Okay, quick admission of guilt: a friend of mine recently got me to start playing Guild Wars 2 with him. (pause for jeers)
So, here are my impressions of what that game got right and wrong and what I'd like to see in CoT (none of this is new, and maybe some of it goes without saying, but I'm saying it nonetheless):
1. All North American players are on the same mega-server and can chat, trade, team, etc with each other. This means there are always several copies of the world map running at any given time to accommodate players, and they constantly track how full each copy of the world is and expand and contract additional copies to keep the environment you're in feeling full, but not overcrowded. I think this has been mentioned before and is not terribly cutting edge tech at this point, but it definitely works. It seems like there are enough (but not too many) other people around everywhere you go. Occasionally you get a message asking you to move to a different copy of the world, you click yes, after talking about it with teammates, and then you're all there. Also, you can (and may have to) switch from one copy of the world to another to be in the same map as your current team/squad/league etc.
2. Your world map is blurred out in places you haven't visited yet, making you want to go everywhere just to reveal the whole thing. There are Waypoints peppered across the outdoor maps (and in the the dungeons) that allow you to TP to and fro, for some small amount of gold (I think the explanation is just that you want to walk your toon to that point, so we cutscene to when you arrive there without making you walk it the long way every time, but it costs some silver/copper). A person can shift-click on a waypoint they've gotten already (when looking at the map) and send it to you in chat, which makes it a link that you can click on to go to that waypoint yourself now. This is pretty convenient. I don't know if GW2 has this, but some kind of "reveal the whole map for all of your toons when you get it revealed with one" thing might be good. I don't know how the spirit of exploring the remote areas really fits into a game like CoT though. Maybe just have places to go to and things to do when you get there would be good. Then have a super-vehivcle deus ex machina that allows you to fast-forward to any one of a set of specific places, like waypoints, except that you have graphics of getting into and out of your Batmobile or Batcycle etc.
3. People in GW2 are constantly running around the outside world doing content, of which there is a lot to do at any given time. There are many many places where you can start a mission that happens outside, there are places where small dynamic events just go off on their own and you can join in them, etc. Maybe you click on the guy trying to caravan his stuff to the next town, and that starts a "defend the caravan" mission if you acceopt it in the dialog box, or maybe the game just gave you an alert that somewhere on your current map, the Toxic Spider Queen just spawned again (it's on a cooldown cycle) and, since it generally takes a team of more than one to taker her down, you could go there and join a PUG to defeat her for fun, XP, and treasure.
4. The outside world is not a place where you can just stand around forever and not get attacked. There are safe areas like forts and so forth, and the really big cities are basically just totally safe zones, but the world map is a place where there's a wasp or bat or spider like EVERYWHERE and even if you defeat them, more will spawn on top of you very soon. I can't say I love this feature or that it makes sense in a CoT type game, and it makes walking around somewhat hazardous, but you don't lack for XP and loot. I mostly have been going to different zones revealing the map, and in the process I have to fight a lot of stuff. I get decent XP and loot that way, even though its not the fastest way to level.
5. Their costume tool gives you a limited palette of colors and makes you BUY other "uncommon" and "rare" dyes for gold on the auction house from other players selling them. That's just lame. I mean, I spent a few silver to unlock the "Midnight Green" color, but it just feels unnecessary. It's a IGC sink, I guess. I'd just skip it personally. Maybe in a game set in days of yore it makes sense that some dyes are rarer than others and more valuable, but in CoT it would feel wrong.
6. I have yet to hear about anyone on GW2 starting a mission, not finishing it on purpose, then resetting it and rinse-repeating it. Everybody pretty much finishes content that they start. I believe this is because of the bonus rewards you get at the end. For one thing, you don't get to open the treasure chest that might contain some uber item until you defeat the end boss and complete the mission, and for another, mission completion gives not just XP and not just coin and items, but also a non-tradable currency called Karma. Like Reward Merits in CoX, Karma can be used to buy items from vendors that accept it.
7. You can craft food items, and when consumed, they provide a small buff for like 30 min at a time. I think this makes a pretty decent IGC sink. Not only do you have to acquire the food ingredients and craft them, but the effects don't last forever and a lot of the buffs you get are enemy-specific, like "Get +5% damage versus centaurs for 30 minutes" etc. Also, food bonuses don't stack. You can only have one food buff active at any time and the newest one overwrites the older one.
8. You might have a multitude of powers to choose from, but you can only have 10 in your tray. There are 5 on the left of your hit point indicator and 5 on the right. The left 5 are your attacks, which are based on what your class is and what weapons you're currently wielding, the 5 on the right are utilities you get to choose from your various choices made leveling up. Everyone get's a self-heal power. My Elementalist, which is like a Blaster, get's like 6 different self-heals to choose from, but can only have one of them in the tray at any given time and they can only be swapped out when not in combat. There are a lot of things about this setup that I would avoid in CoT. Obviously, no weapon-based attacks. Second, I don't like being limited to just 10 powers if I have more. In CoX you could have additional power trays. Third, giving everyone a self heal is not something I'd do.
9. Your hit points regenerate VERY fast outside of combat, but like not at all during. I don't know how they do it, but the game is really good at determining when you're fighting and when you're "safe". This eliminates the need for a "Rest" power and the hit points regen as you walk around, which is nice.
10. When you get defeated, you have several options. First, you're not outright dead or even knocked out YET. The screen goes greyscale and you get a secondary hit point bar while your toon is on the ground almost dead. That hit point bar starts "full" and slwoly ticks down over time. You can still be attacked too. You can't use your normal attacks to fight back, but you have options You can keep fighting while on the ground, using the "Fight to Survive" option, which has you zapping ot poking the monster until either you or it finally get's "killed" in an heroic attempt to put the monster away. If you actually DO manage to defeat the monster before it kills you and you pass out, you get a free heal and get back up. The time spent on the ground counts towards power cooldown too, so your self-heal might be recharged by then. If you already defeated the monster and you're down with nothing to attack, you can just use the "Bandage" option and your secondary hit points will slowly increase until you get back up again, but you can be attacked while doing this so you might get knocked out (which can happen when fighting to survive too). IF you DO get knocked out, you may and must respawn at the nearest waypoint or someone has to rez you, which anyone can do. You don't have to take a rez power to be able to rez people, everyone can just rez everyone else, but it takes time, and the more total HP they target has, the longer it takes.. I do kinda of like this. I think there are some "better" rez powers you can get too. My character, which is very Blastery, has one I think.
