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self-help secondary effects of powers

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Radiac
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self-help secondary effects of powers

CoX had attacks that did damage, and usually they did something else as well, to differentiate between one type of damage and another. I can't give the complete list, because I couldn't find one online, but things like residual +Damage over Time, +Chance to stun upon successful hit, endo drain, etc.

Most (maybe all?) of these attack secondary effects did something to the target of the attack other than the hit point damage. Would it be possible to have some secondaries that don't affect the target but rather do something to help the attacker instead?

The first thing I thought of in this vein as an example is something for the always endo thirsty Tankers of CoX. What if, instead of doing chance to stun or something with your punches, you simply got a small time extension on your long-duration powers and/or a discount on the endo used by your toggles or something. So when you land a punch, instead of +DoT or +Stun you get what amounts to a very small endurance boost (a small fraction what a blue Insp would give you) and/or a very small time extension on your long-duration click-to-activate powers (e.g. powers like Hasten would take longer to wear off, by a fraction of a second, for each such attack you landed on the target).

Another idea is some kind of vampiric endo drain of the target with a small endo boost given to the attacker, like the Kinetic power Transference had in CoX.

You could also have attacks that do some small amount of vampiric Hit point drain, so extra damage done ot the target, with some small amount of healing of the attacker.

Actually a lot of things could be done "vampire style" now that I think of it. Practically anything that debuffs the target, like -defense, could also buff the attacker, either in the same way (e.g. -def for target, +def for me) or in some other way (e.g. -def for target, +recharge rate for me)

You could have a thing whereby when you land a hit, you get a small amount of added damage on the NEXT attack, but only if it hits. As you chain together strings of hits, you get to some maxed-out point of diminishing returns on this effect, but then when you miss, it resets back to baseline again.

Obviously powers could also have secondaries that affect Momentum and Reserves, both the attacker's and/or those of the target.

Come to think of it, are target bosses and minions etc actually going to have Momentum and Reserves?

In any event, I would see these sorts of "self-helping" secondaries as maybe a good thing for the Tanker types, as they tend to be more defensive and need to land a larger quantity of attacks to bring a foe down than their Scrapper counterparts. Tankers thus need to plan for longer, more drawn-out fights against whole mobs of minions or super-tough bosses, AVs, and so forth, and as such would stand to benefit more from secondaries that actually help the attacker instead of debuffing the minion you're wailing on right before he drops, or debuffing the boss in some imperceptible way that the boss might be immune to anyhow. These type of secondaries could help tanker types reduce some of the edurance issues they were known for in CoX, without allowing them to really put out damage any faster.

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Tannim222
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What you are thinking of with

What you are thinking of with these secondary effects like the old game are part of the themes we apply to sets. Themes are what distinquish sets within the same playstyle template apart from one another.

Some sets will be more straight forward in their operation others will require for tactful application or leverage certain conditions.

To answer your question a out npcs using momentum and reserves, they will have momentum but nit reserves. Some may have powers that require momentum to reaxh a certain threshold, or use momentum to "break free" from a control.

As far as offensive secondary sets that result in longer, more drawn out fights, we will be minimizing making changes from how the primary counter part operates. That is if a primary offense set has some say, health drain effects which heal the caster, the secondary will too. What I donplan to do is actually reduce the resource cost for secondaries since their output is lower compaired to the primary version. This was one of the issues identified with the old game that lead to the necessity of making the Stamina pool power set inherent to all archetypes.

It should also be notd that tanker types require less sustainability powers provides from offensive capability than non-tanker types. Their protection primaries already will provide sustainability in heir longer fights. While thise with less sustainability leveraging more offense or sustaining effects from offensive capability because their native sustainment makes them more vulnerable. thatbis of course generally speaking.


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Radiac
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I guess the larger question I

I guess the larger question I have here is whether self-buff style secondary effects of attacks, or themes if you'd deign to call them that, would be possible in a well-balanced game. I mean, one drawback of enemy debuffing themes is that once the enemy you've been wailing on for the last few hits drops, all the debuffs drop with him and you have to now start over as you go to wail on the next guy. Conversely, themes that buff the attacker always buff the same target (the self) and as such might stand to be more powerful overall, as they carry over from one engaged target to the next, unlike target debuffs. So self buffing powers could be better than enemy debuffing ones even if the raw numbers are equal. And by equal numbers I mean, if you're choosing between +DoT as a theme versus "+self heal over time", the actual amounts of damage dealt or healed might be the same, but is the self heal theme strictly better simply because it never goes to waste? On the other hand, doing -def on the enemy is basically the same as doing +acc on the self.

