OK... Time to do a simple question. -[BODYGUARD] (melee + support) = Is more close to Scrapper?
-[GLADIATOR] (melee + defense) = Is more close to Tank?

And i believe, if i like i can create a Brute, just in skill. Of course not the same way in COX, but if close and good, for old memories. Is great.

Is one of the options for an operator replication? I was always disappointed that with all the minion options (and I will admit CoH didn't really have a lot) I never had the option to summon a team of me to fight alongside me.

Here's my pitch idea for some lore based reason for control Archetype being called Regulators. Could have a hero who operated with ability to regulate or control the temperature named Regulator. He died while fighting in a famous battle alongside Capt. Orbit and now any heroes who can control the forces of nature, time, space, etc are referred to as Regulators.

Could be a little info blurb about such in character creator when selecting Regulator Archetype. BOOM. Lore explanation done.

I also like Alphas to replace the Operator Archetype name because in a nutshell these men and women who lead all have the Type A, Alpha personality. Its what defines them

I'll give it a shot. Hope this works.

Backstory for Guardians getting that name:
Since antiquity, the heroes who shined most and got most of the glory were the ones who were in the thick of battle. They were seen as the best, thought of as the toughest and strongest and thus, worthy of the most praise. Sure, backup is important, but heroes who were not on the front lines were never considered equals with those who were. But that changed one day when Defiance, one of the world's most famous and powerful heroes, went up against an other-worldly entity named Perdition. He had met more than his match. Defiance had never met a foe he could not handle and never really needed backup. But when Defiance was just about to be dealt a mortal blow, he found all his strength returning! When he looked, he saw Perdition focusing his attacks on a young boy who had just rejuvenated Defiance. The hero, now back to full strength, charged at Perdition and the fight continued. At the end of the fight, however, Defiance saw the young super who had helped him was also now bleeding to death. He had given everything he had to make sure Defiance won. Soon, the people began to praise Defiance for his act of heroism, touting him as the guardian of the world. But Defiance turned, boy in arms, and said "No. I was as good as dead before this boy came and saved my life. This boy is the guardian of the world."

From then on, those who backed up the front man were no longer seen as backup, but as equals. Protectors of the tough and strong. They became known as Guardians.

Comment on the new Archetypes webpage: The offset distance of the shadowed in the shadowed fonts appears to be set for the bigger thicker white titles. As a result, in the green Guardian background, the thinner text looks like I'm seeing double and is barely legible. I recommend reducing the shadow offsets for the smaller thinner fonts.

Excellent artwork, by the way. This website is really starting to look like a cohesive, professional whole.

Huckleberry wrote:

Beautiful and awesome

Thanks, Huckleberry! ^.^

Huckleberry wrote:

You might want to check out these two links. This older one dealt with a duplication powerset:
http://cityoftitans.com/forum/duplication-powers
and this one starting somewhere around post #60 dealt with customizing the pet master's pets:
https://cityoftitans.com/forum/customizable-dream-minions-operator

Looks like you didn't check the content. I was there for the duplication talk. Just wanted to know if there was any specifics yet as I haven't been on the forum for a few months.

I personally think Master would be a good alternative name for Operators.

The icon's filename is "master_final.png" after all.

Well my reasoning for Master is that

1. It's a nice throwback to Mastermind and is pretty simple in explanation, after all your character is the ''Master'' or boss to his minions.

2. While it's not unique persay (Worm used the master designation before for superpowers that qualify under the minion creating aspect whether through mind control or materializing them) it's not a very common designation despite being simple.

Archon is also a good name.

Little Red Ragnarok wrote:

This brings me to my second issue with the Controller classifications. We have a Control/Range and Control/Assault (which according to CoH, is a mix of ranged/melee). I'm just throwing it out there but why not a Control/Melee specialization instead? A control/assault archetype just feels redundant.

I think that is primarily so that they can reuse as much of the primary sets as possible. Making the secondary a melee set effectively necessitates that the primary one is also melee so as to not break up the flow of combat. Pretty sure that Control/Melee will come (together with Melee/Control I wager since the only difference in effort I can see would be balancing) given some time but it's just something that MWM currently haven't done any actual plans for it.

Little Red Ragnarok wrote:

This brings me to my second issue with the Controller classifications. We have a Control/Range and Control/Assault (which according to CoH, is a mix of ranged/melee). I'm just throwing it out there but why not a Control/Melee specialization instead? A control/assault archetype just feels redundant.

