Distinctive command buttons are essential. CoX had a good balance between distinctive and simple. Some games have distinctive buttons/icons, but they are so complex that mentally associating them with their powers is not as simple as one might think.

Redlynne wrote:

The one thing that I insist on wanting is a Self Only key, so that I don't have to have two Powers to heal/buff myself and my allies ... instead I can have one Power that does both, with target selection shifting on demand. You know, the way World of Warcraft does it ...

I have nothing against a "single target heal/buff" power that could be used to either heal yourself or someone else. But why wouldn't there also be distinct types of powers designed to ONLY be able to heal/buff yourself and/or designed to ONLY be able to heal/buff someone else? Those are three different cases that are all equally legitimate as superhero powers.

But even if we focus in on the version of the power that could be used to either heal/buff yourself or someone else why couldn't the power be implemented so that if you fired it without picking another target it would simply default to a self heal/buff? Do we really need a second "self only" key with powers like these? I only question it because under the KISS principle having two separate ways to trigger a single power would only tend to complicate things when you inevitably kept accidentally pressing the wrong button during intense combat situations.

Foradain wrote:

Hmmm... Going back to Red's suggestion "the way World of Warcraft does it", in my experience with WoW, if my character uses a single target heal, it will heal an ally iff (and why doesn't my spellchecker recognize the standard abbreviation for "if and only if"?) that ally is targeted. If an enemy is targeted, or my character is targeting himself, or if there is no target designated, my character gets healed. So I use the "Target Teammate" buttons, usually going to the teammate who annoys the enemy the most, and the "Target of Target" button to select the enemy getting hit currently if there is time to lay some harm on him...

So it kind of sounds like WoW works the way I was suggesting already - if you basically don't have an ally targeted with that kind of single target heal it'll heal yourself. I guess I'm not really understanding this entire situation well enough to see the need for the "Self Only" key Redlynne suggested. I'm not denying a control like that might be generically useful for something but I'm just not seeing its value here.

blacke4dawn wrote:

As for "other only" powers, please no. I see no reason why, from a mechanics point of view, that one should not be able to cast a power on them self that they can cast on an ally (I can see lots of conceptual or thematic based reasons but none mechanics based). Sure, there may be practical limits (primarily with rezz powers) but I see no reason to hard code it into any power.

I agree there's no "mechanical" reason why a single target heal power that can target an ally couldn't also target yourself. But having a uniquely separate power that's arbitrarily designed to be a single target "other only" heal makes perfect sense from a metagame point of view if it's balanced correctly.

Look at it this way: A single-target heal that can be used on yourself AS WELL AS someone else is a pretty versatile power that can be used in multiple situations. To "pay" for that usefulness it should not be as relatively powerful in terms of total HP healed. On the other hand if you had another power that was purposefully limited to being a single-target heal with an "other only" restriction then it might make sense to let that power heal twice or three times as much as the more widely useful heal.

It's all about options - if you don't want to use a single target "other only" heal then don't use it. But realize that if one existed it would likely be balanced to be pretty powerful to offset its otherwise restricted use.

blacke4dawn wrote:

Making others-only powers stronger than self-and-ally powers doesn't really balance them imo since you have group members to "cover" for you. This was one of the things that I absolutely hated in CoH when having such support sets (not just healing but buffing in most cases) since a fairly significant part of ones "power" would be unusable when solo.

Sure, it could probably work "just fine" with only one such power in a set (maybe two) but more makes it feel, at least to me, that the set is being pigeonholed towards group support only. Personally though I'm not a fan of such arbitrary restrictions though that could be because I'm not seeing the metagame that you are in this regard. I just don't see why others would have that much more benefit from your power set than you yourself would, even if you go full support.

Thinking a bit more I found one type of power that even from a mechanics point would make sense to be other only, "attribute transfer" types. That is those abilities that temporarily lowers one of your own attributes (including current health) to increase that same one in an ally. There were only two powers in CoH that were made in that way iirc, Absorb Pain and Share Pain. Also in a way we saw a lot of that in Kinetics with the difference that the transfer was enemy to ally, not self to ally.

As you pointed out you personally "hated" heal/buff type powers that might have been "can only target others" oriented and that's perfectly fine. Nobody said that every player must like (or use) every kind of power in a game like this.

