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I think Lothic said it well.
Have a nice day!
On the subject of strengths and weaknesses. I know it *sounds* fair to have +5 one thing for -5 something else, but a lot of things sound fair like that which aren't. Examples:
1. If I invest in a stock and the price goes down by 1% one day and then back up by 1% the next, you'd think I'm back where I started, but I'm not. The percentages are always based on the most recent closing price, so if it goes from 100 to 99, that's a 1% loss on that day, the next day if it goes from 99 to 99.99 that's a 1% gain, and the price of the stock is NOT 100.00 again, it's a penny lower.
2. It was easy for the devs of CoH to convince themselves that the buff percentages they were assigning to Damage SOs put them on par with what you'd get out of a Recharge Rate SO or Accuracy SO of the same percentage and the effects were not even CLOSE to the same. It turns out, as Redlynne likes to point out (or was it Lothic?) that a single Damage SO did the same work as a Recharge Rate AND an Endo Reducer COMBINED and those took up TWO slots to the ONE that the Damage SO used. But hey, 20% is 20%, so they do comparable things for you, right? Not so fast....
The only way to make "fair" drawbacks, to me, is to make the drawback something that's almost completely inescapable, like lower total hit points, slower base movement, slower overall endo recharge rate, vulnerability to ALL incoming damage, etc. Personally I don't want to trade that stuff for "+5 to your fire attacks" even if like 90% of my outgoing damage is fire based.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I was not being silly. I was showing you the folly of the argument you were making by applying your logic to the whole game. Where do you draw the line between what strengths and weaknesses are up for debate and which are not? You seem to assume that we all agree with you that the line is between what we have today and what I and others have said we would have liked to have seen.
That is a poor argument because of the commonality of kryptonite in the DC universe. If our game had every 5th enemy made of kryptonite, or something else more commonplace, your argument would hold no weight. I come back to the importance of game design and balance.
Again, I don't understand this. So what? If a player is able to mitigate away the weaknesses through playstyle, mastery, augments and refinements, I say Bully for you! Well done, hero. I just don't see the problem you see. And by the way, spending all that effort to mitigate weaknesses means a whole lot less effort accentuating the strengths.
[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 side of immersion, it makes perfect sense that a target made of wood would be more vulnerable to fire than one made of metal. I get the immersion argument, and I wish it were that easy and you could just put in stuff like that where it makes sense. But I agree with Lothic that the game has to be a little more fail safe against potential OP comboes than that, sadly.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
You are still looking at the ramifications of this from the wrong point of view. For weaknesses to have ANY significance in the game there will have to be situations where Character X will not be able to avoid their weaknesses if they want to experience all content with any group.
Now it's one thing if the character chooses to avoid his/her weakness MOST of the time because that's just a case of simple reasonable logic (i.e. Iceman melts in fire so obviously he'll avoid as many fires as he can). But if the game allows that player to "deliberately avoid those [weaknesses] on purpose" a full 100% of the time then the weaknesses effectively cease to have any meaning. The game CANNOT prevent the character from avoiding their weaknesses 100% of the time and that 's the fundamental flaw.
Exactly. As we know the Devs of CoH allowed -some- degree of farming but they did their best to prevent it from becoming too easy/simple. I strongly suspect that having strengths and weaknesses that could be used to maximize farming efficiency would easily stray across the line from what the Devs would tolerate.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Now who's being hyperbolic? I find this argument to be no different than the one you made before which I find to be invalid for all the same reasons. There are already going to be builds that will be viewed as better than others. Adding another layer of complexity won't change that. Invalid argument.
In my opinion, making that many strengths and weaknesses would be the worst thing we could do. And that is probably why Champions Hero System requires an active GM. In fact that would actually exacerbate the problems you are trying to avoid. In the example I set forth in the Valiance thread post #461, I arbitrarily came up with six balanced pairs to choose from per character. I still think that's a good number. Looking at the launch powersets and assuming there will be perhaps five or six aesthetic choices at launch for each, that would probably result in about 150 different strength and weakness pairs at launch. I find this would be manageable but diverse enough to accomodate nearly every possible origin story. It would certainly not be as much of a "did you choose option A" as you make it out to be.
[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.
As Yoda would say "That is why you fail..." *shrugs*
Players are SUPPOSED to do what they can "to mitigate away the weaknesses".
That's NOT the problem here.
The problem is when they can mitigate them 100% away into insignificance.
Sadly a game like CoT would easily provide the opportunities to offer weaknesses that you avoid ALL the time.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Gah! I can't keep up with all these posts!!!
Now I think we are guilty of arguing the same point but from two different directions. I say this is why game design and balance are important in order to do it well, and you seem to be saying that without game design and balance it will be problematic. But we are both saying this is something that should be considered.
We at least share that common thought.
[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.
At least under the Hero system if you stupidly tried to give your character a vulnerability to "Unobtainium" that doesn't naturally occur on Earth (in a sad attempt to get credit for a "weakness" that actually isn't a weakness) the Human GM would likely hurl a meteor full of Unobtainium down to Earth to give your enemies something to work with.
And no... only having 5 or 6 hardwired strength/weakness combos per powerset would be woefully inadequate. Everyone would figure out the one of the 5 or 6 that "worked best" and that would become the automatic default practically everyone would use. Once again you end up with no customization/diversity benefit.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
The difference in my argument is that the only thing that would balance out a strength/weakness system as you propose does not currently exist in a computer-based MMORPG. Without adaptive human GM oversight a player will always be able to "outsmart" a computer-based game and avoid having to "suffer" from any weaknesses if they don't want to.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
And shame on any game developer that would code a weakness into a game for something that didn't exist. Seriously, do you even think about your arguments before you make them?
I never said 5 or 6 per powerset. I said 6 per combination of mechanic and aesthetic themes. Did you even read my posts that you are criticizing?
With all the different combinations of mechanic and aesthetic themes resulting in a different selection of 6 per combination, there would be hundreds of different slates of strength and weakness pairs to choose from per powerset.
It's kind of like the NYSE or NASDAQ. There are orders of magnitude more mutual funds than actual stocks because of the near infinite ways those stocks can be combined.
[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.
So, I have a concern about Travel Powers. Hopefully an empty one, but a concern nonetheless.
Disconnecting the travel powers from the framework of the other powers is worrying to me. Not because I don't think it can work, but because I haven't seen it work. Travel powers in CoH were part of the same framework as everything else, and they worked. Travel powers in DCUO and CO are on their own thing and they don't work as well, because of advancement.
You simply have a travel power in DCUO and that's it. In CO, you unlock travel power slots at certain levels (In my free-to-play experience) and it's a bother. In CoH? You wanted to improve your travel power, you invested slots and money in it, and it got better from how you invested in it!
Now, the counterargument there is a good one: A travel power was more or less one power and six slots claimed for your entire build, and freeing those up certainly has appeal. However, at the same time it meant you had to measure them against what else you wanted to do, something I liked. In DCUO, travel feels tacked on, and in CO it feels half-baked, partially because they're not connected to the greater power system.
In addition, DCUO and CO don't have hover.