I have nothing intrinsically against the Controller/Melee combination other than from a purely "meta" point of view. When you think about it that's pretty much what a classic "Tank" already does.

Tankers essentially "control" MOBs (via taunts) and forces them to engage in face-to-face melee while the rest of the team is free to dogpile them. I'm not saying CoT should never have a specific Controller/Melee class - I'm just saying that it's probably far too close to what the classic Tank does to have a serious need for it as a distinct class anytime soon.

And for what it's worth the main difference (to me) between CoH Controllers and Tanks was that one "Mezzed MOBs at long range" while the other "Mezzed MOBs at melee range". The idea of a "Melee-ranged Controller" just seems like trying to mix apples and oranges tactics that don't naturally go together.

The only way I could see melee range control is as a subtype of martial arts or something where you use presser points or grappling to stun or toss around targets.

OathboundOne wrote:

I don't think LRR was advocating a melee ranged control set (blacke4dawn mentioned that), that would put the player at a crippling disadvantage while closing in on their target (when they've noticed you, but you're not close enough to apply controls to them)

I'm not sure anyone was talking about having some kind of Controller where all of their control powers only worked at melee range. That would be relatively gimped all thing considered. When I was talking about Tanks I was even assuming their initial "taunts" were Ranged. My point was that Tanks were tactically designed to engage and survive MOBs at a PBAoE/Melee range whereas pretty much everything Controllers did was Ranged because they had no built-in passive defenses.

It looks like blacke4dawn was talking about potentially having BOTH a Control/Melee class and a Melee/Control class. The later would of course be a Melee attack primary powerset paired with a control-style powerset as a secondary. That's when Doctor Tyche jumped in and said they would never reformulate the "control" concept into secondary powersets.

I thought given the context here that everyone understood that when someone wrote something like "Control/Range" or "Control/Melee" that we were talking about an archetype combination of a Control PRIMARY powerset and a Ranged and/or Melee SECONDARY powerset. Not sure where the question of whether any specific Control powers involved were going to be ranged or not became an issue.

OathboundOne wrote:

rather just that having a secondary set be Fully Ranged Attacks for one Spec, and Half Ranged Attacks for another spec seems like the potential for them to be very same-y. That having the /Assault spec's secondary as a Fully Melee Attack set would serve to distinguish better between the two.

OathboundOne wrote:

There were many Controller and Dominator combinations functioned this way in CoH, particularly Dominators where Melee damage was generally much better than ranged. You applied controls at range, then closed into melee (or at least PBAoE range) once lockdown was achieved.

We all know that CoH had two successful archetypes that are going to be carried over to CoT: the Controller (Control/Mitigation) and the Dominator (Control/Assault). The question is whether they should create a Control/Melee and/or Control/Ranged class as well.

You yourself mentioned that the Assault secondary had stronger Melee powers than Ranged by default and it's generally accepted that Melee powers are typically more powerful in games like this DPS-wise than Ranged powers. If this is all the case then the Control/Assault combination is likely going to be as close to a Control/Melee as they'd want to get anytime soon simply because pairing it up with full Melee powers would likely make that combination close to being overpowered. I tend to think that the /Ranged and /Assault combinations are going to be as "distinguished" (or diametrically opposed) from each other as they are going to allow just because once again /Assault is geared far more towards Melee than Ranged already.

OathboundOne wrote:

Lothic, I was referring to this:
blacke4dawn wrote:
Making the secondary a melee set effectively necessitates that the primary one is also melee so as to not break up the flow of combat.
That pretty plainly suggests that Control/Melee would mean melee ranged primary. That was the part I primarily sought to refute.

Right... and if you read what blacke4dawn was saying very carefully I think you'll see that he/she was saying that "they'd have to make the primary (the Control part) melee oriented" as a NEGATIVE point against the concept of a Control/Melee class.

Little Red Ragnarok's initial question was "I'm just throwing it out there but why not a Control/Melee specialization instead?"
blacke4dawn's direct answer as to WHY NOT starts out "I think that is primarily so that they can reuse as much of the primary sets as possible."

The clear implication (at least that I got) was that blacke4dawn is arguing AGAINST a Control/Melee class because he/she believes they'd have to do extra work to redesign a version of Control into melee-oriented powersets with the goal of maintaining what he/she calls the "flow of combat" which I agree would be additional work that I don't think makes much sense at this point.

I understand the way blacke4dawn responded might not have been totally clear but I'm pretty sure he/she was not technically in favor of melee-ranged Control powersets. Again I think that point was made simply to support the idea that Control/Melee is -not- a good idea, at least not at the beginning at any rate.