11. By the time you get to level 80 (the cap) and get your toon more or less completed, you've acquired all of the powers available to you. The choices you make as you level up only really matter in terms of the order in which you fill up your toon, so like every Elementalist has the same powers as every other one, there are not really any builds that require you to take one thing and not something else. I think this is non-ideal. I liked the "take this power and not that one" decision points that CoX had. Choices mattered in that game. In GW2 you're just choosing gear based on the buffs it gives and trying to pilot the toon as well as can be expected.
12. Leveling happens pretty fast, and it's not really grindy at all. The last level takes about as much time to get to as the first one, as far as I can tell, or at least it felt that way. It only took me like a week and a half to get to level 80 from square one, and though I'm not really "done" getting all my spells yet, it felt pretty fun and quick. I've not heard of people power-leveling toons. There are some people who will level aguy by doing a "circuit" (my term) of different dynamic events that spawn near each other on the same map. Like first you go tot he centaur camp and defeat the champion centaur that spawns there, then after that the other area probably has it's boss ready for you, then you go to area #3 and defeat the giant plant monster, then back to the centaur camp for the chamion again, because he spawns every 30 min or whatever, etc.
13. You get XP and item drops, which might or might not include some IGC (gold/silver/copper), from defeating monsters. For completing missions, you get additional XP bonuses, IGC bonuses, and Karma. Tougher monsters give better rewards. The ones you need help to fight (like the Toxic Spider Queen) will generally drop a rare item more often than less monsters. Big raid-level event monsters, like Tequatl the Sunless (a big dragon) drops a big treasure chest of stuff and you get a daily reward from the game for defeating it, but only once per day. Corpses do have to be actively looted and bag space fills up pretty fast. My toon currently has like 64 slots of inventory in his bag and another 30 in the bank, and most of it is full.
14. While leveling, you only really rent gear. The levels come so fast that once you qualify for level 35 gear, and get it, you're level 40 in like a day or two and are re-upping that gear again, or not. It doesn't make that much of a difference at low levels. A lot of the stuff I get from items drops goes straight to the auction house, which works well, and I get a slow drip of income from that. Once you've equipped anything, you're not goign to be able to sell it to other players, at best you can break it down into SOME crafting components, maybe, depending on how good of a de-crafting kit you've got.
15. Gear get'd damaged when you get defeated and then "Broken" after that. Broken gear does not show up on your avatar and doesn't give any bonuses to combat. Last night in a dungeon I died so many times I was waling back to the gear repair NPC in my boxer shorts, which looked hysterical. The cost is so cheap I don't even notice it. I'm not saying I want this for CoT, I could take it or leave it.
16. The game has lockboxes and keys, I've gotten a few boxes and like 3 keys so far and I didn't get anything terribly compelling out of any of the boxes I've opened. Just cosmetics and convenience items I feel like I really don't need.
17. Doing any one specific dungeon (which is like a door mission in CoT) requires you to go to a specific location and click on the door to the dungeon, but its always in the same place and you can do the same one repeatedly (I think). Some big cities have portals that take you to TF/Trial/Raid-like stuff, I haven't done any of that yet. But it's nice that there are locations that are appropriate to form teams for specific things. That said, I haven't seen a lot of PUGs forming around dungeon doors. Not sure how popular they really are. The waypoint system makes it easy enough to get around that you really don't need access to a queue system window. Given the fullness of the world at large, I think this works really well. If you want to do a specific thing, you go to the place where that thing starts and start looking for a team, which you'll likely find pretty quick. I think this is better than the standard queue system, because this way you can talk to prospective teammates and explain what your goals are (i.e. are we clearing the map, doing a speed run, or doing a high difficulty run for a badge, etc) and that all happens in the local chat where everyone interested can hear everyone else instead of trying to do individual whispers to like 20 people at a time.
18. There are factions that like or don't like each other, but every NPC that has a mission for you has like ONE mission for you and those NPCs will talk to anyone and everyone, you don't have a referral system like CoX had.
19. The game auto-exemps you (down but not up) to an appropriate level for the area you're in, so nothing ever "cons grey" to you. This is good and bad. On the one hand, just waling around is hazardous. I can;t tell you how many times I've been looking at my mapt trying to figure somethign out or on the auction window selling stuff and gotten attacked by a level 5 monster that spawned and started hitting me. That's annoying, but then you do get XP and do so forth from those encounters.
20. You can bring up the auction window from anywhere to sell stuff, which in my opinion is necessary to keep inventory space open, but you can only collect your purchased items and profits of sales in coin by physically going to the AH NPCs. There are enough of them around that it isn't too onerous, and they're usually right near waypoints.
21. There are NPCs that buy trash and give you IGC for it, but it;s really very little. It just about pays for use of the waypoints though. Also, some items that drop have no real use in crafting or as weapons, and cannot be sold in the aH, but will fetch surprisingly high prices from the junk vendors. Most level 80 staffs I find are worth maybe a silver or two, then sometimes I get a bauble or something from a monster and can get 10 silver from the NPC for it.
22. Nobody can fly, so there are a number of rock formations and old castle ruins where you can jump from stone to stone in an effort to reach the top. These are called jumping puzzles and are fun, but not something we could do probably.
23. They managed to make the outside world very big while also not making it look repetitive. The landscape is very nice looking, every area looks like itself and not like a copy of something else.
Edit: 24. One last thing I forgot to mention, all of the mez and dubuff effects have very short durations and don't seem to work well, or at all on tougher bosses. I don't know about stacking them from different sources, but the game is really all about damage, and everyone does damage. There really aren't pure controllers. This might be in an attempt to make PvP work the same as PvE, I don't know. I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand all toons are capable of dealing damage in a fight, on the other, healing and control seem really nerfed.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
A lot of the problems you have with GW2, I think, are related to the concepts you went with going in, I think. There's fundamental differences between fantasy games and superhero games, and you stumbled over a number of them. Keep in mind I'm just explaining the position on these, rather than trying to contest whether they're good or bad.
4. this is a generally accepted thing in Fantasy MMOs - you have select safe zones, and then monster fields elsewhere where you're at risk of fighting, well, monsters. the better games, such as GW2, make it seem like the monsters aren't just standing around in the middle of nowhere waiting to be slaughtered. It's a staple of the genre.