My blaster had both super speed and hover, speed for travel and hover for in-combat positioning. Hover was great for placement, avoiding melee enemies, and giving my blaster a little bit of survival. My point is less hover itself and more what it was: A utility power in a travel power pool. Also in that category was haste, a useful power. Furthermore, aerial superiority was one of the most useful (and hilarious) power pool attacks. DCUO and CO don't (to my knowledge) have this kind of option, and they're poorer for it.
I'd love to hear hear that I have no reason to worry and they have this all planned out. This is really a 'please prove me wrong' kind of situation, I just feel that it needs to be voiced.
Under Construction...
One major aspect others have missed ismthe freedom our system gives to the player to make the character they want (background and appearance) without digging into detailsmof math in game system many may not be abke to grasp.
A 10 year old with autism can get in and play as easily as their 40'year old parent. Hitting random on he costume creator has no game-otiented consequences (it may have social consequences!). And if you want to make human-mitant/alien-hybryd cyborg empowered by soul crystals and trained by an ancient order of monks - well you can do that too without the game restricting you in any way.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
And i personally love that!
Have a nice day!
Huckleberry,
What do you think a weakness/strength system will add to the game that you don't already get from the strength/weaknesses in power set design and the augment and refinement system?
You've been circling the drain towards personal attacks towards me for a while now. Is that the only way you can respond to this now?
I'll make the point again so that even you won't be able to deflect it with yet another desperate quibble: No game should allow players to benefit from having so-called weaknesses that AREN'T ACTUALLY weaknesses, period. In my example the player tried to pull a fast one (like you want to do in CoT) by trying to select a weakness that was in the game (Unobtainium existed in the game universe) but functionally would not really affect them (because the Unobtainium was so rare on Earth it was essentially a non-weakness). The human GM corrected that attempt - the same human GM that wouldn't exist in CoT.
I read them but I tend to filter out BS and get to the heart of what people are trying to sell...
As to this point I've already implied that 10,000 combos might not be enough to preserve reasonable amounts of customization and diversity in a system that would be unregulated without human GM oversight. Why would I accept any retroactive hand-waving on your part that would provide a result orders of magnitude less than that? Hundreds of options (instead of 5 or 6) would only mean it might take the min/maxers a few extra days to settle down to their best defaults they'd use forever.
I really don't know why you want a "system" that will devolve down to players only choosing the few FoTM combos that will become the standard accepted defaults.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Tannim, I know you say you had originally wanted a strength and weakness system before, and I know this is something you guys have said you've already decided against, so you didn't need to get involved again. But now that you are, I can show you how the seemingly random combination you just put forward could be dealt with easily by the strengths and weakness system I came up with already.
First, you never stated the power set, so I can only guess at the mechanical theme. So let me guess a [i]brawn[/i] melee fighter which is probably as close to a martial artist as we have. But he could also be a [i]mind[/i] controller or a [i]force field[/i] supporter to put forth some other possibilities. But let's go with the brawn melee for this discussion, and since the mechanic theme is chosen for us when we make this selection, any discussion about the type of martial arts, boxing, or streetwise would be relegated to aesthetic options.
Second, you also didn't say what the aesthetic theme would be, but since you say she is powered by soul crystals, let's choose the [i]spirits[/i] aesthetic, whatever that would be. Other options could be karate, aikido, kickboxing, spec ops combat, animal-inspired, fire, ice, etc., etc. I'm making this up but you and Doc Tyche have stated that we get to pick one single aesthetic theme, and so I made up [i]spirits[/i] since it fits with your example. If you don't have a [i]spirits[/i] aestheitc theme, pick one that fits the whole "powered by soul crystals" design you came up with.
Notice that so far the fact that your character's nature as a half-alien cyborg is completely ignored by this strengths weakness system, It applies only to Themes, not to the costume parts you picked.
A [i]brawn[/i] melee mechanic theme with a [i]spirit[/i] aesthetic theme would result in the following slate of strength/weakness balanced pairs:
From [i]brawn[/i] you get:[list]
[*]Your character's focus and self discipline enables you to better resist mind-affecting abilities, but this also reduces your susceptibility to beneficial mind affecting abilities as well.
[*]You are so highly trained that you can predict and overcome opponent's attempts at evasion, blocking and dodging; but anything that disrupts your practiced routines has a greater effect, increasing the effect of interrupts, holds and stuns.
[*]Your body is your weapon whether you have built-in weapons or channel some other force through your limbs, you need no props to aid you in doing what you have to do. Your accuracy increases against all opponents; however, when you block or otherwise have to protect yourself, you do so with your own body, meaning that any damage mitigation you would have is less effective.[/list]
And from the [i]spirits[/i] aesthetic:[list]
[*]Your powers come from the power of souls, willingly or not. As a result your attacks cause more damage to undead and unholy opponents, but are less effective against mechanical constructs.
[*]You are a creature of pure spirit. You take extra damage from dark attacks and attacks that harm the spirit, but you take less damage from purely physical attacks.
[*]Your affinity with spirits and souls allows you to heal yourself and others more effectively, so long as they are not beings without spirits such as mechanical beings or undead beings, whom you do not heal as effectively.[/list]
Now note that some of these pairs would be completely inappropriate from a lore perspective. But the point is that even in your random creation there is at least one pair that is lore appropriate. And for all those that say lore is a bunch of poppycock, who don't care, or who are purely interested in min/maxing you get to pick whichever pair you want and rationalize it any way you want.
I thought of these right here, right now, as I wrote it, so let's not pick them apart whether or not they are perfectly balanced. It is the concept we are discussing.
[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.
A strength/weaknesses system would ideally (in a true RPG) give players a means to better define their characters by providing dramatic ques to highlight times when their characters are extra strong AND extra vulnerable. When they invented Kryponite for Superman they did it to provide dramatic tension so that the reader could actually believe he might be vulnerable/killable. They didn't do it so that he could get a +5% To-Hit bonus against fire critters or whatever.
In the context of a computerized MMORPG the only thing a strength/weaknesses system really represents is a means to get as much of a combat bonus out of it as you can while mitigating the pesky "weakness" part. By design it's meant to be an exercise in min/maxing. The only thing that people like Huckleberry don't want to address is that if you have a system that's supposedly giving you a "plus" for accepting a "minus" that "minus" in question MUST COME INTO PLAY for at least some fraction of the character's play experience or else it's effectively non-existent and all you're getting is a "plus" for nothing. That basic equation simply does not balance out.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Good. Because it seems like this last bit is the heart of what you are trying to sell.
I suppose our fundamental disagreement is that you think that matters and I think it doesn't.
We can argue until we're blue in the face, but I say there will always be min/maxers who will always be following the flavor of the month. You acknowledge that what I want makes things more complex for them. Great, because on that we can agree.
You are also saying that what I want wouldn't really end up making a difference, however, and that min/maxing would still happen. I say I agree with that as well.
But what I am also saying is that the benefits of having origin decisions matter more than outweighs any downsides to min-maxing. If you can agree that it is that last statement upon which we disagree, we can put this to rest.
[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.
The real reason stregnths and weaknesses are used in comics and are in part table top games are to be used as a plot device. Something driven by the story teller. Once the plot device becomes systemized and the story teller is removed, the system becomes finite allowing for savy players to manipulate it.
And to Huckleberry, I can cite many examples whre it is easy to build away those suppossed weaknesses by choosing aditonal powers from tertiaries. What if while anything that disrupts my routine as you put it is coverd by my mutant ability to summon barriers around myself?
