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Archetypes staying true to themselves?

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Afterglow
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Archetypes staying true to themselves?

In CoH I really enjoyed teaming with strangers. Rarely did I find myself on an inept or unsuccessful team. I think the well thought out and balanced Archetype system was the biggest reason for this. I loved being able to glance at my teammates archetypes and figure out my role within the team. I’ve read quite a bit about the tweaks City of Titans has in mind for the powersets and I’m both nervous and excited. I’d love for a developer to reassure me that despite the new freedoms we have in choosing our powers, the archetypes will still be true to their core strengths and weaknesses. If I’m on a team with a couple stalwarts, (tankers) who have decided to choose powers that make them more debuffers than meat-shields, I’d like to know that before my Ranger lobs a party popper in the middle of horde of villains.

In other MMORPG’s that I’ve played, I have not enjoyed team play nearly as much as I have in CoH. CO in particular made me so frustrated I ceased teaming altogether before quitting the game entirely. Things may have changed but when I played CO, teams were never organized. When I tried to organize the group, I saw the pointlessness. Because so many characters were freeform, nobody had any idea who was good at what so everyone would just charge into the battle; every battle. Ugh.

In CoH I loved tanking on teams. I also loved being the squishy blaster and dishing out the sb with my kin-defender. I loved playing most of the archetypes and the different skills they required me to learn if I wanted to maximize their effectiveness especially when playing with a group of strangers.

I know City of Titans is not going to allow freeform builds but I'm still worried. Will we be able to count on the Commander for lockdowns, the Enforcer for melee attacks, the Guardian for buffs and debuffs, the Operator to annoy us with his pack of devilhounds, the Ranger to bring the boom and the Stalwart to taunt our foes during our darkest hour?

Thanks and sorry this got so long.

Hirsty
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Hopefully there will be very

Hopefully there will be very similar roles to CoH, in my opinion they had a good formula.

I just hope that Tanks are tanks, not just a punching bag that needs constant healing, they are super heroes after all.
Tanking has never been the same since CoH.

Ellysyn
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I'm kinda mixed on the Roles.

I'm kinda mixed on the Roles. Really for any MMO. I've seen healers using the tank role just so they could have some extra HP. I've seen DPS completely out tank the actual tank. And that's cause the tank is all set up to be a meat shield. And I've seen tanks totally out DPS the DPS team. And healers do the DPS and Tanking for the entire team. I would like to see some kind of balance. But also, I don't want to be stuck knowing that just because I'm a healer I will never be able to solo and stuck to HAVING to be in a team. Every class should have the ability to solo. And ya should be able to build ya toon towards being either a solo hero or a team hero. Would be cool to just have a secondary spec like how WoW does. That way you can switch on the fly between your solo build and a team build. or in some cases ya pvp build. And I would like to feel that I am a powerful character. Although a scrapper being able to dodge like every hit is one thing. But a scrapper being able to take full on damage and still not drop. I dunno. Starting to feel little odd there. If anything he should be able to have the speed to dodger or parry everything but when he gets hit, he should really feel it.

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I also miss the CoX days of

I also miss the CoX days of course. However I think a lot of the confusion with the roles there at the end came from the blending of red and blue sides. Make no mistake, it was way too long coming, but it was blending two different games. Blueside was designed around teaming. Everyone had a role and they were pretty clear. Redside, which came later, was more murky. Brutes were ScrapTankers. Corruptors could solo where Blasters struggled. Masterminds could Tank most things with the right sets. Then you put all this in a blender and things are suddenly less clear.

I like the idea that no role is required to win. I LOVED the fact that clever teams could use sets in new ways (ever see 4 Emp/Defenders own a Monster? I did and it rocked!). In the early years you always heard cries for a Healer or a Rad for certain missions or enemies. Towards the end it came down to 'everyone keep your head and do what you do best' and it was fine.

I DO believe that some of the basics should be clear. Tanks should be able to hold aggro under all but the most extreme circumstances. They should be able to take the most punishment. And they should NEVER be able to out-DPS a DPS role. That's playing in the other kid's sandbox and it's no fun for him.

However, I also believe in flexibility. Makes for good variety and above all re-playability. So let's say I want my Fire Ranger to be all-out, balls to the wall DPS. Yes, he'll be fragile and I'll accept that because I'll know it going in. No, I won't whine when he dies a LOT because I built him that way. Now my Ice guy, HE can take a shot. No, he's not a Tank. No, he can't dish out DPS like my Fire guy, but he can survive stuff that would wipe the floor with Fire Guy. I built him to be a balance because that's how I roll sometimes.

I want the freedom to do this. I want the freedom to build a Tank that can hold aggro no matter what even if he can't defeat anything solo. In the end everyone will find their happy medium.

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...

Benchpresser
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I totally agree luvr. I

I totally agree luvr. I remember when they added the range debuff to Taunt.. my tank finally felt like a TANK again... "get the big guy!!!"

But every powerset combo should feel different. I'll use tanks as an example-

My main Bench was a Inv/SS... SS gave him DPS but in a slow grinding way while he took everything mobs threw at him and smiled. My Dark/dark tank handled it differently... couldn't kill a damn thing but "held agro" by making sure all the mobs were debuffed/feared into uselessness.

There are many different approaches to a role.. all or most should be represented. Players will always find ways to twist roles or go "outside the box", but they should never be able play a role better than the AT designed for that role. I built a "tank analogue" Human only PB.... but he should never EVER be able to tank better than an actual Tank!

Mendicant
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Comicsluvr wrote:
Comicsluvr wrote:

I DO believe that some of the basics should be clear. Tanks should be able to hold aggro under all but the most extreme circumstances. They should be able to take the most punishment. And they should NEVER be able to out-DPS a DPS role. That's playing in the other kid's sandbox and it's no fun for him.

As long as the caveat of 'with roughly equivalent boosts' is understood. To put it in CoH terms, it wouldn't be surprising for a tank with their damage powers filled with purple IOs to out-DPS a blaster of the same level who has no enhancements in their powers at all. however, should that blaster have SOs or regular IOs, they'd probably be out-DPSing the tank.

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Mendicant wrote:
Mendicant wrote:

Comicsluvr wrote:
I DO believe that some of the basics should be clear. Tanks should be able to hold aggro under all but the most extreme circumstances. They should be able to take the most punishment. And they should NEVER be able to out-DPS a DPS role. That's playing in the other kid's sandbox and it's no fun for him.