Clearly the vampiric effects, which are basically the best of both worlds, "debuff target, and also buff me" are strictly better than JUST target debuff OR self buff, and as such the actual amounts of buff or debuff for the vampiric effects would have to be different (less) to compensate, I would expect.

But then, on the OTHER other hand, in CoX you had some attack sets that got more damage as primaries and better secondary effects as secondary sets. With Electric Blast, as a Defender, you could build a decent Sapper, I don't think that was possible as a Blaster. So you might make the "Blaster" version of "-endo attacks" just debuff the target, while doing more HP damage as well, while the "Defender" version does "vampiric endo drain" where the target loses endo and the self gains it, BUT that version does less damage per hit, all other things being equal.

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Your 'vampiric' effects did

Your 'vampiric' effects did exist in CoH, in the 'Dark' powers. In the Defender's 'Dark Miasma', the power 'Twilight Grasp' did no damage, but debuffed the target and returned an AoE heal to the user. Similarly, 'Howling Twilight' debuffed an AoE around the target, damaged them, and returned an AoE resurrect to the user. 'Dark Melee' had 'Siphon Life', which damaged and debuffed the target and returned a heal to the user.

Additionally, 'Ice Armor' had 'Energy Absorption' and 'Energy Aura' had 'Energy Drain', which drained opponents Endurance and returned both Defense & Resistance, and Endurance to the user. 'Fire Armor' had 'Consume', which damaged opponents and returned Endurance.

So, these powers have existed before and been balanced. I was presuming that they would be replicated in City of Titans.

Be Well!
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Izzy
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How do you balance DeBuffs

How do you balance DeBuffs when its a SOLO player, and when another player (or several) join the fight?

Is it scaled on a curve?

when SOLO, a player deals High DeBuff percentages?
when Several on team, one player deals Low DeBuff percentages?

or to make it easier for coders, just scale the Foes DeBuff Resistance, for each additional player? ;]

Tannim222
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You don't "balance". It is a

You don't "balance". It is a false idol. You guage bounds of performance.
Effcts other than damage yield certain advantages which can be analyzed for comparative performance.

If you want the most basic categories and the innate advantages and disadvantages:

Debuffs increase effectivieness against the target for the caster and its allies. But only toward targets affected.

Controls as secondary effects impede capability of the target which assist the caster and allies by either making targets more accesible (controlled so they can't escape, displaced to a desired location / direction) or temprarily removing the target from the scenario (which increases everyone's sustainability).

Sustaining effects increase survival rate of the caster but may only benefit allies tangentially

Buffs (as secondary effects) that improve offensive capability benefitting the caster. They typically require a target (as a secondary effect anyway) but may yield benefits toward some additional targets. And again may only benefit allies tangentially.

Within each category we could break things down further by listing specific effects, but it would take too long. At this most basic categorization, it should be evident that each type does not necessarily yield equitable benefits as in a 1 to 1 ratio. This is due many vairables.

Just comparing debuffs vs offensive buffs as secondary effects you can see that:
They both require targets in order to apply effectiveness
Debuffs hell the caster and his allies immediately - or multiplies the team's force. But only toward the affected target.

Offensive self buffs mainly benefitnthe caster but may also apply against additinal targets over time.
These trade-offs may not be perfectly equitable but the are comparable to a degree. The over all performance of course comes down to the numbers of course.


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Radiac
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As a Rad/Rad Defender in CoX,

As a Rad/Rad Defender in CoX, Radiac (my old main) had attacks in his secondary "blasty" set that did -defense to target as an added effect. I personally never really noticed this effect when soloing and always assumed that it was there and not terribly helpful, and as such I pretty much ignored it.

That said, you used to throw jellomen at the fab 4 at the end of the Statesman TF, I believe, for exactly that effect. In larger numbers, the -defense debuff made some of the bosses (Ghost Widow?) more tenable opponents.