Regardless I would still insist that there's a legitimate place in the game for powers like these, even if they might not be powers that would be listed on some peoples' personal "top ten" list. The reason for that is simple: there's no reason why a person with superpowers COULDN'T have a heal/buff power that worked exactly like that. It's not even necessarily a question of "being pigeonholed towards group support only" - for all you know there might be people out there who want to roleplay a character that can transfer some of their "life energy" to someone else for a heal/buff but that kind of "transfer" can't work to help themselves. And to be clear no one said that they would need to make an entire powerset full of "other only" powers - even I'd agree that having only one or two powers like that in some kind of specially designed "empathy" powerset would likely be enough.

Again it's perfectly fine if you don't like the idea but "overall popularity" can't be the only factor for voting whether we all get the exact types of powers we want. No one said that all powers must work exactly the way you want them to work with zero downsides/drawbacks. Group Fly anyone? This is why I suggested the possibility that "only other" heals/buffs could be made to be more effective than their "target anyone" counterparts as an incentive to find a reason to use them.

Again as you pointed out there are examples (like the "attribute transfer" type powers) that rely on the basic premise of being able to help/hurt other people while excluding being able to do the same to yourself. There are probably countless examples of things working like that in the history of comic books. Sure that might make for powers in a computer game that aren't "ideal" in all situations but my basic rebuttal to that would be that it doesn't really matter.

Alt, eh? I'll have to try that next time I'm in Azeroth or Draenor. ^_^

Learn something new every day...

But, yes that would add flexibility.

Lothic wrote:

As you pointed out you personally "hated" heal/buff type powers that might have been "can only target others" oriented and that's perfectly fine. Nobody said that every player must like (or use) every kind of power in a game like this.

I know not everyone will use every power, but in CoH this was SoP for single target (and kept if they later turned into target AoE) defensive support powers. The worst one was Thermal Radiation with 6 out their 9 powers being "ally only", with only one rightfully so (the rezz) due to practical limitations (even though it was hard coded as well).

Quote:

Regardless I would still insist that there's a legitimate place in the game for powers like these, even if they might not be powers that would be listed on some peoples' personal "top ten" list. The reason for that is simple: there's no reason why a person with superpowers COULDN'T have a heal/buff power that worked exactly like that. It's not even necessarily a question of "being pigeonholed towards group support only" - for all you know there might be people out there who want to roleplay a character that can transfer some of their "life energy" to someone else for a heal/buff but that kind of "transfer" can't work to help themselves. And to be clear no one said that they would need to make an entire powerset full of "other only" powers - even I'd agree that having only one or two powers like that in some kind of specially designed "empathy" powerset would likely be enough.

Please don't use RP as a reason for bringing in such limitations because people can RP whatever they want, and representing what everyone wants to RP as in the mechanics is a fool's errand.

You mentioned this made sense from a metagame perspective, could you expand on that since I can't see it myself?

Quote:

Again it's perfectly fine if you don't like the idea but "overall popularity" can't be the only factor for voting whether we all get the exact types of powers we want. No one said that all powers must work exactly the way you want them to work with zero downsides/drawbacks. Group Fly anyone?

What? Where did you get I only wanted popular ones or ones with zero downsides/drawbacks? Resource costs (mana energy whatever) and CD's are, technically speaking, downsides and drawbacks which are used to great effect in balancing a power. besides there are other kinds of downsides and drawback than "ally only" that can be used.

Quote:

This is why I suggested the possibility that "only other" heals/buffs could be made to be more effective than their "target anyone" counterparts as an incentive to find a reason to use them.

That kind of incentive assumes that most (all?) such powers will have both an "ally only" and an "anyone" version, which I don't find very likely. Add in that unless both versions are given with the same power choice the difference would probably have to be quite substantial for people to take both of them. If MWM were to make an "anyone" version of every "ally only" power then I'd rather see they just make a single one with different effects if cast on ally or self.

Making an "ally only" power be more effective than an "anyone" power seems iffy to me from a balancing point of view mainly because in a group setting your team mates are supposed to "cover" for your own weak spots, thus effectively making it an incomparable. You can't really assign a value to such a restriction.

What I mean in the end is that I don't want any powers with arbitrary restrictions, any restriction should make sense and a power that can only be cast on allies "just because" does not. The only ones that make sense to me right now in this regard are the "attribute transfer" types.

blacke4dawn wrote:

Please don't use RP as a reason for bringing in such limitations because people can RP whatever they want, and representing what everyone wants to RP as in the mechanics is a fool's errand.
You mentioned this made sense from a metagame perspective, could you expand on that since I can't see it myself?