My cybernetics aren't affected by attacks on my spirit because I chose then as a material that resists dark attacks?
Or I have a base with a power dispensor that gives me buffs I can stock up on and have multiple of in my inventory - they're nanobots released from my cybernetics powers by soul crystals which can heal both mechanical objects,'the body, and spirit equally?
I'm not going to delve any further into this as it truly has no bearing on the direction of current game design.
One of our earliest promises we gave in our kickstarter was on the concept of no origins and aesthetic decoupling. Our entire costume system and powers customization is made separate from mechanics and our mechanics doesn't require specific aeasthetics. The exceptions to this are on a basic level of theme (burning sets has stuff thst burns even if it is exploding kittens), and insicators of target based fx for single targets, multiple targets, location effects, and such.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
This, in the end, is the sad truth.
Strength/Weakness is a beloved staple of the Superhero genre, and is perfectly doable in Pen & Paper--but it's not very MMO friendly.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
One more time I am NOT against min/maxing in principle. My "problem" (if you want to call it that) is that there's a very fundamental difference between min/maxing in an environment where there's so many choices that there's no one "right answer" that everyone copies as the collective truth and an environment that's so limited and hardwired that once everyone figures out the "trick" everyone will "choose" (and I use that word loosely here) that one combo as the accepted default. My other problem is that this particular arena of min/maxing ALSO encourages players to figure out how to get something for nothing (and I suppose [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_for_Nothing_%28song%29]their chicks for free[/url] as well). A weakness should obviously be avoided, but being able to avoid them 100% of the time is simply untenable.
What you seem to want (some "handwaved" scenario that might create a few hundred strength/weakness combos) is NOT a solution to these things. People will blast through that in a week or two and then we'll be living in the dystopian reality where some poor schmuck will be kicked from a team because playing as a Grandpooba with powersets A/B he's considered gimped because he didn't select the exact strength/weakness combo X/Y.
Bottomline I don't think "origin decisions" (even disguised in the form of hardwired strength/weakness choices) should ever be part of CoT. The Devs of CoH learned their lesson when they initially tried to "cook" that stuff directly into their game and then spent the better part of EIGHT YEARS trying to pull all that back OUT of the game. Anytime a game tries to pigeonhole characters into "flavor" categories based on things the players themselves should be establishing via their OWN character concepts we all lose a certain degree of ability to dream up literally anything we want our characters to be. I'm sorry but something like your strength/weakness combos don't ADD to customization and/or character diversity. They actually rob us of true individualism by forcing us down pre-established cookie-cutter mindsets. Thanks but maybe I don't want my character to have the same generic +3% DEF against toxic fumes that one of your characters might have.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Period.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Ah, but if we could make it work, how wonderful it would be. There was a time when a lot of things weren't MMO friendly... until someone made them work and everyone else had to also or become obsolete.
Will Camelot Unchained be the HMS Dreadnaught of MMORPGs and by implementing banes and boons thereby make all others obsolete? Only time will tell.
[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.
In that case, why did you pick the strength/weakness pair that included the disruption weakness? Or another take on it would be, good for you for picking a tertiary that mitigated the disruption effect.
Let me say this again:
And I should also remind all that there should probably be an option to select none of the above and have no strengths or weaknesses. That was an idea Lothic came up with in post #500 (of the Valiance thread) and I think it is a good one.
There were five others to pick from if this one doesn't fit.
If this is a base item, and the buffs provided by these buffs apply equally to spiritual and mechanical natures, then great job getting that item installed in your base. That is an effective player decision that mitigates your weakness! And Bravo to the game developers for adding yet another level of complexity to the mechanics of strengths and weaknesses.
Yeah, I was wondering why you chose to get involved again.
[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.
I'm not sure how the discussion got from the 'what can we do: powers' page and videos to arguing back and forth about the (un)desirability of a strengths and weaknesses system.
personally I wouldn't mind if it is in the game (or not as the case seems to be) as it would be a flavour thing only.
min-maxers are going to happen no matter what so leaving out what you see as features because of them is a losing proposition.
City of Heroes inadvertently had the best solution for this issue that I have seen to date: they had set the baseline for succesful gameplay low enough that even players who just semi randomly slotted in some enhancements could finish the game without too much trouble. Players could eke out the last bit of power out of the system by carefully tweaking every enhancement down to the 6th digit behind the dot, but there really was little point to do so. Just slotting moderately smart (or even not so smart) SOs would see you through the game just as well.
League of Legends has what I think is the second best solution with their elaborate game of rock paper scissors, where there is no max built for more than a few weeks before somebody either discovers that build's kryptonite or the developers slightly tweak powers so another type of built becomes the most powerful and the min maxers scramble to 'optimise' that character and build.
For the rest, work towards incomparables rather than percentages as the min maxers will find amazingly tiny differences and /will/ manage to turn them into advantages. Or that may just be hysterical forum jockeys who try to make themselves look smart and knowledgeable, I don't know. I do remember a flamewar on the SW:TOR forums where players had discovered a one frame (one 60th of a second) difference between the animations of two supposedly identical powers of two mirror classes. From the way they carried forth one might be convinced the world was ending and unless the game got immediately redesigned from the ground up one of those two classes was suddenly unplayable.
Against such levels of fanaticism and hyperbole there is no system design capable of resisting so again we probably should turn to the CoH developers who told players complaining about unbalanced PvP: If you are playing paper, you should team up with rock to beat scissors.
(not that I personally think there should be PvP as in my opinion it always creates more problems in a PvE game than it solves, but I've already been overruled on this subject)
They're a daisy if they do!
And if so, what they figure out could lead to retrofitting into CoT like the power color customization that Paragon Studios said that CoH would never, ever get (ever!).
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
You do realize of course, that now you'll have to add exploding kittens... right?
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_HUdf89hI8]Send out your signal, call in your hero
I kidnapped his lady, now his power's are zero.
[/url]
The more I read about the proposals here for a strength/weakness system the more it looks as being more restrictive than CoT's current implementation.
Huckleberry's proposal "locks" the entire power set (both of them?) into a single aesthetic theme instead of being able to choose on a per-power basis and thus being able to choose aesthetic theme based on the individual powers purpose. Like separating between ranged and melee, offensive and defensive, damaging and non-damaging or whatever else distinctions one wants to make, even using more than just two.
As for Ivory's "proposal" in post [url=https://cityoftitans.com/comment/118449#comment-118449]#325[/url] it sounds like ones choices for powers and looks (both costume pieces and power aesthetics) would be based upon ones choices in advantages and disadvantages. To me that sounds ridiculous since if one has a specific look and playstyle in mind one has to first work out which advantages and disadvantages to take before being able to make the super one has in mind. If one really want to have the same freedom as what MWM is planning then one has to take so many advantages/disadvantages that it makes the point of the system effectively moot, or the characters become so hyper-specialized that they can only be used in a very select few situations. Try explaining all of that to a 10-year old who just wants to play the game.
As someone alluded to earlier, what does this advantages/disadvantages system bring to the game that the general public will find more compelling rather than, what it looks to me, a few die-hard roleplayers (for a lack of a better term)? Sure, I fully conceded that there needs to be some advantages/disadvantages built into the system to make characters distinct from each other in gameplay but I don't think MWM needs to go beyond classes and power sets to create that distinction.