As long as the caveat of 'with roughly equivalent boosts' is understood. To put it in CoH terms, it wouldn't be surprising for a tank with their damage powers filled with purple IOs to out-DPS a blaster of the same level who has no enhancements in their powers at all. however, should that blaster have SOs or regular IOs, they'd probably be out-DPSing the tank.

This^

Something i noticed about other MMO's is some roles simply cannot take as many guys as others. If CoH did this the same way, you wouldn't have a defender that can solo an AV more effectively than a brute. I agree that games like CO you'll get guys labeled as ranged who melee and stuff like that, but the versitility of knowing you can be whoever you want (within some limits) with pretty much any archetype i feel is part of what made CoH so great and replayable. Warshades and Peacebringers are an interesting example, or masterminds for that matter. A mastermind could choose to have debuffing, healing or attack oriented powersets, it did not affect his ultimate function in the group, but it did allow the mastermind to escape their shell a little. If every mastermind could choose from a variety of pets and only could choose what was effectively reskinned debuff powersets, the AT would be far less fun and interesting.

After all that said, i do agree that knowing a defender defends, a tanker tanks and a scrapper DPSs is really reassuring and quite handy :)

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I played a lot of different

I played a lot of different types of characters... Some I rolled and liked, some... not so much...

I tended to play support ('troller or 'fender) mostly... with a high amount of altitis in the Blaster realm... A few Tanks that I just never got 'right'...

As far as what CoT will bring us?... Whatever it is... it wont be the same... Just familiar... and I can deal with that :D

Saving The City From The Hell It Has Become!

Comicsluvr
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Mendicant wrote:
Mendicant wrote:

Comicsluvr wrote:
I DO believe that some of the basics should be clear. Tanks should be able to hold aggro under all but the most extreme circumstances. They should be able to take the most punishment. And they should NEVER be able to out-DPS a DPS role. That's playing in the other kid's sandbox and it's no fun for him.

As long as the caveat of 'with roughly equivalent boosts' is understood. To put it in CoH terms, it wouldn't be surprising for a tank with their damage powers filled with purple IOs to out-DPS a blaster of the same level who has no enhancements in their powers at all. however, should that blaster have SOs or regular IOs, they'd probably be out-DPSing the tank.

Oh this goes without saying. A dragster running Standard Unleaded will suck while a street car on jet fuel will likely run better. Buffs will also change the dynamic and I have no issue with a Ranger buffed six ways to hell taking damage like a Tank because he can't do that alone.

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...

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Exactly...,

Exactly...,

- ...I still remember my first Blaster, hell...my first 50th on Virtue (...yep, you guessed it - 'Thunder-Puncher': Energy Blast/Energy Manipulation') who dealt solely with melee attacks (...only had Energy Blast and Nova from the Primary selection...). My highlight was squaring off against none other than Lord Arachnos himself...needless to say, I was on a team that kept me buffed and healed. Nothing like standing next to the Tanker as he quits using Taunt because of the DPS being doled out by that darn 'Melee Blaster'...

- Good times, that...good times. ^_^

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Seems like I should be able

Seems like I should be able to maintain a solo build and a mission build for the same character, and switch back and forth. When I take on a solo mish, then my soloing powers kick in. When people join my team, I revert to the teaming version of my powers. CoH already had a PvP version of its powers, different from the ones used in missions.

As for PVP, some archetypes were hopeless and should have had their powers amended still further. Masterminds, for example, were squishy and died immediately. The minions should have some ability to shield the Mastermind by absorbing damage, since players could never be fooled into attacking the minions the way an NPC could.

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Phantom Specter wrote:
Phantom Specter wrote:

Seems like I should be able to maintain a solo build and a mission build for the same character, and switch back and forth. When I take on a solo mish, then my soloing powers kick in. When people join my team, I revert to the teaming version of my powers. CoH already had a PvP version of its powers, different from the ones used in missions.
As for PVP, some archetypes were hopeless and should have had their powers amended still further. Masterminds, for example, were squishy and died immediately. The minions should have some ability to shield the Mastermind by absorbing damage, since players could never be fooled into attacking the minions the way an NPC could.

I'm not sure i agree with 'squishy Masterminds' when i PVPed in RV and SC i'd run into masterminds that would just annihilate me no matter who i was. Some powersets favored pvp more than others i agree there though :)

Comicsluvr
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Masterminds were never

Masterminds were never squishy unless lots of AoE was flying around. The Minions would often fall first, thus defending their master. It happened mostly at the lower levels. Once a MM got to level 34ish the squishy part was likely gone.

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...

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Comicsluvr wrote:
Comicsluvr wrote:

I DO believe that some of the basics should be clear. Tanks should be able to hold aggro under all but the most extreme circumstances. They should be able to take the most punishment. And they should NEVER be able to out-DPS a DPS role. That's playing in the other kid's sandbox and it's no fun for him.

While I agree about the 'minimum' performance, I don't agree about the 'maximum'. To heck with that other kid's sandbox, I'll play wherever I want.

That said, I agree that one should not be able to be the best at multiple roles At The Same Time.

Tank is a Role, not an AT. A Tank's job is to grab all of the aggro and force the enemy to focus on them. Sometimes, the best way to do that is the kick the ever-livin'... um, Tar out of every enemy that sees you. A running patter of 'Yo Mama' jokes can be effective, but that... Tar-kicking does tend to trump mere taunts.

My point is, if the 'healer' proves to be more adept at aggro control without dying than the front line-man, then they are Naturally 'The Tank' and there is nothing wrong with their being so. The obverse corollary is also truth, if the nominal 'tanker' is better at DPS than others on the team, then they're most likely a kick-ass 'Tank'.

Anyone who feels they should complain, because 'The Tank' is doing more DPS than, say, the nominal 'blaster', had better look at their own toolset and figure out what they can do better. Because, the game is naturally designed to give the 'blaster' better DPS, right?

I'm just saying that the game will give each AT the minimum tools to fulfill their role, however they define that. The 'role' that a player/character assumes is going to be somewhat fluid, depending on the situation and the player. However, the game should not define some arbitrary ceiling of performance in a role and apply it to the various ATs, such that they cannot actually reach as high as they can, but are artificially capped.

Where's the Fun in that?

Be Well!
Fireheart

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Comicsluvr wrote:
Comicsluvr wrote:

. I LOVED the fact that clever teams could use sets in new ways (ever see 4 Emp/Defenders own a Monster? I did and it rocked!).

No but one time I ran a team with 7 blasters and we ran like five or six mishes together! Never had a team that imbalanced that worked before or since! lol

"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

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I was on a number of 'all one

I was on a number of 'all one AT' teams at one point or another. An all defender team that was a juggernaut, several all-tank teams on Tanker Tuesdays, and even a 8-villain strong all-MasterMind team. And yes, we all had the full complement of pets. One of the team compared it to some WoW raids he had been on. "There's almost 60 of us here, and only 8 of us know what we are doing!" :D

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I miss Tanker Tuesdays. They

I miss Tanker Tuesdays. They were a blast :-D

"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."

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The CoV ATs show that you can

The CoV ATs show that you can have very varied AT playstyles with great overlap.

Except for the very fringe cases where the Devs set up a situation which almost required a certain AT (e.g., a Tanker at the end of the Statesman TF), a Brute or a Scrapper, or a MasterMind, or the right Defender (Dark!) could server the *role* of a Tanker in crowd control and/or damage sponge without having to have the magical Taunt power to do so. (Or even a Controller (Illusion!).)

Also, some powers are contextual. A Scrapper or Brute that specialized in single foe DPS will outshine a Blaster who specialized in AoE when up against a single hard target.

This overlap let to Blappers and Offenders.

And this was fun. IMO. I wouldn't want to see in CoT a strict adherence to the *role* of an 'AT' and then deny all other ATs from being able to serve in that role.

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Mendicant wrote:
Mendicant wrote:

I was on a number of 'all one AT' teams at one point or another. An all defender team that was a juggernaut, several all-tank teams on Tanker Tuesdays, and even a 8-villain strong all-MasterMind team. And yes, we all had the full complement of pets. One of the team compared it to some WoW raids he had been on. "There's almost 60 of us here, and only 8 of us know what we are doing!" :D

Yeah, our MM Mondays rocked back in the day. Sometimes we did them themed (the Star Wars all-Bot show) but most often we just mixed up whatever. The only one I couldn't make work was Ninja/TA...damned minions were always dying on me...

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...

Comicsluvr
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Zombie Man wrote:
Zombie Man wrote:

The CoV ATs show that you can have very varied AT playstyles with great overlap.
Except for the very fringe cases where the Devs set up a situation which almost required a certain AT (e.g., a Tanker at the end of the Statesman TF), a Brute or a Scrapper, or a MasterMind, or the right Defender (Dark!) could server the *role* of a Tanker in crowd control and/or damage sponge without having to have the magical Taunt power to do so. (Or even a Controller (Illusion!).)
Also, some powers are contextual. A Scrapper or Brute that specialized in single foe DPS will outshine a Blaster who specialized in AoE when up against a single hard target.
This overlap let to Blappers and Offenders.
And this was fun. IMO. I wouldn't want to see in CoT a strict adherence to the *role* of an 'AT' and then deny all other ATs from being able to serve in that role.

I agree and I should have qualified my position with 'all things being equal' or words to that effect. As you stated, under some circumstances there will be overlap with certain builds, mixes of IOs and even what even you fight (The Icemen might consider Fireguy more of an aggro magnet than some Invul/SS Tank). However we had a LOT of heated debate about ATs and their roles back in the day and many complained that their 'role' had been superseded by another AT.

So IMHO a single-target style Blaster should out-DPS a single-target-centric Tank if both are of a comparable level and have been slotted intelligently. This is NOT to say that there will be overlap, but I'm not worried about the middle of the muddle...I'm concerned with the extremes. Many builds will get a player a middle of the road character. That's where most characters will wind up. But the Tank that is spec-built to take a punch should have his upper limit for punch-taking higher than any other AT.

Don't worry...I have faith in your ability to make this work. This project doesn't have some of the hurdles that CoX had accumulated over time. You're starting out with Blue and Red sides from launch, you have years of experience to draw from and you don't seem to be constrained by any of CoX's short-comings.

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...

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TL:DR

TL:DR

Make Tanks worthwhile and dont let Brutes Tank the majority of content so easily as CoH did with IO's.
We all know what that means :)

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Zombie Man wrote:
Zombie Man wrote:

The CoV ATs show that you can have very varied AT playstyles with great overlap.
Except for the very fringe cases where the Devs set up a situation which almost required a certain AT (e.g., a Tanker at the end of the Statesman TF), a Brute or a Scrapper, or a MasterMind, or the right Defender (Dark!) could server the *role* of a Tanker in crowd control and/or damage sponge without having to have the magical Taunt power to do so. (Or even a Controller (Illusion!).)
Also, some powers are contextual. A Scrapper or Brute that specialized in single foe DPS will outshine a Blaster who specialized in AoE when up against a single hard target.
This overlap let to Blappers and Offenders.
And this was fun. IMO. I wouldn't want to see in CoT a strict adherence to the *role* of an 'AT' and then deny all other ATs from being able to serve in that role.

Agreed...,

- ...and as a side-note, it should be expected...especially towards end-game, that there will be some overlapping involved. I know I made several characters who overlapped...a blaster could scrap, a brute could tank, a controller could blast, a defender could control and a tanker could finally do some damage. However, and it should be known...it was not something they could do on a continuous base with the same level and degree of reliable as the initial AT concept.

- Yes, a blaster could scrap...but as long and continuous as a scrapper? No, not likely...a brute could tank, but not as reliably as a tanker. A defender had perhaps one or two holds or mass immob abilities just like a controller had access to only a few blasts. Melee types finally got some ranged ability, but they were never as continuous as blasters (...even defenders...) who excelled in that particular field. Overlapping wasn't a very big issue for me, it was how the character used their abilities which was important...

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Zombie Man wrote:
Zombie Man wrote:

This overlap let to Blappers and Offenders.

I loved my elec/elec blapper. :D

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Zombie Man wrote:
Zombie Man wrote:

The CoV ATs show that you can have very varied AT playstyles with great overlap.
Except for the very fringe cases where the Devs set up a situation which almost required a certain AT (e.g., a Tanker at the end of the Statesman TF), a Brute or a Scrapper, or a MasterMind, or the right Defender (Dark!) could server the *role* of a Tanker in crowd control and/or damage sponge without having to have the magical Taunt power to do so. (Or even a Controller (Illusion!).)
Also, some powers are contextual. A Scrapper or Brute that specialized in single foe DPS will outshine a Blaster who specialized in AoE when up against a single hard target.
This overlap let to Blappers and Offenders.
And this was fun. IMO. I wouldn't want to see in CoT a strict adherence to the *role* of an 'AT' and then deny all other ATs from being able to serve in that role.

^^

I agree with the notion that an archetype can still be true to itself with some overlap between classes. Otherwise things seem to become too railroaded in many cases.

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I loved the AT system in COH

I loved the AT system in COH and how game play worked. Teaming did not require the holy trinity of Tank, DPS and healer. You could do amazing things with all defenders all controllers and all widows. COH had a freedom of play that was so flexible and allowed for some incredible gaming. I could build and play the characters I wanted to play and play them the way I wanted.

COH's AT system also had incredible flex. Some of my favorite characters in the last two years of play were AT bends. My first was the armored corruptor concept. I took a Fire Blast/ Sonic and kept only the manditory first power the bubble and liquify powers. Using the pools and PPP I went for as much resistance as I could get and with IO bonuses and Pool powers like Weave I had a fair amount of defense best was 38% ranged. This turned out to be stupid amounts of fun. On speed ITF's I was given the task of killing the 300 while the rest mopped up the AV.
Next was a Dominator that played like a Brute Fire/Earth one friend forgot I was a DOM because I was out damaging his lower level brute until the Domination messages would fly.
Last was my speedster stalker that in the upper levels played like a speedster Dark/SR.

The combinations were truly limited by my imagination which made me love it all the more. Give us a sand box to be creative in.

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Comicsluvr wrote:
Comicsluvr wrote:

Masterminds were never squishy unless lots of AoE was flying around. The Minions would often fall first, thus defending their master. It happened mostly at the lower levels. Once a MM got to level 34ish the squishy part was likely gone.

Unless if you were a Ninja Mastermind, in which case the squishiness only got worse all the way to 50.

Comicsluvr wrote:

The only one I couldn't make work was Ninja/TA...damned minions were always dying on me...

Ninjas had such incredibly pathetic defenses (7-12%!) with no way to enhance or improve them that they were practically nekkid at all times and would just fold like pre-creased origami paper in next to no time if anything (including Minions!) directed aggro at them. Trick Arrow just didn't have anywhere NEAR enough control capacity to prevent your Ninjas from taking damage, and of course, Trick Arrow didn't have any healing in it, so your Ninjas just died. A LOT.

I used to joke on SFs that my Incarnate Ninja/Trick Mastermind was really a "petless" build simply because my Ninjas couldn't survive contact with the enemy (any enemy) if they got aggro. So long as my Ninjas did NOT draw aggro onto themselves, they'd live (go figure...) ... otherwise they were just ragdoll heaps on the ground. It was incredibly pathetic.

At the last Player Summit in 2012, I broached the subject with Arbiter Hawk and Black Scorpion in person and after describing the litany of woes that the incredibly awful survival rate of Ninjas when they aren't supported by a complimentary secondary that covers their incredibly MASSIVE Defense Hole (like with, say, Force Fields) that they are just so much wasted Endurance that can't stand up to anything and live ... pretty much both of them were left almost speechless at just how bad the situation was with Ninjas natively, and they both promised to "look into it" when the opportunity arose so as to make some changes.

Of course, Paragon Studios got shut down before that could happen. :(


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It bothers me that the people

It bothers me that the people who work on the game don't know how the game works.

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...

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If CoH hadn't been as massive

If CoH hadn't been as massive and SPRAWLING a beast as it was, I'd agree with you. But CoH wasn't checkers and it wasn't chess. Simply being able to keep track of *ALL* of the moving parts of the game's mechanics and balance was simply an undertaking SO MASSIVE you practically couldn't do it without resorting to a resource like City of Data or having access to the spreadsheets of powers. And even then, because the databases of what powers did what were so HUGE, it was easy for things to get "lost" or otherwise "forgotten" and left behind in the inexorable grind to the NEXT thing finished on time. It's part of why the "Fix All The Things!" Issue kept getting pushed back and back and back and back, because the demand for NEW kept trumping the demand for FIX.

If anything, Star Trek Online seems to be even worse (if that's possible) in this regard, due to the constant pressure to keep producing NEW content, such that there's almost nothing left in terms of Developer Resources for going back and fixing up problems with OLD content. Certain aspects of Klingon Costumes, a highly VISIBLE part of the game, have been essentially broken FOR YEARS now ... and when Cryptic released the new Romulan faction at the beginning of the summer, those Romulans who joined the Klingon faction had those exact same costume bugs affect their NEW characters because the OLD bugs with Klingon Costumes just never got fixed! And there are really no hints on the horizon that suggest Cryptic is going to do anything about it, either now or in the future. The most likely explanation is that even if the Devs responsible for this situation WANT to fix this problem, they're most likely NOT ALLOWED to do so, simply due to the demands of the almighty SCHEDULE which dictates what they get to work on, when ... and that a "push" to fix this (now ancient) bug just keeps not getting Scheduled by whoever controls the Schedule. Competing Priorities, and all that.

So I think it's less a matter of "they don't know how the game works" as much as it is that the game is so HUGE that they CAN'T know how everything works down the last itty bitty little piece of detail AT ALL TIMES. I mean, I played only about maybe 10% of the powersets in CoH, and even *I* couldn't remember every last detail about them off the top of my head "all the time" without needing to refer to City of Data or to Mids' Hero Planner or something to make sure I knew (for sure!) that I understood everything and hadn't left an important detail out. I can't even imagine the kind of headspace it would require to be able to hold the DETAILS of every single power in your head, all at the same time, and keep them all straight so they don't get jumbled up with each other or confused. Anytime you've got a huge sprawling (mess) of a system, there's going to be some parts of it that get neglected, lost or forgotten about, even if they're still there (and mentioned on the maps as being there).


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One thing that I have seen in

One thing that I have seen in other MMO...maybe The Secret World...since there are no ATs...is that you can give yourself a role flag. So you can set your role flag to DPS, Tank, Heal and I also think a blend of any two of them.

Some "tanks" are pure aggro, some are aggro/DPS, some are nearly pure DPS...same with scrappers.

Maybe you have roles like....Aggro, DPS, Heal, Control, Buff, DeBuff...then allow the player to set the default for that toon, but can adjust it in the LFT, or show it in the team list.

So I set my FF/Nrg Defender to Buff/DPS. I set my TA/A to DeBuff/DPS. I set my Fire/Fire Tank to DPS. I set my MA/Dark Scrapper to DPS/DeBuff and so on.

Cuz it seems like in many cases, you dont really care what the actual build is...but you care what the role is expected to be. In PUGs then you can also evaluate folks based upon thier role...

hey Ice/Fire Tank...why do you not have any taunts running? You said you were Aggro/DPS?

It might also be nice to be able to quickly switch between "Roles", that is a set of powers/enhancements. I have been on teams before...where I was off-tank, but pulling aggro from the main tank, because of the way powers interracted...would have been nice to swap out to DPS role, where my powers were reslotted, rather than simply shutting off my toggles and being a weak scrapper.

TSW handles it is a very nice manner with a gear set...as I believe does GW2 and maybe a few others. CO handles it another way where you can set one of 3 modes that makes a global adjustment to how your powers work.

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

So I think it's less a matter of "they don't know how the game works" as much as it is that the game is so HUGE that they CAN'T know how everything works down the last itty bitty little piece of detail AT ALL TIMES. I mean, I played only about maybe 10% of the powersets in CoH, and even *I* couldn't remember every last detail about them off the top of my head "all the time" without needing to refer to City of Data or to Mids' Hero Planner or something to make sure I knew (for sure!) that I understood everything and hadn't left an important detail out. I can't even imagine the kind of headspace it would require to be able to hold the DETAILS of every single power in your head, all at the same time, and keep them all straight so they don't get jumbled up with each other or confused. Anytime you've got a huge sprawling (mess) of a system, there's going to be some parts of it that get neglected, lost or forgotten about, even if they're still there (and mentioned on the maps as being there).

Players howled for YEARS about some of the problems with Coh. Not personal peeves, not minor inconveniences...but real issues. I get that they don't have the staff to have guys JUST to check in-game progress and so on. However many of these problems were brought to light time and time again. In the end I suspect the same problem existed: There was too much new stuff in the pipeline to stop and fix the old stuff.

I read somewhere that War Witch showed up at a panel and was asked, repeatedly, about fixes. She finally said 'Which would you rather have...old stuff fixed or new stuff to play?' The resounding 'OLD STUFF FIXED!' seemed to shock her a bit.

I would rather the game launch with 5 ATs with 2 available powersets each that worked RIGHT than a whole game that was broken.

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...

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@CaptKurt

@CaptKurt
I like this idea of being able to flag yourself into the roles you want to do and having 2 options.
So Tank means I grab aggro and hold onto it. Do not expect any kind of support or damage from me.
Tank/DPS means I can handle aggro as well as do some damage.

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Comicsluvr wrote:
Comicsluvr wrote:

I read somewhere that War Witch showed up at a panel and was asked, repeatedly, about fixes. She finally said 'Which would you rather have...old stuff fixed or new stuff to play?' The resounding 'OLD STUFF FIXED!' seemed to shock her a bit.

I get the feeling that THAT sort of outlook pervades Cryptic Studios, even as the Playerbase doesn't share it. Having a game with Obvious, Glaring Mistakes in it that have just been left lying around FOR YEARS doesn't speak well towards the Developers' sense of "tidiness" let alone "code control" when they let issues like that linger and fester for years on end. Star Trek Online is STILL doing this right now, which is what makes me think that this is a Cryptic Studios "culture" thing, which then got communicated to Paragon Studios due to where most of the Leads for City of Heroes came from (duh, Cryptic!). But the simple fact of the matter is that when you've got these kinds of "unfixes" left lying around in your game, cluttering up the playing experience, and the expectation is for the players to just "live with it and deal" ... it doesn't exactly engender a whole lot of good will with the people who own and "run" the game, and it also makes the game feel "unfinished" (or dare I say it, "half-assed") in terms of its released state ... which in turn does little to inspire confidence in New Players, especially once they see the (sorry) state the game continues to limp along on. It's really a "fit and finish" sort of thing, where a game that is "polished" is better able to keep its "shine" ... not only for the dedicated long term community but also for new players who come in to join that community.

No one wants to buy a dilapidated house, or a car with obvious dents and dings in it (or at least, they don't want to do so at full price!). Same deal with a gaming experience ...


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One of the true beauties of

One of the true beauties of CoH was that not only were the roles varied, but within each AT there was a spectrum of damage vs the core functionality of the AT. Take Tankers. Draw a line and at one end put Damage and at the other put Tanking (includes aggro management, damage resistance/deflection, etc). You had Fire tankers at the damage end and (not being a Tanker fanatic) I can't say what at the other end.

Or controllers, again Fire at the damage end and (oh fiddle, it's been a while so don't kill me if I get this wrong) Ice at the other end for control.

On the other hand, I prefer to look at the roles in an MMO rather than the classes. And I only see 4 roles. The classes supply a myriad of different ways to perform those roles (yet another thing I loved about CoH).

Control
This includes tankers since they control the flow of battle by controlling who the mobs attack

Buff/Debuff
Obvious to CoH players, requires explanation to non-CoH players.

Healer
Duh

DPS
Again, duh

And I love the fact that CoH hybridized those roles, and it appears that CoTi will be doing the same.

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Col. Kernel wrote:
Col. Kernel wrote:

One of the true beauties of CoH was that not only were the roles varied, but within each AT there was a spectrum of damage vs the core functionality of the AT. Take Tankers. Draw a line and at one end put Damage and at the other put Tanking (includes aggro management, damage resistance/deflection, etc). You had Fire tankers at the damage end and (not being a Tanker fanatic) I can't say what at the other end.
Or controllers, again Fire at the damage end and (oh fiddle, it's been a while so don't kill me if I get this wrong) Ice at the other end for control.
On the other hand, I prefer to look at the roles in an MMO rather than the classes. And I only see 4 roles. The classes supply a myriad of different ways to perform those roles (yet another thing I loved about CoH).
Control
This includes tankers since they control the flow of battle by controlling who the mobs attack
Buff/Debuff
Obvious to CoH players, requires explanation to non-CoH players.
Healer
Duh
DPS
Again, duh
And I love the fact that CoH hybridized those roles, and it appears that CoTi will be doing the same.

Stone Armor would be the opposite end of the spectrum from Fire for old tanker defense sets.

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DoH! I knew that!

DoH! I knew that!

Thanks, Voldine!

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

If CoH hadn't been as massive and SPRAWLING a beast as it was, I'd agree with you. But CoH wasn't checkers and it wasn't chess. Simply being able to keep track of *ALL* of the moving parts of the game's mechanics and balance was simply an undertaking SO MASSIVE you practically couldn't do it without resorting to a resource like City of Data or having access to the spreadsheets of powers. And even then, because the databases of what powers did what were so HUGE, it was easy for things to get "lost" or otherwise "forgotten" and left behind in the inexorable grind to the NEXT thing finished on time. It's part of why the "Fix All The Things!" Issue kept getting pushed back and back and back and back, because the demand for NEW kept trumping the demand for FIX.

While I agree with you in general, the part that bugged me was the degree to which the COH devs literally did not know how the engine worked. Not that any given Dev didn't know something, but that there were parts of the engine that they insisted worked one way, even though they'd been proven to work completely differently months or years before. They finally realized that there was a certain sub-set of players that they needed to listen to when something came up and things improved, but for a LONG time, there were areas of the game that nobody knew how it worked.

Yes, it was a beast of a system, yes, there is ZERO chance that any given person would be able to understand it all, but there should have been someone that understood how to-hit worked before Arcanaville basically reverse-engineered that part of the engine to prove that their understanding was completely incorrect.

Also, the i16 drop-rate bug. The dev group did their internal testing and decided it was a "perception" issue and took weeks of convincing (after it went live, no clue how much there was that happened of this in Beta).

One thing I definitely see happening here is that the CoT dev types are definitely engaging the players on things, and from the level of interaction, it seems like if the playerbase comes up with stats to show something is working one way, even if their internal tests say otherwise, they're likely to listen and take the complaint seriously.

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Bel, that's mostly a numbers

Bel, that's mostly a numbers game.

And by that I mean that we the players outnumber the devs. In a game like CoH (and hopefully CoT) that attracts intelligent creative people the devs are going to be outnumbered and outsmarted at some point. Probably many points.

(As an aside, this is one thing that infuriated me with SWTOR devs. I beta'd that beast for a year and the devs never would listen to us.)

As you note, CoH improved drastically once the devs figured out that some of the players had completely reverse engineered the math on it and were telling the devs what the game was actually doing as opposed to what they thought it was doing.

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These are interesting to me,

These are interesting to me, since they illustrate a thing that I am hoping CoT won't be as guilty of, due to the rather unique background that is driving its development...

Redlynne wrote:

I get the feeling that THAT sort of outlook pervades Cryptic Studios, even as the Playerbase doesn't share it. Having a game with Obvious, Glaring Mistakes in it that have just been left lying around FOR YEARS doesn't speak well towards the Developers' sense of "tidiness" let alone "code control" when they let issues like that linger and fester for years on end.

Bellerophon wrote:

[ ... ] the part that bugged me was the degree to which the COH devs literally did not know how the engine worked. Not that any given Dev didn't know something, but that there were parts of the engine that they insisted worked one way, even though they'd been proven to work completely differently months or years before. They finally realized that there was a certain sub-set of players that they needed to listen to when something came up and things improved, but for a LONG time, there were areas of the game that nobody knew how it worked.
Yes, it was a beast of a system, yes, there is ZERO chance that any given person would be able to understand it all, but there should have been someone that understood how to-hit worked before Arcanaville basically reverse-engineered that part of the engine to prove that their understanding was completely incorrect.

Now, you could read the above in a way to say that there is an expectation of 0 mistakes, but it is more about not getting stuff wrong that is important to your customers. I think they illustrate the cumulative result of the game industry rules of thumb about game design and maintenance. Rules of thumb are intended to be more portable forms of lessons learned, so they aren't inherently bad, but they still need to be examined for correctness.

Since the folks in CoT are working on the spiritual successor to a game that most of them played for so many years, they have an advantage that Cryptic didn't (and doesn't, imo). More interesting to me, however, is their experience in other industries, where the rules of thumb on what is acceptable and what is sloppy are very different. I dunno if that will lead to them bringing a more professional model for software release cycles to the MMO industry, but it would be a big win if it did. A success there could give rise to new rules of thumb that provide a more player-friendly balance between being shiny and working properly.

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Oh no, it's not what I planned
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Wanders wrote:
Wanders wrote:

Since the folks in CoT are working on the spiritual successor to a game that most of them played for so many years, they have an advantage that Cryptic didn't (and doesn't, imo).

The downside being that their work gets compared to something that was developed over a decade.

Wanders wrote:

I dunno if that will lead to them bringing a more professional model for software release cycles to the MMO industry, but it would be a big win if it did.

I don't know about the rest of the industry, but the MMOs I've played seemed to be using a professional model for release cycles. Aside from the "we have too few devs" span of CoV between launch and its first expansion, anyway. So which part seems unprofessional?

Surely not that releases are buggy in varying degrees? The whole software industry's like that; the alternative is spending a lot more effort on development (trying to concoct every possible test case under the sun, at least) and shipping much later than you would have otherwise.

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

The downside being that their work gets compared to something that was developed over a decade.

People can say whatever. We'll see how seriously that comparison is taken when it is made.

Quote:

Wanders wrote:
I dunno if that will lead to them bringing a more professional model for software release cycles to the MMO industry, but it would be a big win if it did.
I don't know about the rest of the industry, but the MMOs I've played seemed to be using a professional model for release cycles. Aside from the "we have too few devs" span of CoV between launch and its first expansion, anyway. So which part seems unprofessional?

One example is regular 'scheduled maintenance' windows that involves downtime. For the extreme example of that, look at WoW.

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Wanders wrote:
Wanders wrote:

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
The downside being that their work gets compared to something that was developed over a decade.

People can say whatever. We'll see how seriously that comparison is taken when it is made.

Quote:
Wanders wrote:
I dunno if that will lead to them bringing a more professional model for software release cycles to the MMO industry, but it would be a big win if it did.

I don't know about the rest of the industry, but the MMOs I've played seemed to be using a professional model for release cycles. Aside from the "we have too few devs" span of CoV between launch and its first expansion, anyway. So which part seems unprofessional?

One example is regular 'scheduled maintenance' windows that involves downtime. For the extreme example of that, look at WoW.

You think WoW's is bad?

Try Eve Online. It has *daily* downtime, that lasts roughly 30 minutes.

And on "Expansion release day", you are locked out for *Several* hours.

Unlike the release of MoP, which took 5 minute I think it was (you had to basically relog if you already had the patch downloaded and your account upgraded... it was stupidly fast)

Also, those are built on *old* (in comparison) systems, where the alternatives that would have enabled features that could have enabled advantages could well have been out of their price range (or too expensive for minimal extra benefit).

And swapping from one system to another can have unexpected circumstances.

Side note: Most of Eve's downtime is due to them doing their daily backups of transactions and the like. I believe that for them, its faster and has less processor load having 30 minutes downtime, then actually doing it whilst the game is live.

((If i remember correctly, a while back, doing the backup would spike the Eve server CPU load to 100%, which you *dont* want to do whilst it is live, as it would affect everyone... these companies try to keep downtime to a *minimum*, so they have their reasons, even if you don't like them))

Quote:

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4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

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Col. Kernel wrote:
Col. Kernel wrote:

Bel, that's mostly a numbers game.
And by that I mean that we the players outnumber the devs. In a game like CoH (and hopefully CoT) that attracts intelligent creative people the devs are going to be outnumbered and outsmarted at some point. Probably many points.
(As an aside, this is one thing that infuriated me with SWTOR devs. I beta'd that beast for a year and the devs never would listen to us.)
As you note, CoH improved drastically once the devs figured out that some of the players had completely reverse engineered the math on it and were telling the devs what the game was actually doing as opposed to what they thought it was doing.

The problem I had with it wasn't the fact that the players outnumbered the Devs and had the time (as a group) to dig in farther.

I can understand if the devs don't want to make public how the engine does something. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I can understand it. But when they say that the engine works one way and the players notice that it doesn't seem like that is right and have to reverse engineer it themselves to prove that it works a completely different way and have the Devs not believe them, that's a problem.

The underlying issue was that the people responsible for fixing/modifying the engine simply did not know how it worked. That's a horrible situation for ANY system.

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that is what a lack of

that is what a lack of documentation can do though...

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I have a programming friend

I have a programming friend who told me that despite the fact that he was reminded CONSTANTLY all through school to record his methods he has NEVER seen this done in the field. Coders don't want to tell anyone how they do things because it takes time and many feel that their specialized knowledge helps insure job security. On the flip side, the bosses never allow time for proper documentation and never ask to see any either. It's the worst kept secret in programming.

As a QA guy this very idea makes me shudder at times...

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...

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I hope for no roles We're

I hope for no roles We're playing superheroes. Spider-Man isn't put into any one AT.

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Comicsluvr wrote:
Comicsluvr wrote:

I have a programming friend who told me that despite the fact that he was reminded CONSTANTLY all through school to record his methods he has NEVER seen this done in the field. Coders don't want to tell anyone how they do things because it takes time and many feel that their specialized knowledge helps insure job security. On the flip side, the bosses never allow time for proper documentation and never ask to see any either. It's the worst kept secret in programming.

There's a pretty valid question as to what constitutes "proper documentation", not only because "proper" is in the eye of the beholder, but also because the question of what kind of documentation is *useful* varies from environment to environment. Since it does take time to produce docs, crappy docs that fit some checklist of properness are worse than none. Such docs are almost certainly not going to be updated, either, so it is even more of a waste of time.

I'm currently working at a place that is pretty devops-y, and which has a complicated operating environment that still undergoes lots of development. For this place, the code is definitely the most accurate documentation of the current state of things, but even so there is a benefit in encouraging the forms of documentation that are relatively low-cost, and that pay off the most for the coders you expect to produce it. Things like comments in the code that document stuff (regardless of whether the stuff was written by you or by someone else) that you had to figure out, and archiving and indexing mailing lists (or whatever) where bugs are discussed. (In my particular case, I have the added advantage of a bad memory, so I have more incentive to note things down than remembery people do >_>)

The hard part in a place like that is to not to get so caught up in the code-is-my-documentation mindset that you don't document things that -are- kind of stable, and especially things that you expect other people to use (like APIs and tools and such). In a devops-y place, it is the devs who have to field questions about such things, so that is a pretty good incentive for them to write those oft-repeated answers up in a document form. That is also a way you can encourage "best practices" and to try to limit the range of uses you will later be called upon to support. To put it another way, if you figure out ways to make a documenting a win-on-balance for the people who will need to do it, you'll get better results than if you pursue some ideal doctopia.

Anyway, as nice as documentation can be at times, I kind of worry more about design and code reviews, since so many problems are due to people making weird-in-retrospect design choices that end up leading to a lot of workarounds later. Just getting someone to talk about an approach with someone else is often enough to expose many of those before they get baked in.

The bigger question, that all of that stuff ends up fitting into, is whether the dev environment is healthy or not. If a coder is actually not documenting stuff to enhance job security and managers are verbally talking about documenting but actually discouraging it, that's a messed-up place. It's like how some companies focus on figuring out who is to blame when something goes wrong, and others focus on making sure it won't happen again. Based just on my personal experience, I would say that if you find yourself in a poison-laced place, it is easier to move to a healthier one than it is to fix the broken one. I hope that the folks in charge of shaping the CoT tech side will work on fostering a healthy dev environment... it is shaped by incentives and rewards and lore as much as the game itself will be.

Quote:

As a QA guy this very idea makes me shudder at times...

You have my sympathies. :)

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

I hope for no roles We're playing superheroes. Spider-Man isn't put into any one AT.

There's a whole big thread about having freeform power selection, and the dev team thought about it, and decided to go with AT's. The reasoning why can be found from various red-sig posts in said thread.

Amongst those reasons: it's much more difficult for new players to make effective character with a great big huge system, it has a tendency to promote cookie cutter builds taking all the best powers.

The thread in all its many pages can be found here: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/why-not-free-form-system-instead-classification-system

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Col. Kernel
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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

I hope for no roles We're playing superheroes. Spider-Man isn't put into any one AT.

Role =\= AT Let me quote my post from above.

Col. Kernel wrote:

On the other hand, I prefer to look at the roles in an MMO rather than the classes. And I only see 4 roles. The classes supply a myriad of different ways to perform those roles (yet another thing I loved about CoH).
Control
This includes tankers since they control the flow of battle by controlling who the mobs attack
Buff/Debuff
Obvious to CoH players, requires explanation to non-CoH players.
Healer
Duh
DPS
Again, duh
And I love the fact that CoH hybridized those roles, and it appears that CoTi will be doing the same.

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There's just Control and Buff

There's just Control and Buff/Debuff.

"Healer" is Buff/Debuff that specializes in Buff Friendly HP.

"DPS" is just Buff/Debuff that specializes in Debuff Enemy HP. ^_-

Deconstructing further, Control is just Debuff Aggro Effectiveness... @_@

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

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Zombie Man wrote:
Zombie Man wrote:

The CoV ATs show that you can have very varied AT playstyles with great overlap.
Except for the very fringe cases where the Devs set up a situation which almost required a certain AT (e.g., a Tanker at the end of the Statesman TF), a Brute or a Scrapper, or a MasterMind, or the right Defender (Dark!) could server the *role* of a Tanker in crowd control and/or damage sponge without having to have the magical Taunt power to do so. (Or even a Controller (Illusion!).)
Also, some powers are contextual. A Scrapper or Brute that specialized in single foe DPS will outshine a Blaster who specialized in AoE when up against a single hard target.
This overlap let to Blappers and Offenders.
And this was fun. IMO. I wouldn't want to see in CoT a strict adherence to the *role* of an 'AT' and then deny all other ATs from being able to serve in that role.

But...I tanked Recluse at the end of the Statesman TF with my Scrapper. Is the idea not to allow such a thing?

Is the idea to be solo friendly except for certain content, and then it will require CoT's version of a Tanker?

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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

There's just Control and Buff/Debuff.
"Healer" is Buff/Debuff that specializes in Buff Friendly HP.
"DPS" is just Buff/Debuff that specializes in Debuff Enemy HP. ^_-
Deconstructing further, Control is just Debuff Aggro Effectiveness... @_@

I took the 10,000 foot view, you took the 25,000 foot view. If you keep going higher pretty soon all you see is characters and there are no more meaningful differences.

In fact, I'd say you already passed the point the point of meaningful differences.

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Col. Kernel wrote:
Col. Kernel wrote:

\I took the 10,000 foot view, you took the 25,000 foot view. If you keep going higher pretty soon all you see is characters and there are no more meaningful differences.

... is hard to breathe up here ... x_x

But my main point was that the "Trinity" could be deconstructed to the point of "X makes Y bigger or smaller" and you could build a table out of it. CoH didn't get rid of the Trinity as much as it took everything and said "Will it blend?"

So you got all these different "archetypes" that cheated and swiped stuff from other archetypes. My plant controller could play healer with her tree pet. */Ice blasters could punch things with ice fists. Claws scrappers could tag things at range with their claws. And so on.

"Know the rules so that you may properly break them."

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Col. Kernel wrote:
\
I took the 10,000 foot view, you took the 25,000 foot view. If you keep going higher pretty soon all you see is characters and there are no more meaningful differences.

... is hard to breathe up here ... x_x
But my main point was that the "Trinity" could be deconstructed to the point of "X makes Y bigger or smaller" and you could build a table out of it. CoH didn't get rid of the Trinity as much as it took everything and said "Will it blend?"
So you got all these different "archetypes" that cheated and swiped stuff from other archetypes. My plant controller could play healer with her tree pet. */Ice blasters could punch things with ice fists. Claws scrappers could tag things at range with their claws. And so on.
"Know the rules so that you may properly break them."

I'm from RO, breaking rules is what we do best! :D

But I will disagree with your statement that CoH didn't get rid of the Trinity as much as it took everything and said "Will it blend?"

The trinity is forced on most MMO players by an imbalance between healing and everything else (de/buffs in particular). The first part of the problem is that healing is the worst form of damage mitigation. If you have 1000 HP and take 1100 points of damage, that can't be healed. Buffing and debuffing are the solution, therefore most MMOs nerf those abilities quite hard.

And their position is not completely unjustified. In CoH RO (and others) discovered just how godlike we could become by abusing stacked buffs and debuffs.

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Col. Kernel wrote:
Col. Kernel wrote:

Brand X wrote:
I hope for no roles We're playing superheroes. Spider-Man isn't put into any one AT.

Role =\= AT Let me quote my post from above.
Col. Kernel wrote:
On the other hand, I prefer to look at the roles in an MMO rather than the classes. And I only see 4 roles. The classes supply a myriad of different ways to perform those roles (yet another thing I loved about CoH).
Control
This includes tankers since they control the flow of battle by controlling who the mobs attack
Buff/Debuff
Obvious to CoH players, requires explanation to non-CoH players.
Healer
Duh
DPS
Again, duh
And I love the fact that CoH hybridized those roles, and it appears that CoTi will be doing the same.

Spidey doesn't have a role either. :p

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

Spidey doesn't have a role either. :p

Sure he does! He's your friendly neighborhood Spiderman. That's his role.

Spidey is an RPer, not a PvPer.


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Spidey is an RPer, not a PvPer.

I don't like the implication that these are separate people. I stay in character at all times while logged in and still Kick other players' asses

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JayBezz wrote:
JayBezz wrote:

Redlynne wrote:
Spidey is an RPer, not a PvPer.

I don't like the implication that these are separate people. I stay in character at all times while logged in and still Kick other players' asses

Looking at CO, I think the comment is more along the lines of "Oh hey! Look! This powerful demon concept, who prefers the arcane, is using firearms and calling in an aircraft to strafe the target."

There are plenty who's idea of a concept is "What's the best powers to take as a whole, forget everything else." While a fine way to play, as some people have no care for concept or think their hodge podge of a concept is actually a concept, as it fits them grabbing such powers as an excuse, it can ruin the game for others.

Now, I'm by no means the hardcore PvPer. I stopped PvPing as much in CoH whenthe great PvP nerf happened.

I do think there's ways around all this and keep the game balanced, but it appears to be past that point, and even if CoT was the most balanced of games, as soon as someone loses, they'll claim it isn't balanced anyways :p

To really enjoy PvPing one has to be able to handle losing. Most people think losing means it sucks. You may not be that person, but MANY and I would say MOST are not that way. To often I see "No, don't PvP because I can't win." even in CO I can think of one person who had repeatedly told me, if they're not winning and not the best, they're not having fun.

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

To really enjoy PvPing one has to be able to handle losing. Most people think losing means it sucks. You may not be that person, but MANY and I would say MOST are not that way. To often I see "No, don't PvP because I can't win." even in CO I can think of one person who had repeatedly told me, if they're not winning and not the best, they're not having fun.

I understand that people think this.. And there is little the devs can do about that. It's the human component of competition.

Everyone should be able to die/lose. Some because they die easily, others because their damage is pitiful. But if we all go into the paradigm of PvP accepting that loss is a part of it then players can have FUN with competition.

Those who take competition very seriously should be reminded IN GAME.. that it's only a game at the end of every match. I don't care if it's a corny 8BIT screencap saying "You win this time!"

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