I don't have to use "RP purposes" as my only justification for having multiple types of heal/buff powers in a game that work in different ways.

From a metagame perspective games as far back as D&D have been presenting us with spells/powers that all overlap each other in terms of targeting, range, numbers affected, duration and so on. I can see absolutely no reason whatsoever why a game like CoT could not provide us with multiple versions of various heal/buff powers that can differ from each other in qualities like "whether it can affect only others versus only self". Can you explain why there can't be all kinds of heal/buff type powers spread across all the abilities possessed by either PC or NPCs in this entire game? For example you could have the following as a non-exhaustive list:[list]
[*]A heal/buff that can only target yourself
[*]A heal/buff that can only single target an ally
[*]A heal/buff that can single target EITHER yourself or an ally
[*]A heal/buff that could affect some/all allies in a ranged AoE
[*]A heal/buff that could affect some/all allies in a PBAoE
[*]A heal/buff that could affect some/all allies in a ranged cone-shape
[/list]
Can you provide any serious reason why that second version couldn't exist in CoT beyond "you just don't like it"?

blacke4dawn wrote:

The only ones that make sense to me right now in this regard are the "attribute transfer" types.

I still find it strange you can accept the general idea of "attribute transfer" powers without acknowledging that it's possible to have such a power in the comic book world that can only work outwardly to benefit other people. How do you explain being able to heal/buff yourself with such a power that hypothetically requires you to "transfer" some of your total life essence to someone else to heal/buff them? To try to heal/buff yourself with such a power you'd have to in effect reduce your total "life essence" to in order to heal/buff yourself which under those circumstances makes very little sense.

I'm not saying that "A heal/buff that can single target EITHER yourself or an ally" should not exist in CoT. Far from it. I'm just saying you have not provided any legitimate reason why "A heal/buff that can only single target an ally" can't exist beyond the fact that you don't "like" it. Provide a tangible reason why such a power might break the game or be impossible to create and then I might be willing to agree with you here.

blacke4dawn wrote:

What we differ on now seems to be the reason for such a restriction to exist, with me being more restrictive in that regard and I don't think you will ever convince me that "arbitrary" is a good enough reason for such restrictions to exist.

If a hypothetical "single target only ally" heal/buff power was somehow better (or even just different) than a "single target self OR ally" power then it wouldn't be there just for "arbitrary" reasons. No one would deny that the "self OR ally" version of the power might be considered more versatile because it could be used in more situations. But if the "target only ally" version of the power had some unique quality/difference that could favor it in specific tactical scenarios then it would have all the justification in the world to exist in the game.

If I had to I could probably dig up hundreds of examples of games which had multiple powers which all did effectively the same thing but varied in terms of range, duration, AoE, intensity and so on. To me the idea of two game powers doing the same basic thing but one say having half the range but twice the impact of the other is absolutely fundamental. Now could you hyperbolically claim that the one power that only has half the range is being "arbitrarily restricted by the Devs"? I suppose if you wanted to be incredibly, tediously nitpicky you could say so. But in practical reality something like that wouldn't bother me in the least. Theoretically your slippery slope accusations of the "Devs being arbitrary" could apply ad nauseam to literally every design decision they could make about anything. At some point the Devs have to DECIDE (which is NOT the same thing as being arbitrary) that power X does this and power Y does that.

I'm not saying CoT should or should not have multiple types of single target heal/buff powers. But if they do the idea of being able to vary what types of targets those powers can affect will be just as legitimate as varying their range, duration, recharge, etc.

blacke4dawn wrote:

Look, we can continue to argue this until the heat death of the universe but all it really comes down to is personal feelings on what makes "acceptable reasons" for certain restrictions.

I get that your personal feelings on this has led you to the dead-end conclusion that an "ally only" version of hypothetical heal/buff power does not have a justifiable place in this particular game. I've given you the completely logical, acceptable and historically relevant precedent that in countless other games a given type of power with significant downsides can be tactically balanced by unique advantages and yet you've chosen to dismiss that time-honored gaming tradition out of hand for no other reason than you seem to realize you can't really counter that argument. So be it.

Basically we're left with your hyperbolic definition of the word "legitimacy" which seems to include among other things anything you personally find acceptable for a computer game. All I can do at this point is try to make you realize that the very concept of what can legitimately exist in a game doesn't rest on any one single player's vision of what they subjectively like or dislike. The world doesn't revolve around you or me and we're not special snowflakes either...