[b]î[/b] This.
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_HUdf89hI8]Send out your signal, call in your hero
I kidnapped his lady, now his power's are zero.
[/url]
Napalm Gummy Kittens!
Be Well!
Fireheart
That is depressing....so you already "genericed" the entire game design to such a degree? That "even a 10 year old with autism could do it"?
Except you aren't really creating that. It is just a costume and you are roleplaying.
You could say you have that same "freedom" in any game since it is all in your head and has no actual meaning in the gameplay. It seems the design philosophy is to try and re-create CoH to some degree with just some limited power customization....where "being a super hero" is all about your attack chain plowing through random groups of interchangeable mobs.
Nope, I would never suggest that. Costume pieces should have no impact on a power (since a player can imagine any number of scenarios where even a thin leotard is made from hyper advanced nano fiber bla bla and provides the same armor as a suit of iron man armor).
Power looks (color of attack) should also have no impact on a power...since, again, a player can imagine a pink fire that is actually an illusion (so doesn't behave like you would expect a fire to...instead actually acting like cold).
Basically, player should be able to create any hero or power they desire. Shooting lasers from the hands because you have a magic ring that summons it ? Fine.
The only difference is when a player creates that power with their personal explanation....they would ACTUALLY be creating that power with its own limitations (which they pick).
So that magic ring....they made it an equipment (because they want to switch it out later)....fine, but equipments can be disabled or removed.
They put the magic ring on their hand....fine....but if your arms are restricted, you can't lift it to shoot the attack.
.....
It is all about giving the player the freedom to do what they want....but also building into those freedoms a deeper system of consequence and utility.
If adding a '+' here and a '-' there makes it more interesting for you to play a human-mutant/alien-hybrid cyborg, that's well and good. That probably would not be the case for me. I'd most likely prefer not to choose any such strengths and weaknesses for my characters.
When all is said and done, whether a character takes a smidgen more damage from one enemy and does a smidgen more damage to another enemy isn't going to affect "your attack chain plowing through random groups of interchangeable mobs".
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Ideally a strengths and weaknesses system wouldn't boil down to slight adjustments on damage numbers.
If people are thinking that hitting and being hit are the only two interactions that should ultimately happen in a super hero game...then....they need to go read some comics or watch some super hero shows and come back later :P
Just think of batman and his utility belt...and his batcave....does that really just boil down to simple adjustments of his DPS and tankability?
Sorry, Blacke4Dawn, it wasn't my idea to limit us to only one aesthetic theme. I agree that if it was my idea it would be limiting.
It is actually MWM's idea to limit us to one aesthetic theme of our choosing and one mechanical theme that is not. In fact, my whole premise was built around this and without it, would have been something else entirely.
Here is my reference from the Regen thread:
and a little bit further on:
So if you have any complaints regarding this decision, please direct them at MWM. Maybe it has been changed since April 6th 2017, maybe not.
Edit: I reserve the right to admit it if I completely got it wrong, but I've mentioned it several times to Tannim222, and he has not told me I was wrong.
[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.
It is really strange seeing so many people defend this planned system as LESS RESTRICTIVE than one where you can pick any animation, any costume, any particle, any color, any mechanical effect, and so on for a power of your complete customization.....all because I said when you first pick the base power, it comes with a suggested weakness (which you can remove) ....so strange.....
I think I've had enough of this thread, and its ongoing topic lol. Cya next update folks!
Have a nice day!
That's missing the forest for the trees.
The problem is that such a system would be inherently restrictive. There's no way that the devs can predict every option and combination the players may want to have. That's why even in PnP games they're typically optional. That's Tannim's point. People can roleplay whatever they think up without the game prompting or forcing any kind of behavior (the so-called "role-play vs roll-play"). Heck, some weaknesses can only be portrayed through roleplay.
Long story short, the creation and maintenance of such an system would be a mountain of work that I'd rather the devs apply elsewhere.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
The thread is starting to spiral a bit.
Ivory, at this point, from what has been said, I'd have to venture that this game probably just won't end up being designed the way you'd prefer. And that's probably that.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Let me set something straight right now.
If I inadvertantly offended anyone with this statement, I whole-heartedly and humbly apologize.
The in inclusion of the word "even" changes the tone in which I made that statement.
Having a child with special needs of own, the years of therapy involved, specialized schooling, the heartache and headache it can all be, with wonders and delight all rolled up into a big ball of life, I would never-ever disparage or mean to insult anyone with any issue.
Knowing families with children with autism, adult children with autism, and many other disorders and special needs, and working with others on this game thst fall in the spectrum, I only meant to impart that the game meant to have a high degree of accessibility. Ease of play to enter, depth of play for others to enjoy.
To anyone who reads this - I am sorry.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
My partner who has Autism found it funny and reassuring that it would be a "everyone can enjoy" game like CoH :) .
Have a nice day!
I think the true intent and nature of your post stands on it's own, Tannim.
No need to apologize. The insertion of "even" clearly altered the original meaning of your statement.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Thank you Lothic, but I really want to get Huck's thoughts. Also, I didn't ask what a strength and weakness system was, I asked about its benefit to 'this' game.
Huck, what do you think a strength/weakness system will add to the game that you don't already get from augments/refinements and the built in strengths/weaknesses of power sets?
I think that's a fair question at this point. It was addressed way back in the beginning of course, but it would take two research assistants and a few pots of coffee to find it by now.
What it really boils down to is that in CoT there are no consequences, for good or ill, between the very 'nature' of our characters' abilities and the affects they have in the game.
The first example that pops to mind is fire abilities. One would assume that if my attacks were fire based that they would not have as much affect on a fire-based creature as they would on an ice based or a plant-based creature. And really that's all it boils down to. It was an attempt at somehow connecting the aesthetic choices a player makes to something more meaningful.
That is one thing that no amount of masteries, augments or refinements can address because aesthetics are "mechanically agnostic," as Doctor Tyche likes to put it.
[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.
Really, if you want to go there, it boils down even farther than "Tank/Heal/DPS": those are the three obvious roles when you are using a two-pool resource system (HP and energy), and actions can only trade one for the other directly. Interestingly, that description doesn't apply to either D&D or classic MUDs, for the most part; they normally didn't have a separate 'energy' pool, just a round-based system with a fixed action rate as the limitation.
And some forms of mez, especially many of the ones that were very popular in CoX, were about affecting either the energy pool (otherwise relatively untouchable) or the action rate. That's a pretty big deal when, prior to that, everything focused solely on the HP pool in one form or another (understandable because the systems it arose from only *had* that one pool, for the most part).
So from a system mechanics point of view, damage buff/debuff and things like slow, stun and hold are actually worlds apart. In fact, I usually think of the latter when I hear "mez", although the term seems to really have just sort of grown out of the old utility classes and "we don't have any other good name for it".
[hr]
[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
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While fair, there are also a ton of people for whom that was a major draw / meta-game. Part of why CoX appealed to as many as it did is that there were something like a dozen meta-games to be played. And while there were a couple that ended up being out of whack (being good at the market tended to produce far more advantage than it probably should have, as much as I loved the market and desperately hope CoT treats theirs as CoX did, to wit "a way to PvP for people who hate twitch and love spreadsheets"), the holy grail would really be to have as many of those as can be managed sanely, make each of them capable of providing meaningful reward that helps in others, but avoid having any of them too drastically dominant or making *any* of them "effectively required".
That said, larger and better funded game studios have spent close to two decades trying to solve that problem, and while there has been a lot learned in twenty years, it is by no means a "solved" problem. The best practical answer I know of is also one of the simpler ones: start with a solid set that folks understand reasonably well, expect that there may need to be some significant adjustments made for the first little bit, set up safety caps so that you don't have to yank stuff away from folks (there is little else that will upset people nearly so fast), and... gather data from the real world, then use it to refine the next attempt. It is not only an iterative process, but one that basically *can't* be more than roughly refined prior to exposing it to a real player base, because what works or doesn't work depends so heavily on the actual player base involved.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
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What if your burning theme attacks are themed mechanically to a damage type that burning themed creatures are highly resistant to? What your "burning"' attacks looks like is not impinged upon by the game, but still has impact.
One of our old devs argued the same point, but this is all false equivalency. The key phrase here is "one would assume".
Why must fire do more damage to wood? Why can't the plant life be residtant to fire? Why must fire be weaker against fire when one fire is made by a magic want and burns green and the other is based off Neptunian Texh thst burns purple?
Instead, it is the set mechanics which dictate how the game plays, the appearances of the powers are part of the character - telling in part through showing how or why the character can do what they do. The player gets to reason those parts how they want instead of everythjng in appearance being a literal translation of reality in what amounts to a modern fantasy.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
You seem to be asking for more damage types, or at least damage sub-types. Then you want these damage types to be tied to aesthetics or maybe you want to be able to choose a damage type in addition to a aesthetic, I'm not sure which. Regardless, there isn't really anything game breaking or overly exploitive about either design choice. I do think eventually you will have to limit how many damage types there are but a few more traditional ones in addition to what MWM have already confirmed wouldn't be doom for the game.
This isn't what I thought you were asking for. I thought you were talking about a selection of advantages/disadvantages players could choose for a character that went beyond just damage types.
Since "burning" can be anything from acid to sandblown, and from insects to ice, and actual fire too; I would say that's a nice try. It certainly would make battle calculus more fun and I am a big fan of that. But it does not address the issue at hand.
That is certainly an interesting perspective I hadn't really considered. Of course the color of the fire shouldn't matter, but I realize you used the colors to emphasize that the fires were of different nature to help make your point.
In the end, I think that argument is a rationalization for why things don't act the way people expect them to rather than an explanation for why they do behave the way they do. Because for every explanation you can come up with for why this fire shouldn't melt this ice, there are twenty players with their own explanations why it should. You said it yourself that we all have to rationalize what we see. I think it is easier and better to ask your customers to rationalize why something makes sense than to rationalize why it does not.
Besides, if you really want to put unmeltable ice into the game, what better way to do so than to have all other ice be meltable and have your fire players walk up to this ice with overconfidence only to realize that their attacks don't melt it. Surprise impact for the win!
[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.
Speaking as one of the original champions of modularity in all forms, from the code to the costumes to the animations to all the rest: yes, you "just" need a strong designer of X to make it work. And if one of them didn't happen to volunteer for CoT, they realistically cannot even *think* about trying to hire it out; just the one for the code would easily cost them half of the *entire* funding available (not "funding after Kickstarter's cut, tool and licensing fees, and all the other good stuff"). Per year, and there is probably a solid year and a half of stuff to be done there; certainly a year at the very *minimum*. And that's if they were offering a discount rate. How do I know? Because that just so happens to be what I do for a living, and I know what my contracting rate on a limited-run project would look like when you take into account all of the overhead. "It ain't cheap."
Want to know what the full original design called for? The one I pitched as a "for an ideal world" target, when I first brought up the whole concept of what has been dubbed "aesthetic decoupling"? All of it is stuff I can see clearly *how* to do, and build frameworks around, or I never would have suggested it -- but that doesn't mean populating them is easy, even once they're built.
[list]
[*]Full body part swapping of standard "base" body, including non-standard shapes such as robotic arms that were mostly struts, etc.
[*]Multiple layers (minimum 3, ideally "however many we find we have a use for")
[*]Gaps in outer layers allowing the layers beneath to show through, along with translucency support
[*]Auras that could be associated with the full body or any particular subset of the body
[*]Combat animations of costume pieces
[*]"Separable" costume pieces with associated animations that could tie to appropriate attacks ("draw a gun and fire" results in a gun-plus-holster prop being swapped out to a gun and a holster in real time, with the animation of the hand lined up to it properly)
[*]Arbitrary emanation points for any and every attack, including several not on the body itself (in front of you, over your head, etc)
[*]Everything that had a color being individually colorizable -- costume pieces, powers, auras, *anything*
[*]Full support for light-emanating vs. light-obscuring FX
[*]"Mix and match" power effect animations (want a "Dragon Round" shotgun? Normal shotgun + small pyro 'bullet' + fireball impact)
[*]Smooth animation follow-through
[*]"Chaining" of body parts: a body wearing a muttonpack that had a gripper-end-effector that held a stick with a gripper on it that held a gun (... that fired guns that fired sharks? or was it tornados?)
[*]Integrated wings, tails, and other appendages that "Just Worked" when added
[*]... I'm sure I'm forgetting some things, it has been a couple of years
[/list]
Some parts of that will probably be there, or partially there, under the hood. Certainly there are design documents for how to approach most of it, from when I wrote them, but just designing an architecture doesn't mean you've actually worked out how to build that in the reality of a game engine. Speaking from rather direct experience, some of the above simply won't be practical unless and until either someone on the market makes tools that let you do it sanely, or MWM has the a full-bore technical development budget of a major (not just indie) studio. There's a reason it was an "ideal" list -- having at least the shape of it was important to understanding how to avoid closing off future possibilities by accident. Honestly, I would not expect to see *any* game, even the so-called "AAA" ones, with a list that complete for at least another decade. Most games have only caught up to where CoX was in 2003 within the past few years.
And all of that? That's just the list for the code. Of *one* system. Granted, one of the most important systems, and granted I was designing with a view to it being viable a decade down the road. But "a couple lines of code" it ain't. That is, instead, what you have to do in order to add something new to a system *if* it has been both well-architected *and* robustly filled out with "basics" already.
And even *I* don't want to think about the difficulty of making all of the art assets that could mesh in a system like that... and that's even counting the fact that MWM is using some very creative / unusual approaches to reducing the workload involved in those assets.
Don't even get me started on the map and world building assets. :)
[hr]
[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
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If you would like to see this in action, albeit still far short of a "completely failure" mode, go check out Champions Online.
I love the game, but from day 2 (or maybe it was day 1, I forget) they have struggled with trying to balance things in a way that doesn't result in having an *overwhelming* "Flavor of the Month club". As in "people feel like they have to play X combination to be at all effective", not just "X is popular right now and maybe a little stronger than it should be." And a large part of it is due to the very thing that was (and to some degree still is) one of the largest selling points of the game: the ability to "break out" of class-style restrictions and take a mix of powers from all over the board. Even that has some pretty notable restrictions, but when you have dozens of powers and nearly any combination of them can be taken? It becomes almost impossible to avoid there being certain combinations that are just profoundly "disruptive" without either having every power basically just be a clone of every other, or nerfing most of the good powers into uselessness (canonical example: Personal Force Field going from the 'everyone must have it' power to 'oh lord why would you ever bother?' in the first patch... because their underlying mechanics only supported those two options until *years* later).
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
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Ah, but *how much* more vulnerable is the question. If we're talking starfire, it isn't going to matter enough to make much of a difference... plasma trumps just about everything. Except magnetic fields, for those you need the photons coming off the plasma, instead.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
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I like the perspective that strengths/weaknesses drive story. I am sure with the size of the content team, plus the ability to write own missions, this can be simulated. If general content needs to presume your weakness then perhaps your powers could be disabled by a "substance in a box" (or maybe it is the box) without getting too specific. That could be simulated to a good extent even in CoH's Architect Entertainment by dropping characters into a level 1 mission. Perhaps a separate thread could explore 'weaknesses' and how they might drive stories while remaining relevant to many.
Much of 'weakness' come down to moral decisions. Choosing one option gets all heck unloaded on you, but how could you not choose to protect the innocent/family/most infamous serial killer? Morality can always be a 'weakness' if you want to get 'good' at it, driving choices optimal for others but not yourself. Huge credit to the devs for making morality such a multi-faceted attribute. For instance, being compelled to pursue a 'weird' outcome could mean all kinds of plot points, sometimes forcing a weakness.
If you're looking for to have a weakness affect just one member of a team, that again can be part of the story if you write it right. In the simplest case you target punishment on the team leader - in AE you had Arachnos homing bombs. The team lead is usually making the decisions after all, unless somehow MWM makes it possible to decide by committee. [color=red]Please don't make this thread about that[/color].
So much might be done through story.
[size=14]"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths." - Pushkin[/size]
[size=14] "One piece of flair is all I need." - Sister Silicon[/size]
If I want to make my character a cyborg, I assume I'll be able to make it LOOK that way in the Chargen (skins, colors, props, textures). If I want to give it powers (Primary, Secondary, Tertiary + Masteries + Augments and Refinements) that reflect the cyborgy things about it, like having some damage resistance, etc, that would technically be feasible with just the base system, ignoring any attempt to make all wooden objects more flammable, all metal heavier, all ice vulnerable to fire damage, etc, wouldn't it?
Making "materials properties" for everything sounds like a lot of work for no great benefit, to me. The devs are going to allow us to design our toons with the powers and so forth that we want anyway, so you can program in that sort of stuff if you like, to some extent, and the critters in the PvE mobs will all be built from the ground up with whatever strengths and weaknesses the devs feel they should have hard wired in.
So I guess I don't see the need for a cannon "materials properties system" at all really. Not for immersion (which it might have accomplished), and certainly not for properly balanced mechanics (which it would have been counterproductive at doing anyway).
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
It happened for years before AE ever came around, it was just a lot easier with AE and you could build a mission for a much more arbitrary selection of "who can farm this?" rather than being limited to missions the devs had written that you could find a way to farm. But there were most definitely dev missions where a single person could go +4x8 *and* enter with a entire group, have every else leave, and come out without a scratch at the end... nearly as fast as they could run through the mobs. It just had to be a very particular sort of build that was tailored for *exactly* that mission, to be quite that good.
As for farming in CoT, all I can say is that I know for a fact that the subject has been considered extensively, because I was in the meetings. And at least as of when I left, I was personally comfortable that there was a solid answer planned that shouldn't be prone to the sort of policy backfires that AE sometimes induced.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
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The 'energy pool' in computer RPG's grew from the 'spells per day' limits of spellcasters and the often forgotten strength/endurance checks during combat in D&D.
Both D&D and early computer games did in fact have mez effects that did not affect HP yet affected energy. In D&D there were spells like 'Ray of enfeeblement', 'Hold monster', 'Charm Monster' or the classic 'Turn Undead' in addition to rules for weapons that ensare, trip and trap. Early computer games, including MUDs, had mez effects that did not do damage, Final Fantasy's confuse spell or Dragon Warriors(2?) stun effects are just a couple examples.
Damage buff/debuff has never been the only kind of buff/debuff. It's true that mechanically damage buff/debuff is different than slow, stun and hold but in this case its ignoratio elenchi. The relationship to one another is not in question. Their relation to the holy trinity is in question.
An interesting point of note: when first considering what *types* of sets should exist, there were pretty extensive discussions about thematics and possible effects and even the potential for things like interacting with the environment. CoX even had some of that -- for example, ice was slippery, and oil slicks were slippery *and* could be lit on fire to give a DoT patch. At least unless I'm badly mis-remembering, which is always possible.
Some of those possibilities got discarded as either being too tightly bound to particular aesthetics, or impractical with the engine, or too likely to cause unpredictable game balance issues (being able to electrocute everything in a lake at one shot is probably a wee bit OP). Most of the ones that were kept were boiled down much further, to the actual game mechanics standpoint of "what makes X behave the way it does and why is that appropriate for this power set?" Probably the most obvious example is the "burning" power set -- and oh how I desperately wish, to this day, that any of us had come up with an alternative name for it that didn't just flat-out suck, given the level of confusion it has caused from then to now -- and the fact that things from it are much more likely to either have, or complement, a DoT "nature" to them. But if they are using a system that is even remotely "modular", it will be possible to flag any number of things as, for example, an "ignition source" that could light a flammable "set piece" on fire. Whether that's a fire attack or lightning or a bullet impact (because a good trope should always trump realism where it applies). I happen to know that the *engine* at least supports the necessary features, so it is really a question of whether they end up having the time and capacity to do the legwork required to get all of those bits and pieces to work together.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
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Well...it seems a lot of the problems have been a lack of experience....so you guys are re-building the wheel over years. Like this update just a year ago https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/1669755 ....you show a long struggle with just creating a basic human body with proper edge loops for the game?!?!? ((Don't take this as "holier than thou" or anything, I'm not an extreme pro either...I know how it is to learn as you go along....but it is worrying that you struggled with a really basic character art problem for so long. A lot of that is just not being aware of the resources out there. You can get a human with proper edge loops in about 10 minutes, probably for free, if you know where to go...))
There are ways to speed up content creation (a LOT)....but it would require (again) more custom systems / design to set in place. Instead, facing the daunting task of building those toolsets....you guys decided to brute force your way through a lot of stuff (while struggling with a steep learning curve). Like just building out the city, I have a solution that could do a HUGE diverse city faster than you could imagine....instead it looks like you are hand building it o.O
For cosmetic pieces for this type of game, aim for a small selection and then throw out a "base model" of each piece of armor (including a bounding box for allowable geometry, so you don't have massive intersection problems). Then just tell the community that they can make their own versions and you will take the ones that pass standards. You will have a huge number of bracer designs and backpacks and everything else in no time. ((Modeling a new bracer is something anyone could do within a few days of picking up blender or maya or whatever else)).
From what you are saying, it sounds like whipping out an MMORPG really isn't that big of a deal. Seems like it should be pretty quick and easy.
Why aren't more people doing this? How in the world did CoT and all of the other successor projects miss this? It sounds like we could have had a new Superhero game pretty quickly after CoH closed!
It seems weird that the bigger studios waste so much time and money developing games when they could save a ton of both by just doing what you're saying.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
No, an MMORPG is massive....but some pieces can be sped up a LOT with a variety of tools that have come along in the last 5 years.
Actually, quite relevant -- just not to anything you're talking about, which is why my post wasn't in reply to one of yours.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
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You're remembering right. Oil slicks were targetable pets.
This was important once when there was a near-total wipe on a Hamidon raid. They were down to one character alive, hiding behind the rocks. I forget exactly how they teleported enough folks back behind the rock, but it ended up with the surviving Trick Arrow character firing an Oil Slick Arrow at a jsut-resurrected Dark/Dark Defender, who proceeded to use [url=https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Dark_Miasma#Howling_Twilight]Howling Twilight[/url] to resurrect everyone in range (since the oil slick counts as an "enemy"), who then recovered and rezzed the rest of the raid.
IIRC this was during a beta test of the redesigned Hamidon raid. Back Alley Brawler was present, and was flabbergasted by the idea of using an oil slick to fuel Howling Twilight.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
While I certainly won't argue that there has been a learning curve and some degree of "reinventing the wheel", there has also been quite a lot of use of those tools which could be afforded. Unfortunately, as I have some rather specific reasons to know (having also been the assistant art directory and primary person dealing with the "art pipeline"), it isn't anywhere near that simple when you start looking at some of the subtler points... like licensing and copyright and whether or not something consists of a derivative work. And a standard human with edge loops actually turns out to not work very well when you start trying to add things like tails and wings that aren't just "stuck on". Not to mention that most of the pre-built figures are only partially compatible with the rigging system that UE4 provides. There are also other reasons which aren't appropriate for me to go into with anyone who isn't covered under the NDA.
Anyone who wants to do character and armor work should most definitely get themselves in contact with the active staff. However, it isn't something that can just be "tossed out" in that way, because contributions have to be covered by contract, and even putting out the "base" information can't really go to anyone not under NDA, without it being a risk the company shouldn't be taking.
As for building a huge city... "a" huge city, certainly, but can you build *Titan City*? That's a very, very different question... actually one I sank a week or two into specifically researching. There's a reason that the map got done as fast as it did, compared to everything *on* the map. But even that took a couple solid weeks of my time just to do the parts that are unavoidably manual if you want anything that looks like non-fantasy terrain. And they've already demonstrated that they're using an adaptable / "LEGO" approach to the buildings themselves; there are videos on the channel showing off the tools they're using to that end, in fact.
So I'm not going to claim it couldn't have gone faster, but I will say that I know for a fact they most definitely *do* look for tools and options to avoid reinventing wheels. But there is also a big difference between, say, a bicycle wheel and a semi-trailer wheel. Or a solid-core wheelbarrow wheel. Sometimes the "obvious" tools turn out to not actually produce something you can use, or you can only use it with significant additional work after the initial pass. On the other hand, sometimes you get lucky.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
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Wait, it was a rez, too?!?!?!
:)
But that is just full of win for all the right reasons...
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
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True you didn't reply to me. You replied to a reply to me in order to refute a statement I made without directly engaging me.
It was legendary. I could probably have found the thread for that event if the CoH forums weren't blown up by NCSoft.
From the PW page: Howling Twilight Effects: [list]
[*]Ranged (Targeted Area of Effect)
[*]Foe Disorient[*]-Regeneration[*]-Recharge[*]-Speed
[*]Ally Resurrect[/list]
Slurp.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
BABs was probably just amazed at the creative synergy that players invented on the fly. Don't forget the unlisted effect of Howling Twilight - All the Aggro in the World! However, targeting a 'neutral' item like Oil Slick, that's sheer brilliance!
Be Well!
Fireheart
Why didn't you call it the [b]ablating[/b] power set?
[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.
You seem to think that "roleplaying things that are just inside your head" is an inferior alternative to having a game that could somehow anticipate every single whim a player might want in terms of character concepts and make those elements manifest in actual game content.
Let's take Tannim222's example as case in point: For his character idea to have what you're calling "meaning in the gameplay" the game would suddenly need to define A) alien hybrids that use the exact TYPE of alien that Tannim has in mind. Does he mean aliens like Vulcans or aliens like Predators? Then B) the game would have to define cyborgs and come up with stats for them that may be completely unique to Tannim's vision. Then C) the game would have to define soul crystals. What would they be like and could everyone collect/use them for some other purpose than what Tannim wants to use them for? Finally the game would have to implement some version D) of an ancient order of monks. Would these monks have a base somewhere in the game and could other players interact with them?
I hope you now see the futility of your desire to make everything about character concepts have tangible "meaning in gameplay". When spread across thousands of players there are easily billions of variations that could be envisioned in terms of how they'd all want their characters to work. How on earth could a computer game designed circa 2017 ever account for ALL those variations and make them ALL meaningful within the gameplay? Basically you're asking CoT to have the flexibility/capability of The Matrix and quite simply that's impossible.
So what's the alternative you may ask? The alternative is EXACTLY what the Devs of CoT are designing as we speak. They are creating a game where things that no modern computer game can account for are left to the purview of players' imagination and roleplay. These things MUST be left to being "all in your head" because as soon as a game tries to do ANYTHING that remotely piegonhole's player concepts (i.e. [url=https://paragonwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Category:Origins]CoH Origins[/url]) then suddenly it opens a Pandora's Box that it can never hope to fully satisfy. The players' ability to imagine/roleplay will be vastly superior to any game's ability to support for the foreseeable future; until The Matrix exists these games shouldn't even really try to pretend they could give "meaning" to any concept a player could dream up.
Either a game can account for EVERYTHING players can create roleplay-wise or it shouldn't even try. We are still squarely in the "they shouldn't even try" territory.
And the only way a game can do that in 2017 is to give players as many costume/animation/aesthetic options as possible WITHOUT attempting to saddle players with hardwired Origin/Theme concepts. This is the very definition of what the folks at MWM are trying to give us with CoT.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
my 2 cents: weaknesses/strengths are totally inappropriate for a game with this level of customization. And bad for RPGs in general I'd argue. Having "burning" be weak to "dark" or something is silly if "burning" is acid and "dark" is cosmic rays. And the problems it introduces totally aren't worth the dev time to fix and manage. Better spent on Commander (whatever the pet class is) I say ;)
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[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
Well at least in a pen-n-paper table-top setting the given players and GM of a RPG could take the time to discuss the exact meanings and intentions for using certain terms. If someone initially doesn't understand the character concept a player is trying to create at least the player could explain it so that everyone is clear about what's going on.
That kind of "meta detail" is specifically impossible to account for in current computerized MMORPGs and is thus something that, as you say "aren't worth the dev time to fix and manage" in this venue.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
This is the reason why is so important for City of Titans to clone in the exact same way another feature of City of Heroes: The character's biography/description with a simple RIGHT-CLICK of the mouse on that person, and same limits to the lenght (it was perfect imho, forcing the players to summarize since you must have time to read it IN GAME, while waiting for somebody in team to reach the rest for example, not too short, not too long).
I have often read the bio of my mates, because there was often some seconds/a minute to spare between missions and their costume intrigued me to know more in some occasions, and I often found the thing very well done by the users. I admit I had to summarize my stories much in my characters, therefore I'd used more text-lenght but I also understood that a story too long would have made me NOT-read the story of the other peoples (therefore also mine would have been useless, since the others wouldn't read mine too). The players used that feature, liked that feature, not all but a good percentage did, even with their 20th character, it is a very important part of the character's creation since it's define everything you cannot directly affect with games features, like the weaknesses or the character's role-play details you were just discussing here.
I agree that CoT should allow a space for players to write out a [url=https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/The_Players%27_Guide_to_the_Cities/User_Interface/I.D._Screen]short biography/description for each character[/url] but hopefully the textual formatting of that space will be handled much better than it was in CoH.
Because that text space was implemented as part of the unique GUI designed for CoH it had major problems with things like cutting-n-pasting into and out of that space and even doing any kind of simple editing was a nightmare if you tried to maintain lists or headers in that space. Basically it made something like Windows Notepad look like the best text editor ever created by comparison.
Also the limited number of characters it allowed (the max was 1023) might have been fine by itself but that total included all whitespace characters (spaces and CRs) so it only let you write maybe 5 or 6 serious sentences if you were lucky. I can't tell you the number of times I wrote a first draft of a character bio and it came up to something like 1050 characters. I easily wasted several hours of my life wordsmithing to get many bios down under that silly 1023 limit. So I'd actually be fine with a limit of say 1000 characters if the system was smart enough to NOT count single spaces between words against that limit. A system that forces brevity is fine but not at the expense of needless frustrations.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I wish it was as easy as it's being made out to be. But, using an off the shelf system for what is being asked is simply impossible, for such a system does not exist. There is a reason why most of the MMO's out there have uniform bodies.
If the body were to be uniform in size, then it would have been trivial. Basic scaling, a bit harder. Clothing, yet harder. Modular pieces, yet even harder. Color tinting, yes, even harder. Every little piece we add, every element further down the line, the further away from anything on the market things became.
It's not making *a* human form. If we were making one form, like so many other MMO's have, it would have been done awhile ago. Every outfit would fit because every body is identical. Every animation would work, because every body is identical. But no, we made a model which can be as close to *any* human form and beyond which we can make it. That adds a significant level of complexity not easily overcome. I wish it were easy, but, things are as they are.
The improved engine made the simpler design we began with no longer sufficient. I dig out the original model once in awhile to compare. While UE3 lacked the fidelity, UE4 showed off every seam and edge.
Take a look at this image for a moment, and look carefully at the place where the ear joins the head. If you look carefully you can see the seam there. The original model had this, and every other seam, standing out plain as day in-engine.
[img]https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/015/289/774/4851224b76f9fb48df9ba322eb030e48_original.png?w=639&fit=max&v=1485393484&auto=format&lossless=true&s=2141af540fed0388b9ca633a4e3ca016[/img]
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
I wouldn't mind CO's bio system, with a few improvements. It had a fair increase in character count (which I don't remember off-hand), and supported a few basic HTML elements (paragraphs, breaks, bold, italic, spans with a color style). There was even a hack that would switch the font from the standard UI font to Arial. The only "catch" was that the HTML tags themselves counted toward the character limit. (Although the way some people abuse text styles the way they abuse the Random button in the tailor, that's a feature.) A "rich text lite" editor would be nice to have, but we could live with HTML tags or BBCode, I think.
Twitter: @SisterSilicon
What the heck are you talking about?? Are you trying to say basic morph targets / blend shapes and deformation cages / rigging is hard or complicated? :| Morph targets (to handle anything from a range of ear customization, to adding breasts to a character, to muscles) is basic 3d animation stuff.....first year on just how to set up a rig.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypRhJAfJXAc
Same with attaching interchangeable armor (really easy to parent an armor to a rig or scale it along with the model). The only big concern with a range of armor is issues where they intersect with animations (it just requires you are aware of your maximum size constraints till pieces start to overlap.....so having a few bounding box guidelines when creating new pieces helps).
Heck, you would already be miles ahead of what you have shown if you just started using Fuse (even if you just grabbed the base model of the human, the anatomy on the one you guys have shown is a bit more questionable....) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqdqMiCldtg
Ivory, you are aware that Fuse only exports, and does not actually offer customization in-engine, right?
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Of course. But you can use that to quickly make a handful of characters and set up morph targets from them.
Personally I do that stuff in zbrush, but auto-characters + morph targets is a really fast way for those without 3d modeling skills to get something going.
The problem here is that your Fuse export would be a single model. Your clothing would be fused (hence the name) to the player model. No movement, no life. You change your shirt, you need to replace the whole model. Change pants, yet another model. Mix and match, every combo is now a fully, new model. And you have to then transfer every single morph between every single one of these combinations. Very resource, and time, inefficient.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Here, this pipeline should help explain many of the issues we face. While our design is not identical, we do share many of the same issues.
http://apbreloaded.gamersfirst.com/2016/04/apb-reloaded-character-pipeline-overview.html?m=1
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Accurate in spirit, if not in specifics:
[img]https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/here_to_help.png[/img]
Twitter: @SisterSilicon
#qft
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Why....would you even consider doing that? o.O That is crazy.....
Yea, it is a single model.....that is what you want.... then take it into another package and stretch it out to the scales you want for custom characters (creating a set of models) and take them back to create your set of morph targets (which you can slide between for a custom character of a large range of aspects).
Baking the clothes into a ton of model for a custom game would be crazy...... if you want to grab a jacket or something from fuse, you can though...bake it out and cut it up so you have just the jacket (which you can throw into your costume system to put over the player character). Easy way to get whatever they have in fuse (though I'm guessing you could find the OBJ somewhere? Probably somewhere in the fuse folders).
And that is just one package.....just from there, you would have your custom character (with decent anatomy) and the morph targets and a set of basic clothes.
But all of this is stuff you were struggling with for years (and have, to some degree, figured it out? at least with the basic model). Though I suspect there have been some problems with this basic male model still, since you aren't showing it in newer videos....you are probably still trying to get some better looking?
Yea....all of that is basic 3d pipeline stuff.....it shouldn't be a special challenge....going through that process is something an artist can do in a day or two........the time sink really comes into play when creating the high poly sculpts and texturing them (though even that isn't too bad, just adds up when you are trying to create hundreds of pieces). Even producing the low poly is a LOOOOT faster now (there are tools to automate it and get really really close, only needing a little clean up if you get perfectionist about it).
Have you guys actually begun the high poly sculpting for costume pieces yet though? From what I've seen you are still messing with textures for the human body to give a few spandex options (which doesn't really require a skilled artist, anyone can create different V shapes on a UV template).
"Balance"
As a child, I thought my name was handsome, cause that is what everyone called me.
Alright I have a question, can I reuse staff animations, with a bow so that that I can hit people with my bow?
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
[CENTER][URL=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm][IMG]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/24.jpg[/IMG][/URL][/CENTER]
You could use a spell. Bō. Tadah!
(Ignore me. You've asked a good question)
[size=14]"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths." - Pushkin[/size]
[size=14] "One piece of flair is all I need." - Sister Silicon[/size]
No idea. Let's try it out!
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Hey now! I said it was really hard right at the start! :P
... and I never suggested algorithms. Well. Not for the character model... out loud, anyway... oh, damn.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
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