5. The wardrobe system GW2 uses is actually leagues ahead of what most fantasy games have, and plenty of games are starting to copy it. It's one of the more lauded systems in the game. You're going in with the idea that CoH is what it should be, when you're missing the idea that CoH was far and away customized around the costume system, while the vast majority of other games - specifically, gear based games which most fantasy games are - should somehow have the same system. The idea that you can change the appearance of your jacket or whatever is actually fairly novel; set appearances based on what gear you have on is the norm. So, essentially, you set your expectations way too high for this one.
8. this is a fantasy thing. More often than not, your choice of weapon is only a choice of what stats are on it. GW2 went out of its way to break that paradigm by linking skills to certain weapon types based on class.
11. The Guild Wars franchise is built on the idea that the real challenge isn't choosing powers, but choosing a build and learning to skillfully play said build. Like... deck building in a card game, is a good comparison. you build right, learn to play it right, and you can challenge anything.
16. GW2 has a strict "no pay to win" model going, so cash shop items are all cosmetics, short term boosts, or convenience items. Black Lion Chests only contain cash shop items and a few unique but relatively unimportant things inside.
17. Pressing Y brings up the Looking For Group tool. you also only need to be on the same map as your party members to join a dungeon or other instance, so there's no practical reason to stand around outside the dungeon entrance when you could be ruynning around doing exploration while you wait for your group to fill up.
24. Alright, breaking this one up into two parts, because you addressed two different things here.
24a. Healing was set up in this game so that there's no "trinity". The conceit of the game was to avoid someone being locked into a healer or tank role by making it so that everybody has some form of damage mitigation active defense (attack cancellations like blocking, dodge rolls, and invulnerability skills). The result is that everybody has to cover three roles for themselves to remain self sufficient; some self healing (the reason why everybody has a healing skill), some defensive ability (largely the dodge roll mechanic everybody gets access to, as well as some class specific defensive powers) and the rest goes into damage. Healing isn't so much "nerfed" as it is a last resort after your defensive abilities have failed to protect you.
24b. The power of Control effects were actually extremely inflated in CoH. 6-10 second stuns are NOT a normal gameplay experience in the vast majority of games; many more deal primarily with 1-3 seconds that you're meant to use at clutch moments or to knock your opponent away while you reposition. Additionally, the reason why control effects are largely ineffective against bosses is because of the break-bar mechanic; monsters with a break bar can only be controlled when the bar turns blue, and each control effect you apply does a little "damage" to this bar's points. When it hits 0, the bar is broken and the boss is stunned for a while; this prevents players from doing shenanigans to bosses like they used to before the whole Breakbar mechanic got introduced to the game.
Hope that was enlightening.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
intentionally failing and repeating content: This can happen. There is a chain of events which can be interrupted by finishing an early event, so it's intentionally not finished. Farming happens with world bosses. Look up the dulfy world boss timer and go to the bosses when they are active. You'll find a ton of people at each, and you'll find those same people at the next one and so on. You can only beat the bosses once in a 24hr period (which resets based on server time 8pm EST) but there are enough bosses that it'd be a long play session to get all of them in that period. The main story missions are also a very small part of the game. A lot of characters simply don't do them after the first few run-throughs. Your race and faction choice have a mild effect but after level 30 or so all the story missions play pretty much the same.
Dungeons and other instanced content: They are, in my experience, not very popular. My guild has run the dungeon series once, so everyone could get the achieve's. Fractals are similar. I've actually wanted to do more of these as the few I've done have been interesting and entertaining to me, but most of my guild is of the opposite opinion so it's very hard to put together a team to do some. I'm not sure if I've just become more sensitive over time to joining a PUG or if the community is not as nice, but I feel very uncomfortable doing that in GW2. I'll give the GW2 community the benefit of the doubt and blame it on my own anxiety.
Second Chance: https://store.missingworldsmedia.com/CityOfTitans/SecondChance/
Dev Tracker: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/fixing-dev-digest
Dev Comments: https://cityoftitans.com/forum/dev-comments
Hi Rox! I've never done a Fractal or Dungeon. I usually just crank out the Dailies and go read a book. Of course, that might just be because my time-zone and gaming-time are so much later than yours. I think your post-40 personal story differs, based on the Order you choose, but then it's Claw Island and Trahearne... I got tired of the endless stream of undead-things and didn't really follow up.
Crafting, in GW2 is a giant, money-sucking IGC-sink. You are practically forced to pay real-money to support it. Alternately, you could quit your day-job and work the (rapacious) Market, flipping stuff and basically Being one of the Market-goons we hate. Yes, once you have reached maximum Crafting level, one can make a small profit by making and selling certain items.
Your Costume is basically fixed by your Class. There's a dozen or so different looks for each of the six costume locations, for each type of armor. Those looks are actually fairly limited by the Devs' um-creativity, so the 'ultimate' armor has things sticking out of it, if you are male, and you get 'nearly naked angels in lingerie' if you're female. Of course, there IS a system for over-riding the look of your armor, by replacing it with the look of some other armor that you've already collected. That does lead to a bit of mix-and-match creativity in individual costumes, but, mostly, they all seem to come out the same - at least, to me.
Experience is ridiculously plentiful, as I have 2-3 Hundred levels worth of free experience tickets in the bank. All seven of my characters are already max-level. They might be higher, but I didn't buy the expansion that introduced post-80 content, so my extra levels don't count.
Upshot is, I'm kinda bored with the game, but here's a screen-capture of my latest thing:
[URL=http://s105.photobucket.com/user/fireheart5150/media/My%20Characters/gw131_zpsfhbvd6rf.jpg.html][IMG]http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m207/fireheart5150/My%20Characters/th_gw131_zpsfhbvd6rf.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
Be Well!
Fireheart
Thanks for the comments all. I think it's pretty obvious that City of Heroes was my first real MMO and GW2 is my first fantasy one. I like the dynamically-spawning little events that pop up all over everywhere. I think that wouldn't be out of place in a CoT game, and would be a reason for remaining outdoors and street sweeping. If it worked, mechanically, like the GW2 ones do, you could have a nearby NPC that gives out the same type of "go into this local area and clean it up until you've defeated enough mobs and interacted with enough objects to complete my mission, then you get XP, and other rewards" then have a boss that spawns in that area, like a gang leader, or robot that runs amok, etc.
As far as the crafting, I mean, the one thing I don't like about GW2's system is that crafting involves just standing there combining components in a work table. Granted, it gives XP, but I think it would be better if the crafting mechanics could somehow operate on the principle that you get crafting progress by going out and defeating mobs to gain XP, even after you reach the cap. That way all the extra XP-getting stuff you do post cap could serve the purpose of grinding away at that uber rare item you still want. Those items have to be hard to get, so they're either going to drop VERY rarely, or you have to grind a LOT to make them, or both.
As far as the auto-exemping that GW2 does, I think that once you've reached the level cap, or once you're reached a level that's above the stated maximum for the zone you're in, you should only be exemped down to the zone maximum, not down to the point where every minion wandering around is a real threat to you. It would make navigation a little less arduous if they made SOME concession to the level 80 toons walking around in the level 1-15 zone and just let us be level 15 everywhere in it. That way I'm not getting mauled by a level 5 spider as I try to figure out how to get to the next hero point.
I think the way I would prefer to handle TFs and "dungeon" type stuff, would be to have a physical location in the outside world that has a door to the "Start Here" point for the content, which would have an area around it that's relatively safe, and which people can congregate in if they're looking for a team to do that TF or whatever. Then only the leader of the team can open the door or talk to the NPC to start the thing, at which point the first thing the TF does is it sends everyone on the team the "TP to your new Task Force start point now?" message. Then, once everyone clicks "Yes" the team is assembled in the first part of the instance or dungeon map or whatever and they can then start the thing. This isn't new or different from a lot of other ways to do it, but I like having a clear "hang out" point around each different TF that is the appropriate place to go looking for a PUG to do that TF. CoH basically had that for a lot of the early stuff. I dislike and would try to avoing even having the option of the "jump in the queue and get placed with a random set of people you don't know and haven't talked to" thing, because some people are going to want to clear the map, others want to do the speed run, others want to do Master of Run, etc.
I'm personally at a loss for how to make the salvaging of raw craftable materials work in a game like CoT. I don't like the idea of "there's trees and ore and harvestable plants everywhere" for a modern type setting, but then that DOES get people moving around outside looking for stuff they want. Maybe it would be better to have NPCs give out missions for materials and you get a bunch of crafting stuff from the NPC when you complete the mission? That plus the "XP earned gives crafting progress" mechanic would encourage people to do those missions, to completion, and I like the sound of that. Or that could work like the hearts do in GW2, where just being in an area and defeating mobs gives you progress towards an eventual"full heart" which would then award you XP (and crafting progress) and some raw mats you need.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Well, without Gear in the game, 90% of most crafting systems goes out the window. No weapons or armor just leaves temporary buff items and permanent 'augments' or whatever we're calling enhancements, now. One element of GW2 crafting that I do like is 'Salvaging' - turn all of the junk-loot that you get into raw materials, then use those materials to craft new things. This would simplify the Plethora of named junk into more generic base materials.
That way, one isn't defacing the landscape by picking flowers in the garden, chopping trees in the park, or digging nodes of ore. In fact, it would make more sense to me, if we turned in the 'materials' recovered in operations against our foes to the 'authorities', for recycling, and got some sort of credit that could be spent on what we needed... even IGC would work. Or... since we're talking 'licensed heroes', we could turn our completed 'crime scene' over to the Police for clean-up and get a Reward for completed maps... Villains could call a 'salvaging crew'. No need for PCs to collect every unlicensed firearm, death-ray, and vat of unholy alien goo, just turn it over to the clean-up crew and... profit?
Be Well!
Fireheart
This might be pedantic of me, but we [i]will[/i] have gear. It just will not be tied to appearance and will be "slotted" into the power itself, similar in many respects to how CoX's enhancements worked. We have sparse details, all of which are subject to change based on the designers exploring and refining, but mechanically it's still items that fit into slots to enhance your character's abilities.
I'm in general a big fan of simplifying the loot systems. CoH early on had a good idea where the only loot you got was Enhancements and Inspirations without any clutter that you really don't care about. Granted, a fair amount of the enhancements you got were [i]still[/i] functionally useless vendor-dump items (Like lvl 40 DOs and AOs), but it was a better direction from stacks of dozens wolf-pelts and other BS that older generation games used.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Certainly does seem needlessly nit-picky to me. In a classic 'gear driven' game, the character itself has no stats at all, but serves as a framework upon which to hang gear. In GW2, for instance, there is no 'weaponless' attacking, except in certain 'utility' powers. Therefore, without the right weapon-gear, the character is pointless.
That was not the case in CoH and presumably not in CoT. Even without Enhancements/Augments, the character still has their powers. Their 'gear', if you want to call it that, ONLY buffs their numbers, not their actual powers. It has no... physical existence, it is invisible in the game.
Now, one could argue that DCUO, which has 'gear' collection in it, is similar, in that the characters still have their actual powers, even without the 'gear'. Yet this 'gear' has a visible presence, expressed as a visible change in appearance when equipped. A character is clearly 'more' with the right 'gear' than without it.
So, I choose to view the CoH system as a 'permanent buff' and not as 'gear'. 'Gear' has form and function, it is a 'thing', while Enhancements/Augments are formless, they could be Anything, and only have an effect.
Enhancements have the advantage in being flexible elements of story-telling. Sure, they could represent discovering a new cybernetic attachment, or an Artifact of Power, but they could also represent Training Montage X. Augments are tokens that represent the fact of the buffing effect and not the object that causes the effect, like a piece of 'gear'.
At least, that's how it seems to me.
Be Well!
Fireheart
That is inaccurate though, and not what you said.
It's inaccurate GW is somewhat exceptional in the level it takes it's Gear Focus, but most classic MMORPG games (Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, WoW) have the character build stats and skills on top of some abilities requiring certain abilities. Guild Wars is the exception in this case, not the rule.
It's not what you said because you made the statement that CoT will be "without gear" and this will throw out most crafting. Enhancements/Augments [i]are[/i] gear and the distinctions you make later are null.
This seems to be a matter of definition then, but your definition just doesn't make sense within the context of the claim that the game is gearless within the context of mechanics, specifically crafting.
Gear in this context is not a storytelling element, but rather is a mechanic. Within this context as a game mechanic, "gear" is any in-game entity that is created or found, provides a mechanical effect on the character, and can be added and removed from a character. CoH enhancements were not "Permanent" in that they were fixed once applied. They could be removed and replaced, the only hangup being that once they were removed, they were destroyed. You could swap out a damage enhancement for an accuracy or recharge rate enhancement at any time, if you so chose.
Your requirement that gear be visible is very strange to me, as there are often items that are unarguably "gear" yet occupy a non-visible slot in plenty of games. Heck, in most Final Fantasy games (especially the older sprite-based games), about the only gear you had that applied a visible component was the weapon.