In a desperate plea for common sense I'll throw out one more classic gaming example to make this case: Magic the Gathering. Hopefully you've either played it or are familiar with it. In that game there are easily hundreds of examples of cards that have fairly heavy restrictions or are very limited in terms of when or how they can be played. But they are still LEGITIMATELY in the game because regardless of how bad they seem in most situations they also incorporate some other element(s) that when utilized in the right way or at the right time can actually be incredibly useful. In fact many of the so-called "killer decks" out there actually rely on cards that are individually "undesirable" but when placed together with the skill of the player become unstoppable.

Applying this in terms of CoT you can now hopefully see that powers which initially seem to be relatively bad/limited (just like an "ally only" power may appear to be to you) can easily find a LEGITIMATE reason to exist if it is balanced in such a way that clever players can take those lemons and make lemonade out of it. In a nutshell just because YOU can't see a good reason for this kind of power to exist doesn't mean that someone else can't. Besides as always if such a power actually ends up in CoT no one's going to force you to use it regardless if you find a clever way to use it or not. *shrugs*

This was alluded to earlier, I'd like to flush it out a little bit.

I think the perfect example of why there should be 'ally only' buffs is the healer. A single healer is designed to support 3-4 other players that are actively engaged in a semi-losing battle. With the healer those players are able to overcome those odds and are better for it. Lets put some hypothetical numbers on it. A player takes 75% damage per unit of time. A unit of time is the healer cycle time, the time it takes a healer to cycle to and heal all 4 players. The healer would heal each player to 100% per cycle. If that same healer is able to apply that same amount of healing to themselves they would have a healing capability of 300% per unit of time. Assuming everyone has the same HP or all heals are percent health based. At the same difficulty level the healer would be able survive the same attacks as the 4 combined. At that point they are a regen tank. At an easier difficulty the healer could waltz through a mission without a single concern. At such a time why have a team? Switching between teammates is harder than focusing on oneself. Or leave your team for dead at the start and walk through the mission click the glowie and exit. If those same powers are ally only, it changes the dynamic completely the healer must then focus on the team. And the team must focus on protecting the healer. A failure of either quickly results in a team wipe.

The debate then becomes solocentricity or team dynamics which is more important in an MMOG?

Mendicant wrote:

I see your point Grim, but this could be handled within the code. Perhaps a healing power does 3X worth of healing to allies and only 1X to the healer, for example.

Personally, I don't see a problem with ally-only powers. I played an Empathy defender to 50 back when CoH was first starting and never had a problem. Sure, I would have liked to have been able to use more of my powers on myself, but that just meant I had to be clever about my tactics.

I actually have no problem at all with a specific version of a heal power that did something like "3X worth of healing to allies and only 1X to the healer". But regardless if that kind of heal power was in the game that still doesn't make a completely separate "can only heal allies" power illegitimate for the game. That's the precise notion that I was arguing about in my earlier responses to this thread - people can't judge whether something is "legitimate" for a game based solely on whether they "like" it or not.

There is no universal rule or law that says you can't have an "ally only heal" power in a MMO game like this. I continue to understand how people might not prefer an "ally only" heal especially when you might have access to a different heal power that might be more universally useful. But again there's no law that says all game powers must work in perfectly ideal ways in all situations. As I said before many games actually rely on the tactics and strategies its players come up with when they are forced to "make lemonade" out of the lemons they've been given to work with.

Considering that having multiple leaders and not so many followers is usually a BAD thing, in an organizational sense, it might have been more on-theme to make the Leadership aura buffs NON-stacking, then just make one well-enhanced instance of each aura worthwhile when soloing and like extra good when teamed just from having more targets to help.

Here's a freaky idea, what if you had to actually be the leader of the team you're currently on in order for you to be able to give teammates Leadership based buffs? So like ONLY the person with the star can aura up and give the rest Maneuvers, Assault, and Tactics, and if they choose not to, then nobody else's Leadership powers work on the team, only on themselves.

Heal other vs. Heal other-or-yourself is a balancing thing. Same for buffs. On the other hand, it is less of a problem in class-based systems than freeform pick systems.

On the gripping hand, logically pretty much everybody in Champions should pick heal drones (not to mention one or two other pets like turret morph bots or multiplying toy teddy bears) in addition to their normal power tracks, when they get to higher levels and all powers open up. Yet they don't most of the time.