OathboundOne wrote:

Yes, I got that Blacke4dawn was arguing against control/melee because they believed that would require additional resources to alter the control set. My main point was that no, they wouldn't need to alter the control primary at all.
Control primaries functioned just fine with mixed range and mostly melee ranged sets in CoH, there's no reason to believe they wouldn't function just as well with a fully melee secondary set here.

TBH, I never really thought that "having to alter control powersets to make them more melee-oriented" was really the strongest argument against a Control/Melee class. It's -an- argument against it, just not be best one.

I have two other arguments that (at least to my mind) are more convincing:

One would be that a Control/Melee character, like any Control character, would have no built-in passive defense/resistance. Now the classic Controller and Dominator mostly "solved" that problem with active Mezzing - essentially as long as the character could Mez their enemies first then it usually didn't matter that they had no actual built-in defenses. After Mezzing the Controller and/or Dominator could then usually do other things with their secondary powers AT RANGE to finish off their opponent. The problem with /Melee is that it literally requires the otherwise squishy Controller to get close to their enemies to finish them off. This automatically puts them in more danger from various PBAoEs and such. Basically Control implies "playing it safe" which is completely antithetical to having to get within Melee range to finish anything off.

The second argument is a little more meta but I think it's just as valid. As I mentioned before games like this usually allow its melee attacks to be more damaging just to make up for the fact that you have to get within Melee range just to use them. This means that a Control/Melee, if played correctly, could potentially manage to be far more powerful DPS-wise than a classic Controller or even Dominator could ever be. I suspect this is why when they came up with the Dominator in CoV they didn't just let it be a Control/Melee class because they knew that would be too powerful. Instead they came up with the hybrid /Assault secondaries to make it a mix of ranged and melee damage so that it wouldn't be able to deal out huge single-target melee attacks.

Either way the whole idea of Control paired with Melee just doesn't quite "fit" together balance-wise or concept-wise. The CoT Devs may eventually get around to making it work at some point, but at the very least it's really sort of a fringe/experimental concept that shouldn't be a priority for the launch of the game.

Redlynne wrote:

[...] The problem with that is that as soon as you run into something resistant to your Mez effects, well ... it's game over for you.

Yes, these are all good points as well.

As a sort of conclusion I wouldn't want to say that a Control/Melee class would be outright unplayble. We all know people who managed to build weird/experimental builds out of existing archetypes "just to see if it could be done". But I think it's clear Control/Melee would be a relatively "unforgiving" combination that would require a very specialized/unique set of tactics thus why I labelled it as a "fringe" class earlier.

Again MWM might offer it to us at some point but I don't really see this being a priority for Launch Day.

Lothic wrote:

Again MWM might offer it to us at some point but I don't really see this being a priority for Launch Day.

We have multi-year old documentation explicitly stating that it's not a priority for Launch Day, so I'd say you're on pretty firm footing here with that assertion/assumption. ^_~

I've not been able to follow the conversation very closely. Conceptually, Control/Melee is, in my opinion, a bit like a Stalker build. A stalkers primary defense is not being attacked through careful use of stealth which takes two forms debuffing the enemy's vision or buffing their personal stealth. Control/melee would be the same carefully controlling targets to avoid taking damage from them. In solo play it would be exceptionally difficult to not draw aggro from the rest of the group in order to methodically take out each target. However, with a tank holding aggro of a group a C/M could mez a target and deliver swift high damage attacks and repeat. Masteries taken would likely have to be resistance or stealth based to increase general survivability. With the damage primarily coming from the secondary, would there be enough of it to play the role? A stalkers primary was the damage. Here the opposite would be the case. So there would need to be substantial secondary debuffs tied to the control affects to provide enough damage for the C/M to actually function. The motivation would be to slot both sides, primary and secondary, heavily in order to ensure that they could function. But are there enough slots to pull off the feat? It would be quite the balancing act and would probably be best left to a veteran player. Certainly not a "welcome to COT" class.

For now it's just an interesting concept to think about. As has been mentioned it's also somewhat similar to a tank. Instead of having internal mitigation you'd have an offensive mitigation. My Plant/RAD troll could pull off a City of Statues every once in while but with a class like CM you'd need to do it every encounter. In a team that could be really overpowered. So such a class would have to be held to primarily single target holds. I'd think.

Sorry for the mixed thoughts I plowed through a couple iterations while I was typing.

Lothic wrote:

Grimfox wrote:
Sorry for the mixed thoughts I plowed through a couple iterations while I was typing.
No worries. Contemplating how "weird" classes like this might work is a fairly interesting mental exercise regardless.
Grimfox wrote:
It would be quite the balancing act and would probably be best left to a veteran player. Certainly not a "welcome to COT" class.
In solo play it would be exceptionally difficult to not draw aggro from the rest of the group in order to methodically take out each target.
In a team that could be really overpowered. So such a class would have to be held to primarily single target holds. I'd think.
I agree that a Control/Melee (with the traditional mix of single and group/area Mezs) might easily be too overpowered on a team. The downside is that if you adjusted the Controls primary to be more single-target oriented then a soloing Control/Meleer would likely be constantly overwhelmed and nigh-unplayable.
As I alluded to before it would likely be pretty hard to make a Control/Melee powerset combination that was completely balanced for general play. It'd be too easy to have it swing between being too gimp and/or too overpowered given the circumstances.

Control is too bimodal, the way CoX did it. You either have the ablility to lock down a whole mob and thus never take a hit, or you do not and the boss and lt in the mob can defeat you before the minions unfreeze. It's like counterspells in Magic: the Gathering. Either there are enough cheap good counters to make a counterspell-heavy deck work (also called a "control" deck or a "permission" deck) or there are not and nobody plays like ANY counterspells at all.

Radiac wrote:

Control is too bimodal, the way CoX did it. You either have the ablility to lock down a whole mob and thus never take a hit, or you do not and the boss and lt in the mob can defeat you before the minions unfreeze. It's like counterspells in Magic: the Gathering. Either there are enough cheap good counters to make a counterspell-heavy deck work (also called a "control" deck or a "permission" deck) or there are not and nobody plays like ANY counterspells at all.

I always thought that MWM was going to try to make Mezzing in CoT be less "binary" than CoH was. Instead of targets always being "100% held" or "100% unheld" the effects of Mezzing would be more like a spectrum of stun-like effects that would depend on the target's classification and the strength of the Mez power.

For example a single-target Hold that might completely lock down a minion with one cast might only slow down a boss critter. The boss in this case might need to be hit 2 or 3 times before he's 100% locked. The key is that until the boss is completely locked down he's only "quasi-held".

The beauty of doing it this way is that there would be more flexibility in how Mezs could affect their targets. For instance there might be an arch-villain who's so resistant to holds that he might only ever be 80% lock-downable. This would still let the arch-villain be a threat because he would still be able to move/attack at 20% speed regardless of what players throw at him. Players could be similarly resistant to Mez in PvP so that it would be virtually impossible to perma-lock anyone but they could still be heavily slowed/stunned.

Fireheart wrote:

Right, but they're planning a range of effects in CoT, so you're never guaranteed a full-stop control effect.

Basically this.

Radiac wrote:

You could even have partial impairment instead of total lockdown. There are a lot of things in that vein, accuracy debuff, speed debuff, SHORT duration stun, knockback, knockdown, etc. Control effects don't have to be "total stasis, with vulnerability" to be effective.

Right... that's pretty much what they are considering. Instead of binary holds they are talking about "quasi-Mezs" that would be partial, less that 100% effects.

Fireheart wrote:

That sounds fine, for a ranged-Controller, but it sounds like a recipe for 'squish!' if a character has to get into melee range to do damage - unless they have defenses.

Thus why several of us have been speculating that something like a Control/Melee class would likely be "problematic" at best.

I'm thinking the degrees of success could be something like: hold w/extra duration, hold with regular duration, hold with half duration, slow with regular duration, slow with half duration, fail (run!), for example.

Benson wrote:

TL;DR only one I don't like is the Operator, If you added more Xs to the icon it would fit more.

NICE easy fix for that icon!

One big X with some smaller x's, then switch the names for Operator and Commander, and... done!

Planet10 wrote:

Simply switching the names because we don't like it will not work. There has to be a lore backstory behind the change otherwise MWM isn't going to change it. Be creative, spin a tale, give them a reason to change it.
MWM has already made it clear that the Archetype and Specification naming scheme is based on lore. The first or most prominent super to display certain characteristics gets the honor or notoriety of being the baseline example for those that come afterwards. The majority of the names MWM are using have been set in concrete for over three years. Either there was lore to set it up or the lore was created to prop up the chosen names. Suggesting something like "Just swap these two names and call it good" won't work within their framework. They are NOT using a functional naming scheme.
In a way, the design on the icons do not matter either. As long as the design theme is applied consistently it doesn't matter what they look like. We are applying too much of our frame of reference to a game world where we do not have a full grasp of the history & lore.
(for the record, I still stand by my assertion that the archetypes and specifications should be based on a functional scheme)

I think you're both overcomplicating and oversimplifying it at the same time.

They have not insisted that the scheme will only be based solely on existing lore. Yet, I'm sure whatever name is chosen will most likely be spun into the lore--as it probably should be.

But spinning a tale as to why a pet class is called a Commander and a controlling class is called an Operator is not exactly an imaginative leap. I think they can handle it.

I do think the addition of a large X with smaller x's would be more intuitive for the pet class icon, though.

Empyrean wrote:

I think you're both overcomplicating and oversimplifying it at the same time.
They have not insisted that the scheme will only be based solely on existing lore. Yet, I'm sure whatever name is chosen will most likely be spun into the lore--as it probably should be.
But spinning a tale as to why a pet class is called a Commander and a controlling class is called an Operator is not exactly an imaginative leap. I think they can handle it.
I do think the addition of a large X with smaller x's would be more intuitive for the pet class icon, though.

Yes, I am deliberately making this more complicated and oversimplified at the same time.

If they concede the point and change Operator <-> Commander what is the rationale behind not changing something else? Or all of it?
MWM must have some lore in place to support all of their naming choices already. They must have art direction behind the archetype choices too. Just look at the Commander icon/badge. It is very specifically themed. What is to say that the Operator icon doesn't have some significance in its design? Just slapping a couple more x's in there might go against their design aesthetic or concept (especially if the icon appears in other areas, scaled down).

We already know that MWM is very deliberate when they release information. Just throwing any old icons and names out there just to see what sticks and jives with the community is not the way they operate. They took a very specific approach to the naming scheme and they even said there have been rounds & rounds of debate internally (and it has mirrored here in this thread). Making one or two functional changes to a lore based approach will not achieve anything. It will only invalidate the approach.

Any changes that are made at this point must be done in one of two ways:
(1) Make lore adjustments or changes to fiddle with a few names & icons. (just swapping names will not work)
(2) Toss it all out and take a different approach

We have our own preconceptions of what a 'Commander' is in our world as we do with 'Operator'. Many people are looking at it from a functional standpoint and rightfully doing the tilted dog head [I]huh?[/I] when they look at it. The problem is that we as outsiders do not have the benefit of knowing the lore to support those choices. There is lore about a super named [b]Commander[/b] that did some sort of wildly impressive controller type things and someone said "Hey! Did you see that Commander guy lock everyone down and save the day?" Maybe he shouted orders and people obeyed. Or being all 'authoritative', barked some orders and the bad guys had a change of heart and decided to re-evaluate their lives.

Post [url=https://cityoftitans.com/comment/116177#comment-116177]#100[/url] in this thread, by Dr Tyche. I don't imagine the window remains open forever.

harpospoke wrote:

Planet10 wrote:
The majority of the names MWM are using have been set in concrete for over three years.
Someone posted a quote from an early post from MWM in this thread that said the opposite. Something like, "all names are subject to change" or something.

There was a bit more to the quote than just "all names are subject to change". It was in the initial [url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/625583]KS post[/url] that said the names were subject to change and that post was made over three years ago.

The point is they had the names setup three years ago. There has been internal debate probably before and after that time. Apparently we are making the same arguments for & against the naming scheme that have already happened year(s) ago and yet the names remain exactly the same as they were outlined three years ago (with the exception of Master >> Operator).

Just throwing random unsupported suggestions against the wall hoping that MWM will make them stick will just disappoint you is what I am getting at here. You have to either work within MWM's framework or be a voice for scrapping the current approach and provide a fleshed out alternate. Mixing and matching functional and lore based naming schemes will only confuse the player base.

One can argue that making it all functional strips the life out of the very basic constructs of your character. You are nothing more than a blue glowy Tank like any other sparkly/glowing/whatever Tank out there. If you forge your character in the image and footsteps of Bulwark, Savior of 2035 (or whatever the lore says); you are carrying on a storied tradition of dependability. You too can preserve those standards and be a beacon of hope for others, yada yada yada.

One could also argue that making it all lore based artificially limits your character concept because the named super implies some bias (good or evil). Think about talking to someone in chat when they ask what archetype or specification you are. "Yeah, I'm a Ice / Ice Gunner." "Yeah, I'm a Ringleader that protects the city instead of exploiting it..." Sure, it is just a name, but you are operating in the shadow of the game's lore whether you like it or not.

The current naming framework is based on the game world instead of the game world being based on the framework.

Easy standard: If a subclass name doesn't immediately [i]and exclusively[/i] call to mind what that combination of Primary/Secondary plays like ... [i]to someone who doesn't already know the correct/right answer[/i] ... then the naming scheme/schema has failed to Do Its Job.

The whole Operator/Commander confusion of attribution that has been cited repeatedly throughout this thread [i]FAILS THAT STANDARD[/i] of necessary disambiguation among the uninitiated.

Stalwart -> Terrain
Ranger -> Coward
Enforcer -> Soloist
Guardian -> Minmaxer
Commander -> Politician
Operator -> Nerfherder

And that's why they don't let me near the gameplay team.

And what about naming the archetypes as approches. Since the dbeginning, archetypes are named like jobs. which is like the class names. Pretty disturbing.
I mean, we are talking about "who" is a guardian or a master or... But, what if we don't name those archetypes as archtypes but as "roads" to lead to a class ?
Just think, one second, these classifications are related to a characteristic. Like the guardian archetype is more accurated to the wisdom characteristic or the ranger is more based on accuracy. Then, an archetype will not be archetype but the "way of wisdow" or the "way of accuracy" or way of whatever you want as long as its represents the archetype.

I know that will be not represents good enougt an archetype as masteries could make a way approche another one. But, maybe we can think about the names to be more "general" or, moreover, to be like a word instead of the name of a job. The idea could be to find One word which represents well an archetype. Some exemple for the fun :
Ranger | Way of accuracy | Monitoring
Commander | Way of manipulation | Observation
Guardian | way of conservation | Instinct
Enforcer | way of resistance | Resistance
Stalwart | way of agressivness | Wrestling

It could be another way to classify archetype and then clarify class names ? :)

harpospoke wrote:

And it looks like Commander is the one most are finding mis-named so there is something to the complaint. It does sound like a Mastermind instead of a Controller.

For the record, I agree that Commander doesn't make sense for the archetype name (because my frame of reference does not include knowledge of the lore), but that isn't what is at issue here. Doctor T has mentioned that just doing a string swap for the names is a trivial thing to do (in the "swap Commander & Operator names" argument), but then the archetype icons would still be the same (aka, not swapped). The backstory lore for each of the supers (Commander & Operator) would most likely need to be tweaked to suit their new archetype.

The issue is that people are arguing that "Commander" sounds like a pet archetype. The icon even looks military-like, implying that you direct the actions of troops. There is a disconnect because people are looking at the names and icons from a functional standpoint. They are trying to infer capabilities of an archetype and/or specification based on the name & icon. The thing is MWM designed all of the archetype & specification names & icons based on lore (aka the first or most prominent super to exhibit the qualities associated with the arch/spec). If all they did was use neutral names and generic icons, the user base would incorporate the system into the lexicon and propagate it going forward. They want us to do exactly that, but we don't have the benefit of knowing the lore behind the super's names & icons that are the basis for the arch/spec framework. Thus we have a disconnect and have voiced opinions about making changes.

Making a functional change (aka swap Commander & Operator) to simply appeal to our functional brain's desire to grasp the association between the name & capability of the character defeats the purpose of the approach (basing everything on lore). Hence the names & icons in dispute need to be redesigned and the associated lore probably needs to be tweaked. Or the lore approach needs to be scrapped and a functional one needs to be adopted. Additionally we don't know how developed the lore and art are for these prime super heroes/villains. MWM might have already started branding and merchandising based on those characters & icons, so that might complicate making changes at this point. We don't know.

Planet10 wrote:

For the record, I agree that Commander doesn't make sense for the archetype name (because my frame of reference does not include knowledge of the lore), but that isn't what is at issue here. Doctor T has mentioned that just doing a string swap for the names is a trivial thing to do (in the "swap Commander & Operator names" argument), but then the archetype icons would still be the same (aka, not swapped). The backstory lore for each of the supers (Commander & Operator) would most likely need to be tweaked to suit their new archetype.
The issue is that people are arguing that "Commander" sounds like a pet archetype. The icon even looks military-like, implying that you direct the actions of troops. There is a disconnect because people are looking at the names and icons from a functional standpoint. They are trying to infer capabilities of an archetype and/or specification based on the name & icon. The thing is MWM designed all of the archetype & specification names & icons based on lore (aka the first or most prominent super to exhibit the qualities associated with the arch/spec). If all they did was use neutral names and generic icons, the user base would incorporate the system into the lexicon and propagate it going forward. They want us to do exactly that, but we don't have the benefit of knowing the lore behind the super's names & icons that are the basis for the arch/spec framework. Thus we have a disconnect and have voiced opinions about making changes.
Making a functional change (aka swap Commander & Operator) to simply appeal to our functional brain's desire to grasp the association between the name & capability of the character defeats the purpose of the approach (basing everything on lore). Hence the names & icons in dispute need to be redesigned and the associated lore probably needs to be tweaked. Or the lore approach needs to be scrapped and a functional one needs to be adopted. Additionally we don't know how developed the lore and art are for these prime super heroes/villains. MWM might have already started branding and merchandising based on those characters & icons, so that might complicate making changes at this point. [b]We don't know[/b].

Exactly. We don't know. So we are of course reacting to what we do know. If there is an important reason to call a control class "Commander", then it would be a simple thing to just let us know about it. But without that, we can only comment based on what we know. And at this time, "Commander" does not fit the control class and does fit the MM class. Not sure how "lore" is going to make Commander sound right for a Controller to be honest.

They do let us know about these things and then provide a link to this forum for a reason, yes? Isn't it true they want to hear our opinions?

Well it looks like the dominant opinion voiced here is directed at the Commander name. If that's the one name they have decided cannot change, ("set in stone) then it would be a simple matter to just pass the information on to us. They are sharing lore after all. Since that hasn't happened, it sounds like they want to hear our opinions on the matter.

I see both sides. After reading the names in the original post. I admit to doing a little bit of semantic gymnastics to get Commander and Operator to fit.

Looking back at the Defender and the Tanker. You could argue that these two names are swapped, if you had no prior knowledge. The Defender should be the class that takes all the damage. It is the hero with the shield blocking the attacks taking the hits that no one else could. The Tanker reminds me of a large seagoing vessel. A vessel that could support an armada of (modern) warships. That sounds like a support class to me.

I know in Final Fantasy 14, every tank has at least one ranged attack that also doubles as an aggro generator - the point is to peel enemies off your teammates when they're running around like chickens because said teammate can't take a hit. It's really valuable ability.

I've also seen some exclusively ranged tanks in a few games, they just work a bit differently - specifically, they're slow moving but heavy hitting artillery that's meant to be too much of a threat to ignore, rather than traditional tanking. That only really works in pvp focused games, though.

Volron wrote:

I am curious if there is an intent on making Epic AT's. I really enjoyed playing and having Epics in the team in CoH, and some of my most memorable TF's had epic's in them. Despite having my own, I couldn't help but keep a close eye on one as they fought. :)

Thoughts, yes. But there is a whole lot more to get done before even tinkering with the concept I have in mind. The thing is, once more of the ATs release, and more primaries, secondaries, and tertiaries, players will be able to build characters with similar flexibility (not quite exact in function!- but similar).

Brand X wrote:

Radiac wrote:
Control is too bimodal, the way CoX did it. You either have the ablility to lock down a whole mob and thus never take a hit, or you do not and the boss and lt in the mob can defeat you before the minions unfreeze. It's like counterspells in Magic: the Gathering. Either there are enough cheap good counters to make a counterspell-heavy deck work (also called a "control" deck or a "permission" deck) or there are not and nobody plays like ANY counterspells at all.
Seems to be a reason to ditch a Control AT and just have a control ability in the attack sets of the other ATs.

To me that would be awfully close to relegate control to gimmick status and is one of the things I hate in other MMO's, but absolutely loved in CoH due to it being so prominent.

The way I see it is not so much if you can lock down the whole mob and walk away unhurt or not but rather that you can lock down enough of them to survive. Considering that as long as you hit there will be some form of control effect applied than I think that it is appropriate to have control ATs.

Brand X wrote:

Radiac wrote:

Control is too bimodal, the way CoX did it. You either have the ablility to lock down a whole mob and thus never take a hit, or you do not and the boss and lt in the mob can defeat you before the minions unfreeze.

Seems to be a reason to ditch a Control AT and just have a control ability in the attack sets of the other ATs.

Sounds more like Radiac simply doesn't like to play dedicated Control ATs which is perfectly fine but doesn't mean CoT needs to do anything as radical as get rid of Control ATs altogether.

I probably played a few thousand hours with several Controllers in CoH. Basically Radiac's assessment of CoH's system being "too bimodal" is incredibly simplistic. A Controller's only real DEFENSE is being able to, well, control as many MOBs as possible so "never taking a hit" is not like playing the game on "easy mode" - it's the way it was supposed to work. And when you can't fully control a MOB that's when skill and experience takes over so you can more easily easily solo larger groups.

Basically playing Controllers take tactics that are almost diametrically opposed to playing things like Scrappers or Brutes so if you love "Scrapperlock" then Controllers are always going to seem too weird, too slow or even too wimpy because you're somehow not -willing- to get hit. The joke they never got is by the time I had, for instance, my level 50 Fire/Rad going I could mow down MOBs much faster than the average single Scrapper could dream of. In fact whenever I teamed with one I called him/her my "4th Fire Imp" because that's usually the only help they were to me.

As blacke4dawn said one of CoH's strengths was that it actually allowed for dedicated Control ATs which most other games can't seem to figure out. It would be a huge loss if CoT got rid of them and simply spread a few Controll-ish powers to the other powerset. Also as Fireheart pointed out CoT plans to smooth out the Control effects in the game so that they work more on a spectrum instead of just binary on/off. Somehow Radiac keeps forgetting that or amazingly doesn't remember the dozens of times that has been mentioned over the years in this forum.

People love their control effects in all games.

In Magic, the three analogs to CoX's Controllers were 1) Permission decks, which packed many, many counterspells to the point where they had a counter for everything and could just barely damage you enough to eventually win, 2) Land Destruction decks which put a choke on your mana to the point where you couldn't get your cards out of your hand for lack of mana to pay for them and 3) Suicide Black which was a deck archetype that basically forced you to discard cards until you had none left and were living off of your one-per-turn draws. In the early days of MtG, these decks were common and very playable but led to games that either took forever and as such made tournament games impossible to finish in an hour, or were over in like 3 min.

The powers that be Mark Rosewater at WotC eventually decided that they wanted Magic to be a fun game that people play where they make moves and countermoves that require strategy and guesswork and have an element of luck of the draw (it being a card game and all), and where BOTH players feel like they're able to interact, not just sit there and get slowly (or quickly) ganked. So those decks were nerfed by making the mana costs of the counterspells higher, and by printing fewer land destruction and discard spells per set such that you could use them in small amounts, but not make a whole deck out of them. What resulted is a game where you might actually cast a creature and get to attack with it between the beginning and end of the game, which is not only more enjoyable for both players, but closer to the intended style of game play that the original creators had in mind.

I feel that the PvP aspect of the MMO game requires some interactivity like that, so you either have to take away the "hard control" effects, or make them work very differently in PvP than they do in PvE, because in PvE they basically freeze the opponent in place while you and a friend bash them with no aggro back.

I think it's the nature of people that they would not like to play a half-axed "semi-control-ish" toon (just as nobody plays one or two land destruction cards, it's usually all or nothing) but would play a toon that can totally lock down an entire mob long enough for the rest of the party to do the damage to defeat them with no attacks back. If you DON'T have that level of control, then you don't have controllers, at least not as the old CoX Controller fans remember them.

To be clear, for me personally, in PvE I'm fine with good old "hard control" like we had in CoX, and in PvP I personally don't care what you do, because I won't be doing that anyway.

Since there will not, presumably, be any Break Free Insps in CoT, how would a person who got mezzed into a state of helpless vulnerability mitigate that in PvP? Or are we just going to add those in and be done with it?

Nyxz wrote:

Radiac wrote:
Since there will not, presumably, be any Break Free Insps in CoT, how would a person who got mezzed into a state of helpless vulnerability mitigate that in PvP? Or are we just going to add those in and be done with it?
I've been under the impression that that is one of the uses for momentum in both PvP and PvE.

More accurately, it is one possible use of Reserves. And if we need to, we can change the settings of Momentum gain when fully controlled and the Mometum decay to fill Reserves faster to give a chance to brieak free (if your hp lasts) - keep in mind this is something that will most likely get fine tuned over time.
.And with how we have set things up with Tertiaries, anyone could get access to protection powers to help with reducing control effects.

Radiac wrote:

Land Destruction decks which put a choke on your mana to the point where you couldn't get your cards out of your hand for lack of mana to pay for them

Man, I miss those days. My red/green hasn't been the same in the Modern game, so I just leave it Vintage and crush people with a green/artifact deck. #derail