Additionally, whether a item is visible or not has zero relevance to crafting. You could craft enhancements [i]and[/i] costume pieces in CoH. Granted, the crafting system was rather tacked-on IMO, but it illustrates my point that visibility is irrelevant to crafting.
The reason I'm harping on this point is that calling CoT "gearless" is incorrect within the context of this discussion and the available information regarding the game, and is likely to confuse readers that haven't been following the subject.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
I played EverQuest and WoW and in both of those games, your 'gear' was both visible and distinctive. Your character was 'generic' and pretty much indistinguishable from every other character of that race and class. **Yes, I remember the stats-buy and balance in EQ, but that barely made any difference past 50.**
So, I must disagree with any attempt to say that 'gear' is a factor in CoT. Anyone familiar with a 'gear' game, like WoW, will see only the faintest resemblance in Augments. In CoH, Enhancements went into your Powers, directly, and not into your stats or your Character. Best of all, you didn't have to 'camp Nagafen' to get them. I believe the Devs have stated that CoT will be similar, in that Augments are slotted into your Powers.
I see where I said:
... and that could be confusing. It's not quite what I meant to say. I meant that Enhancements affect the numbers for Accuracy, Damage, and the like and that they don't actually give the character their powers.
My statement about Crafting, though, was that without 'gear', all that was left to craft was temporary and permanent Buffs. I meant to imply that systems like harvesting nodes and processing critters for materials were not needed in such a simplified situation. By 'temporary' buffs I meant consumables like Inspirations and by 'permanent', items like Enhancements, in CoH.
And, I agree, Enhancements/Augments are not a story-telling element. I thought I was clear that storytelling could be more easily adapted to generic, non-gear items, like Enhancements, than they could to 'gear', like 'Mongor's Artifact of Power'. Because, to make your Build, you're gonna need sixteen 'Mongor's Artifact of Power' and a couple-dozen 'Cybernetic Augmentation', plus a bunch of 'Titanium Shell' and a whole case of 'Jungle Juice'.
Have fun camping Nagafen!
Be Well!
Fireheart
How do people feel about leaving the Augment and Refinement objects totally generic and unexplained? Like, instead of calling the Damage Enhancement a "Nectanebo's Gourd" or "Cyberdyne Flow Regulator" it's just called a Damage Augment. Maybe a prefix on the name for rarity, like "Rare Damage Augment" or whatever, but leave it like that with no "flavor text" in the name?
Even if you did THAT, and assuming these things, whatever we're calling them ("gear" or not) have no effect on your avatar's appearance, which is entirely a function of other factors, those generic Damage Augment objects will likely be a thing that players in the game can make for themselves somehow by assembling the right combination of other objects and processing them somehow.
In a game where the salvage is themed, you might have skeletons that drop Cursed Bone Fragments while robots drop Circuit Boards, etc What will our generic Damage Augments be made of? Will the salvage components have names and descriptions like "Circuit Board" and "Bone" or not? And if not, then what? And how do we acquire them? And how do we go about making the things we actually want? I think the system by which one acquires and processes salvage items into usable Augments etc ought to encourage and reward playing the game. Like defeating mobs and completing missions and stuff should get you more salvage and should in some way be a thing that actuates or accelerates the processing of that stuff into Augments etc. The less sitting there in my lair combining parts at a table I have to do, the less "Minecrafty" the game feels and the more "superhero" it feels. That's as far as my thinking takes me.
For the record, I don't like having to click my mouse to harvest nodes and to loot corpses. I think a good modern hero/villain game should have none of that. In GW2, in many cases, the monster you just defeated drops absolutely nothing, by the way. Just throwing that out there. I mean you get XP, but that's the only thing that's guaranteed. But what I'm really saying is, since there will be no treasure chests or whatever, the mobs might drop salvage parts directly into our inventory, like CoX, which is fine if the salvage parts have names like "Circuit Board" because you'd expect a robot to drop those. If we're not doing that naming convention for the salvage, or if the salvage isn't going to come from defeated mobs, then I assume the NPCs are going to give it to us for some reason. Maybe you have to grind for a particular NPC faction to get specific salvage components. Would that work?
Also, since a lot of people will likely just do whatever's most efficient, I'm in favor of rotating what the most efficient play mode is on a regular basis. Some days you want to street sweep, others you want to do other stuff. There's more value in every mission, mob, TF, map, etc that way. You get people playing the WHOLE game, so that no well-designed part that took many long hours of blood sweat and tears go to waste because it's not the absolute most bang for the buck. So like have some kind of rotating or quasi-random daily rewards buff for doing different things maybe.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
First, we don't know that salvage will be themed yet, do we?
Second, what do you mean by "most efficient play mode?"
Shall I assume from the context that you are speaking of most efficient xp/playing time? Because I'm sure it would all depend on what the character/player wants to farm: inspirations, xp, reputation, other, all of the above? Personally I farm fun, so to me the most efficient play mode is the play mode that packs the most fun for my playing time. But I think I understand the gist of what you are getting at:
Offering different rewards for different content on a randomly rotational basis encourages people to diversify their playtime accordingly.
On the plus side, it could really reduce the queues for group and PvP content; and it would certainly get people to interact with other people they otherwise may not have interacted with. On the downside, it could result in a zerg playstyle where everyone ends up doing the same content to match the rewards, depending on how great the rewards are amplified. It could also mean that people will deliberately choose not to participate in a certain play style until it is that playstyle's turn in the reward circle. Gotta love the laws of unintended consequences.
Skyforge does this. Rewards are constantly shifting and people choose the content they run primarily because of the rewards offered by it. Skyforge avoids the zerg and omission effects by offering different rewards for every client. So no two people see the same rewards offered for the same content. If CoT would do this, I recommend they do it the same way, rotating the rewards differently for each client.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
On the topic of rotating, or otherwise dynamic reward ratios:
I'm personally adverse to [i]arbitrary[/i] shifts of reward ratios for exactly the reasons that Huckleberry mentioned. I'm also not a big fan of arbitrarily granting mechanical advantages to players through an individual rotating reward system, as I think that might encourage solo-play more than anything else, or make players feel cheated. However, this also inspired a thought on how to make the game somewhat less static.
The short of it is to modify spawns in a zone in response to player actions in defeating groups of enemies. I only have the broadest strokes of this idea right now, so the following example should be taken on the more abstract concept rather than the details.
