- Will you have linear level up story line with cut-scene and a vote option for the team to skip it (Missing Tera immersion)
Something like it - option to skip if everyone's seen it once is the plan.

- World bosses +20 heroes to kill with an achievement on kill
I honestly think CoH invented Achievements - I don't have a solid record of something like it before Badges - not as common objects to have. So yeah. World bosses.

- Will auras be available straight away or unlock-able through the game achievements?
Some will be right away, fancy or plot ones may be unlockable.

- Utility powers, will you have a main for early level and able to have a second one later?

I'm not sure what you're asking here. I think yes.

- Space & water levels, fighting underwater or on a space station, will the hero be able to swim and fight underwater?
Water levels are often boring. But how do you feel about space nazis on the MOON?

- Will there only be one skill tab, or will you have a variety of many skills forcing you to use alt+ and ctrl+ keys resulting in more available builds? (using at least 30 skills while fighting)
We're looking at happily full multitrays like the old game, with temp powers and all kinds of fun things.
But a standard attack chain is probably no more than five long so you can do it with one hand while moving with the other.
(I mean different power sets are different)

- Will you have at least the same of customization options as City of heroes had in the beginning of launch?
We've already got more. Go try out the creator!

- Will villain option be a choice from the beginning, or do you take a decision later in the game?
From the beginning or later.

- Will you have special cosmetics and skill effects unlock-able by achievements that can higher your status in game?
Of course.

- Will you have customization weapon look on your characters and minions? For example, if you have a pick a spear melee class, will you be able to customize his weapon?
Weapons, certainly, but we're not promising things on minions at this moment. When we get them to playtesting we'll have more to say.

- Will you have the hero builder itself as a free stand-alone version for anybody to create their hero and try it out on the Island after launch (Good to attract new customers and people could have fun with community content out of it)
That's a license issue. Right now, it unlocks with purchase of the game. I know, it's not perfect.

- Will you have the sidekick program like city of heroes had? will it be the same or different?
We don't want to duplicate the old game, but we do want to implement the good ideas it had. That was certainly one of them, though ours is a little different, mechanically, cause we thought it up before the game started, and designed it in a little better.

- Will you have experience debt (Really liked that😊)?
I feel a little negative reinforcement for dying isn't the worst thing, so something like it, yes. Not too bad though and it's situational. (If it's your first time through a 'task force' equivalent, we expect you to die a few times, so you wouldn't get debt.)

- Will you have unlock-able titles above your head? “Hero name” The mysterious etc.
Of course!

- Will you be able to higher the mission’s at least 4 levels above like in CoH?
Depends on how good you are and your power selection but it's not impossible.

- Will you have channels/layering in zones (one of the beauty of CoH was how many heroes were in one city flying around, but understand the frame-rate issue)
Instances? Yeah.

- How many heroes can join a mission? (6-8)
We're hoping for 10 max, if memory serves, I haven't looked at that part in a while.

- Will a mission change by heightening the level of the mission and squad size reveling different and unseen enemies with a larger map size?
Larger map size, possibly not, but generally the rest of it yes.

I can clarify some more things regarding powers and game play design as I’m in the thick of it when it comes to that department.

By utility powers, your constant reference is travel powers.

You can get up to 4 of them and they have their own form of progression. They do not have any aspects that affect combat other than the type of movement the travel power provides.

On death penalty:

We don’t have a direct death penalty such as XP debt, lost xp, or stat debuffs.

When your character is defeated, it ceases to obtain any rewards. The loss of time out of combat and loss of rewards that could have been obtained itself is a form of penalty. Furthermore, we will be implanting a Challenges and Achievements system with our reward system. One such Challenge we are considering is called Undefeated. Earning and possibly maintaining this achievement will act as a bonus multiplier to any other Achievements earned, such as completing content.

Group size:
We initially balanced metrics on a group 1-8. Additional testing will yield which is ideal. But 8 should be workable.

I’m considering a bonus for group size, grouping with Super Team Members, and possibly League (connected Super Teams) members.

I’m currently working on our reward metrics. We have a baseline which considers are basic combat loop. It would be premature and misleading to give the hours to cap away at this point. For one, we have a lot to consider when it comes to bonuses. I’m working on something interesting restarting the base reward system in general and need to model it to make sure that at least as a premise it works well enough to test with in the game. Finally, players always exceed what game developers expect when it comes to efficiency and time to level metrics.

What’s important for us, as a developer, is to ensure that we set bounds of expectation where players “shouldn’t” exceed a certain balance point for leveling and earning rewards, while also maintaining the far end bound for expected play time.

The level cap at launch is 30 and only contains about half the city, with inky 2 launch Paths. We will then work in the rest of the city, the content, and expand the cap to 50 at a future date.

There might be 'currents' underwater, that push you around. There might be Fishmen. Or Frogmen. Or Jacques Cousteau. Or Captain Nemo.

Be Well!
Fireheart

Tannim222 wrote:

When your character is defeated, it ceases to obtain any rewards.

How will this work if you are helping to fight an AV or a Giant Monster and you get killed 2 seconds before the enemy is defeated (possibly even having heroically sacrificed yourself for others)? Will such a character get no credit/xp/badge/whatever for helping?

Tannim222 wrote:

Cinnder wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:

When your character is defeated, it ceases to obtain any rewards.

How will this work if you are helping to fight an AV or a Giant Monster and you get killed 2 seconds before the enemy is defeated (possibly even having heroically sacrificed yourself for others)? Will such a character get no credit/xp/badge/whatever for helping?

Badges - our Achievements are to be assignable when defeated. XP however isn’t.
Don’t forget, when you are defeated, any Momentum you have is depleted will go into Reserves. If you have a heal Reserve, you can use it to resurrect yourself, or if a group member has one ready, they can use it to resurrect you.

Just to be sure I understand what you're saying, in the scenario I describe you'd have to rez yourself or get rezzed within the 2 seconds between your death and the defeat of the big boss if you wanted to get xp? So if you take 90% of the hit points off the enemy and die just before its defeat and there's no time to rez you would get no xp from the boss? And if defeating that boss was the last thing required to complete a mission, would you also get no mission xp if you didn't manage to rez in that tiny window of time?

Tannim222 wrote:

If you are in a defeated state when a combat target is deferred by your team, you do not earn rewards. Hence why being defeated is a penalty in of itself.

Achievements, which include completion are separate.

Please remember, nothing is set in stone.

Honestly, that seems way more easy going than taking XP Debt upon dieing, guaranteeing you just took a hit to net xp gain. At least this way you do have a chance to get back up in time to not loose out on the XP. Everyone will just need to play things a little more save when bosses are getting close to going down.

Cinnder wrote:

I disagree. I think it encourages safe 'gamey' play when a big boss is close to defeat instead of heroic, self-sacrificing moves -- which seems to be the opposite of what we'd want in a superhero game.

Well for one, not everyone is a “hero”.
I’d argue quite the opposite, because knowing the risks involved with defeat [i]the player[/i] chose to push it to “sacrifice for the team”. Which to others could be seen as even more noble.

Be that as it may, how often one or more characters will be at risk of defeat in the last moments of spawn engagement is the issue at hand.

If it is a common occurrence, then obviously, something needs to change.

Is it the result of encounter mechanics? How a particular spawn type is designed?

Now if it is a rare occurrence, the same questions need to be asked.

And in either case we must also evaluate if the occurrences are due to poor decisions. Making on the players’ part.

Now if so, we need to again go back to design. Did we do something that isn’t intuitive that is causing this issue to occur on a regular basis? If so, something needs to change.

But, if it happens rarely, because the player made a mistake, and it wasn’t an issue with the encounter design, UI, power mechanics of a certain set or combination of sets, or another game mechanic, then it is really upon the player to learn from the experience.

I recall my friend dying 4 hours into a raid in EQ. He had fallen asleep at the keyboard.

He ended up disconnecting and was locked out of the raid.

Now sure, there were probably things that MIGHT have been able to be done on the design side (there were a lot of technical limits back then so who knows). However, really it isn’t the game designer’s fault.

Now, this is an extreme example. Smaller examples I’ve heard of is lI sneezed” and my cat jumped on my keyboard”.

To stare this simply: if it happen “too often” we will have to examine why and address the issue.

If it happens “rarely” we will also need to understand why if it is at similar encounter type or power set (combination thereof).

If it comes to design, there the penalty is causing too much of a problem, it will. Red to be changed.

If it is a mechanical issue, we will see if the mechs cis can be addressed or not.

If, however, it proves to not be a huge issue, and players don’t like being defeated, then the penalty is working as intended.

Again, it would come down to frequency of occurrence and mechanics of the encounter involved.

Now, I highly doubt a standard boss rank pawn will wipe an entire team of 8.

We would be looking at Legend or Monster class encounters. DoT would have to be fairly strong to solely defeat such a target, particularly if the NPC has any subtraction toward the damage type.

Grouchybeast wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:

If you are in a defeated state when a combat target is deferred by your team, you do not earn rewards. Hence why being defeated is a penalty in of itself.

Aww, that's a shame. There's nothing more awesome in CoX than unexpectedly leveling when dead and suddenly being brought back to life in a shower of glitzy FX.

This is true and we argued plenty when we were in pre-production if game play design about death penalties.

The hope is that this will give some more importance to players helping one another get back into the fight more, or players opting to recover (what you may refer to as a hospital trip). The downside of this was for players who waiting until: they gained the xp to level (I’m close, I’ll just wait out the next 5 minutes...), or waiting until the right drops came in so they could make a “wakie”.

And we can give an Achievement for resurrections for players to earn as further incentive.

MeSoSollyWan wrote:

Is this for NPC kills only?

What if the mission completes while you are downed? Do you get 0 XP?

Because that seems way more likely to happen than the other examples.

Mission completions are counted as an Achievement. It rewards separately.

I'm pretty much for just about anything that might deter some form of what might be considered "mooching", especially considering that there appears to be a number of mechanisms that allow for (self) resurrection.

In other words: get your spandexed @$$ up and contribute to the team.

I think that as long as the downed player is on a team that successfully accomplishes the mission, the downed player should get credit for the accomplishment. So far so good.

On the other hand, my knee-jerk reaction to downed players not getting credit for kills is that it is a bad idea. I personally prefer credit to be awarded for contribution instead. Healers can use this against players they don't like. So a player can have the most contribution towards a kill but the team, or just the healer, lets him die at the end just to grief him and then that player gets no credit whatsoever. Even if there wasn't a plan to kill the character, from a systems analysis perspective the people dying in combat are the people most likely to be contributing the most in that combat. The other population of dyers are those squishy people who make mistakes or aren't paying attention. To catch the contributors who are in the thick of the fight in the same net you are casting to catch those who make dumb mistakes doesn't seem fair from a game design standpoint. I understand that life isn't fair, but game design should attempt to be as fair as possible in my opinion. As @Cinnder said, this will result in risk-averse gameplay as no one wants to be "that guy" who does all the work, dies and doesn't get any credit for it. There's an entire archetype built around being "that guy" who takes all the punishment for the team. How is this going to affect that?

That's my knee-jerk reaction. My first opinion after thinking just a bit. I still have some more thinking to do on it to look at it from as many angles as possible.

I'd also agree that downed players should still receive credit for team accomplishments. It would be infuriating to be on a hypothetical 6 hour raid, get killed 5 seconds before the end, and then not get credit for a badge just because you couldn't Res yourself quickly enough. It might not be "realistic" to earn things while you're dead but that policy does ensure overall player enjoyment and prevent rage-quits.

As far as earning XP/loot while dead or AFK goes I thought CoH already had a reasonable solution for that based on team proximity. IIRC, if you died (or went AFK) in CoH you would still get XP/loot from team kills as long as your team was within a certain physical distance of your body (I think it was something like 500 feet but the exact number is not really that important). The main point was that once your teammates were farther away than that threshold the dead/AFK team member would no longer get any team earned XP/loot. This prevented people from going AFK at the start of a mission and letting their teammates farm the entire map for them but at the same time not be penalized too much while waiting for a teammate Res if the entire team was playing together in a "traditional" manner. Always seemed like a workable anti-farming compromise to me.

Apart from that the other obvious "anti-mooching" measure will still be available in CoT - if someone tries to mooch XP/loot off a team that doesn't want that person to mooch the team leader can always just kick that person off the team.

I was thinking on this some. What if we did something like this instead...

While your in a downed state, all XP you would be earning while up is stored in a separate area.
You can choose to go to the Hospital at any time by clicking 1 of 2 options.
Option 1: Pay Hospital Bill(which is a percentage based on stored XP) and recover stored XP.
Option 2: Accept 50% XP "Injured" debuff for 30mins and regain half your stored XP

If you are rezzed you receive 50% of your Stored XP and the other 50% is split between your teammates.
This creates and even greater incentive for your team to fight to get you back up as they are rewarded for it.

OH! Do we spawn as a clone of ourselves!? OoO

Redlynne wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:

We don’t have hospital trips. We are doing something else instead.

????

I’m not at liberty to reveal this design just yet. But, by now, should be pretty clear by now that we aren’t seeking to emulate the old game in every capacity. There are things which work in a similar fashion and things which are wholly new.

For the record Leroy Jenkins was a paladin, not a blaster.

Leroy also didn't have a nuke. Blasters carry nukes. If a blaster runs into battle screaming their own name, they likely have a plan to wipe out everything...and accept that this may include themselves. Such is the power and responsibility of being a blaster.

Grimfox wrote:

For the record Leroy Jenkins was a paladin, not a blaster.

Leroy also didn't have a nuke. Blasters carry nukes. If a blaster runs into battle screaming their own name, they likely have a plan to wipe out everything...and accept that this may include themselves. Such is the power and responsibility of being a blaster.

I get the impression you thought I was picking on Blasters in particular. If it makes you happier I'll freely clarify that [b]ANY[/b] archetype in CoH can/could be played stupidly enough to accrue too much XP debt. ;)

The irony related to death penalties in CoH/CoT is that the players who tended to complain the most about it were also those who were willfully ignorant (for whatever reasons) of the proper tactics needed to prevent accruing XP debt or having to make hospital runs every 30 seconds. At the very least you'd have to admit low-level Blasters don't have Nukes to save themselves from bad decisions. I was simply providing a slightly hyperbolic mixed-game metaphor of the classic self-destructive MMO play style (i.e. a 'glass cannon' Blaster constantly charging into suicidal situations and being mad they can't survive as if they were an indestructible Tank).

In summary players who play with good tactics don't usually quibble about death penalty mechanics because they don't tend to suffer from them excessively. Those players who overtly want to play their characters "wrong" will (and frankly should) get penalized for that.

Redlynne wrote:

Cobalt Azurean wrote:

Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good Blaster at your side, kid.

Flawless Victory ...

[img]https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/65/f7/ac65f73752c194652d21d8cdb08114d9.gif[/img]

P.S. It's kinda sad that these few seconds of Obi Wan were just about the only saving grace of that entire particular movie...

isbrjotur wrote:

[b]What if you could gift max 3 days of your own game time once to e-mails.[/b]

Would any of you players like this option that is mentioned above?

Really interested if someone share the same view.

Since CoT is, according to the devs, going to be Buy-to-Play with an optional subscription, I don't see what it is that we'd be gifting. They'd still have to buy the game, at which point they have access....

Tannim222 wrote:

Well for one, not everyone is a “hero”.
I’d argue quite the opposite, because knowing the risks involved with defeat [i]the player[/i] chose to push it to “sacrifice for the team”. Which to others could be seen as even more noble.

Be that as it may, how often one or more characters will be at risk of defeat in the last moments of spawn engagement is the issue at hand.

If it is a common occurrence, then obviously, something needs to change.

Is it the result of encounter mechanics? How a particular spawn type is designed?

Now if it is a rare occurrence, the same questions need to be asked.

And in either case we must also evaluate if the occurrences are due to poor decisions. Making on the players’ part.

Now if so, we need to again go back to design. Did we do something that isn’t intuitive that is causing this issue to occur on a regular basis? If so, something needs to change.

But, if it happens rarely, because the player made a mistake, and it wasn’t an issue with the encounter design, UI, power mechanics of a certain set or combination of sets, or another game mechanic, then it is really upon the player to learn from the experience.

I recall my friend dying 4 hours into a raid in EQ. He had fallen asleep at the keyboard.

He ended up disconnecting and was locked out of the raid.

Now sure, there were probably things that MIGHT have been able to be done on the design side (there were a lot of technical limits back then so who knows). However, really it isn’t the game designer’s fault.

Now, this is an extreme example. Smaller examples I’ve heard of is lI sneezed” and my cat jumped on my keyboard”.

To stare this simply: if it happen “too often” we will have to examine why and address the issue.

If it happens “rarely” we will also need to understand why if it is at similar encounter type or power set (combination thereof).

If it comes to design, there the penalty is causing too much of a problem, it will. Red to be changed.

If it is a mechanical issue, we will see if the mechs cis can be addressed or not.

If, however, it proves to not be a huge issue, and players don’t like being defeated, then the penalty is working as intended.

First of all, as always I appreciate the response and your willingness to discuss/explain.

The odd thing to me is this discussion of 'mistakes.' Based on what we know at the moment about death penalties (and it's clear from the dropped hints around lack of hospital runs that there is still much for MWM to reveal on this topic) it seems that following the 'correct' behaviour in CoT will mean one can die any time except just before a big boss is defeated. That still seems really gamey to me.

The good news is that MWM seems willing to review this rule once it is put into practice. (Which I suppose applies to most aspects of a living MMO.)

Lothic][quote=Cinnder wrote:

Death penalties need to be "significant" while also being "tolerable". That's a hard balance to achieve in any game.

Not to agree or disagree, since "significant" (and, for that matter, "tolerable") in this context is a debate unto itself, but it does require us to know what happens after death. As I recall from past discussions here, most people view the hospital / graveyard run to be a part of the death penalty. If MWM is consciously removing it as a part of the equation, are they replacing it with something else?

I'd definitely consider not getting XP upon death to be tolerable, even if I contributed significantly to the effort. Not getting loot I'd consider significantly less tolerable.

Lothic wrote:

Cinnder wrote:

... it seems that following the 'correct' behaviour in CoT will mean one can die any time except just before a big boss is defeated. That still seems really gamey to me.

Not really sure where you got this specific idea from. I doubt there will be any cases where the game will artificially keep you alive in a "gamey" way for anything.

Let Cinnder correct me if I understood incorrectly, but I think it was meant differently than how you read it, Lothic.
It appears as if Cinnder meant that people could "game" the system to die all the time as a viable means to an end, so long as they didn't die during the final boss fight.

As you have mentioned, there have been VERY in-depth discussions on death penalties in other threads in which death penalty is used as a deterrent to undesirable behavior (such as to restrict content without using invisible barriers) and to promote desireable behavior (such as immersion-breaking kamikaze waves to kill mobs instead of using skill and teamwork). I believe Cinnder was trying to say that dying without suffering a penalty or even a hospital run will encourage players to use their own characters' deaths as a means to a goal instead of as something to be avoided. Thus "gaming" the game.

Edit: Some people have stated that experience debt was a poor death penalty for end-game, since experience is no longer accrued at end-game. And that makes sense. Likewise, however, aborting a winning streak is a penalty only once. Once a streak is broken and any bonuses or awards associated with that streak are lost, the penalty is lost as well. Death is no longer something to be avoided once one dies once.

Tanim222 has stated that there are more mechanics at play we haven't been told about yet, so I'm eager to hear more.

Huckleberry wrote:

Lothic wrote:

Cinnder wrote:

... it seems that following the 'correct' behaviour in CoT will mean one can die any time except just before a big boss is defeated. That still seems really gamey to me.

Not really sure where you got this specific idea from. I doubt there will be any cases where the game will artificially keep you alive in a "gamey" way for anything.

Let Cinnder correct me if I understood incorrectly, but I think it was meant differently than how you read it, Lothic.
It appears as if Cinnder meant that people could "game" the system to die all the time as a viable means to an end, so long as they didn't die during the final boss fight.

Eh, I still don't get that connotation from this. I would assume that if there's any game mechanic out there that becomes routinely exploited for an unintended purpose that it would simply be nerfed/changed by the Devs thus not remain a chronic problem. Cinnder seemed to be worried about something else perhaps, but TBH I guess it's still sort of unclear precisely what was meant by the use of the word "gamey".

Huckleberry wrote:

Let Cinnder correct me if I understood incorrectly, but I think it was meant differently than how you read it, Lothic.
It appears as if Cinnder meant that people could "game" the system to die all the time as a viable means to an end, so long as they didn't die during the final boss fight.

As you have mentioned, there have been VERY in-depth discussions on death penalties in other threads in which death penalty is used as a deterrent to undesirable behavior (such as to restrict content without using invisible barriers) and to promote desireable behavior (such as immersion-breaking kamikaze waves to kill mobs instead of using skill and teamwork). I believe Cinnder was trying to say that dying without suffering a penalty or even a hospital run will encourage players to use their own characters' deaths as a means to a goal instead of as something to be avoided. Thus "gaming" the game.

That's almost what I was getting at, yeah, except that the gamey part to me was the 'just before AV defeat' stuff.

As Darth Fez points out, we are operating on this topic with some critical missing info, as Tannim has hinted there's a plan for death penalties outside of the specific 'no xp if you happen to be dead when the AV goes down' rule. Until we have that info, I'm proceeding on MWM's past statements that indicated the intention was for death penalties to be a minor inconvenience rather than a major penalty. I'll be somewhat concerned if that position has changed significantly.

So, what I was getting at was that--based on what we know up to this point and until MWM reveals more--it seems that in general the death penalty will be light, except when death occurs just before the defeat of a major boss. The gamey behaviour I'm worried about is as described above by others: that players will suddenly start to play more cautiously when an AV or GM is close to defeat in order to ensure that they don't happen to be dead when the big boss hits the ground. It's the game's encouraging a sudden change in behaviour to prevent loss of reward that I consider gamey. Surely when the Big Bad (or Good) is almost down it's the time for everyone to pour it on, throw caution to the wind, and [i]'finish him!'[/i] That's the sort of behaviour I'd like to see rewarded, rather than be put in jeopardy.

Again, I realise that we are missing a big chunk of context here, so perhaps this conversation is best put on a back burner till we have the whole story from MWM on death penalties.

Cinnder wrote:

The gamey behaviour I'm worried about is as described above by others: that players will suddenly start to play more cautiously when an AV or GM is close to defeat in order to ensure that they don't happen to be dead when the big boss hits the ground. It's the game's encouraging a sudden change in behaviour to prevent loss of reward that I consider gamey. Surely when the Big Bad (or Good) is almost down it's the time for everyone to pour it on, throw caution to the wind, and 'finish him!' That's the sort of behaviour I'd like to see rewarded, rather than be put in jeopardy.

Let's be clear here: There's a big difference between losing out on some XP or random loot drops from a huge AV/GM and say losing out on getting a badge or other unique reward from that same huge AV/GM. Again I suspect that in order to keep the game relatively player friendly and mitigate people from wanting to rage-quit the Devs will decide to make sure that people will still get a badge/unique reward from a team kill even if an individual player happens to be dead the instant the AV/GM dies. The often-repeated hypothetical scenario of losing out on a badge after a multi-hour raid would be highly, highly annoying. In the grand scheme of things I'd much rather lose a chuck of XP (due to being dead) that I could get anywhere from any kill than to lose out on a unique badge/reward.

So in answer to your fear that people will have a "sudden change in behavior" between normal MOBs and a big AV/GM goes I'd say I'd doubt that would happen if you knew as a player that you'd still get the badge or other unique reward even if you lost out on a bit of XP/loot. Again big, big difference.

warlocc wrote:

Don't forget that we're still very early in development and everything we say could easily change.

But even now it's actually safe to say that the death penalty in CoT, whatever form it takes, will still need to be balanced between being relevant and being inconsequential. If it's essentially meaningless then you end up with problems like Cinnder was trying to describe where players could potentially exploit death as some kind of abusive combat tactic or as a means to grief others (i.e. my earlier reference to the classic Leeroy Jenkins).

Trust me if this game starts its beta testing and basically "no one" complains about how the collective death penalties are working then it'd be clear the collective death penalties were not strong enough. Death penalties are the kinds of things that must be vaguely hated by most people or they are not doing their job in the first place. Death penalties exist in games like this to "motivate" people to not die (for whatever reason) so they need to be mildly painful enough to want to avoid but not so annoying as to make them overly burdensome in the long term. As I implied before it's going to need to be a delicate balance no matter what MWM does.

Tannim222 wrote:

I thought I was clear on this, but I will restate:

The death penalty is that once in a defeated state, you no longer receive rewards such as XP.

However, anything that is under an Achievement such as mission completion or a badge, can still be earned. Being Defeated also means the Undefeated Achievement bonus is lost. This bonus is applicable to mission completion and when “street sweeping”. As doing so in certain neighborhoods can be like triggering a “mini”event .

No, we don’t have “hospital runs”. We have a similar system but it’s different, with less time loss involved.

From the way things are going, I may have to submit a full write up on this topic.

These things were clear enough to me. That's why, for instance, I kept agreeing with your player friendly stance on things like "losing out on XP/loot rather than a badge". This was why I was confused by what Cinnder was saying in that we'd have to "slow down(?)" against GM/AVs for fear of losing out on rewards. I'd be happy to suffer losing some XP due to character death as long as I wouldn't lose out on a badge in the end. Remember back in CoH most average street GMs weren't individually worth all that much XP/loot precisely so that they wouldn't become something you'd want to farm for large amounts of XP/loot in the first place.

But of course all of this will be borne out in the crucible of beta testing regardless. Naturally we'll be interested in seeing what's going to "replace" hospital runs. As long as death doesn't become a ubiquitously exploitable combat tactic then I'm sure it'll be workable.

Wolfgang8565 wrote:

How about when you die, a "ghost" emerges from your body and your teammate has to run and tag it to rez.

It's not a terrible idea but it does raise the instant question of what would happen if you were playing solo. Would you be able to self-rez your own ghost?

Wolfgang8565 wrote:

Ha, it was mostly a joke. It seems to be popular among multiplayer games nowadays. Cuphead comes to mind. Wouldnt work in an mmo too well..

Well it might not work too well for the "standard" death penalty system of CoT. But I could see there being special types of team oriented content (maybe like a Halloween event raid) that might involve ghosts and special unique rules for rezs that would require team cooperation. Like I said it's not a fundamentally terrible idea; it would just need to be structured properly to work in something like CoT.

Huckleberry wrote:

There was a game, I think it was Oberin, in which you did turn into a ghost when you died. It was funny, because if you typed in chat when you were a ghost, all others would see is "ooOOOoOOOOooO." One of the things that made it interesting was that people playing clerics could understand you and speak with you normally. And only clerics could raise you, if they were high enough level. Otherwise you had to find a respawn point and then run naked back to your body. Ghosts could see hidden things, too, if I remember correctly, so ghosting could become a valid scouting tactic. Good times. I have a lot of good memories of that game.

Sounds fun. There's no reason that non-superheroish "out of the box" ideas like this couldn't be applied to strictly controlled regions within a game like CoT (i.e. the Halloween raid idea).

Huckleberry wrote:

It wouldn't be appropriate for this game, of course. What with the philosophy of aesthetic decoupling and unrestricted personal lore allowance, turning into a ghost would be against some character's personal lore. Such as for robots, undead, characters who were already spirits, character's who have traded their souls for power, and etc. But it is a fun idea to ruminate upon.

I'm all for everyone having fun with their own character concepts and how they may or may not apply to CoT's content and lore. But if the Devs of this game have to assume that idea X, Y or Z couldn't be used in special cases/missions just because it might go against one or two people's precious concepts then we're going to be looking forward to incredibly bland cookie-cutter content. What if I'm playing a science-based character that doesn't like/believe in magic - does that mean the Devs aren't allowed to create any magic-based content?

Sadly suspension of disbelief is going to be needed to grease the skids between whatever content the Devs cook up and whatever character concepts players dream up - no getting around that. Players will simply have to decide for themselves how to handle it vis-a-vis their own characters just like they had to do in CoH for years.

MeSoSollyWan wrote:

warlocc wrote:

[b]Don't forget that we're still very early in development[/b] and everything we say could easily change.

We've done very little combat testing yet. Everything that Tannim has said is coming from a very rough draft.

Honestly, reading this made me revisit the 2013 Phoenix Project Kickstarter campaign page, and it me sad.

I'll rephrase. Early in development of that particular portion of the game.

I know everyone is already planned out on the whole death penalty thing, but had a thought I just wanted to put out there for the hell of it.

XP penalties end up becoming useless once your character reaches max level. So instead of using that as a penalty, what if Heroes/Villains "CONFIDENCE" was effected upon losing a fight. "Confidence" would basically be a stats boost that rises for every so many enemies taken down. There would be a maximum amount of "Confidence" you can obtain and if you lose a battle you lose all your "Confidence" and have to work hard to get it back.

This would be a penalty that could effect you through all levels of play, and you could even sell "Confidence Boosters" for tough late game content.

Anyway, just a thought.

Cooltastic wrote:

I know everyone is already planned out on the whole death penalty thing, but had a thought I just wanted to put out there for the hell of it.

XP penalties end up becoming useless once your character reaches max level. So instead of using that as a penalty, what if Heroes/Villains "CONFIDENCE" was effected upon losing a fight. "Confidence" would basically be a stats boost that rises for every so many enemies taken down. There would be a maximum amount of "Confidence" you can obtain and if you lose a battle you lose all your "Confidence" and have to work hard to get it back.

This would be a penalty that could effect you through all levels of play, and you could even sell "Confidence Boosters" for tough late game content.

Anyway, just a thought.

Just a few posts ago Tannim re-mentioned an idea the Devs mentioned a while ago for what he calls an "[url=https://cityoftitans.com/comment/176232#comment-176232]Undefeated Achievement bonus[/url]" that you would lose when defeated. IIRC it sounded pretty similar what you're calling "Confidence". I think the difference is that your "bonus" is a stats bonus whereas Tannim's talking about getting a loot/reward bonus. Maybe we could end up with a system that affects both to different degrees for different reasons.

As you say since these things are not linked to XP it's a type of "death penalty" that could affect anyone, even people who are level-capped.

Tannim222 wrote:

Stat penalties on defeat generally don’t work in a game like we are designing. Either players can obtain sufficient buffs to mitigate the penalties through various means, or the penalties end up cumulatively too much for the character to be effective.

If you are already having a tough time in a boss fight and keep losing the fight, with a penalty making it harder for you each time...It can actually end up too frustrating as a penalty.

There's actually another way to see how having undefeated bonuses (and/or defeat penalties) that are entirely based on stat modifiers could be unbalancing for the game. For the purposes of this post I'm referring to both possibilities of getting either a stat bonus for remaining undefeated OR a stat penalty for being recently defeated.

The thing is you have to balance the game to work with the lowest common denominator. In this case you'd need to make it so players can generally succeed without the benefit of a hypothetical undefeated stat bonus. They'd still have to be able to progress even while suffering under the worst levels of "non-bonus" or "penalization" whether it's cumulative or not.

So if players can still succeed even under the worst case handicap of not having an undefeated bonus then typical players might easily become [b]too overpowered[/b] once they're finally enjoying the benefit of the undefeated stat bonus. If the "baseline" for the game is "players can succeed even without the undefeated bonus" then a constant state of being undefeated might not only be trivial to maintain but it might make getting killed semi-impossible because while you have the undefeated bonus you are in effect overpowered by definition. It'd be a positive feedback loop that in this case would be an overall negative for the game because everyone could run around like invulnerable untouchable gods.

Having some form of stat modifiers to motivate/demotivate player behavior might have a [b]small[/b] place in the overall death penalty system of CoT. But clearly that can't be the ONLY thing the entire death penalty system is hinged on.

Cooltastic wrote:

Well, you could also limit which things get boosted so it doesn't become anything game breaking too.

Looking at the word "Confidence" you could do something like...

Increased Accuracy(chance to connect hits), Increased Awareness(chance to dodge attacks slightly(glancing blow) negating some of the damage from a hit), Increased Adrenalin(chance to receive additional momentum when obtaining momentum)
They aren't things that boost stats directly, but would be more like CoX's Invention Origin Enhancement Proc's.

To do this would require a new baseline because you have to balance your combat loop how you design player characters to perform normally.

Increasing Accuracy won’t help very much in the early game but for normal hiitd but would increase crit rate (they’re interconnected). This would skew performance.

Increased evasion would skew NPC Vaseline metrics vs the PC, but also you have to understand how our buffs work in general with output.

As you improve an effect with output you have diminishing returns. For anyone improving, something like evasion a decent buff at low levels with no evasion powers / buffs, a small amount of output can give a decent evasion valise. At high levels, with anyone taking or receiving improved evasion from buffs / powers, that same output may not result in any noticeable improvement.

Messing with momentum gains by improving them beyond the baseline can end up messing with a ton of performance metrics, it also would mess with the baseline off expected Reserves earned.

What sounds simple on the surface can often lead to more complications . Especially since so many mechanics are interconnected and how we’ve designed our subsystem for effect values.

Darth Fez wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:

NPC Vaseline metrics vs the PC...

This is not the combat you're looking for.  <.<   >.>

[img]https://media1.tenor.com/images/630966f2d729c9c66a9bd25fda8cf4a0/tenor.gif?itemid=4728060[/img]

Huckleberry wrote:

Ghosts could see hidden things, too, if I remember correctly, so ghosting could become a valid scouting tactic. Good times.

One of the suggestions that I made about 5-6 years ago was to making Phase powers literally Phase your character to a different Phase of the map. That way, you could "ghost" your way through a map without anyone knowing you were there ... doors that open and close would be permanently open while Phased (on the Phased version of the map) and metal gratings could be passed through, but would block you if you were "solid" (and not Phased) and so on. It would basically function as an alternative version of the map that you could switch back and forth to.

Not too difficult to take such a theoretical formulation of how a Power would work and then leverage it as the way to handle Defeat Mechanics on top of being useful as a Phasing Power.
Two stones, one bird ... and all that jazz.