Another though this brings up is the fact that some effects tend to be more popular than others, even if the effect isn't really THAT much better than other options. It's like net decks in Magic, someone makes some combo work, then everyone apes it because it's easier than designing a deck on their own.

Also, it seems to me that while there may be hard and soft caps on resistances and defenses, there probably should be hard and soft "floors" on those things too. Just making a boss totally immune to an effect is not as good, to me, as giving them really high resistance or defense, then maybe cut off debuffs of that to a point. So like instead of making a boss totally immune to my debuff, just make them really resistant, and only allow the debuff to lower the stat in question to a certain level, and no lower. I remember facing Tyrant in the one Incarnate trial and people were like "You an forget even bothering with Lingering Radiation, because he's immune to having his regen rate debuffed" to which I was like "Drag.... so what am I even here for?"

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Quote:
Quote:

In any event, I would see these sorts of "self-helping" secondaries as maybe a good thing for the Tanker types, as they tend to be more defensive and need to land a larger quantity of attacks to bring a foe down than their Scrapper counterparts. Tankers thus need to plan for longer, more drawn-out fights against whole mobs of minions or super-tough bosses, AVs, and so forth, and as such would stand to benefit more from secondaries that actually help the attacker instead of debuffing the minion you're wailing on right before he drops, or debuffing the boss in some imperceptible way that the boss might be immune to anyhow. These type of secondaries could help tanker types reduce some of the edurance issues they were known for in CoX, without allowing them to really put out damage any faster.

The main reason why tankers, in general, have to plan for longer battles is because they are designed to have the defenses to survive it. If you really think that they have too long battles and thus would need this kind of "improvement" then it needs to be fixed on the basic level of the AT instead of giving only certain power sets within said AT this benefit.

Don't get me wrong I'm not against these kinds of thematic sets, it's just that justifying them through "tankers have too long battles" is one of the worst reasons to implement them imo, especially since they would still need to be within a certain "performance curve/spec".

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All I can say is I LOVED that

All I can say is I LOVED that fact that you could slot electric powers all out with end drain. I made some very fun toons doing it that way. I loved how when their endurance was gone they just stood there. It was another form of control.

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GrazerCoH wrote:
GrazerCoH wrote:

All I can say is I LOVED that fact that you could slot electric powers all out with end drain. I made some very fun toons doing it that way. I loved how when their endurance was gone they just stood there. It was another form of control.

You and me both, Grazer. I had an elec/elec blapper who would jump into a crowd, drain all their endurance with one or two attacks, and then start punching. It was a blast.

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Ok, not to derail the thread,

Ok, not to derail the thread, but every time I read the title I can't help but think of a superpowered Stuart Smalley with positive self-affirmations as secondary effects.

FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)

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GrazerCoH wrote:
GrazerCoH wrote:

All I can say is I LOVED that fact that you could slot electric powers all out with end drain. I made some very fun toons doing it that way. I loved how when their endurance was gone they just stood there. It was another form of control.

Towards the end, one of my favorite characters was an elec/regen brute that I cheesed out the endurance drain and regeneration on. The few times my opponents actually got the opportunity to hit me, I was looking at around the regen speed of giant monsters when I went all out. I didn't dole out as much damage as some folks, but I made up for it by being basically unkillable if I could hit my opponent.

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".

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Halae wrote:
Halae wrote:

GrazerCoH wrote:
All I can say is I LOVED that fact that you could slot electric powers all out with end drain. I made some very fun toons doing it that way. I loved how when their endurance was gone they just stood there. It was another form of control.
Towards the end, one of my favorite characters was an elec/regen brute that I cheesed out the endurance drain and regeneration on. The few times my opponents actually got the opportunity to hit me, I was looking at around the regen speed of giant monsters when I went all out. I didn't dole out as much damage as some folks, but I made up for it by being basically unkillable if I could hit my opponent.

I personally found a ranged electric powerset to be better on grounds of the fact that the enemy won't be able to use melee before you've locked them down. Just use an Electric/Electric Dominator and you have enough endurance-draining powers to lock half the map.

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Radiac
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My sapper toon was a Kinetic

My sapper toon was a Kinetic/Electric Defender. Good times. I even made him a "Sapper" costume to look like a Malta guy, his gun being the Crey CBX-9 Accolade Power.

R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising