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Quite obvious what powers I prefer to see, lol.
"Being a alpha-class Empath superhero; means you must not be only sympathetic, but to be truly be empathetic to the world." - Psirus.
All the classic staples of course, super strength, energy blasts, telepathy, telekinesis, but also power armor suit tech (like iron man) gadgets and laser weapons, and gravity, and maybe a super speed based set which revolves around moving fast to build up combat buffs.
Power mimicry/absorption kinda Rogue like! I always liked her ability especially that it had drawbacks connected to its use like being an always on passive ability she had to guard against overusing. Perhaps a milder version... Marvel Online had this for her and it was a pretty cool power I thought...
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
Yeah but in order to give her that capabaility they literally ended up having toncode her with every power in the game. And every time a new hero / power was added, they had to manually add those powers to her. If they changed a power, they had to go and manually change her version to match as well. It was like doubling the workload but it was the only way to ha sleep it for them.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I like the basic idea of Rogue's absorption power but it's honestly hard to imagine how that'd even work well in a MMORPG like CoT.
I get that they apparently managed some kind of version of it in Marvel Online but how would it work in terms of a more "open ended" power system like CoT with its power trays and/or methods to activate newly absorbed powers? Would a character with that ability in CoT just keep getting new powers in their power trays every time they absorbed a new power and would there be any limits to it? For example if I absorbed powers from 50 different victims would I potentially have 50 new powers to use? How could that not become hyper-overpowered unless the period you could use the absorbed powers was extremely short (like a minute or two for each power). Sounds like it might be far more problematic than it'd be worth.
I suppose the question of "power customization" for these powers would also be moot since I'm assuming the absorbed powers would have to look/work exactly like they did for the victims. Also would a character in CoT have an "absorption" powerset totally geared for this concept or would "power absorption" simply be a single power inside an otherwise generic powerset?
Again I like the "idea" of it. I just don't know if it'd be worth overcoming the implementation problems it'd have in a game like CoT.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Wow I didn't realize it was so hard to make happen... I honestly thought it was a bit more modular lake taking an empty template and directing it to a another class that it could adapt. Doesn't seem so hard to me but I'm sure it's much more involved than I realize.
Thanks for the info Tannim!
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
I'm thinking it would have to have limits to the number of powers and the strength of those powers based on the target absorbed from and the character doing the absorbing. Say for example, base having one and at max ability having say five or six. However, I would think some other base powers would have to take a back seat in order to use those absorbed powers. (like greying out some other power while the absorbed one is available) I have no idea how to go about deciding how that would all work mechanically though. Like trading a melee absorbed for a melee of the characters primary or secondary power pools until the "absorption" wears off... (days/hours/minutes/whatever) same with whatever other power pool types absorbed. Ranged for a ranged etc. If no such pool exists then perhaps augment an existing with features of the absorbed power.
Sounds very organic and could lead to a lot of neat ideas but I can see it being very difficult to code at best...
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
So I'm guessing I can't make an homage to Duplicate Lad then?
[\rant] I can make Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad and Cosmic Boy! I want my Duplicate Lad. [\end rant] ????
Eh, all good.
Because of CoT's nature, maybe it'd be better to mimic the [e] aesthetic [/b] of a power but not the mechanics.
E.g. A Lethality ranger with mimicry asthetic. When they hit a fire blaster, the asethetic changes to genetic fire blasts instead of a gun default.
Not an exact Rogue clone but I still think you'd get the thrill of "stealing" a power with this compromise.
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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
Agreed. Plus I like the shape-shifter idea.
I have some fun ideas. We’ll need to wait and see how things pan out. Too far off tonreally get into it.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Thematically, I really liked the elemental power sets. Storm was my favorite go to for both pure character and utility. It had a little of everything. It inspired several of my toons and their backstories. I would really like to see something like that.
While I'm thinking about it, there should be a switch so we can configure knock back to knock down on the fly though... It could be an issue in groups...
I love template effects that control space and abilities that combine with each other to greater effect.
Though I really want to play a mastermind again more than anything.
I believe Knock* effects are being handled by "alternate activations." That is to say that the powers default to knockDOWN, but there's an alternate way you can activate them (a second icon?) that bumps it up to knockBACK if you want it to. It's really up to you which effect you want when you click the button.
While they haven't said mechanically how this swap will work, I think the easiest way to achieve this is a toggle button. Knock backs are fantastic when solo, they help to kite more than just a knock down. But once you group up with melee people, that knock back can get rather annoying to them. One button to mute all your knock back effects into knock down effects sounds like a better solution than a 2nd version of every power on my bars.
This may not be viable, and it may already have been requested, but I’d kind of like to see “mixed” powersets. By that I mean powersets with varying effects: one power could be “piercing” like lethality; one power could apply a DoT; one power could have knockback/down effects...
And so on and so forth. Maybe this is EVEN nuttier, but the ability to select the effect on a power in this powerset would be really cool.
I can imagine that this would be difficult from a game balance point. Perhaps it could be a “jack of all trades, master of none” type of set. As in it has a ton of variety, but its debuffs, DoTs, piercing, knockback effects etc could be of a lower potency from those sets that specialize in one type of mechanic.
Just a thought :)
Name: Safehouse
Ranger: Gunner
Primary: Force Blast
Secondary: Atrophic Aura
Tertiary: Kinetic Melee
Travel Power: Parkour
Status: Traveling. Following rumors of a huge city in Massachusetts that is teeming with supers.
I think their Augment and Refinement System can change some of the behaviors of the powers/abilities.
https://cityoftitans.com/content/what-we-can-do-augments-and-refinements
Telekinesis, although I'm planning to use Gravity to mimic that depending on what's available at lauch.(Since I know sets are being created about more broad concepts)
Time, again thematically I might be able to use some kind of kinetics speed sset to mimic it if necessary.
Some kind of combat utility for Teleport would be nice. Teleport ally and enemy are always good. I did use Teleport itself for positioning in big fights in CoX, but it was honestly not usually any better off than walking in most cases because of the hard root and long animation. It just looked cooler....
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
For protection powersets I'm really looking forward to regeneration. Honestly one of the coolest powers in comics imo.
For a melee powerset, I think a "gravity" powerset that pulls and draws enemies closer to you may be neat. Might work better as an assault set since it technically has range in the form of those pulls.
All the Biotic and Tech Powers from the Mass Effect franchise.
Combos included!
The alternate activation from knock down to knock back is handled on the same power icon.
Using a mouse For example it would be left click on the icon for the normal knock down, right click on the icon to switch to knock back.
A keyboard example would be press 1 for the power to activate normall causing knock down and shift+1 to switch to knock back.
Of course you could always create your own customized set up as well.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
That is actually awesome...It's making me imagine other mechanics that could possibly benefit from an alt-fire activation...
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Awesome. You guys rock.
So... I have skimmed through the forums wondering about this... I used to favor Corruptors / Dominators pretty heavily once they were made available on the hero side of CoX. It seems other here have too. Maybe not initially, but will there be a archetype approximating those, or possibly will you give us the ability to choose which set is primary and which is secondary on a build at creation? Controller / Blaster, Blaster /Controller... Melee / Buff-Debuff, Buff-Debuff / Melee, etc...
Thanks for answering these questions.
Are there a lot of alternate power uses? Because I love that idea and it could work for a lot of abilities without adding additional clutter to player's UI or having tons of abilities to learn.
It doesn't have to be limited just to changing the type of CC mechanic on a power, it could be used for all kinds of things.
It doesn't even have to be limited to alt-fire, you can have charge up and channeled powers that can be canceled/unleashed for example.
You mwah want to check this old post referencing our [url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/updated-classification-and-specification-chart]Archetypes and Specifcations chart[/url].
Ranged / Support is actually set for launch so that play style is offered up front.
For the control / assault you will need to wait until the Engineer is released. We will also offer a control ranged combination called the Executor.
However the difference here is that we have selectable [url=https://cityoftitans.com/content/mastery-sets]Mastery Powers[/url]. Which can also affect how your chosen Archetype plays.
With a Ranger, the Eliminatir Mastery May be appealing to the person who wants to punish their enemies as their health is reduced.
An Operator looking to turn into a power house of being able to control enemies for a short while may want to look at the Supremacy Mastery.
If you read the update on Mastery Powers you’ll note that you get 3 choices throughout various levels. Focus on one Mastery or you can diversify.
Another thing to note is that you will get multiple builds in the game per character, including one that is unlocked at a particular level. When new Soecifications are released you can actually use an alternate build to switch to a different Specification and even different Mastery Powers.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Nicely varied. I wonder, would the customizer be able to set up a click/hold option for keyboard (click to knockback/hold to knockdown)? I tend to use multiple trays, and usually use shift+ options for the second tray.
On the edge of your Perceptions......
Turn away and feel his hand upon your shoulder.....
Look for him and he shall not exist.....
in the middle of the crowd....lost in the faces....
Stands a Figure....of Gray......
No, we can’t do “hold the power icon”. That type of activation method won’t work with our animation system for customized animations.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Please dont give us too many buttons to bind (FFXIV has this problem) 25 at max level total is plenty.
I get giddy every time I remember you get multiple builds WITH another spec if you so choose!
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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
[b]Affect Other vs Affect Self.[/b]
In City of Heroes you needed to have [i]different powers[/i] in the Medicine Pool for Aid Other and Aid Self. You couldn't have a single power that did both.
With an alt-fire activation, you can do both functions (others OR self) in the same power.
Note that this can apply equally well to buffs and debuffs as it can to heals.
So now instead of needing two powers ... Speed Boost (others) and Siphon Speed (self) ... now you only need one power with an alt-fire activation option on it.
Just make sure that ANY alt-fire feature on a power can only modify ONE aspect of how that power works or get used. That means that KockDOWN vs KnockBACK "counts" for filling that alt-fire slot, meaning you can't use the alt-fire for anything else with that power.
[b]Target AoE vs PBAoE.[/b]
Power activation (main type) is Target AoE and requires a target (friend or foe, depending on power type) in order to activate around that target's location.
Power activation (alt type) is PBAoE and [i]does NOT[/i] require a target (friend or foe) in order to activate around your PC's location.
Basically, you're using the alt-fire keybind to "zero the range" on the Target AoE effect.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
So it looks like no Fighting Prowess/Ranged combo AT. My dream of creating the Asian City of Heroes launch trailer character thwarted again a decade later. Lol
Oh well, I'll just eagerly await the pet class while writing the bios for my control and tank characters for launch. :)
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Do you mean a melee/ranged class? Something like that might sound powerful in theory but in practice it would be horribly broken and hard to play with.
First off without any kind of damage prevention (defense powers) or mitigation (healing, regeneration, mezzes, etc.) a character like that would be constantly face-planting if you tried to run it solo. It might be awesome in a team as long as other players were willing to permanently tank for you or spam-heal you constantly.
Also having access to that many offensive powers you probably couldn't get any serious attack chains going due to lack of power/resources. If all you had was like 15-20 attack powers and nothing else how could you effectively use them all without probably outright ignoring several of them due to having too many to deal with in the first place.
Basically any "100% offensive power build" is going to suffer from problems like this.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I considered that. Looking back at CoT that was kinda the concept for the Blasters anyway. I suppose that may be more in line with what I'm looking for and they do have an AT planned along those lines. The Blaster secondary set did utilize melee, and both primary and secondary had built in utility and cc to help with survival. I didn't intend for it to come across as 100% dps.
Edit: In the update that never launched in CoH, Blasters were supposed to get Martial Arts, along with Dominators. I would've loved something like what they planned.
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Martial_Combat
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Yep Blasters were surviable because they weren't 100% offensive. With their "Off/Mit Maipulation" secondaries they had enough "damage mitigation" to be workable. Heck there were some Blaster builds (like Ele/Ele/Ele) that were practically closer to being Controllers than Blasters in the way you played them.
I think in general the CoT Devs are going to avoid letting any build be 100% anything (100% offense, 100% defense, etc.).
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I play tested Martial Combat. Ki Push was bugged and sent enemies flying in the air with a long hang time. The rag doll physics make formsome hilarious Ki Pushes.
With regards to Blaster sustainability, it was terrible. They had the highest rate of defeat of any AT.
Only several combos worked well “enough” but sill could lag behind other ATs over all.
With our Tettiary sets being open to all ATs, those players feeling that their primary / secondary combo makes them a bit too squishy can grab some protection powers at earlier levels.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Well to be fair I think a large portion of Blaster players tended to "overplay" their characters without the proper sense to realize they weren't as "bulletproof" as the average Tanker or Scrapper was. ;)
For what it's worth if the CoT version of "a Blaster" is made to be slightly less fragile than its CoH counterpart that would probably be fine. I'm just saying that maybe 95% of the blame for having the "highest rate of defeat of any AT" in CoH was due more to "pilot error" than "archetype weakness". In a nutshell people just didn't know how to play Blasters as intended and kept trying to pound that proverbial square peg into a round hole.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Didn't CoH havethe same thing with Fighting?
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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
Yeah CoH had the [url=https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Fighting]Fighting Power Pool[/url] which had a couple of defensive powers but I honestly don't know how many people ever used them. I know I never used the Fighting Pool for any of my characters.
If the CoT version of this pool is tweek'd up to be more effective then maybe it'll serve the purpose Tannim is suggesting in CoT.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I think I got them for my Blasters and that's it.
[hr]
[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
Same. Had a Fire/Fire blaster and ended up taking that pool to add some defense.
The main reason I avoided using the defensive powers of the CoH Fighting pool ([i]Tough[/i] which provided Smash/Lethal Resistance and [i]Weave[/i] which provided Defense and Mez Resist) was their relative tiny buffs. Each of them only provided like a 1% bonus when unslotted which only went up to like 3% when fully slotted. Basically I could never justify taking those powers for such relatively small bonuses.
As I said in my last post if the CoT equivalent of this pool offers better powers I might reconsider using them. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
We don’t have a version of that pool. If you want some extra protection powers, take a Protection Tertiary. If you want some extra Melee powers, grab a Melee Tertiary. Remember, if a set is a Secondary in this game. It will most likely wind up as a Tertiary Set.
We will have a few unique Tertiary Sets which are not based off a Secodary Set as well. But they will provide unique mechanics not typically found in other Tertiary Sets.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Whoa now. Do you mean inherent lack of survival? Because my Nrg/Nrg Blapper was hardy as balls. But, of course, I made him that way by taking nearly every defensive power I could, even before IO set bonuses and Patron Pool access to stuff like Scorpion Shield. I receive [i]several[/i] compliments on my build and how survivable I was, even compared to some scrappers who died frequently next to me during AV fights.
Only way I'm not taking that riposte power tertiary (if it works the way it's described now) is if I take the powerset as a primary :D
As I mentioned, certain combos worked well. But as you mentioned, you also took as much defensive powers as you could (and then later built upon that). Defense in the old game was really skewed in how effective it was (until it wasn’t). Yet, to keep up (and in certain circumstances excel) that had to be done.
This doesn’t change the fact that when you look at the meta-data for the Blaster AT throughout all levels of play in the game as a whole, there was a discrepancy in how many defeats the AT experienced compared to others.
Lothic pointed out that in part (and perhaps a large part) user error was the issue. That is a distinct possibility, but perhaps it becuase why as Lothic pointed out, that people didn’t play them right.
Instead the prevailing theory was that there skill floor necessary to remain comparatively effective as other ATs (and not be defeated as often) was too high compared to other ATs. Any experienced, decent Blaster player would attest that the effort required as much greater. The short version could be: it was harder to play to be as effective.
This is why the AT had its inherent power reworked and adjusted several times after, in an effort to lower the skill necessary to be as effective.
And if you look at some of our Mastery Powers for Rangers you can see how we had this thought in mind for those Primary / Secondary combos that may be a bit more difficult.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Just noticed that CoH was going to release more pools, they look pretty cool. Hope CoT can do one better ;)
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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
Has it on my Scrapper.
The Fighting Pool Tough and Weave stacked nicely with Defense Power Sets.
I don't recall them being used to often on non defense sets at first, because they would detoggle when mezzed. Then if memory serves, they set it up, so if mezzed, you didn't lose your toggles.
Then combine Tough/Weave with Corruter/Defender Support sets or anyone with the right IO setup and you became much more protected.
Will we be able to make combos like Protection Primary, Assault (or some kind of damage oriented set) Secondary, and Control or Support tertiary?
One of the later Stalwart Specifications is Protection / Assault - which is a mix of Melee and Ranged Powers. For Tertiary Sets with control mechanics you would look for Manipulation Tertiary Sets. And yes you can also get Support Tertiaries.
If any power set is a Secondary set for any Archetype it is likely to end up being made into a Tertiary.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
There was a guide on the old CoH forums on how to play Dominators that said Blasters and Dominators needed to use "active" defense in the absence of other ways of mitigating damage. Basically you needed to plan on how not to draw more aggro than you could survive while killing everything that could be a threat. Many never quite got this concept. I saw SO many young Dominators fire off an AOE Immobilize and die within 10 seconds. And then they would repeat it.
Active defense 101. If the held/stunned/slept foe isn't killing you, kill something that IS.
If you have assault/protection, I think you have to nerf one of them severely. Full power defense and ranged attack is so OP
[hr]
[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
Everyone else went in for the Fighting Pool to get Tough and Weave ... so naturally I rejected that conventional wisdom and reached for the Leadership Pool instead, so as to get Maneuvers, Assault and Tactics.
The way I figured it, Weave (and Tough, for that matter) were essentially SELFISH power choices ... because they were Self Only.
Maneuvers might only offer half the Defense buff you could get from Weave, but as soon as you grouped with a second PC with Maneuvers, not only did both of you match what you'd each be getting out of Weave, [i]but so did everyone else on your Team![/i]
The "ultimate" expression of this was if a Team-8 all had Maneuvers, they'd all have 4x the Defense of a Team-8 that all had Weave.
So the only time when Weave from the Fighting Pool was better than Maneuvers from the Leadership Pool was when you were soloing (so Team-1) or when no one else on your Team(s) invested in Maneuvers or the Leadership Pool.
After realizing that Maneuvers was superior in EVERY case of "Myself +1 More" it was kind of a no brainer for me to reach for Maneuvers instead of Weave on every character that I could. I pretty much tried to shoehorn in the Leadership Pool "trio" of Maneuvers, Assault and Tactics into every build I could, and was often times successful at doing so (except on my tri-form Kheldians, I think).
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
LMFAO not really. becuase secondaries and tertiaries won't be as powerful as primary to begin with.
For me, a big part of the fun in playing a blapper was in figuring out how to make it work -- digging up a few points of defense here and there, combined with some IO defense bonuses, made all the difference. And MAN was it fun to play.
My Nrg/Nrg was good, but my Dual Pistols -- not truly a blapper, but she fought in close more than at range -- could easily hit the defense cap with Hail of Bullets. She solo'd so well that I even used her to farm purples sometimes.
Obviously, CoT is going to give us tons of options with builds. But I really, really hope there will be crazy and unconventional ways to build characters, that can be made to work, but won't be too easy.
A lot of the fun in CoH was in figuring out how to make something crazy into something crazy good.
Kheldians were the ones with Ranged/Melee Offense, but they effectively had a third, Defensive powerset, as well. Arachnos Soldiers had it even better. So, it seems to me that one would only have to survive and grow long enough to pick up Tertiaries. My Spines/Invulnerability Scrapper was very effective, but most of his powers were MID-range and AoEs. He was my best 'Blapper'.
On the other hand, my favorite ATs were Controller and Tanker. My Invulnerability/Energy Melee Tanker had Both the Fighting Pool and Leadership. Because his best support of the team came from Not-Dying and absorbing all of the Aggro. I cribbed a lot from Call Me Awesome's build-guide.
And for destroying the enemy, while keeping everybody healthy, I loved my Dark/Dark/Dark Defender, who also ran Leadership. if the team would give me a few moments to get fully set up, it could be almost as easy as Rad/Rad.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I don't think the problem was that CoH Blasters required a bit more skill to play "properly". In fact I liked the "challenge" of having to be a bit more tactically-minded to survive. I think the ACTUAL problem was that the game simply never really warned players that some ATs were frankly easier to play out of the box than others. All things being equal you could "button mash" your way through the low levels of being a Tank or Scrapper whereas you had to be somewhat "more mindful" in order to handle say a Blaster or Controller.
Instead of trying to make sure that all the classes of CoT are "equally trivial" to play I'd rather that the game simply warn us that "class X is easier for newer players whereas class Y is intended for more advanced play". I don't need CoT "Blasters" to be "re-geared" to as easy as CoT "Scrappers" or "Tanks" - the game just needs to let players know that they are fundamentally different and need to be handled differently.
Bottomline it's OK for the game to have classes that are harder to play than others - you just need to warn players of that fact.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I never said it was bad tonhave different ATs withndifferent skill ceilings and floors.
But because of the huge range of possible combinations of primary, secondary, tettiary(ies), and Masteries, there really isn’t a way to provide information that accurately describes which combo would be harder or easier.
I never said it was bad that there may be more difficult options, only that understanding a previous problem from the old game and also what was attempted to address it. Our efforts were then to provide Masteries which could help avoid certain performance issues.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
To be clear I think your general idea to use Tertiaries and Masteries as a means to allow players to "smooth out" the rough spots of various Primary/Secondary combos that might be more challenging to play than others is a decent way to handle the situation.
But I still think that in general some ATs are always going to be geared (no matter what powersets/masteries you use) to be "easier" to play than others. A character built with say a Melee/Defense scheme is probably always going to be easier to play (on average from Day One) than say a Control/Support build. On a fundamental level some ATs are always going to be "Apples and Oranges" to each other and it's THAT information that could be provided to players with simple textual blurbs during character creation for instance.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Interesting... I played blasters a lot. Yeah they were squishy but most players (at the time) thought they were OP. So far as the ability to do massive damage perhaps they were OP but only when compared to other ATs when it comes to defense they were by far the weakest of ATs. If you soloed (and I soloed a lot...) you had to use different tactics than when teaming and frankly they were harder only because doing mass damage it was easy to forget how squishy you were especially after a good team up where you were really well supported. Frankly I don’t think they were any more difficult than any other AT but you had to keep perspective on what each AT’s strengths were or it was easy to say any AT was too powerful in some way at some stage of the game from 1 to 50... it was easier to get Blasters up to level 25 or so when soloing than other ATs but the 30s were a pretty slow stage every time. And when you had to start teaming more you had to be ready to play differently. And remember COH didn’t have multiple builds for several years so your solo build was your teaming build as well.
Big picture I really don’t think they were terribly OP but each AT was easier at different stages of the game so opinions may vary... I had more level 50 blasters than anything else and I think I soloed the game maybe 65-75% of the time but I was also very patient when playing solo...
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
This is the key point - some ATs simply require different TACTICS depending on the situation (i.e. solo vs. teamed). Some ATs are going to be easier to play at lower levels whereas some become easier at higher levels. Every AT is unique and it would be nice if the game could summarize that during character creation so that some poor smuck doesn't think a Blaster type character is going to be as "bulletproof" as a Tank without learning the "hard" way.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
That kind of stuff was a good idea. Not precise enought to my opinion (since some AT had the same survavibility while they weren't so equal) but it could be a good way to help choosing an AT regarding the choosen Sets (and then, avoiding people to pick up an "weak" AT)
(of course, blasters were not weak :) and this will not help people to know how to play the AT. Overtheless, it doesn't prevent MWM to put a little text to display how this set should be played in a standard way
[hr]
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My first COH character was all about electricity. I’m looking forward to making my first COT like her.
I saw other posts talk about natural phenomena creating earthquakes and blizzards ... that sounds cool!
Really looking forward to building my character :)
My general rule of video games is to never underestimate the genius of players to break your game in ways you've never imagined.
The best games also have developers who know when to embrace that as a feature. (and when not to). Chasing balance obsessively at the expense of fun angers and drives away players. A perfect balance in a game which gives any freedom is impossible.
There is no such thing as perfect balance in many video games. Especially as one as complex as the one we are making. Most of the times when a dev discusses balance what they actually mean is “within bounds of performance”.
While we have our expectations we aren’t foolish in that players will find ways to smash those expectations. We have our starting basic metrics, which will continue to adjust through testing. Even as we go live, through the life of the game buffs and nerfs will undoubtedly happen.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
As I'm sure they will, just be careful not to do like Cryptic Studios under the evil overlords of PWE and nerf with a Nuclear weapon instead of a Scalpel.
Ah yes, the "we can't be bothered to do iterative testing to find out what a suitable performance profile ought to be" attitude that simply results in NERF IT IN HALF!! because analysis is for suckers on the forums (that the developers aren't listening to anyway).
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
For CO it actually seems the ONLY people they listen to is a select group of elitist min maxing players on the forums with a strong "stop having fun and do it my way" attitude.
Since we pick the animations, I'm thinking I'd like a set like Spines Melee. Not sure if there will be one like it in CoT. Don't really want the DoT aspect (or maybe I do O.O) but I'd like it for the fact that Spines Melee had a range attack, a ranged cone attack, and a PBAOE attack, and didn't require every attack for good performance in terms of DPS.
Infact, it's best ST DPS used a ST attack, melee cone, ST range and AOE Ranged Cone and while not the top DPS it wasn't the bottom, IOed right could solo a pylon and if you could sustain it, it had the AOE Damage Toggle for more.
To me, blasters motto (among many of their mottos, most of them about dat XP debt cap life...) is the best defense is a strong offense. Honestly, I think if they had increased the scaling of the original Inherent version of Defiance so that it was even higher with reduced HP, say at least 50% damage boost at 50% health and it increased non-linearly with HP loss, blasters wouldn't have had a more challenging time of leveling, which I'm not denying.
And I also agree with your above point about tactics being different solo vs. teamed vs. AT. I think that's what great about AT diversity is that sometimes you can't just go in guns-ablazin' but actually give the content thought and due consideration. Then again... I do love going in guns blazing.
I'm sure blatant "one-shot" broken powers and exploits will feel the wrath of Tannim222's magic crowbar. But Dr. Tyche once said, "That if you like going into an instanced mission and pulling all the mobs in the zone into a dumpster, and your friends nuke them over and over for hours of time. If that is fun for you, have at it." Personally I liked going to monster island and solo the giant crystal monsters with my scrapper. I also had a friend that had an Illusion/Rad controller that spend hours soloing archvillians. I'm not sure if we will be able to do things like this in CoT but I hope so.
Tiger, to me, building my scrapper up and going after the AV solo was the most fun. Finally being able to solo the ITF was AWESOME!
Not something I'd recommend to others, as it took a 30min or less group effort and turned it into a 3 hour+ event, but it's what made me feel like my character was a super :)
Yeah nerfing the ability to do those kinds of things would take away the super hero feel of the game. Our heroes should be able to feel like top class A list heroes by the time they're max level and have had some progression. and that means soloing big villains and non cosmic threats, alebit with possibly some difficulty.
Well, I'm not sure it should be something done just because you hit max level. For sure something to be able to build towards after hitting max level.
Well how much of it you can do would definitely depend on how much progression the character has had, but since this wont be a gear focused game I assume you won't be crippled by low level gear on hitting max level.
That just means you do not have a good (or extensive) QA group in place.
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
Not gear focused, doesn't mean no gear. While CoH didn't call it gear, that is exactly what enhancements were. Gear.
I don't think you're wrong about this, but I'd add that difficulty depends on the Player, as well. I heard people complain that Controllers were hard to play, but I found them relaxing and 'easy'. I don't doubt that 'Play-style' also figures into it.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Playstyle is definitely a thing. Many things are hard until you've wrapped your head around them. I was a shit controller, and it was boring. I was a great defender when there was an active group that played well together, but otherwise it was really frustrating. I could do blasters solo, but in a group they were never that fun; Either I destroyed everything super quickly, or I got ganged to death; Managing aggro with that kind of fragility was just never my strength. Tanks and Scrappers were my mainstay, and I did well at both; As a tank, I considered it my role to be the first one striking and the first one to fall if things went to crap; Especially with my speedy little TNT (sprint-specced; he moved fast without a real travel power) I would be moving constantly, hit that guy, knock that guy down, lay a big aggro-grabbing smack-down on the boss, AoE knockback on the cluster of minions who decided my blaster looked tempting; I never single targeted unless I was solo, and my damage output was so meager that soloing with my tank was frustrating. My scrapper on the other hand was a single-target monster who regularly killed Bosses before the fight was fully engaged.
In other games, I'm often quick to find my groove and stick to it; I'm good in my groove and I enjoy my groove. But a good game will find a way to force you out of your groove, or at least motivate you to leave it, and sometimes you find that some other style is super enjoyable if you give it a real shot. Brief example is a game I've recently discovered and been addicted to, [i]Heat Signature[/i]. There are one-off missions you can do, that don't affect your main campaign at all, and they stick you with weird or difficult limitations that you have to find a way to work around, and doing them is really gratifying because they remind you of mechanics you've comfortably learned to ignore in your main playstyle, and force you to find new tactics that you don't have to when you have more choices. I can't imagine how CoT would manage a similar paradigm, but finding a way to get people out of their particular grooves and get them to discover new playstyles and learn to enjoy them could only make the community better.
~ DariusWolfe
Errant, TNT, Vibrant and Fluxion on Liberty
My Blaster was a bit ore defensive than most but that was just inherent in going Ice/ice. I got more joy out of the slows and the crowd control than I got out of the damage. That's not to say he didn't die a lot, Ice did SOME cold damage but was predominately crushing which meant I was NOT very good at taking out robots such as the Malta Mechs. I did however, absolutely love throwing out a CC on a ranged guy, then jump behind a corner so the melee guys would chase. As they rounded the corner I'd use Ice Patch and begin blapping with both my ranged and melee powers to take down a key target or two. Then I would swap to rooting/sleeping (ice had some holds that broke on damage and counted as sleep) the remaining melee enemies to focus down the ranged.
It would change group to group, but I was always thinking. If I got tired I would join and group and just throw ice from afar or get on my tanker who's all encompassing tactic was to just jump in there.
My other mainstays were my Robots/Poison Mastermind and Human form focused Warshade. I was JUST getting used to and comfortable to dominators when the game left us. It was satisfying enough that Operator remains the class I plan to make first.
As to what things I would like to see? Farther down the line, some sort of shape shifter, but I honestly have no idea how to make it work is aesthetic decoupling.
For now I'll be excited for Power Control/Vampiric Emination. The idea of just nullifying an enemy's powers sounds pretty fun, and slapping the Supremacy mastery on there causes dark corners of my mind to giggle.
I currently play World of Warcraft. A triple "A" game from a billion dollar company, and even after 14 years of WoW development experience, and the best QA in the industry, players still break their game on a regular basis.
I say this as someone who's been accused of white knighting for Blizzard, but even I think their QA has gone downhill this expansion. Game dev is hard, things happen, code is not simple. A while back (since BFA launched) they made changes to lessen healer's mana regen by a certain amount in PVP, I think it was -33%. Except by mistake their mana regen became -33% and they had negative mana regen in PVP. Literally spawned with a full bar and it would drain.
To QA that would literally just require flagging a healer into PVP mode. Perhaps I'm wrong in that it could be that easy. game dev is hard, things happen, code is not simple.
Except it just happened AGAIN to shamans within the last week with the enhancement nerfs!
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I know the pain of playing a Shaman. My main in Legion was an Enhancement Shaman my alt was Shadow Priest. For BFA I had to beak out my Warlock to get into mythic dungeons and raids.
I do not know how Blizzard manages their Q&A department. I would hope that QA is integrated into the development process given how beastly and long lived WoW has become. Unfortunately, for the most part, development studios treat QA like mushrooms (keep them in the dark and feed them crap, so to speak). QA can be viewed as a luxury (aka, if there are problems, the enthusiastic players will report and we can just patch it). And or it isn't a problem if no one ever encounters it. There are also differences in philosophy in how to utilize QA when confronted by budgets or when cuts need to be made to get the project released in time (to make money, meet a schedule, or whatever).
If you integrate QA into the development process, they can identify issues much earlier in the coding process. Plus, in some cases, if you have access to the specs (design document, hard numbers, or whatever insider details), you can identify corner cases and exploit opportunities much more readily.
I am going to take a guess and say Blizzard deploys their QA to make sure that the code functions to spec (i.e. new stuff works, old stuff isn't broken, core functionalities do not cause crashes). Then they have limited play testing to gauge difficulty levels. Then they have Beta testers to pre-calibrate difficulties and identify how the choreography does/does not match the intent of their design.
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
A great game QA team (even with unlimited budget and resources) might be able to catch most basic software bugs and even, if they are lucky, find a few game exploits (not technically bugs but methods to "game" the system) before a game is set to launch. But by the time thousands of gamers set off to either actively discover (or accidentally stumble into) all sort of scenarios at would be effectively impossible to test for then even the efforts of the best QA on the planet can only account for so much.
QA is a necessary step that sadly doesn't get all the attention it needs in most software development efforts. But again even the best QA team will never be able to anticipate or mitigate all of the "collective cleverness" of an active playerbase. That's why virtually all active games are constantly publishing patches and hot fixes - the work of QA doesn't end when the game launches and having absolute faith in such a process is foolhardy at best.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Sure you can't necessarily "blame" how ATs/classes in a game will play out based solely on the numbers. There's always going to be the "player" factor to affect how successful things are balanced out.
For instance you might have somebody who absolutely loves to play class X. They might love that type of character so much that not only have they figured out how to mitigate the disadvantages but can even make them do things even the Devs may not realize they are capable of doing. Another person might hate that same class X simply because they haven't "figured" out how to play it yet or it just doesn't suit their playstyle. Same class - two completely different outcomes.
But even with this I think it's still fair to say some classes in games are simply made to be "easier" to play pretty much by design. Take classic D&D. The Fighter just has to grab a sword and start swinging. On the other hand a newbie Magic User has to be pretty clever to make his/her few spells count while making sure to stay out of the Fighter's way. It's only when that Magic User becomes relatively high level does he/she become formidable.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
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