[b]Example:[/b] You have a zone that has fairly standard spawns between 4 different factions (or gangs, w/e). The ratios of Minion, Lieutenant, and Boss type enemies in each spawn group is 7/2/1. If players focus on a beating up a given faction, along with the other factions spawning more groups (In character "taking turf"), the faction getting beat up starts to have fewer spawns of more powerful enemies (You've "killed" a bunch of their members, and only the especially competent ones are left), thus skewing the M/L/B ratio of spawns to more like 5/3/2.
Hypothetically, this would make the other 3 factions more available to fight and have individual groups easier to defeat than the faction taking a beating, and therefore creating some form of equilibrium within the zone that is not arbitrary, but will remain dynamic enough to spur changes in behavior in players if they're hard-farming a particular faction too much.
The biggest potential hangup I see as a non-programming type is the server resources that would be necessary to track enemy kills in the zone. As a general suggestion, this type system would be based off of defeating a given enemy group (similar to CoX mobs) rather than individual enemies defeated in order to reduce unnecessary server traffic, even if it's imprecise. As an In Character justification for this, you could say that the survivor that you didn't finish off went back for their buddies after the Player Character left (or something).
Sic Semper Tyrannis
This... City of Titans NEEDS this. Never have I been so happy as to learn that I might actually have the dedication to reach max level on a video game for once in my entire life.
<==========)===O|TtDd|O===(==========>
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/toon-profiles-nnekonnin-llabanttselel-aalbusuumbra-aagimundr-sstaalsol-and-doctor]My original character profiles![/url]
[img]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/26.jpg[/img]
True, a big level/xp grind can be frustrating to slog through, but letting characters level too fast can also be a bad thing. This is a challenging balance to create, and one that some people on either extreme will inevitably dislike, but it's one that must be done.
I could get behind that. If I recall correctly the main reason we had that flavour text on some enhancements (DO's and SO's) was due to the "Hero Origins" (Magic, Tech, etc). If CoT does not have anything mechanically connected to the origin of our powers then the flavour text is not necessary. Like Training Enhancments and Invention Enhancements, just call them "damage", "accuracy", etc. Besides, that flavour text would always screw me up when I was outfitting my characters: "what the hell gives me increased immobilization? Li Tieh Kuai's Lens? Whatever..."
If there are such things as "Augment Sets" or special types of augments in COT, I could get behind them having special names however, just to differentiate them from "normal" enhancements. Kinda like "Anthem's Honour - Damage/Accuracy" or somesuch.
I think I'd like more info on how the crafting system would work before I decide on the "flavour" of the salvage. I do agree that I don't want anything nearly as complex as Minecraft. For me CoH hit a kind of sweet spot - crafting was entirely optional, and it wasn't too involved; you had a recipe/blueprint that told you what you needed, and if you had the parts/ingredients you just hit a button - and done. And if you were a big crafter you could even get to the point where you didn't even need recipes - just the parts.
Agreed - I think stuff should just automatically appear in your storage. I can't tell you how many times playing STO that I just completed a mission and clicked to pick up the loot from a destroyed enemy vessel only to have the OPS/mission end window pop up JUST before I complete the keystroke - meaning I just missed the loot AND I missed the mission flavour text (yes, I usually read that stuff), and I'm booted back into sector space.
I'm for this as well. Maybe have a community reward meter kind of like STO has. The meter is filled by completing the objective(s), the meter can be filled multiple times during the event, and those participating get some nifty rewards as/when the meter is filled.
Okay, having just made a big mistake on GW2, I'm now going to rant about it.
So there are these Trial/TF type things they call Fractals of the Mists. Apparently, in the more advanced ones, there's this "Agony" mechanic whereby everyone just takes damage over time from the environment. In order to not get auto-killed by the Agony effect in the more advanced fractals, you need items that give you Agony Resistance. The lower level fractals drop a currency that can be used to buy such items and a salvage component that is necessary to craft such items (you can buy the ring you need and then craft the upgrade thingy that get's slotted into it and with an upgraded ring you get Agony Resistance). I recently got a rare drop from a fractal that was a perfect fit for my character, in terms of stats. It was a ring, and the GOOD ring for my class, so they say. Now, after doing a few more fractals, I had managed to save up enough junk to BUY another ring (you can wear two rings). So I did that, then my teammates, like 10 seconds after I clicked "yes" to the transaction, informed me that these rings, being ultra rare, are subject to a rule the prevents you from wearing two copies of the same ring, even if you have them. Also, these rings are account, bound, meaning I cannot trade them or sell them, my only options are to email the superfluous ring to another character on my account, or to de-craft it for really meager returns. I have no intention of making any more characters, and so I did the de-crafting thing, which ended up costing me coinage and not really gaining me anything I needed for my trouble, so it was a pure straight-up waste to ever buy that second ring, which I could not really salvage any value from.
Now, the buying of the second ring, being a mistake, was my bad. I should have read the rules more carefully before doing that. That's on me. My main issues with this system are the following:
1. Okay, I bought a second copy of the same ring and couldn't use it. Presumably that "you cant use two of the same ring" rule exists in order to make the process of optimizing stats a little more difficult/complex. I get that. Despite that, there is a DIFFERENT ring I could have bought that would have given me the EXACT same stats as the ring I already had. I'm still screwed, because I bought the ring with the wrong NAME and cannot trade it or exchange it for the other, equally good one with the different NAME. If there's going to be a "no two of the same ring" rule, then why the HECK do they have two different rings with different names that do EXACTLY the same thing, stat-wise? You COULD just get rid of the other ring and let people wear two of the same ring and the result would be the same. This system is unnecessarily complicated and awkward, if you ask me.
2. Anyone who get's items dropping at random runs the risk of getting, at random, two of the same ring or getting a random drop of an item they already just bought yesterday. So even if you make no mistakes, you can still buy a ring, then have a copy of that same ring drop on you later, with no real ability to gain from that random drop.
3. GW2 has an annoying and confusing array of like a billion different currencies to have to manage. Your "wallet" has a list of over 20 different currencies, some of which only drop in one specific dungeon. You do the Twilight Arbor dungeon, you get Dire Flowers or whatever they're called, you do a different one, you get THAT dungeon's currency. These currencies cannot be traded to other players in any way and can only be given to NPCs to buy gear for yourself that's account bound as soon as you buy it. This is madness. The game's trading and commerce functionality should exist so that people can trade items and so forth with each other, but that's not really why the auction house exists, because there are like 50 different kinds of gear you can only get for yourself from NPCs using that NPC's preferred currency, which you cannot acquire in any way other than grinding their one dungeon for it. While it may be true that this causes more people to do more dungeons, it's also true that it totally undermines the auction house, making it kind of pointless to even have one in the first place, in many ways.
4. Given all of this, the apparent reason for the auction house is to give you an economy to interact with that's apparently just for show and to make you feel like there's a reason for it to be there. The monsters drop gear, you can sell it, but the people buying it are mostly not buying it to use it, they're buying it to de-craft it into salvage so they can get their crafting skill up to the max level. The crafting is entirely for making a Legendary weapon for yourself, after much grinding. All of the stuff you make yourself from crafting components into usable items ends up costing money and you get less money back for the item than you paid to make it, EXCEPT for the legendary ones, which will take a long time to grind for and make. So you have to take a big monetary loss to get your crafting up to the maximum level, then you can finally grind a LOT more to be able to make the ONE item you can sell for a profit or more likely use yourself.
So the GW2 economy system is far from perfect. I don't know how I'd try to design one if left to my own devices, but I have problems with it as it is.
I don't want CoT, being a superhero game, to have a crafting system them forces me to craft a bunch of totally worthless stuff just to get my skill level to the max. I want to be a hero, not a manufacturer of goods nobody wants.
Some ideas:
Maybe the game gives you progress toward crafting an item based on how much XP you've earned since starting the project. Call it "work", you get XP while you've got a bun in the oven, you do work towards the eventual completion of that project. To be sure, these projects ought to require raw materials too. So maybe on any given week, certain game content gives bonus material drop rates, some other content gives bonus XP, and yet other content gives bonus IGC drop rates. Since you've got multiple rewards types, you might want to do all three or maybe you want to focus on the one that get's you the item that you're working on finished. It would be better, in my opinion, if the items we make ourselves are better than the ones that drop at random, if such even happens at all. It might be good to have player-made stuff be better, slightly, at all rarities than the randomly dropping stuff. Or maybe pre-made gear doesn't just drop at random, and the ONLY gear is player made. Or maybe good gear doesn't drop, but IGC does and you can buy cheap, not terribly powerful stuff to tide you over from NPCs then get the uber stuff later after you reach the level cap. Maybe the not-so-great NPC gear is character bound on acquisition and basically disposable, but cheap, and the player-made stuff is more rare and better.
I don't know, it's a tough problem.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Bank space is also account-based, in GW2, so drop the spare copy of the uber object into your bank and pick it up with another character. You actually can't mail stuff to yourself, in GW2.
As I mentioned, GW2's Crafting system is Mostly just a money sink.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I actually loved the way Guild Wars 1 handled it; you got to the level cap of 20 rather quickly, and then things kept getting harder anyways. the idea was, simply put, to encourage you to figure out proper strategies and refine your build - which was convenient, as you could re-set up your build in any safe zone, assuming you had everything unlocked. It far and away encouraged people to be intelligent, rather than simply relying on good gear or something like that.
It's not something we can do in a game like CoT, but it was a very nice setup back then.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
I'm with Halae on this one. I dislike grinding in general, and using Level-ups as the hook to keep players playing is usually done because the designers are applying skinner-box design rather than engaging content.
I played my lvl 50 characters in CoX more than anything else because I enjoyed playing them without the concern for leveling up. Leveling up itself wasn't a problem because I could just run the missions from my contacts pretty much all the way to 50, especially with a couple TFs thrown in.
Grinding for levels is just absolutely toxic with regards to my enjoyment of the game.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Perhaps oddly, I have only rarely experienced this thing called 'Grind'. I just went out and played the content. The few times that I did experience this 'grinding' sensation, is when I had out-leveled the content I was doing and couldn't find new content (that I wanted to do) which was appropriate for my level. Any content requiring ‘taskforce’ sized teams didn’t appeal to me, unless I was running with a group I trusted, like my SG.
An advantage in GW2 is the automatic (downward) level adjustment that happens whenever one is in a lower-level area. One loses no powers, but combat statistics are constrained to be consistent with the local content. This happens on the fly, as one moves through the areas, and one’s applicable ‘level’ can change up and down without even leaving the zone.
We had this automatic effective level reduction in CoH Instances, but not in open-world zones. (https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Sidekick) I remember that we could set limits to how far up/down we were willing to go, but I recall situations where I also wanted a Toggle for that auto-reduction. For instance, when I was travelling across a zone and didn’t want to be bothered by mobs that were technically ‘all grey to me’. It was also useful for preventing a party-wipe-out, even at the cost of earned experience points.
My experience in GW2 is that levels (experience points) were ridiculously easy to gather. Practically every activity in the game was worth points, from discovering new territory, to collecting materials and crafting, to resurrecting the fallen, and of course all the regular ‘pixel-murdering’ activities.
In the course of leveling up 6 characters to maximum level, I have accumulated almost 300 levels worth of ‘free level’ items. Meaning that I could create 3-4 new characters and immediately raise them to maximum level. In fact, I made a 7th character and raised it half-way, played and leveled for a couple days, then finished the last 3 levels all at once, because I was getting bored.
So, ridiculously plentiful experience-points. And I hadn’t even worked through most of the content. Happily, GW2 auto-manages my effective level, wherever I go, with whatever character I use. So no content is ever ‘all grey to me’ and everywhere is dangerous territory.
Except for the volume of experience-points, I love these features and would welcome them in CoT.
Be Well!
Fireheart
"24b. The power of Control effects were actually extremely inflated in CoH. 6-10 second stuns are NOT a normal gameplay experience in the vast majority of games; many more deal primarily with 1-3 seconds that you're meant to use at clutch moments or to knock your opponent away while you reposition."
Reposition for what? Damage? I don't wanna do damage, I want to control! I thought CoH did a great job with controllers. Yes, I was squishy, but what I enjoy most is NOT damage, but screwin a mob up for the damage dealers on my team to take out. I loved controlling, buffing and de buffing mobs. I have played other games since CoH shut down and you are correct when it comes to the 1-3 seconds thing, and it sux. I liked how in CoH one control on a boss or AV did not work, but the more holds you applied, you could literally see them taking effect until they were held. Yes, not for long, but it was a great feeling when it happend. Please, please, please CoT don't nerf controllers down to what "other" games are doing. Playing other games since CoH, I NEVER got the feeling of being a controller. Besides, why make everyone "have" to be a damage dealer? I don't wanna do damage. I wanna be support...and NOT just "healing" support. A good controller in some cases could "turn the tide" in a battle. I loved that.
I don't think he was saying this was a negative - I think he's just pointing out that Controls in other games are typically MUCH less powerful. And fear not - I think the devs here understand these powerful controls were a positive for CoH - we ARE getting a dedicated controller class in CoT after all. The effects might not be as binary as CoH's, but they will still be comparatively powerful nonetheless.
Vanguard(*) had one of the best solutions for this problem. To increase your crafting levels you could do writs, rather than open world crafting. For writs you were given a list of items and the required quality and stats for them, AND the necessary crafting resources. On completion you got an experience bonus and a small monetary reward. Resources you had gathered yourself (or bought) gave you a small but not insignificant headstart on the crafting process so it became easier but more expensive to meet the quality requirements. If you blew your crafting you might have to try again with gathered resources, and on completion both the items you crafted and the resources you left unused were removed from your inventory again (and the provided resources could not be used to craft regular items).
This had the added advantage that starting crafters didn't flood the auction houses with useless crap and the developers could closely control how much money entered into the game (as opposed to the more traditional gather resources from a limitless supply and sell to traders at a fixed price).
It of course helped that the crafting process was a fun, and at higher levels quite challenging, minigame. (You can take a look at the crafting in Everquest 2 to get an impression of what it was like, though the Vanguard crafting minigame had still more depth to it).
It always struck me as such a simple solution to the ages old problem of crafting tons of useless items and creating a limitless money supply in the process.
(* The game was shuttered shortly before Sony dumped what remained of its online gaming division into the hands of what was left of the development team, and the new owners are slowly being strangled by some questionable investors. But I guess we should be grateful that Sony is not a Korean company or they would have closed all the games and kept the source code and IP for no apparent reason other than that they could, refusing to deal with anybody until long after said property had any remaining value.)
I like that you get XP for breathing, blinking, getting out of your chair, etc in GW2, I don't like the "Writ of XP" or "Gain a level" items that exist. I mean, I don't use them, for the most part. I really like to take my time and get to know the class I'm playing, so I feel like handing me a free level 80 toon is like handing a 10 year old a copy of "Quantum Physics" by David Griffiths. Great text for the college quantum class, but too advanced for the person that has it in this case. Some people just want to get to the cap and get their PvP on, so to each their own, I guess.
As for control, I think there could be more/better control in GW2 without breaking anything. I mean, you have to get the rules figured out for large teams (how much stacking of effects is there, etc) and the better bosses probably ought to be immune to it, sometimes, or have abilities that make them much much harder to control, but even if all you can do is slow the bog bad a little and make them have to break out of the control effects by using a power, if it disrupts their attack chain, it's worthwhile.
As for getting around town, I think the dynamic exemping that GW2 does would be fine for CoT if the neighborhoods in had lower mob spawn rates and more safe areas. Also, having travel powers that get you around al ot faster, or through the air, will help a lot. It would be nice if there weren't angry robots and cultists on every rooftop and fascist werewolves throwing rocks at you all over like Brix had, though.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
One thing that I find interesting and frustrating at the same time in GW2 dungeons and fractals is the "mini game" type stuff they make you have to participate in. Like last night, we were doing Citadel of Flame, which at the end has a boss that's totally immune to all player attacks. He rolls lava balls at you, you have to then pick up a lava ball (like that wouln't kill you outright) and throw it back at him to defeat him. Meanwhile he does all sorts of flamey lava effects like erecting walls of lava etc. The lava walls can be attacked and brought down, but parts of that feel really silly to me.
1. He's this big fiery minotaur looking demigod, and he appears to be MADE of lava. My own fire, ice, lightning, and earth based attacks do nothing to him. I made my character because I wanted to use MY powers, not have to use someone else's
2. He's GIVING you the only weapon you could possibly use to defeat him. That seems kinda stupid of him.
3. How am I picking up a ball of orangeinsh white-hot lava and not getting killed instantly, and why would I decide that doing that was a good idea the first time? I feel like at the very least there would need to be some kind of explanation or mechanic that makes me feel like I can pick up balls of lava without it harming me too much, but there is none. You just do it.
4. Why is he, a demigod made of lava, vulnerable to being attacked by lava balls? And if he IS vulnerable to THAT, why is he INVULNERABLE to MY "Lava Eruption" attack still?
I think some of these things could be designed better, or in a way that makes a little more sense when you pay attention to the flavor text. That's all.
Like in this other one we did, there was a boss in a powered Mech suit. You fought him in the foundry where the suit was forged and there were vats of hot molten iron that you could dump on him, if you lured him under the vat, which you could do. THAT, I felt, was far better designed, because it made sense that dumping hot molten iron on the mech would harm it in some way. In that one, all the molten iron dump did was immobilize him and reduce his damage resistance to the point where you COULD wail on him for damage, temporarily. Then you had to lure him our to another vat and dump more molten iron on him and repeat.
I like the puzzle nature of these things where you have to figure out how to win the minigame, but I would prefer to do it using my powers in some way at some point in time. It's definitely next-level technology as compared to "click the glowwie" and I would like to see it used in CoT. Just having the ability to pick up and put down objects allows you to have to arrange and relocate things to make a game out of it. Put all the crystals in the crystal matrix, depress all the pressure plates on the floor by placing the big rocks on them, etc. If there are going to be things like "all of your attacks are useless, you have to use these new special ones we give you," I would prefer that it be done in such a way that some people in the party still get to use their own attacks for the usual effect. Maybe there's only only one special gun or whatever, and maybe you have to protect the guy who has it or maybe the team has to pas it around in some way from person to person, I don't know. Just don't shut down everyone all the time.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Radiac, I think we would have gotten along much better in the early days of this forum if you had picked up GW2 sooner.
Having played GW2 since launch week (though not as much recently) I think the biggest lesson to be learned is to be careful with making adjustments to difficulty. Because a small portion of the player base was able to blow through the dungeons (most of which was due to their skill at the game to be fair) they were made significantly harder and annoying for the average player who was pretty much fitting the original design. Ultimately I got better at it, but that was because I had friends that helped push me through it.
I'm all for fixing exploits, and sometimes things are found to be too easy or hard after they go live. But just because a small percentage of players are breezing through content it doesn't mean the bulk of the player base needs to suffer just to erect a speed-bump.
-----------------------------------------
I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame