Okay, before I dive into this, everyone gets a warning.
This is an attempt to communicate an IDEA for how to structure Level Advancement, in terms of how things get sequenced (and why that might be a good idea) … how I’d set up the Enhancement System (and why doing it this way might be a good idea) … how Enhancements would inter(re)act with Powers (and why doing it that way might be a good idea) … and how this entire regime could potentially be extended on into the future when raising the Level Cap after game launch. So there’s a LOT to cover, a lot to explain, and details to lay out so as to communicate how everything hangs together to form a unified whole. I’m also going to be comparing and contrasting between what City of Heroes did versus what I’m suggesting/recommending be done here, so as to better illustrate the differences and communicate The IDEA as clearly as possible. In other words …
[b][size=30]WALL OF TEXT™ CRITS YOU!!!![/size][/b]
You have been warned.
Proceed at your own risk.
Do not back up, severe tire damage may result from Caltrops.
But then, pretty much ANYTHING trying to tackle such a “large” item of consequence in terms of Game Design is going to be huge so … no big surprises there. ^_~
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
[b][url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Leveling_Chart]City of Heroes Leveling Chart[/url][/b]
City of Heroes had a Leveling system that essentially mandated adding a new power at every even numbered Level from 2 to 32, and then adding another new power every third Level thereafter between 35 and 49. The result was 17 Power Picks by Level 30, and only 28 Enhancement Slots by Level 30. That total increased to 24 Power Picks by Level 50, supported by 67 Enhancement slots by Level 50. This was because starting at Level 31, Enhancement Slots were granted in threes rather than twos on the Enhancement Slots Levels, and there were now twice as many Enhancement Slots Levels per Power Pick Levels.
So in the early game (1-30) the Powers were essentially “starved” for Enhancement Slots, and it was only towards the end game (31-50) that this deficiency started being reversed and the pendulum on the ratio of Enhancement Slots per Power started swinging the other way, allowing more Powers to be Fully Slotted. A ratio of 1.65:1 Slots Added per Power by Level 30 became a ratio of 2.8:1 Slots Added per Power by Level 50. These numbers don’t even take account of the starting Powers at Level 1 (one Primary, one Secondary), nor the Inherent Powers (Brawl, Rest, Sprint, Hurdle, Swift, Health, Stamina) which could also be given Enhancement Slots, all of which would lower the ratio of Slots Available to Total Powers below the ratios shown above.
City of Heroes was a game originally designed for a Level 40 Cap, but City of Titans is planned to launch with a Level 30 Cap … which means that the same assumptions that went into the City of Heroes structure for Level Advancements is not [i]entirely operative[/i] in the way that City of Titans will need when the game launches. Furthermore, it is unwise for a variety of reasons to design a system that keeps characters “weak” at the beginning and then allows them to grow to be “too powerful” at the end when they reach the Level Cap. In short, I believe that City of Titans would be better served to launch with a more … consistent … Level Advancement Scheme than the one used in City of Heroes, if only so as to make it easier to extend the structure in future when the Level Cap gets raised, and also to offer a steadier, more consistent path of advancement through the game in terms of Character Strength.
I’ll be dealing with the structuring of earning New Powers first, before turning to how I’d recommend the Added Enhancement progression would be structured, how the Enhancements that go into those slots should be valued, and numerous other topics along the way … so buckle up, this is going to be a long Task Force. ^_~
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
[b]Power Picks and Enhancement Slots[/b]
Level 1: 1 Classification (Primary) Power (up to 2nd)
Level 1: 1 Specification (Secondary) Power (up to 2nd)
Level 2: 1 Classification Power (up to 3rd)
Level 3: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 4: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 3rd)
Level 5: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 6: 1 Classification Power (up to 4th) or 1 Specification Power (up to 3rd) or a Pool Power (up to 1st)
Level 7: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 8: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 4th) or a Pool Power (up to 1st)
Level 9: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 10: +1 Global Enhancement Slot
Level 11: 1 Classification Power (up to 5th) or 1 Specification Power (up to 4th) or a Pool Power (up to 2nd)
Level 12: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 13: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 5th) or a Pool Power (up to 2nd)
Level 14: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 15: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 5th) or a Pool Power (up to 2nd)
Level 16: 1 Classification Power (up to 6th) or 1 Specification Power (up to 5th) or a Pool Power (up to 3rd)
Level 17: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 18: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 6th) or a Pool Power (up to 3rd)
Level 19: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 20: +1 Global Enhancement Slot
Level 21: 1 Classification Power (up to 7th) or 1 Specification Power (up to 6th) or a Pool Power (up to 4th)
Level 22: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 23: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 7th) or a Pool Power (up to 4th)
Level 24: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 25: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 7th) or a Pool Power (up to 4th)
Level 26: 1 Classification Power (up to 8th) or 1 Specification Power (up to 7th) or a Pool Power (up to 4th)
Level 27: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 28: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 8th) or a Pool Power (up to 4th)
Level 29: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 30: +1 Global Enhancement Slot
Total Power Picks by Level 30: 16
Total Additional Enhancement Slots: 36
Total Global Enhancement Slots: 3
Note that this structure allocates a maximum number of Power Tiers for a 1-30 game of eight, not nine like City of Heroes had, for its Classification (Primary) and Specification (Secondary) powersets. Also, the parenthetical notes of (1st/2nd/3rd/etc.) in the above chart is to indicate which Tiers of Powers are available with those Powersets. This structure allocates a total Additional Enhancement Slots in a 2.25:1 ratio of Slots to Powers, which is almost dead center of the spread between City of Heroes at midgame versus endgame … but it also introduces a new kind of Enhancement Slot, inspired by the Invention System of City of Heroes … the Global Enhancement Slots (which I’ll explain in a bit).
Extending this system beyond 30 would involve (presumably) enabling the Mastery (Tertiary) Powers, thus filling in the role of the Epic Power Pools/Ancilliary Power Pools in the 40 to 50 range of City of Heroes. It would then look something like this:
Level 31: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 8th) or Mastery Power (up to 1st) or a Pool Power (up to 4th)
Level 32: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 33: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 8th) or Mastery Power (up to 2nd) or a Pool Power (up to 4th)
Level 34: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 35: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 8th) or Mastery Power (up to 2nd) or a Pool Power (up to 4th)
Level 36: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 8th) or Mastery Power (up to 3rd) or a Pool Power (up to 4th)
Level 37: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 38: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 8th) or Mastery Power (up to 4th) or a Pool Power (up to 4th)
Level 39: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 40: +1 Global Enhancement Slot
Total Power Picks by Level 40: 21
Total Additional Enhancements: 48
Total Global Enhancement Slots: 4
Although it may not look like it (quite) yet, I would argue that this particular structure is in its own way “just as powerful” as that of the City of Heroes arrangement, with 24 Powers and 67 Enhancement Slots by Level 50 … except that we’re getting to it here at Level 40. In part that is simply due to the “compression” necessary in order to launch the game with a minimally “complete” set of powers for a 1-30 game instead of a 1-40 game.
Note, that if this basic structure were to be extended even further, to make a 41-50 Level game a reality, my personal recommendation would be to add a 9th Tier Power to the Classification and Specification powersets, and add 5th Tier Powers to the Mastery and Pool powersets so as to give them something to gain in the 41-50 Level range. The result would then look like this:
Level 41: 1 Classification Power (up to 9th) or a Pool Power (up to 5th)
Level 42: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 43: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 9th) or a Pool Power (up to 5th)
Level 44: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 45: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 9th) or a Pool Power (up to 5th)
Level 46: Mastery Power (up to 5th) or a Pool Power (up to 5th)
Level 47: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 48: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 9th) or Mastery Power (up to 5th) or a Pool Power (up to 5th)
Level 49: +3 Additional Enhancement Slots
Level 50: +1 Global Enhancement Slot
Total Power Picks by Level 50: 26
Total Additional Enhancement Slots: 60
Total Global Enhancement Slots: 5
Level 50 would thus effectively be the “Incarnate” level of power seen in the endgame of City of Heroes, but without the Incarnate Powers System. The important thing to note here though is that the basic structure that I’m proposing with all this is essentially an extensible one that can carry the game through raising the Level Cap from 30 all the way up to 50. It also “defers” some of the more complex complicating aspects of Powers Development beyond Game Launch so as to have plenty of time to take stock of the emerging Game Balance Issues to correct and adjust them before adding additional layers onto the system.
At its heart, this system offers (roughly) 5 Powers Picks per 10 Levels, 12 Additional Enhancement Slots that get applied to those Power Picks per 10 Levels, and 1 Global Enhancement Slot per 10 Levels. The only disruption to that pattern is that Level 1 is effectively a Special Case in order to get the character started. This structure can just simply be repeated for every +10 Levels added to the Level Cap, creating a relatively even slope towards increasing power for characters.
Power Pools can be chosen from as early as Level 6, although with a little bit more restriction to it than City of Heroes imposed in terms of Pool Powers’ availability after that point so they are slightly delayed relative to the City of Heroes legacy model (but not by much).
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
[b]Additional Enhancement Slots[/b]
I envision the Additional Enhancement Slots working in pretty much the same way that City of Heroes ran the system in that these get applied to specific Powers, and they MUST be allocated in order to complete a Level Up Advancement. A major difference that I want to place a marker here for though is changing the number of Slots which any one Power can have from 6 … to 8. This change is designed to accommodate other changes I’m going to be calling for in the City of Titans system for how Enhancements are valued, which I will deal with further down when I discuss Enhancements themselves later on.
Note that just like in the City of Heroes scheme, I envision every Power starting with 1 “free” Enhancement Slot already in the Power, meaning that every Power Pick would have room for 7 Additional Enhancement Slots (not 8).
[b]Global Enhancement Slots[/b]
This is a very MAJOR change from the way City of Heroes ran its Enhancement System. Here, I’m calling for the inclusion of Enhancement Slots that aren’t assigned to any ONE Power, but which instead allows the Enhancements put into these Global Slots to add their value to ALL Powers that a character has. These would be TRULY Global Enhancement Slots. Put an Accuracy Enhancement into a Global Enhancement Slot and you have just added the value of that Enhancement to every Power you have.
Now, before anyone freaks out over what that might do to Game Balance, consider that when I get to how I’d like to see Enhancements “work” in a little bit here, I’m going to be calling for a Diminishing Returns Formula that will moderate excessive stacking of Enhancement values in such a way as to incentivize (without mandating) a diversity of choices for these Global Enhancement Slots, rather than going “monotone” with them. So Don’t Panic and keep reading (or continue “testing” if you’ve got a Portal Gun) … because this isn’t over.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
[b]Enhancements[/b]
City of Heroes ran on a baseline system of Single Origin Enhancements that was defined as being +100% Value for 3 Enhancements (in Schedule A). This meant that, prior to Enhancement Dysfunction, it was possible to 6-slot a Power for +200% of a particular property of that Power. This had the (unfortunate) effect of making Single Origin Enhancements operate on a +33.3% basis, since they were dividing +100% up into thirds.
Compounding this sort of mathematical “quirkiness” was the fact that the progression of Training Origin to Double Origin to Single Origin scaled in a 1:2:4 fashion, creating a steeply increasing power curve as characters progressed through Levels 1-22, where they could finally begin slotting Single Origins. The net result was that at low levels in the early game, Training Origin Enhancements were practically worthless, because their influence was almost too small to notice, since you needed to have 6 Slots filled with identical Training Origins in order to get even a +50% benefit out of them … all at a time when your character was lucky to have any Enhancement Slots at all because you were still earning them. Unfortunately, City of Heroes was essentially Balanced around the notion that Training Origin Enhancements were supposed to have almost no effect on the Powers they were slotted into, and all Foe NPCs were Balanced accordingly. Tiny Damage that had Tiny Damage Enhancements slotted into it yielded … still Tiny Damage. QUITE unsatisfying!
I’m recommending that in City of Titans the value of Enhancements be changed from a +33.3% value to being a +25% value instead. This helps moderate certain quirks of the legacy City of Heroes structure (such as very nearly EVERY Power needing to have Accuracy slotted into it to the tune of 1-2 Enhancement Slots just in order to reliably hit Foes with that Power) and puts everything on a footing that is easier to work with, because you’re dealing with eight “quarters” instead of six “thirds” for Enhancements. I strongly feel that this one change alone will introduce a greater variety into potential builds and strategies since it will in and of itself allow for (and promote) greater Enhancement Diversity simply because there are more potential combinations available.
Now, as far as the database would be concerned, the field value for these Enhancements as I’m proposing here would actually be “0.25” in the spreadsheet, not “25” so as to make the math downstream for use in formulas easier (by removing the need for a “divide by 100” operation), but for the purposes of our discussion here, it’s easier to just talk about it in terms of being +25 at times because that’s the terminology and framework that we’re all used to using with City of Heroes. So if you see me doing this in the writeup, understand that I’m using these two notations interchangeably for the comfort of the Humans reading this post. ^_~
And just to be clear, I do not envision recreating the Training/Double/Single Origin progression inside of City of Titans, because … let’s be honest here … that wasn’t fun. What I’m calling for here is a single VALUE for all Enhancements regardless of type … so no Schedule A/B/C/D nonsense. Any and every Enhancement offers the same “value” when slotted. However, that VALUE is subject to Diminishing Returns, so the strength of the EFFECT on Powers will vary, depending on how many stack up their value on a particular power.
Which then leads to everyone’s favorite subject …
[b]Diminishing Returns Formula[/b]
The formula I’m thinking of using for a Diminishing Returns system on Enhancement values is essentially a (simple?) Square Root function.
1 Enhancement = +25 = 0.25 … square root of 0.25 = 0.5
2 Enhancements = +50 = 0.5 … square root of 0.5 = 0.71
3 Enhancements = +75 = 0.75 … square root of 0.75 = 0.87
4 Enhancements = +100 = 1 … square root of 1 = 1
5 Enhancements = +125 = 1.25 … square root of 1.25 = 1.12
6 Enhancements = +150 = 1.5 … square root of 1.5 = 1.22
7 Enhancements = +175 = 1.75 … square root of 1.75 = 1.32
8 Enhancements = +200 = 2 … square root of 2 = 1.4
9 Enhancements = +225 = 2.25 … square root of 2.25 = 1.5
10 Enhancements = +250 = 2.5 … square root of 2.5 = 1.58
11 Enhancements = +275 = 2.75 … square root of 2.75 = 1.66
12 Enhancements = +300 = 3 … square root of 3 = 1.73
13 Enhancements = +325 = 3.25 … square root of 3.25 = 1.8
The appeal of this system, at least for me, is that the Diminishing Returns function becomes pretty apparent very quickly, but it does so on a parabolic curve, rather than through the dreaded “cliff” of the City of Heroes system.
The number produced after the Square Root function is then the Enhancement Multiplier that is then plugged into the formula that determines how Enhancements modify any given Power’s effects. In this case, I’m talking about the familiar … yet now slightly altered … formulas of:
Increasing Power Effect: (Power Base * (1 + (Enhancement Multiplier * Power Multiplier)))
Reducing Power Effect: (Power Base / (1 + (Enhancement Multiplier * Power Multiplier)))
The Power Base is the base value of whatever property of the Power is being affected by the Enhancement. The Enhancement Multiplier is determined from the Square Root formula demonstrated above. The Power Multiplier is a field specified inside the spreadsheet recording the various aspects of a Power that can be affected by Enhancements (of the correct type(s)) and is set as a Constant for that particular aspect of that Power so as to enable what I like to term “microtargeting” of Game Balance parameters to POWERS as needed without needing to edit the entire Enhancement Item system (ala Schedule A/B/C/D) in global ways that can cause unwanted interactions with unrelated Powers if adjusted [i]on the Enhancement Values[/i] rather than on the [i]Powers themselves[/i].
When the Power Multiplier is set to “1” and the Enhancement Multiplier is 1, the above formulas result in:
Increasing Power Effect: (1 * (1 + (1*1))) = 1*2 = 2 = double effect
Reducing Power Effect: (1 / (1 + (1*1))) = 1/2 = 0.5 = half effect
Thus, where 3 Single Origin Damage Enhancements yield “double damage” (before Enhancement Dysfunction) in City of Heroes, using my system, 4 Enhancements yield “double” damage” as well … and both slotting arrangements require half the available maximum Slots a power can have … 3 in City of Heroes versus 4 in my proposed City of Titans system here.
More detail about this notion of being able to “control” the strength of Enhancements on various aspects of Powers in a fine grained, individually targeted way, can be found [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/27463#comment-27463]HERE[/url]. I maintain that it is simpler to tweak the POWERS in terms of how strongly they’re affected by Enhancements, rather than tweaking the ENHANCEMENT values in a global way to resolve issues of edge cases that can crop up with specific powers. Furthermore, it could potentially make life SO MUCH EASIER for the Powers And Game Balance Team!
Now at this point, I need to make a couple of things clear. First of all, I’m not “wedded” to the notion of using a Square Root function to create a parabolic decay curve of Diminishing Returns for slotting Enhancements … it just happens to have a shape that “feels right” to me for the purpose I’m trying to achieve. It means that the first Enhancement of ANY type slotted into a Power will have a [i]very noticeable[/i] effect on that Power’s performance, but the gains from slotting additionals beyond the first see a very noticeable drop off in additional gains, albeit with no sharp “cliff” sort of behavior “forcing” a particular choice of when to stop. However, this system does mean that if you want to get “maximum value” out of your choices for Enhancement Slotting, the familiar Frankenslot method of differing types of Enhancements will actually net the greatest “efficiency” of added value … but then the question becomes, “is that degree of Enhancement sufficient” for what you want the Power to do?
Complicating this question is the fact that there are Global Enhancement Slots in play, which effectively add to the number of Enhancements influencing the performance of every Power you have. This can then create a very … peculiar set of divergent build strategy behaviors, including doing things like not putting any Damage Enhancements into the Global Slots, since not every Power can make “use” of Damage Enhancement … but most can use Accuracy or Endurance Reduction or Recharge Reduction in some form or fashion. The question then becomes one of whether or not to “diversify” the choices of what to slot into the Global Slots, or to stack them all with a single type of Enhancement to achieve a sort of “global specialization” in your build plan.
Ultimately though, this becomes something of a Meta Game question, and to my delight is something that WILL NOT have a One Size Fits All answer, simply because nearly every build will be different, and different play styles will place different demands of different weights on what YOUR build will “need” in those Global Enhancement Slots to be most powerful in the most “efficient” way. The real point of pride for me though is that those Global Enhancement Slots offer builds an opportunity to either Specialize or Diversify themselves in a way that City of Heroes never made possible, and puts that choice entirely within the decision making process of the Player, and doesn’t require the Player to (in effect) “jump through hoops” building Invention Sets defined by Developers who didn’t build those Sets for YOUR build specifically.
Another advantage of this move from six Slots to having eight is that it substantially reduces the need for complications of Dual and Triple Enhancement Types such a Hamidon Origin and practically all Invention Set Enhancements, since having eight Slots available on any one power, and Global Enhancement Slots supporting them, allows enough “room” to get everything you’d really “need” into a Power without [i]needing to[/i] resort to Dual and Triple type Enhancements in order to be able to “squeeze everything in” that you’d want to add onto a Power. This system is, I think anyway, both “broad” enough and “deep” enough to create a SIMPLE set of rules to control everything … which can then engender an absolute PROFUSION of builds, strategies, specializations and play styles among the Playerbase.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
[b]Conclusion[/b]
Everything I’ve read in the forums so far tells me that how THIS subject is planned to be accomplished hasn’t been nailed down yet … hence my eagerness to “throw my hat into the ring” to see if I can in some (*cough*) … [i]small way[/i] … aid the efforts I see going on all around here to make this game not only the Spiritual Successor to City of Heroes, but also a GREAT GAME in its own right. To achieve that end, I have already emailed Mentalshock my IP Release and NDA Forms in preparation for making THIS post and initiating this discussion. I can only hope that no one [i]On Staff[/i] finds this effort of mine to be counterproductive.
As always, comments, thoughts and discussion are not only invited but also encouraged, because the one thing that I [b]DO NOT[/b] want to have happen is for something as … weighty … as this particular subject covers take place in the ABSENCE of Peer Review. I don’t claim to have all the answers, nor do I assume that the above proposal is “perfect” (let alone “ready” for Prime Time “as is” just yet) … but it’s my opening bid in trying to help make this game be everything can … and should … be for its players. AWESOME.
Easy to Learn. Difficult to Master.
Words to live by.
But then ... we're Heroes. This is what we do.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I'd give the lady a round of applause, but all I have are rectangles of admiration.
In all seriousness, though, this seems like a decent plan to someone without insider information.
The original Lady of Ysgard. -Virtue
[img]http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2010/203/c/5/Updated_Homage_by_Voldine.jpg[/img]
[i]* dies.[/i]
[i]* respawns.[/i]
[i]* rubs eyes.[/i]
Ow.
Anyway, if anyone cares, I decided to fit a log curve that ends up around the same "just short of 200%" point for 13 enhancements, using the formula [i]m[/i] = ln(1 + [i]n[/i] / [i]s[/i])
where [i]n[/i] is the number of enhancements, [i]s[/i] is a constant per-enhancement scale factor, and [i]m[/i] is the resulting enhancement multiplier.
With [i]s[/i] = 2.5, I get these results for [i]m[/i]:
1 to 5 enhancements: 33.6%, 58.8%, 78.8%, 95.6%, 109.9%
6 to 10 enhancements: 122.4%, 133.5%, 143.5%, 152.6%, 160.9%
11 to 13 enhancements: 168.6%, 175.8%, 182.5%
[b]EDIT:[/b] For the record, for schedule A at-level SOs (+33.3...% each), the post-ED bonuses in CoX were approximately 33%, 67%, 95%, 100%, 105%, and 110%.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
An interesting and well-thought out proposal, Redlynne. Two things come to mind while reading it over for a second time.
First, I have the feeling that the number of enhancements versus the number of powers is a little slot-starved. While it is a only somewhat smaller proportion of slots to powers than CoH had at 50 (CoH: 2.8:1, Proposed: 2.25:1 at 30, 2.3:1 at 50), the number of potential slots per power has increased from 6 to 8 per power. So in CoH, you had 144 potential slot positions (24 powers, 6 slots per power, not including the inherent powers) and you could activate 46.5% of your potential slots. With this system, at 50 there are 208 potential slots (26 powers, 8 slots each) and 28.8% of those slots can be activated. This would be offset somewhat by the 5 global slots, of course. The globals will save on slot cost, but be less flexible as not all powers may make use of an enhancement in a global power. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how much the global boosts will offset having fewer power-specific boots.
Second, and I freely admit this is a pedantic nitpick, but your diminishing square root system is actually a diminishing absolute square root system. We want to avoid those negative square roots, ya know. :D
But what if you have negative enhancements? :P
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Then you need to Respec.
NEXT!
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
*sits down with a sign that reads 'Can't survive Terra Volta respec, please help' on the bridge in IP*
I'll help! Got a good book to bring along?
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Short answer: it's a trade-off, and it's up to the Player to decide the most effective, efficient and applicable tradeoffs they want to make with the Global Enhancement Slots for THEIR build, which may not have the same needs as someone else's.
Longer answer: in terms of being able to "activate" the maximum number of slots, you're absolutely right, my system makes it harder to achieve the maximum in more powers than the legacy system. However, if you count things in terms of "how many slots does it take to get to 8?" when factoring in the Globals, things go quite sideways on a theoretical paper analysis just because of the number of variables involved. That's because you can't make a "proper" sort of apples to apples analysis when cross-comparing the two systems. That's because the complicating factor of the Global Enhancement Slots turns this orange into a tangerine ... which makes oranges to oranges comparisons not even work right because one end of it is really a tangerine.
Best I can tell you is that I firmly believe that the Global Enhancement Slots combined with the Diminishing Returns Formula I laid out (and Lin is suggesting alternative math for, which I have no problems with) turns what had been a 2D problem into a 3D one, and so the metrics you use to judge one don't "translate" all that well into judging the other [i]on the same terms[/i]. My system is just [b]a different beast[/b] that manages to do the "work" of the Invention System with its Set Bonuses and Dual/Triple/Quad Enhancements by using "sort of Single Origin" Enhancements throughout my entire system, simplifying it tremendously(!).
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I do! It's the latest book in the Wall of Text series by Redlynne.
Uhh... reactor'll go cold before you're done.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
When I tried calculating the effect of the global slots, I figured out that if every one of them were useful on every power, it came out to the rough equivalent of over 60% slot activation. Of course, where the usefulness falls along the activation curve is going to vary depending on the build and the goals of the player.
And I particularly am happy with the 'No TO/DO' part of it. I almost never used TOs or DOs, because TOs were practically unnoticeable and DOs .. well, DOs I'd slot if they happened to drop for me, but they really didn't make enough of a difference for me to go out and buy them. SOs (and later on, low level IOs) were the first I actively sought to slot.
Speaking of SOs, what are your thoughts on having effectiveness degrade as the boost ages? I see the value in this from a currency-sink point of view, buying a new set of SOs every 5 levels took some of that hard won influence out of the economy. But it was also annoying to level up in a mission and suddenly be less effective because of it.
I love it. I love that there are no TOs and DOs. I love that there is room to really amp up a few powers, or spread it around, and still feel balanced either way, because of the global enhancements. Again, I am not a programmer, so I do not know the complexities of what is or is not doable, but from a player standpoint, this sounds like a simple, straight forward method of leveling with a lot of room for individualization.
Nice work.
Good read. I like the global enhancements wrinkle your system proposes. As Red and Mendicant have discussed, it opens up options in how to slot powers and can mitigate the slot starvation of the high level powers.
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Wow, I really like this idea, I hated the TO/DO stuff, and I liked your point about low level enhancements being useless, I would actually skip getting enhancements at all until I hit level 22, I couldn't stand paying money for something that did nothing. I would love to see your ideas, if not all, at least some implemented into the gameplay! That was a good read indeed :)
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*tags to finish reading later ;-)
*didn't go to bed, finished*
I love the detail here, and I understand your idea a lot better than I ever understood the progression of CoX enhancements.
Also, I like that having less than 4 of an enhancement type increases their effectiveness under the root system ^_^
Anyway, I'd better go to bed. Great idea!
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If the Programming Team makes a determination that for Server Resources Demand reasons use of logarithmic scaling requires less computational power than running a square root computation, then this would seem like a functional and worthwhile alternative. I don't particularly care for the fact that the logarithmic formula has a starting point of +33.6% instead of +50%, because in this case what I really want to achieve is a [i]Raise the Minimum while holding the line on the Maximum[/i] sort of design so that there isn't quite so much of a separation between Minimums and Maximums (leading to a HAVE vs HAVE NOT situation).
Like I said, I'm not absolutely "wedded" to the notion of the Diminishing Returns curve [b]must be[/b] a square root parabolic curve. It just happened to be a mathematical "shape" that suited my purposes very well ... but there could be others. Just because I've laid down a marker on my Opening Bid on this issue, doesn't mean that my bid will win by default. I say that because if somebody comes up with a Better Idea™ I'd want to go with that better idea so as to make a better game! So as far as that goes, I don't CARE where the ideas come from that ultimately get used in City of Titans, whether they're mine or someone else's ... I just want THE BEST ideas and materials going into the game that we can get!
I personally don't have the programming and networking skills necessary to know which method would place a lighter load on the computational support required to implement, so I'll readily defer to people more experienced in those areas on THAT score. Ignore your people with knowledge on subject at own peril, and all that.
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Yeah ... the Global Enhancement Slots just take a 2D problem and turn it into a 3D one, and it really doesn't translate all that well into the previous (City of Heroes) system. It just doesn't. Instead of apples vs oranges, now it's apples vs giraffe.
My baseline use of Mk I Eyeball of how "effective" the Global Enhancement Slots would be in terms of "backfilling" and mitigating the Slot Starvation issue is that depending on how they're slotted (an incredibly HUGE variable!) and what the overall build "needs" from those slots (another incredibly HUGE variable!) that if a build can manage to get something like 35-40% "applicability" out of the Global Enhancement Slots it would be doing "about average" in terms of using them well. Not all Powers can be Enhanced for Accuracy, for instance ... or Damage ... or Endurance Reduction ... or Recharge Reduction ... or Protection (Defense or Resistance) ... and on and on and on. However, if a character has a Damage Classification (ie. Primary) and a Damage Specification (ie. Secondary) build, they might be able to get more ... mileage ... out of certain Enhancement types than other combinations, but only because they're Specializing.
And there's the rub which throws all of this back into being a Value Judgement for the PLAYER to decide, rather than a spreadsheet analysis program. Thanks to the Diminishing Returns formula that I've devised, increasing Specialization carries "costs" with it in terms of [b]The Path NOT Taken[/b] with regards to diversification ... like protections foregone or buffs/debuffs not taken (or simply not supported adequately). In my opinion, the system that I've devised here "works" on the Meta Game level so well because there ISN'T any kind of One Size Fits All Solution to the possibilities the system creates. That's because I firmly believe that the biggest mistake a game can make, in its design, is to let Players "have it all" so that they never have to make ANY trade-offs of any kind. The stereotypical Tank Mage is a perfect example of the "have it all" variety, which then makes everything else obsolete by comparison, leading to Cookie Cutterism™.
The system that I've designed here, and am offering for City of Titans is one where [i]how you build your character[/i] is ALL about those trade-offs, and how you'll probably NEVER be able to "have it all" ... but you'll certainly be able to "be what you want to be" and have enough variability built into the system that it's actually LESS likely to induce Cookie Cutterism™ than a lot of the alternatives, simply because there's so many moving parts involved (each operating on simple rules) that a tremendous amount of complexity results. And at no point do the Game Mechanics ruthlessly ENFORCE a particular choice on you (such as the 3-slot "cliff" of Enhancement Dysfunction) ... so it's really up to each Player to decide for themselves "how far is TOO far" to go in terms of Specialization, because there is a Cost to be paid for doing so. Likewise, there is an "efficiency" advantage to be gained by being Diversified, but again ... going too far in that direction also results in a sort of "inadequacy" of its own sort when spreading yourself too thinly, and again, the Game Engine itself doesn't "tell you" where that line of adequacy vs inadequacy is, because you have to figure it out for yourself.
I'm sure that if my system gets adopted as a foundational part of how City of Titans gets built and played (and Meta Gamed), that it will produce an absolute profusion of ideas of how to build, what to value, and almost endless debates over advantages and disadvantages of particular schemes and strategies for making builds. I also fully expect the "conventional wisdom" over the relative Value of the Global Enhancement Slots to shift [i]over time[/i] as builds grow and change as Players level their way on up through the game towards whatever the Level Cap is at the time. I anticipate that kind of "competitive intellectual pursuit" being not only possible, but actually a lot of fun(!), because it's a problem that involves getting "the most Bang for your Buck" (as it were) in a system that involves Too Many Variables for the answer to that question to be a Singular And Absolute one. Which then means, of course, that *I*, as a Game Designer, would have DONE MY JOB of making an interesting Game with an interesting Meta Game component to it.
Yeah, I really hated the TO/DO/SO regime, because it once again reinforced the notion that you really weren't "playing the game" the way it was meant to be played until you were halfway to 50 (ie. Level 22 and first slotting SOs). It just meant that every low level character was Gimped By DESIGN™ ... and unfortunately the early game had been balanced around that "fact" so there was nothing that could be done about it. Tiny modifiers to Tiny numbers results in ... more Tiny numbers that are just an insignificantly small amount higher. It was just ... meh.
It used to be that people would say, quite legitimately, that life didn't even really "begin" in City of Heroes until Level 20 (thanks to Stamina) ... and you weren't even really a "hero" until you made it to Level 22, just because of the gigantic stair step LEAP in power throughput courtesy of changing over to Single Origin Enhancements. It was just so sudden that it made everything that had been done before that point feel like you'd been [i]Playing The Wrong Game[/i] ... which is NOT a good feeling to engender in your Players.
Needless to say, I'd like to *do* something about that so that we don't have a repeat of it in City of Titans ... ^_~
I'm not quite ready to lay down a marker on the issue of Planned Obsolescence that this sort of decision entails just QUITE yet. Not because of the point you cite, but because it's something that would have to be tied into the Game Economy in some form or fashion, and that's an external, very "social" factor that I'd want to be working with someone else on in order to get "just right" because there are a lot of potential pitfalls in every direction. It's also something that would have to be influenced by the Loot Drop system, so that you don't necessarily have to buy Enhancements from Vendor NPCs. There's also the question of whether or not there would be an Enhancement Combining system like City of Heroes had for the pre-Invention Origins, and what kinds of limitations on Combining there would be.
So this sort of question touches on a very different aspect of the game's Design, with some very far reaching implications and repercussions. Because of that, I'd be leery of wanting to stick my neck out TOO far in this area in the absence of more of a consensus of how these other aspects of City of Titans are intended to function.
If building in a vacuum however (ie. I'm marking my caveat right here and now!) ... I'd say that City of Heroes almost got the formula right, but flubbed the execution on the margins. Specifically you could only Combine an Enhancement up to 2 times (so you'd have 50++ for example), but you could have an Enhancement slotted which was ranked at your own Level +3/-3.
Hmm ... now you've got me thinking ([i]always[/i] a Bad Sign!) and I'm starting to see a Way To Do This (in a vacuum). Let me write something up here in another post here in this thread. Hang on.
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While I've been wrong before, I'd like to point out that since there are a limited set of input values (i.e. number of enhancements) to the curve function, a look-up table would probably be the best bet for implementation, and that would mean that [i]any[/i] curve would have roughly the same computational resources. So the logarithms (or whatever other curve) are effectively computed offline. In any case, worrying about that is premature optimization.
So let's stick to game effects.
But that's what I meant when I wrote that the scale factor can be adjusted. If you want enhancement #1 to deliver a 50% boost, then...
[i]* beats up numbers.[/i]
setting [i]s[/i] = 1.54 gives 50%, 83.2%, 108.1%, 128%, 144.6%, 158.8%, 171.3%, ... 224.5%
The rough part of using the inverse parabolic is that it rises fast for the first couple of enhancements then falls off fast for the rest.
IMHO, getting a 50% bonus from [i]one[/i] enhancement seems like a bit much. Especially since you have five globals, that means you could be getting at least 50% boost in five attributes on all your powers before factoring in the powers' own enhancements. It will lead to "never put more than one of a given enhancement type into your global slots." A 33% bonus puts it more in line with existing CoX practice, at least for 1-3 enhancements, while not effectively discarding the effects of enhancements 4 and up.
Neither log nor root curves have asymptotes, i.e. hard limits. If the devs want a curve that [i]has[/i] an asymptote, then the exponential curve is the "natural" one to go with. It has the form [i]A[/i](1 - e[sup]-[i]n[/i]/[i]s[/i][/sup]) where [i]A[/i] is the asymptote value, [i]s[/i] is the scale factor, and [i]n[/i] is the number of enhancements. For [i]A[/i] = 2 (asymptote is 200% bonus) and [i]s[/i] = 3.45 (to hit about 50% for the first enhancement) we get 50.3%, 88.0%, 116.2%, 137.3%, 153.1%, 164.9%, 173.7%, 180.3%, 185.3%, 189.0%, 191.8%, 193.8%, and 195.4%. Note that the last five only provide a 10% bonus total.
Whereas for [i]s[/i] = 5.5 (to hit about 33% for the first enhancement) we get 33.2%, 61.0%, 84.1%, 103.4%, 119.4%, 132.8%, 144.0%, 153.3%, 161.1%, 167.5%. 172.9%, 177.4%, 181.2%. The last four enhancements only get you a 20% bonus total. Compare with the log curve, which grows slower initially but doesn't hit the last few enhancements so hard (the last two get you a 15% total bonus). Further, it doesn't have an asymptote, so if the devs later wanted to add something (incarnate-level stuff, boss stats, or whatever) that went "past" 200% they could without changing the curve at all.
Anyway, those are some more numbers to chew on.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Agreed. Let's stick to game effects.
The reason I'm not [i]at this stage[/i] willing to just say "make a table and have done with it" is because I'm anticipating future refinements to the system, where individual Powers would grant lingering effects that function very much like Enhancements and would knock things off their "easy" and clearly defined progression. So I'm more comfortable with making a formula and creating a table from it for purposes of explaining, than I am with making a table and then trying to figure out how to fudge things on it for when all factors don't fit "neatly" into the table's assumptions and conditions, which are "discrete conditionals" rather than continuous computations. Premature optimization ... right back at'cha.
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You missed my point. Don't let the lists of bonuses fool you: every proposal I've put forward here is a continuous function.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
[b]Redlynne[/b], I like your scheme. It gives a lot of flexibility and captures the essence of CoH builds. There can be a lot of quibbling of detail, but I'll leave that to the devs.
I especially like the idea of Global Enhancements.
I do find one big problem, though:
What's the reason to restricting these power picks? That is, why must a pick be from the primary set? Or why must it be from the secondary? I'd much rather see each of those to be "Classification or Specification Power (up to [i]X[/i])".
Whenever the game design restricts player choice, there needs to be justification. I don't see any balance reason why a character couldn't pick only from the primary, or only from the secondary. Or picks in a different order.
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This particular problem required (and requires) More Thought than just a casual, off the cuff, unserious answer to it. As I mentioned above, it involves parts of the Loot Drop System, has impacts on NPC Vendor Services, touches on the In Game Economy (particularly as relates to Trading and Auction House Services), in addition to acting as a potential Money Sink if the structure used is one that enforces Planned Obsolescence in a way that mandates periodic replacements. And as if all of THAT wasn't enough on its own ... there are other potential angles that could be involved, such as Death Penalty kinds of things ... such as "Delete one random Enhancement from its Slot" when the Player is Defeated (in PvE, not in PvP) so as to create a situation in which Demand for Enhancements never drops all the way to zero in any particular Level Range (and I'm thinking specifically of the Level Cap here).
Now, to be fair ... NOBODY is going to like the idea of "losing Stuff™" as a result of getting faceplanted in PvE ... especially if the Stuff™ that can be lost is either rare or (ridiculously) difficult to obtain (think Hamidon Origin Enhancements as well as Set Invention Origins and the like). However, if the only kinds of Stuff™ in this case that could be "lost" were what amounted to Common Items that were not all that difficult to replace (ie. go to the Market or go to a NPC Vendor and just buy another one) that calculus changes a little bit. Doing so might be TEDIOUS and therefore potentially ANNOYING to have to do, but it wouldn't in and of itself be outright BURDENSOME (or worse, Crippling) to have to endure and recover from.
No ... I'm not necessarily recommending the idea that a City of Titans Death Penalty involve your Powers have an Enhancement "pop out" somewhere and need to be replaced ... but it IS something I thought of just now and figure I might as well throw it onto the bonfire as an alternative to doing something akin to an XP Debt. I mention it because any "item economy" that drops Items as Loot also needs to have a way to destroy Items as well so as to prevent the supply of such Items from outrunning the demand for them in perpetuity, simply because those Items are never "lost" once found.
But that's another discussion. ^_-
Let me first give an overview of how Enhancement Levels worked in City of Heroes, for the benefit of those people who never got to play the game (it did close down over a year ago) and so as to do the obligatory "Show Your Work" behind the thought processes I've got for changing that system into how I'd want to see it done in City of Titans. For those of you who know this already, feel free to "skip ahead Brother Maynard" to where I start mucking up the old system.
[b][url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancements]City of Heroes Enhancements[/url][/b]
One of the things that bugged me about City of Heroes and its Enhancement System, particularly with regards to Loot Drops and the like, was the fact that the Loot Drop system was *SOOO* random that you could never count on it to keep you supplied with "enough" Enhancement Drops to keep your build "current" and supplied with the Enhancements that you needed in the quantities that your build demanded, [i]at the times that your build demanded them[/i]. Every 5 Levels there would be the Massive Turnover where you completely reslotted EVERY POWER in your build with a fresh set of Enhancements (if they were TO/DO/SO), which created sudden "spikes" in demand for Enhancements to slot ... and having an Inventory of only up to 10 Enhancements, there was simply NO WAY EVER for you to "stockpile" enough Enhancements to be able to Do The Upgrade without visiting a NPC Vendor to buy dozens of Enhancements.
The Combining System was clever, but ultimately under-utilized feature ... except when creating 50++ Single Origin or Hamidon Origin Enhancements. Once Inventions came along, the Enhancement Combination System was very nearly forgotten.
Add on top of this that the entire reason for wanting to Mass Replace ALL every 5 Levels was due to the fact that Enhancements bought from NPC Vendors came as being assigned Levels that worked on 5s and 10s ... but could be slotted and still used up to -3/+3 Levels below and above the Level of the Enhancement. So a Level 35 character could use an Enhancement that had a Level of 32-38. This meant that every time you reached a 2s or 7s Character Level, it was time to go hit the store and buy up all the 5s or 10s Level Enhancements that you'd use for the next 5 Levels all at once. Even worse, this was one of the few INF Sinks available in the earlier Issues of City of Heroes, which meant saving practically all of your currency earnings for 5 Levels in order to finance the NEXT round of Enhancement buying you'd have to be doing in another 5 Levels.
To quote my friend Lin Chiao Feng on the subject of the Second Law Of Thermodynamics:
[i]You can't win.[/i]
[i]You can't break even.[/i]
[i]You can't get out of the game![/i]
In fact, the only time when Enhancements and the slotting of them ever stabilized in the early Issues of City of Heroes was when your character reached Level 50 ... at which point all that was left to do was to keep grinding so as to get Enhancement Drops that were Level 51 or 52 so that you could combine them into being either 51++ or 52+ so as to achieve Maximum Potential Enhancement in the form of a +3 Single Origin relative to your Character Level of 50. Needless to say, with some 70 Enhancement Slots (including those on Brawl, Rest and Sprint) ... that could take a LOT of grinding to do, and really wasn't all that much fun for such a small return on investment since the bumps in power level by that point weren't all that big.
The Developers at Cryptic realized this was a problem and came up with the Common Inventions, which would never become Obsolete, like the Training/Double/Single Origins had been prone to doing. I'm thinking this was a wise decision, given the structure of what they were working with.
Now, one of the complicating factors for the Invention Combination System was that Enhancements that had been combined retained their original Level on the Enhancement. So if you combined a 24 and a 25, you didn't get a 26, but got a 25+ instead, which [i]functioned like[/i] a Level 26 for all intents and purposes, but couldn't go beyond a ++ modifer of adding +2 Levels onto the Base Level of the original Enhancement.
For City of Titans, I'd want to streamline this unnecessarily cumbersome system of Combining Enhancements together. For one thing, the ++ method imposes an artificial cap on how "far" such an Enhancement can be "advanced" in Level (partly because of availability of Drops to Combine it with was nowhere NEAR sufficient to maintain parity). I can understand why this was done, given that Enhancements that had a Level that was above/below the Character's Level had their Enhancement Strength either moved up or down on the scale as appropriate (hence the +3 SO notation the the Community adopted).
In City of Titans, I'd want to throw out this mechanic of having a disparity between Character Level and the Level of an Enhancement having an effect or modifier on the "strength" of an Enhancement. All that does is create a situation where Powers get weaker for 5 Levels before getting an infusion of fresh Enhancements every 5 Levels, pushing the performance of Powers back up to their peak. Enhancement Decay, we always called it.
Instead, Enhancements would have a Number on them, just like they did in City of Heroes, but that Number isn't used to specify the midpoint of a Level Range that the Enhancement is useful in ... instead, that Number defines the Top End of the Level Range within which the Enhancement [i]has any effect at all[/i]. The rule would be then that you can only Slot an Enhancement that is [i]up to 5 Levels higher[/i] than your Character Level.
Now, I want to be clear on this particular point, because it's important. So long as your Character is within 0-5 Levels UNDER the Level Number shown on an Enhancement, you can slot the Enhancement into your Powers and into your Global Enhancement Slots. That means the Number on the Enhancement is the "ceiling" for its use, not the mid-point, as was done in City of Heroes. This 0-5 Levels Under limit then determines whether or not the Enhancement "works" for you, in terms of adding its value to the amount it Enhances your Powers by. Special note, when Exemplared or Sidekicked to a Character Level outside your "native" Character Level, this requirement isn't quite so ... rigid ... as it sounds at first, since the Exemplar/Sidekick Level Adjustments are really only "temporary" in a sense, so those are something of a special case, which I'd like to think we can all understand implicitly ... right? ^^;
Combining Enhancements would work very much like it did in City of Heroes, except that when you Combine Enhancements in City of Titans, the Enhancement Level of the highest level Enhancement goes up by +1. So instead of Combining a 10 and a 10 to make a 10+, which has a limit of only being able to go to 10++ before NEEDING to find a higher Level Enhancement to combine with it (in this case a 12, so as to combine with a 10++ to make a 12+ that's actually a "13") ... instead, if you Combine a 10 and a 10 you get an 11 ... not a 10+.
The difference here is that rather than increasing the "strength" of the Enhancement by Combining it to create a Level Disparity between the Enhancement Level and the Character Level ... instead you're "buying time" during which the Combined Enhancement will continue to offer its value to the Power(s) it is slotted into and affecting. I say Power(s) in this case in order to account for the Global Enhancement Slots, where Enhancements slotted there affect more than one Power.
What this means is that at Character Level 1, you could buy a Level 5 Enhancement for each of your Powers, and the "value" of that Enhancement would remain constant from Levels 1 through 5. However, you could, at Character Level 1 buy two Level 5 Enhancements of the same time and Combine them into being a Level 6 Enhancement that you could then have slotted. The Level 6 Enhancement doesn't offer any greater/lesser "strength" to the Power(s) it Enhances, but it will be a longer time before it NEEDS to be replaced.
Since there would be no built in Planned Obsolescence using this system, where old Enhancements "expire" en masse and have to ALL be replaced because you've crossed over a Level Range Break, it would theoretically be possible to simply keep Combining Enhancements so as to "keep them current" just from Drops all the way from Level 1 up to the Level Cap. Granted, such an outcome may not be particularly LIKELY, but it would at least be possible.
There would have to be a Rule that the result of a Combination, which junks one Enhancement (the "low" one) so as to raise the Level of the other Enhancement (the "high" one) can't result in an upgrade that has an Enhancement Level greater than Character Level +5. So a Level 1 Character can Combine a pair of Level 5 Enhancements to make a Level 6 Enhancement (1+5=6), but that same character would need to be a Level 2 Character before they could Combine and Level 5 and that Level 6 Enhancement so as to upgrade the Level 6 to being a Level 7 ... and so on.
Combining in City of Heroes had a Chance To Fail built into it, and that chance was a simple 5% for each Level of disparity between the Levels of the two Enhancements to be Combined. So two Enhancements of the same Level had a 100% Chance to Combine. If you had a Level 5 and a Level 7 Enhancement, the chance to Combine them was 90%, because they were 2 Levels apart. I'd go ahead and keep this system, because it means that even at 19 Levels of separation, there's still a 5% chance of advancing the higher of the two Enhancements.
Another factor in the Combining System in City of Heroes is that when Combining FAILED, it always junked the "weaker" (read: lower Level) of the two Enhancements being Combined ... and failure could only occur when the was a Level disparity between the two of them, so the edge case of "but what if they're the same Level, which one dies?" was already removed from the set of possibilities.
The practical upshot of making Combining simply advance the Level of Enhancements, rather than just adding a ++ modifier onto the Level Number, means that a far wider range of Enhancement Drops become "valuable" ... even if that means those Drops are used primarily as "fuel" for Combining. That then generates an Economic Model for how Enhancements get USED within the game that involves both Creation (Drops, Vendor purchase, Market trading) and Destruction (Combining to Advance Levels to "extend the life" of Enhancements). The PROBLEM that occurs then, is what happens when you reach the Level Cap? What happens when you run out of "up" for this system of Creative Destruction and Players no longer NEED to keep "consuming" Enhancements to improve, or even just maintain, their builds?
And it's at this point that my thoughts make their full circle turn back to the idea of a Death Penalty that is more of an Inconvenience than it is of being a Penalty ... at least in the sense that the Death Penalty would cost Players an "easily" replaceable resource, which in this case would be a single random Enhancement slotted into any of their Powers (or into one of their Global Enhancement Slots) would be destroyed/deleted. instituting such a Death Penalty mechanic would ensure that even in the end game at Level Cap, there will always be SOME demand for Enhancements ... even after "beating" the game and reaching the Level Cap. That way, you don't wind up with a Game Economy where everyone at the Level Cap is receiving Drops of Enhancements that they're never going to use, thus making all those Drops what amounts to Vendor Bait.
{sigh} ... At any rate ... that's the general direction that my thinking turns in response to your question, Mendicant. Take the Advancement Cap off the process of Combining Enhancements, stabilize the "value" that Enhancements have while they are slotted into Powers so that it doesn't fluctuate with Character Levels (so no +0, +1, +2, +3 SO adjustments to need to Balance the game around), and create a circumstance where even at the Level Cap the demand for Enhancements won't drop down to zero so as to make sure that the Game Economy for these Items whether they be Drops or Purchases maintains a level of Creative Destruction that doesn't get too far out of hand or result in a runaway situation of either oversupply or excessive scarcity. At this point, a LOT of these ideas need more follow up and more rigorous defining than I'm presenting here, because I'm trying to get just the basic IDEA across so that it can be understood and evaluated by others in a sort of First Draft form. But if you've got Better Ideas™ on how to handle various aspects ... by all means, throw your hat in the ring and let's discuss. Because the one thing that I DO NOT want this to turn into is a [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjZGy0mXVSs]One Man Band[/url] kind of deal.
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Me likey too ... ^_~
This is one of those cases where I was trying to go for a shorthand that wouldn't bury in information, and was implicitly relying on many of the same assumptions present in the City of Heroes scheme. Although in hindsight I could have explained this better to prevent confusion on the point that you now highlight.
My intention wasn't to say you can ONLY choose from your Classification or Specification power sets at those Levels exclusively ... but rather to indicate at which Levels which Power Picks became available from which Powersets. The thing you have to assume is that once a Power becomes available at a lower Level, [i]it remains available for selection at all higher Levels[/i].
But since the way I wrote that in the first place might prompt a misinterpretation like you say, I'll just go ahead and edit it so as to show the more lenient structure I had always intended, but which it sounds like was not clearly and explicitly stated.
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Very nice, Redlynne.
Now, what would be the impact of applying debuffs to the base enhancement value, rather than on the value after the square root.
A flat 25% debuff applied after the square root would affect all characters equally, which may be what we want.
if I subtracted 25 points from the pre-calculated value, I see a diminishing penalty as I slot more.
-If I 2-slot, and get a -25 penalty, I drop from .71 to .5, a loss of .21.
-If I 5- slot, that debuff takes me from 1.12 to 1, a loss of only .12
You're still using diminishing returns, but providing a form of "debuff mitigation" to make the decision of where the "best" cut-off is a little fuzzier. Does the additional debuff mitigation make it more worthwhile to slot another enhancement?
Haven't really looked at this intensively in your example, but it would seem that, applied to the right calculation, this could also be used to provide debuff "floors" as well- how stacked could the debuffs get before they also start hitting a diminishing return...
Original post of Level Advancements is now edited to provide greater clarity of flexibility originally intended but not made sufficiently clear in first draft as quoted.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I don't think I can *squee!* with pride without getting Amerikatt on my case about Trademark Infringement (^_-), but all of this support I'm getting is really encouraging. *^_^*
My first thought would be that this idea isn't how Debuffs worked in City of Heroes, by and large. By that I mean that Debuffs didn't attack [i]Enhancements[/i] directly, but rather they attacked Figured Stats in various ways in a more Additive way, rather than the Enhancement that "powered" the Powers which resulted in those Figured Stats. Do you see where I'm going?
An outlier on this kind of performance though was the way that Resistances wound up "inherently resisting" Resistance Debuffs because of how the math for them got calculated ... Defense had no sort of "inherent resistance" to Defense Debuffing at all (because of how the math for IT got calculated). So you wound up with a situation where Defense could suffer from [b]Cascade Failure[/b] from Defense Debuffs (in a game where over *50* Powers had some kind of Defense Debuff built into them), but the very notion of a similar kind of Cascade Failure happening for Resistances was just about absurd (in part because so few Powers actually did any kind of Debuff to Resistances, and I think the count was less than 12 across ALL powersets in the game at that time) ... so long as the respective Defense or Resistances started out at their respective Softcap/Hardcap.
It's an interesting idea ... but one I'd want to investigate thoroughly before committing to it, even partially, because of the potential for edge cases that this sort of thing would create (such as needing square roots for negative values, potentially, if not "clamped" to prevent such things). Don't get me wrong, this idea has merit ... but I'm just not ready to commit to it, one way or the other, just quite yet. I'd want to discuss this with more people than just myself(!) first.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
The amount of thought and level of detail you've presented are astonishing. You've fleshed out what was a simple suggestion into an extraordinary system. Hats off to you!
(and oh yeah... [b]/signed![/b])
The suggestions/questions I would send back at you is: What would enhancements that boost multiple aspects of a power do under this system? Is it designed solely for single-aspect enhancements or, if the devs decide that they want to mimic some of CoX's IO system ([i]which I think is a reasonable assumption of one path they might take[/i]), can it support multi-aspect enhancements? How much would that complicate the underlying math, especially given that CoX's multi-aspect enhancements had bonuses whose sum exceeded the bonus granted by a single-aspect enhancement?
Say the single enhancement is [i]25%[/i], a double might be [i]17% / 17%[/i], and a triple is [i]13% / 13% / 13%[/i]. Is there point where each would be equal? And more importantly would we [b]want[/b] them to be equal? Should an enhancement that boosts multiple aspects be inherently "better" than a single? I don't know if there is necessarily a right answer, but given that this was a system under the original game, I believe the question is worth asking.
Um ... I just received a "Cease and Desist" letter from a lawyer retained by Valve. Uh ... this wouldn't be [i]your fault[/i] would it?
<.<
>.>
*IF* there were to be Multi-Type Enhancements, and to be honest, I'm kind of hoping that City of Titans wouldn't go that route (in part because it really isn't needed with the system I've designed here) ... but *IF* it were to happen, I'd want to do something like this:
Single Type: +25
Dual Type: +14/+14 = +28 total
Triple Type: +10/+10/+10 = +30 total
Quad Type: +8/+8/+8/+8 = +32 total
However, just between you, me, and the rest of the internet ... I really don't like where that kind of thing leads to. It causes built in power creep, makes all kinds of things Hard To Balance simply because they have to be accounted for, and a bunch of other things besides. On top of that, if you do this kind of Single/Dual/Triple/Quad kind of deal, all you wind up doing is fragmenting the Drop Tables so as to make finding Loot that is "right" for you and your build (to keep Combining your Enhancements to advance them with your Character Level) more complicated ... AND makes the very idea of having a Death Penalty where getting Defeated deletes one of your slotted Enhancements very much a "NO NO" because now you'd be taking away "stuff" that could potentially be rare and hard to find.
So [i]on Balance[/i] I'd be disinclined to include such a thing in City of Titans [i]just because City of Heroes did it before[/i]. Part of that is just the simple Power Creep that including this would cause, particularly because it would be one way to "have it all" in a way that not only makes Tank Mages more *likely* to occur, but also encourage Cookie Cutterism™ and promote a sense that Quads Are Best while everything else is Trash ... once again promoting a HAVES vs HAVE NOTS sort of situation. Best to not go there, methinks.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
What, and shut this whole thing down? I may be off-kilter at times but I'm not [b]that[/b] crazy!
You make good points, and I agree with the reasoning behind sticking to a single aspect option. I hadn't considered the challenges that multi-aspects would pose to your combination system.
Sooo... umm...
Carry on, nothing to see here :/
[i]P.S.: Devs, listen to Redlynne...[/i]
Agreed.
This idea initially came from work in a different situation, and just threw it out here to see what stuck
Back then, it started with an observation on what made a good 'marksman' in the military- in general purpose firing ranges, an "average" rifleman could get pretty darn close to a master rifleman on the range... still a measurable difference, but not a HUGE difference. Faced with things like poor visibility, rain, cold temperatures, fatigue, improvised cover, or darkness, though, and the gap widened.
So, in our "theoretical game" we looked at a (steeper) curve like this to give marginal diminishing-return improvement, but also give reason to keep going, even when that improvement seemed so negligible. Since the debuff was primarily applied to the "original" values, it didn't take long for a rifleman to get "adept" at a skill in good conditions, but it took much longer to retain that quality as conditions degraded. (This was also in a very different concept that was seen as very buff/debuff heavy as a way to "nudge" battlefield behavior to be more consistent with real battlefield issues. We wanted to reasonably mix rookie & elite together without (much) sidekicking mechanics This made the rookie capable in controlled situations (low debuff) while the expert was better utilized in high-risk (heavy debuff) maneuvers ("Much" sidekicking because, IIRC, elite level characters also had a kind of "leadership" buff aura- a kind of "stick with me kid, and we'll get through" kind of thing)
I've been thinking over my [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/27463#comment-27463]First Draft of Enhancement Types[/url] that I referenced earlier in my original [b]Wall Of Text™ Crits You!!!![/b] and after having built up the rest of a possible system for how Enhancements would work here, I'm thinking I'd like to ... Revise and Extend my thoughts on Enhancement Types.
In my first draft, I posited the following list:
That gave us a list of 9 Enhancement Types to work with.
Now having had more time to think about a more holistic [i]Structure[/i] to plug all that into, I'm thinking that the following would be better:
[list][*]Accuracy
[*]Buff (includes Endurance Modification, Heal, Movement, Protection, Range, "To Hit Buff", [i]et cetera[/i])
[*]Charge Reduction (all Interrupt Time mechanics from City of Heroes change to being a Charge mechanic instead)
[*]Control Duration
[*]Damage
[*]Debuff (includes Accuracy, Endurance Modification for drains, Heal, Protection, Range, Slow, "To Hit Debuff", [i]et cetera[/i])
[*]Endurance Reduction
[*]Range
[*]Protection (includes Damage Resistance and Defense)
[*]Recharge Reduction
[*][b]Universal[/b][/list]
Now, I know that everyone is looking at that [b]Universal[/b] choice there at the bottom of the list and wondering ... "What the...?"
What I'm envisioning using the Universal Enhancement for is ... Pure Combination Fuel. It can't be slotted into ANY Enhancement Slot anywhere on any character ... but it can be Combined with any Enhancement Type to advance the Enhancement that *isn't* the Universal by +1 Level. This then puts a "wildcard" Enhancement Type into play for use with the Enhancement Combination System to keep Enhancements advancing as your Character Level advances.
Another point is that this second draft of Enhancement Types has 11 Enhancement Types in it, which makes the Loot Table distribution of these for Drops really simple. Everything except Universal has a 9% chance to Drop ... which adds up to 90% since there are 10 "slottable" Enhancement Types. The Universal Type then gets the remainder and has a 10% chance to Drop. This then gives you a KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) setup for the Loot Drop Table when an Enhancement is scheduled to Drop. It also means that as far as being able to get the "right" Drops to advance the Enhancements you've got slotted into your build, odds are pretty good that you'll get SOMETHING useful to you, rather than being presented with lots and lots of Vendor Bait you're never going to use. This also sets up a good dynamic for creating "churn" in the Enhancement Economy inside the game, such that an appropriate rate of Creative Destruction can occur on a continuing basis, mitigating runaway supply or demand problems.
Universal Enhancements would have an Enhancement Level assigned to them, so they would follow the same rules for Combining as every other Enhancement out there, but with an additional limitation. Universal Enhancements must be at least 1 Enhancement Level BELOW the Level of the Enhancement they are to be Combined with ... so that in the event of a Combination Failure the Universal Enhancement is ALWAYS the one that gets junked. That takes care of a few edge cases that could have resulted if that limitation wasn't there that would have been ... unfortunate. Because of this, I'd recommend assigning Universal Enhancements a -1 Level Modifier when created for Drops so as to bias them towards being a lower Level than everything else that is being Dropped around them. Furthermore, the Level Cap on Universal Enhancements should functionally never exceed the Character Level Cap -1 for the same reason. Likewise, make sure that the Universal Enhancement can't drop as a Level 1 (which after the -1 Modifier would turn it into a Level 0) and you've effectively "clamped" the range for the Universal Enhancement to drop as being 1 to Level Cap -1.
As far as switching Interrupt Time out for a Charge Reduction ... hear me out.
In City of Heroes, Interrupt Time was a good idea and served a needed purpose, but the simple fact of the matter is that pretty much ANY time use of an Interrupt Time mechanic is warranted, using a Charge mechanic instead, in place of an Interrupt Time, makes for a better gameplay experience. I say that because the way that Interrupt Time worked was as a Delay that the Player had no "control" over once the Power was Activated ... and if the Power was Interrupted during the Interrupt Time, the Endurance Cost of the Power had to be paid, but the Power did not take effect or do anything.
A Charge mechanic puts up a Progress Bar showing how long the Interrupt Time is going to take, which puts the Player more "in control" of what is happening. You'd still have to "pay the time" the Interrupt Time would have required, but now you can SEE how fast you're getting through that time and KNOW when you have completed it. It's just a more interactive and [i]informative[/i] way to achieve the same ends as Interrupt Time accomplished, and it opens up all kinds of additional options and possibilities that Interrupt Time foreclosed on, because Interrupt Time could only be used ONE WAY ... while Charge mechanics can be used multiple ways for different purposes, including giving Powers multiple "modes" of operation, that would allow Players to use their Powers in ways that aren't necessarily [i]as predictable[/i] as they might have been otherwise.
To give a concrete example of what I mean by this, it would be simplicity itself to create a Titan Weapons styled powerset that uses the Charge mechanic for almost every attack power ... but then allow those Powers to be slotted for Charge Reduction, so they Charge faster and thus swing and attack faster. You can also put a modifier property onto each of those attack Powers such that when their animation is complete they grant a brief Charge Reduction Global Buff for like 2-3 seconds so as to simulate the way that Momentum worked in City of Heroes ... meaning that so long as you chain your attacks, you'll be swinging (ie. Charging) faster than you would if you stopped attacking for a short period of time.
Or to put it another way familiar to plenty of Redsiders ... "[b]Brute SMASH!![/b]"
The Charge mechanic is a system that can allow the activation/animation times of Powers [i]to be variable[/i] in a way that the City of Heroes system supported only through a "kludge" of using Alternate Animations. But using the Unreal Engine, we aren't necessarily going to be limited by those Game Engine Support issues ... so why continue to restrict ourselves?
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
It just occurred to me that I hadn't allocated a Pick/Slot for the "Boosts" that the Rednames around here have occasionally mentioned wanting to do in City of Titans ... mainly because I was working off the City of Heroes "script" for building my structure, rather than working through something that came out of an internal City of Titans document. So looking over the structure I've laid out up above, I started thinking that, honestly, the Global Enhancement Slots certainly "work" (for me, anyway!) as Enhancement Boosts in a pretty straightforward fashion. But what about Power Boosts? Heck, what would a Power Boost [i]EVEN LOOK LIKE[/i]? Just about the only thing I can think of it being is something like ... [url=http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Epic.Power_Mastery.Power_Build_Up]Power Build Up[/url] out of the Defender/Controller Epic Power Pools ... but I'm not even sure that's on the right track for what the Rednames of City of Titans have in mind.
But no matter! I've figured out that if there needs to be an ... exchange ... of potentials so as to shoehorn a "Power Boost" pool of Powers into the structure I'm proposing, it would be simplicity itself to swap the option into these Levels:
Level 15: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 5th) or a Pool Power (up to 2nd)
Level 25: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 7th) or a Pool Power (up to 4th)
Level 35: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 8th) or Mastery Power (up to 2nd) or a Pool Power (up to 4th)
Level 45: 1 Classification or Specification Power (up to 9th) or a Pool Power (up to 5th)
This is because these are the "Wildcard Power" Levels, where I just was at a loss for what to do in order to counterbalance having +1 Global Enhancement Slot at 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, pretty much the only thing left was to offer a Power. So if City of Titans wants to offer "Boost Powers" and needs to fit them into the structure I've outlined, these would be the places to do it.
Hmm ... now that I think about it some more ... it would be kind of interesting to make these Boost Powers include a list of available Passive Powers, rather than just piling on more Clicks. In City of Heroes, every Pool Power was a Click ... except for the Fitness Pool of Hurdle, Swift, Health and Stamina, which were all Passives. Even more interesting is the notion that some of the Click Pool Powers could be made into reduced strength Passives ... so things like Leadership Toggles or even Presence Pool click Powers could be turned into Passive Aura Powers that offer light effects that are Area Effect Persistent, but work in a "low" background sort of way that can then augment the more typical Click Powers by supporting their effects with additional Buffs, Debuffs or even Magnitude for Mez type status effects. Even something as "simple" as Scrapper Criticals and Controller Containment could potentially be run through Boost Powers, rather than tying them into specific Classification and/or Specification combinations.
And then for extra bonus points, those Boost Powers would have Slots ... which could be added to ... and affected by Global Enhancement Slots. That way you get your Boost Powers AND your Boost Enhancements through substantially the same systems.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I definitely like the 'A size for everyone' feel of the design rather than 'One size fits all'. That I may be able to choose having powers with massive long-range damage, at the price of not being able to shore up my defenses, or with the same powers have strong, shorter-range attacks with a better change or surviving closer in makes for great diversity in builds.
The enhancement looks pretty good, too. Especially the part about the number marking its upper usefulness limit, rather than the midpoint. It always seemed odd to me that enhancements got less useful each time you leveled, and the fact that, even if you had full ++ enhanced enhancements, when they did go red you could only replace them with the new enhancements, not merge them with the new enhancement, seemed like a waste. For example, a 25++ enhancement is effectively a 27 which goes red at 32. At 32 you can buy level 35 enhancements, but you cannot merge them with the 25++ as that would result in a 35+, which you are unable to use.
Yeah, City of Heroes had a system that just made it far too hard to "rollover" your Enhancements into the next Level Range, leading to the "need" to just outright REPLACE everything every 5 Levels (because if you didn't, you were just gimping yourself). I'd like to avoid that problem if at all possible, preferably with a system where a substantial portion of your Enhancements are getting raised through Drops as you Level, so it isn't just a case of Go Shopping For EVERYTHING every 5 Levels.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
... For the record, that's actually the first three laws (skipping the 0th) of thermodynamics, in order.
Anyway, I made a plot of the various curves:
(Redlynne's proposal, of course, gets the red line.)
You can see how the square root front-loads a lot compared to the others, then settles down to follow close to the shallower log curve. There's not a huge difference between the shallow exp and shallow log curve overall. The steep log and exp curves, however, are close to each other until after about 8 enhancements where the log curve breaks away.
And ED just looks broken, but we've been over that.
P.S. Python code to generate these graphs is available on request.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Yup. Out of all of those curves, I really do like the Red Line best ... and not just because I thought of it in the first place. The two log curves either fly too high or too low through parts of their span ... as do the exp curves as well ... for the kind of performance I'm looking for across the full spread.
Remember, kludges like Beginner's Luck were necessary in City of Heroes because early on (Levels 1-10) you just couldn't get any Training Origins that were worth a darn, and you'd be completely Slot starved because the Slots were getting added on so slowly (add 2 at Levels 3, 5, 7, 9). That made it just about IMPOSSIBLE to get any kind of Accuracy going with your Powers, resulting in [i]A Whole Lotta WHIFFING Going On[/i] because the entire game system was biased against lowbies. Finally, Paragon Studios took pity on us (they might have noticed that the only things people were slotting early on was JUST Accuracy!) and gave us an Accuracy Buff that decayed until DOs became available at 12 (and IOs at 7) so that the earliest parts of the game didn't amount to "whiff this barn door" kind of nonsense that you couldn't do anything about. I actually WANT that strong start, because the first Slot in a Power like an attack is almost always going to be Accuracy. So having ALL Enhancements start out "strong" when single slotted into Powers is very definitely a Working As Intended design goal, rather than a Bug.
So yeah ... Red Line for the win.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
My favorite is still the blue curve, with the yellow a close second, because they aren't so overwhelmingly front-loaded. The main difference between the two is that the yellow curve places a little less importance on globals.
Does the [i]very first[/i] enhancement [i]really[/i] need to deliver a whopping 50% bonus? Then you have to pour in three more for another 50%? Comparing to the 8.3% the TOs got you is kind of unfair; a 33% bonus is already equal to [i]four[/i] TOs... and you're telling me that's not good enough, it should be six...
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
While much of this looks fairly good, there are several aspects of it that I don't like.
The first is that, in the end, you've only got two layers of meaningful choices: where you put slots, and what you put in the global slots. After that, slotting any individual power is strictly mechanical: put in enough accuracy, put in enough endurance reduction, put in enough recharge to make your attack chain function, fill in the rest with damage/resistance/defence/whatever-that-power's-primary-thing-is. Skip sections in the above list that aren't relevant; most defensive powers don't need accuracy; most toggles don't need recharge, etc.
Compare that to CoH, where you often had to make interesting decisions like "Do I stick in an off-set quad, or do I slot that extra +damage/acc IO I mostly don't need in order to get the set bonuses?" (Now, the in-game UI could have used some improvements - I consider it a failing that an external tool like Mids was pretty much required if you wanted to really fine-tune your build. And being able to shift some things around without a full respec would have been nice, too.)
Issue two is the game economy. The primary driving thing in CoH - and in every MMO I've played - is stuff that makes your character better. Most of what was on the market was enhancements, or recipes or materials to make enhancements. (Though if you'd been able to sell non-trivial temp powers like Shivans, those would've been good trade too.) What you're proposing, with essentially SOs being the only option, really reduces the available variety. There won't be an option to slap together a cheap frankenslotted build; nor will there be an option to spend billions of inf on high-end purples. And, with build variety going down (see issue #[i][/i]1), you'll run into the issue of max level characters quickly running out of things to spend on. If I can go to a vendor, buy SOs, and that's the best anyone can get... well, it's not going to be good for the game. See, for example, the commentary over in the economy thread, here: http://cityoftitans.com/comment/21924#comment-21924
Issue three is a minor one: I'd suggest putting the global slots early, rather than late. In particular, I'd consider replacing any sort of "beginner's luck" mechanic with granting a global slot at level two, and having the tutorial hand you an accuracy enhancement and say "You should probably put this into your global slot, so that your attacks will stop missing so much." (And give you one in your inventory if you skip the tutorial, too.) Because these slots impact everything, it makes more sense to build around what you have in the global slots, than to fill in global slots based on what you've put in your powers.
Issue four is also relatively minor: I actually liked the relatively sharp dropoff of the ED curve - it gave me an obvious place to stop, which in turn made it much easier to decide "Okay, I don't need more than X slots in my travel power", or "Hm, if I use this set at level 34, I lose just a few percentage points, but I keep the set bonuses down to level 30; yeah, that seems like a fair trade" - whereas curves with a less sharp dropoff, suddenly you just want as many slots as you can get in your primary powers, because there's no sharp dropoff - no point where you can step back and say "Yeah, this power's done, I don't need to spend more slots on it unless there's a really awesome proc or set bonus." Basically, you've described a system where it's much less reasonable to not put the maximum slots & strongest enhancements into a power you plan on using, which again reduces build diversity.
Phoenix Rising Token Minidragon
Okay ... do tell.
Um ... you do realize that everything you've just said is [b]EXACTLY[/b] how City of Heroes "worked" on these points, right? So your objection to my system building itself off the City of Heroes example is ... that it follows the City of Heroes example ... in a game that is trying to be a Spiritual Successor to the City of Heroes game ... where people are EXPECTING things to work in City of Titans pretty similarly to the way they worked in City of Heroes?
At this point you're talking about the Invention System ... not the distribution and decision process involved with assigning Enhancement Slots to Powers. You're talking about what goes INTO the Slots as opposed to the "structure" involved in placing the Slots where and when.
With respect to this point, what needs to be understood is that the Invention System was an incredibly thick layer of COMPLEXITY slapped onto a relatively simple system. Furthermore, the Invention System involved an incredibly CUMBERSOME expansion of Content in a huge variety of directions (Inventory, Storage, Recipes, Salvage, Market Interfaces, Fluff Text, Badges, Memorization Mechanics, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.!) that for all intents and purposes completely REVOLUTIONIZED the entire Meta Game of building characters. Worse, that "revolution" in the building of characters was NECESSITATED by the fact that Enhancement Dysfunction essentially "wrecked" the [b]Game Balance[/b] that City of Heroes had enjoyed prior to that, and the Invention System was the "patch" to let people get "around" the limitations that Enhancement Dysfunction had imposed on the game (for 2 years!) so as to "restore" the pre-Enhancement Dysfucntion "feel" that the game had previously enjoyed.
The way that I look at it is that the entirety of the Invention System was Paragon Studios "copping" to the fact that Enhancement Dysfunction was a terrible mistake in the way that it "bound" all kinds of limits onto the game that were just too great a Nerf for the game to sustain its previous Balance Point. Inventions were the Devs' way of saying "sorry" for the debacle caused by Enhancement Dysfunction, which had been allowed to linger and fester because they weren't (ever) going to take it back or change it.
I look at the Invention System as an attempt to PATCH a PROBLEM ... and in large part it managed to "succeed" at that goal, because it created the conditions necessary for a "play by OUR RULES and we'll let you have your old power levels back" kind of system that sidestepped the worst aspects of Enhancement Dysfunction through use of Global Set Bonuses.
The structure that I'm building does away with the underlying reasoning and rationale for "needing" that extra layer of complexity, and does so in a way that makes the kind of complexity that Invention Sets represented UNNECESSARY because the "problem" that Invention Sets were designed to "solve" ISN'T PRESENT in the design of the structure that I'm building and proposing.
Correction. Most of what was on the Market, particularly after Issue 9 when Inventions got introduced, was stuff that involved Inventions. The Invention System "share" of the Market was very nearly total. I often got the feeling that if you removed all of the Inventions related stuff (Salvage, Recipes, the crafted Inventions, etc.) the Market Interface would have lost like 60-70% of its content (if not more). The sheer quantity of "stuff" needed to support the Invention System as far as the Market was concerned was just overwhelming.
That's what happens when you apply a KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle to a complex system. Right now, I'm trying to build the STRUCTURE of the simple rules that create the boundaries around, well ... EVERYTHING. At this stage, simplicity is a Virtue, not a Vice. Furthermore, I want to put everything on a Firm Foundation for how the whole system interacts (ie. how this "clock" ticks and runs), make SURE that everything works "properly" FIRST ... and then, maybe later on down the line, start thinking about introducing additional layers and levels and complexity into the system once everything is running smoothly.
Or to put it another way, I don't want to START the process of building a car by deciding what the tint on the chrome plating is going to be, just because last year's car catalog had a car with really nice chrome plating on it.
Ask yourself this all important question. WHY was a Frankenslotted build even necessary in the first place?
Answer: because there weren't enough slots available to give you the variety of Enhancements you needed in order to achieve what the Frankenslotting could offer you.
When you could Frankenslot a pair of Dual Set IOs and get 1.25x the Enhancement Value for 2 properties out of them together, it made sense to do that. Frankenslotting allowed you to "get more slots WORTH" of Enhancement out of a limited number of Slots. You had (up to) 6 Slots, but with Frankenslotting you could sometimes squeeze 7 to 9 Slots WORTH of Enhancement VALUE out of those 6 Slots.
The reasoning and rationale for why that kind of performance (and behavior) should even be ALLOWED is because the City of Heroes system didn't allow for anything like a Global Enhancement Slot which would take what was put into it and have that Enhancement affect ALL POWERS. There was no system that allowed you to SIMPLY "pick" what Set Bonuses you wanted to have [i]in a free form fashion[/i] because the only way to get Invention Set Bonuses was to build SPECIFIC Invention Sets that offered those Bonuses exclusively, and then try to find room for them somewhere in your build.
And surprise, surprise ... not all Set Bonuses were "equally" valuable. More to the point, most of the Set Bonuses offered by the various pre-designed Sets were (to put it mildly) pretty darn awful. So what you wound up with was a system where only a FEW Invention Sets were considered worth a darn ... and the rest were just trash and vendor bait. Frankenslotting ameliorated that particular condition [i]SLIGHTLY[/i] ... but not really.
So pardon me if I'm not exactly ... eager ... to recreate the Invention System, in its entirety, right from the beginning. The Invention System was made as an answer to a PROBLEM. My point is that the fundamental Problem that the Invention System was designed to correct [i]should not be incorporated into the fundamentals of a NEW game[/i] right from the get go.
Um ... I wouldn't expect any kind of "high end purples" to emerge prior to the Level Cap being raised to 50. City of Titans is going to be launching with a Level Cap of 30. I think I detect a ... flaw ... in your assumptions here.
Hence why I stated, flat out, that anything having to do with a Loot Drop system is going to need to be tied into the larger Game Economy ... and all of the issues that THAT implies. Furthermore, in order to PREVENT the problem of Level Capped characters having difficulty finding enough things to spend their currency upon isn't exactly an issue [i]confined and limited to[/i] what kinds of Enhancements will Drop at the Level Cap. Creation of Currency Sinks is a broader economic subject than just merely the one that I'm addressing here.
Indeed, I'm already trying to get out ahead of this problem by showing how making Slotted Enhancements be subject to "destruction" as a kind of Death Penalty could HELP this particular problem of having an Item with "permanence" such that demand for it collapses towards zero in a particular environment (ie. Level Cap). Would that be "enough" in and of itself to completely "solve" the problem? Probably not ... but it ought to be able to "help" with solving that problem at the very least.
Tell that to everyone who bought and played City of Heroes from Launch through Issue 4 who thought the game was wonderful. Issue 5 brought the Global Defense Nerf, and then Issue 6 brought Enhancement Dysfunction (if I'm remembering correctly, it's been a while). I started playing in Issue 2 and thought the system was brilliant (aside from the weaksauce Training and Dual Origin stages).
Lin Chiao Feng and I *still* reminisce, to this day, about how awesome [b]6 Slot Hover was[/b](!). Try to get your head around the idea that putting 6 Fly Enhancements into Hover made it not only "awesome" but also a "Travel" Power comparable to Fly! If you can't do it, that's because you never experienced it.
I hear what you're saying, but the thing is ... Global Enhancement Slots are INCREDIBLY powerful! This is why I push them towards happening on the "later" cycle, rather than on the "earlier" one like you suggest. They're supposed to be something you build TOWARDS, as an end goal, rather than as something you pick up along the way to getting towards the end. That's why I put them at 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 ... so that when the Level Cap gets raised, they're quite literally going to be the last thing you get when you hit that Level Cap.
I envision the Global Enhancement Slots as being the "keystone" part of the "arch" built by progression through 10 Levels of play. Thus they belong at the end, rather than in the middle.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but I think you're going to be in the minority on that one. Not ALONE, certainly, but definitely in the minority.
/em laugh
If you honestly believe that then ... well ... there really isn't a whole lot I can do to help you. To be sure, there are going to be Min/Max Players (aren't there always?) who will do exactly what you say ... they will Specialize to the exclusion of all else, and turn themselves into One Trick Ponies. But at what price?
In a linear system, the price of doing that would be negligible, since everything winds up being a Zero Sum Game, after all. In a "cliff dropoff" system like Enhancement Dysfunction was, there's a pretty clear incentive to NOT go past "Point X" that is basically baked into the game mechanics, so that the Developers gets to tell the Players "how to play the game" to the satisfaction of the *Developers* ... as opposed to the satisfaction of the Players. But in a Diminishing Returns CURVE like I've got set up here, you don't have any kind of "restraint" against Going Too Far other than your own sense of Good Judgement. I have the feeling that if my system were implemented in City of Titans, the debates over How Far To Go in terms of stacking Enhancements into Powers would be a debate that never comes to a consensus resolution for ALL Players ... simply because different Players value Specialization versus Diversity differently. A sort of "conventional wisdom" may emerge that settles on a sort of "no more than 3 or 4" kind of rule ... but it would be a convention and consensus of opinion based on a bewildering array of interactions with OTHER MOVING PARTS of the Meta Game, rather than something "enforced" because the game mechanics just TELL YOU that (and if you don't believe it, then you're just stupid) like Enhancement Dysfunction did in City of Heroes.
You say you think my system will reduce Build Diversity.
I have a hard time imagining how my system wouldn't cause Build Diversity to metaphorically "explode" with possibilities.
Brand X said that in the context of a different thread, but I feel it applies equally well here.
I'm not trying to "clone" the City of Heroes system (mainly because doing so would be a futile effort for a whole host of reasons) ... I'm trying to build a Spiritual Successor. Do the same things ... but [b]differently[/b] ... so that it can feel both Familiar AND New.
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I have already stated my support for this idea. That has not changed. I believe that this proposal will in fact lead to good things happening for the game at large. The fact that one boost slotted means a greater bump in effectiveness means there will be more incentive to slot for secondary effects of powers.
Are you a hunter with a set that has stuns, slows, or knock as a secondary effect on your blast or manipulation sets? Slot one damage into that first global (Hunter being the blaster-like class and thus one of the few this would be a good idea for) and one accuracy in the second and go to town making those extra effects more potent without 'gimping' your build. Slap a hold enhancement in that one power where you'd be forced to ignore the opportunity in CoH because a blaster slotting manipulation powers for mitigation purposes meant they had to do less damage or ignore valid sets...
The best part of this idea is that, due to global slots, the developers could bring back IO sets but keep them at only 6 pieces max per set. Many would say 'then why even place a 7th or 8th slot in a power?' The response would be simple and obvious once given: to get something the set doesn't give me. Complete that ranged damage set for the nice bonus at the end and still have room for a stun, knock, debuff, or taunt boost.
Yes, taunt. Remember, we're getting a classification that has Ranged/Defensive powers (Gunner) so there's a reason for some ranged fighters to want enemy attention. Sure they won't have the survivability of a Stalwart, but they'll be able to help keep aggro away from the squishier teammates simply by being able to slot for taunt because they can take a few hits and not inspect the floor afterwards.
You see stagnation, I see potential!
The original Lady of Ysgard. -Virtue
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For the most part I like the idea of a single type of common enhancement. I hated the TO/DO/SO thing too, just a PITA.
The chance for having them destroyed I do not like. Oh shit, I lost several accuracy enhancements in that mission and now I'm throwing nothing but Wiffle Balls at the enemies. Sounds like I'll be running to the store a lot in-between every mission, or carrying a crap load of extras around with me just in case.
I also don't like the idea of not having IO's of any kind. Unless... there is some plan to have enhancements and other ways to do the unique things that the set bonuses and special effect enhancements covered (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Set_Enhancements_with_Special_Effects). Just to mention one that completely change the way a character worked is the one that converted knockback to knockdown. Extra bonuses to percentages is not why I used enhancement sets in the first place. Like Wyvern said, I wanted the unique stuff that sets and procs would give me and would slot enhancements far below 50 so that I kept those unique things at every level. So, if you can find a way to have these special things in only having vendor enhancements then I'm all for it.
Actually, I'd like to point out that it would not be unreasonable to have Enhancements Dropping in my system, with a reasonable likelihood that even if you did get hit with a Death Penalty of losing an Enhancement from a Slot, chances are "not horrible" that you'd already have a replacement sitting in your Inventory thanks to the random Drops. So long as you ... refrain ... from Faceplanting too often, it shouldn't create THAT much of a hardship. Part of the reason I can say that is because there's only 11 Enhancement Types in my design here, so even with an Enhancement Inventory limit of only 10, you're still looking at fairly good odds of being able to replace without visiting a Store so long as you've got a few in your tray and haven't sold them all at the time you get hit with a Death Penalty. Expand that Inventory tray to 20, and I think you can see how much easier that makes things.
Like I said, if the Enhancements were in some way "Unique" or otherwise a "chore" to acquire, that kind of "price" being charged as part of a Death Penalty would be a serious "NO NO" in terms of Game Design. But if the Enhancements are "fairly common" and indeed are effectively "Dropping all the time" then that becomes far less of a concern, since they can just be replaced with a [i]little bit[/i] of effort. Remember, we'd be talking about the loss of ONE Enhancement per PC Defeat here, so it wouldn't be THAT stiff of a Death Penalty ... although having an Enhancement slotted into a Global Slot be lost would "hurt more" than one that belongs to a single Power, but hey ... them's the breaks (if adopting that system).
With respect to the Knockdown/Knock Up/Knockback situation, I've already recommended elsewhere in these forums that City of Titans institute a Target Self keybind control so that Buff Powers (including Heals) can be switching on Player Command from Affects Target to being Affects Self. WoW does this (I believe it's the Alt key by default over there), allowing you to Heal either Allies or Self on demand, and do the same things with Buffs. That same Target Self keybind control could be used for Knock Attacks as well, allowing it to do "double duty" so to speak, where if the keybind is engaged when the attack Power is commanded that any Knock Up/Knockback will automatically be converted into Knockdown ... thereby giving Players the ability to "Knock On Demand" rather than having to find Terrain to "contain" their Knock Effects for them in a way that doesn't tick off their teammates.
That then leads to creating a set of choices in the Options Menu for the Game Controls, such that you'd be given a choice of having:
Knockback: Always On / Default On / Default Off / Always Off
Knockup: Always On / Default On / Default Off / Always Off
Knockdown: Always On / Default On / Default Off / Always Off
Always On and Always Off are kind of obvious, but the Default On and Default Off would control the "default" setting which the Target Self keybind would be inverting when used with Knock Attacks. So a Blast with Knockback would be keyed to the Knockback Setting which would be set to Default On ... meaning that the Target Self keybind when engaged would switch that to being "Knockback off" and would therefore "clamp" the amount of Knockback delivered to Target to only be enough to cause a Knockdown.
With this system then you can "customize" how you want your Knockbacks to "work" for you, if you want them to work at all, and whether or not you need to engage the Target Self keybind with your Knockback Attacks in order to convert them to being Knockdown (or not) by default.
If you do all of THAT ... then there's really no "need" to put any kind of Knockback Limiter into the Enhancement System ITSELF, simply because all of those functions are being handled independently of the Enhancements slotted into your Powers.
Final thing I'll say on this subject is that if there's going to be any kind of "Special" Enhancements that do unique things ... I wouldn't want to be messing with those AT LAUNCH simply because of the way that such Items can have a rather disruptive influence on Game Balance (in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons). Like I said earlier, I'd like to make sure that the Powers/Slots/Globals/Enhancements structure and systems are all running [i]tolerably well[/i] FIRST before introducing Outside Elements such as those. Not writing them off in a "never gonna happen" fashion ... just saying that I wouldn't want to BEGIN with those elements, which is a very different consideration. Remember, when the "pros" build a brick wall, they usually start at the bottom ... not with all the nifty stuff that goes on top. ^_~
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Well, that could be, but their were powers that kinda promoted the idea of doing just that. One of the most powerful damage powers in the game relied on you dying so that you could activate it. Others were specifically designed to let you die and take you out of the fight, self destruct comes to mind. If similar powers exist then those that take them will look on this as a penalty for using their powers.
As far as the knockback goes, nice idea, but I don't see that happenning. I can't put my finger on it, maybe it will, but I doubt that that such effects will be allowed to be as easily negated at the whim of the player.
Knockback was just one example though of a specific unique effect achieved form a proc or a set bonus. The only reason I mentioned it was that one of the things I saw brought up in this thread was eliminating crafting of enhancements completely. While I don't expect to see it at launch, I would be disappointed if it never made it into the game at all, and I don't see how these special effects will be achieved without them. There have been many complaints about the market and crafting, but I enjoyed both that different levels, and I personally need more than doing missions, defeating enemies and running to NPC store. I also want a way to make my character semi-unique because I took the time to do so, and that's gonna require more than a few global enhancement slots.
Yes, when you build a wall, you start with what goes on the bottom, but if you're really a pro, you already know what's going on top of it, you don't wait till you get there to decide.
Here's what it's like for me.
Imaging you're playing D&D and the only long sword you can get is just like everyone else's long sword. There is nothing special about it.
The suggestion by whoever made it above, to remove this removes and create less of an incentive to continue playing. It is this suggestion that I disapprove of more than any of the rest. If this game lacks those special, rare things, there won't be much to keep me playing. I think that, whether or not it is in there from the beginning. Any plan has to include how you're going to introduce those special, rare things when you decide what they will be.
In response to Redlynne's response to Wyvern: Completely agree
As to the idea of an IO-type system: nothing wrong with it as something to add later, but I agree with the KISS philosophy (at least until the first increase in level cap)
I did like being invisible when I flew ...
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I should HOPE that people who use [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyPFQKpRnd0]Kill Me Now[/url] Powers when the game includes a Death Penalty can do the 1+1=2 operation to figure out what that means.
"I'm not real good with Cause and Effect. Why is that?"
And as far as the Knockback Control By Keyboard Command goes ... why WOULDN'T anyone (Player or Developer) want such a system? Forcing that decision into the "somewhat permanent" Enhancement system via slotting, so as to occupy a (precious?) Slot that could have been used by something else [i]rather than allowing Players to DECIDE when to Pull Their Punches[/i] just seems ... short sighted and ... well ... DAFT ... to me.
And let me take your perspective on Crafting and push this a little bit further into focus here, because I think the one thing that everyone seems to be forgetting (when they push for a City of Heroes styled Invention System) is that Inventions relied on Salvage that was broken down into two Origins ... Tech and Magic. But City of Titans [i]isn't going to be bothering with Origins[/i] ... so how to you incorporate that fundamental divide so as to get "enough" kinds of Salvage out there to make all the recipes "work" for Crafting? Do you just make "everything drop from everything" ... so to speak? If you're going to do THAT, you might as well just resort to some sort of Token system, where you do Crafting using some kind of Currency rather than from consuming Inventory. But then if you do THAT then you aren't recreating/cloning the City of Heroes experience (faithfully enough)!
In a lot of ways, this is an argument over Crafting is one that can become Tautological pretty quickly. And that's before you even scratch the surface of needing to plan, manage and moderate a Game Economy for every single little part and piece of what can go into that Crafting System. Trust me when I say that doing anything that feels like Crafting is going to be a truly monumental undertaking.
The other issue that's staring us all in the face is ... what do you DO once you've gotten to the Level Cap? Or more to the point, what are going to be the Drains and Sinks for various currencies and commodities that will be getting generated at the Level Cap so you don't wind up with runaway inflation due to ever increasing supplies and little to no demand (because once You've Got Yours you never have to worry about losing ANY of it!). If there's nothing to "spend on" when characters reach the Level Cap then they run out of game to play. I'll freely admit that the solution I've put on the table for [i]partially solving[/i] the issue of Level Cap Itemization with respect to Level Cap Itemization is by no means "perfect" or somehow all encompassing or complete ... but it's something which IS (for the most part) "avoidable" through Player Skill, even though at the same time it is relatively "inevitable" simply because it's a Death Penalty. I also recognize that a lot of people have "no love" for Death Penalties in games (and really, why should they?). But really ... how else do you propose creating a "sink" for Level Cap Enhancements to get funneled into so that they aren't pure Vendor Bait and Market Trash after reaching the "I've Got Mine" state? Only way I can think of to do that is to make the Enhancements that you Slot somehow IMPERMANENT ... which means a chance to lose one ... somehow. Keying that loss of Itemization to some kind of Random Number Generator that the Player has no control or influence over is just cruel (and stupid) since it takes any sort of Player Skill out of the equation.
Now ... I could see doing something like the "lose an Enhancement from a Slot" as being a very SPECIFIC sort of Death Penalty kind of deal. I'm thinking here (now) in terms of the Enhancement Deletion happening only if you have to release to Rez in a Hospital ... for example. That would be one way to mitigate the impact of having this sort of Death Penalty. It would mean that if you have someone nearby who can Rez you in place by using a Power, or if you can use a Wakie Inspiriation on yourself, you can avoid that part of the Death Penalty and not risk any of your Enhancements. That would be doable. In fact, the easiest way to "do" that inside the game engine would be to make that aspect of any sort of Death Penalty key to being Rezzed in [i]certain places[/i] ... such as a Zone Hospital, and possibly even a Base Hospital (although a Base Hospital might have mitigating factor items which make the odds of Enhancement Loss be less than 100%). So there are various ways to *finesse* such issues ... although every exception which prevents Enhancement Loss as a result of being Defeated simply moves the need for some sort of "sink" to consume all the Loot Drops that will be occurring at the Level Cap that much more important to create, lest they build up in the Game Economy with nowhere to go.
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*head esplodes*
Ok...just in case I missed it somewhere, how would the Global Enhancements work with sets with fewer traits to enhance like Def and Resist toggles? Most of these would get 1 End Redux and then 3 for their appropriate state (defense or resistance). So I could devote 1 global slot to End Redux which would affect all of my end-required stuff and 1 to say Resistance that would benefit only Resistance-based Powers yes?
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Not that I'm married to the IO idea, but one way to balance this would be to have certain types of "salvage" (or whatever the creation material turns out to be) only come from certain groups ... the Black Rose drops one set of salvage, the Arcane Sentinel drop a different set, etc. with some generic ones that drop from everyone.
The the "recipes" could require salvage from at least two different groups, or one group and one generic for lower-level recipes, or three or more groups for higher-level recipes. Recipes could drop from any group that drops salvage for it.
Again, I totally understand why you don't like it, and I would prefer it to be an option that has more effect for higher-level characters.
Also, IO creation consumes a LOT of time that could otherwise be spent enjoying story arcs, but some people do like the grind, and it would give people something to trade/auction and add to the game economy.
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Well ... I did admit flat out that I, y'know ... [i]went crazy[/i] to think I knew what I was doing ... so, um ... surprise!! \o/
In my scheme, you don't have Resistance OR Defense Enhancements, you simply have Protection Enhancements that apply to both Resistance AND Defense. So that's one point of clarification I wanted to make.
If you wanted to have your Global Slots applying their Enhancement value(s) to your Protection Powers, all you have to do is Slot into the Globals whatever would Enhance those Protection Powers. So if the Protection Power(s) you want to (globally) Enhance are Toggles, and therefore they burn Endurance ... you can slot an Endurance Reduction Enhancement into your Global and it'll Enhance not only your Protection Toggles but also presumably almost any Power that isn't a Passive (with some exceptions, like Rest or maybe Brawl). That Endurance Reduction will, of course, have "no effect" on Passive Powers simply because Passive Powers do not consume Endurance.
The main thing is that I want to break down the Enhancement Types into "functions" ... which is why I group Resistance and Defense into a single Type, put all Buffs into a single Type, and put all Debuffs into another Type. Perhaps the biggest consolidation would be in the Mez Duration category, which I could arguably see being titled "Control Duration" instead for clarity. So instead of slotting Sleep Enhancements into Sleep Powers and Hold Enhancements into Hold Powers and Stun Enhancements into Stun Powers and Confuse Enhancements into Confuse Powers ... all of that is simplified down into a SINGLE Type of Enhancement that works on ALL Control/Mez Effect Durations. That way you can put a single Mez Duration Enhancement into a Global Enhancement Slot and it'll "work" for every Mez Effect you've got in your powersets ... whether they be Sleep, Hold, Stun, Confuse, Immobilize, etc.
You follow me?
Remember when I said that Global Enhancement Slots would be VERY POWERFUL? I wasn't kidding.
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I may be remembering wrong, but didn't CoH enhancements start similar to this? Maybe not this broad, but didn't enhancements for every type of effect come later? (Then of course, the next nerf to enhancement effectiveness was ED)
Anyway, just renewing my support for your idea.
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Nope, it was the other way around.
From paragon wiki:
Endurance Drain, and Endurance Recovery, which were merged into the Endurance Modification aspect;
There was also Cone Range, which got merged into Range. A few others, but those are the ones that I remember seeing myself personally.
To my recollection, City of Heroes started out with The Power 10 and then later on around Launch expanded out into like some 20-25 Types. Some of those got removed later on or consolidated, so as to create the Endurance Modification we all wound up slotting into Stamina and some Electric powersets used for their Drains. Others just languished in "what's the point?" land, like Intangibility for "Caging" Powers, such as [url=http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Controller_Control.Gravity_Control.Dimension_Shift]Dimension Shift[/url] in Gravity Control, which was a Phase Foe Power (and generally reviled). So your memory isn't faulty.
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*tries not to get mez'd by the dancer ...*
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Just for the purposes of clarification and prevention of misunderstanding, my proposed Enhancement system would split these functions apart again into Buff and Debuff aspects. So for like an Electric powerset that did Endurance Drains, you'd want to have a Debuff Enhancement to increase the Endurance Drain on Foe, because that's a Debuff ... but if you wanted to increase the Endurance Gain to Self from the same Power you'd need to have a Buff Enhancement. Same deal with a power like [url=http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Controller_Buff.Kinetics.Transfusion]Transfusion[/url] or [url=http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Controller_Buff.Kinetics.Transference]Transference[/url] out of Kinetics, where those powers contain both Buff and Debuff aspects to their Effects.
Movement Enhancements would be classified as Buffs, since they increase Movement (usually your own and your allies, but never your Foes) ... but Slows (including those that adversely affect Recharge) would be classified as Debuffs, because they apply Movement (and possibly Recharge) penalties to Foes. So a Power such as [url=http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Controller_Buff.Kinetics.Siphon_Power]Siphon Power[/url] out of Kinetics would be another example of a Buff AND Debuff being incorporated into a single Power together. In fact, there were quite a few Drain+Buff Powers in the City of Heroes powersets ... enough that I really couldn't justify to myself having a single Enhancement Type affecting Buffs AND Debuffs at the same time, because that became "just a little TOO good" of a deal in the context of Global Enhancement Slots with respect to Buff/Debuff oriented powersets.
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Way back when I was doing the IO pages for the Paragon Wiki, I was digging through the PIGG files to get the enhancement icons and found some interesting ... leftovers. The ones that come to mind were:
[list]
[*] Icons for "jump height" and "jump range" enhancements. (slightly different shades of tan, and the icon was the standard jump icon but one was stretched a bit more)
[*] An icon for "cone range" (a vertically stretched version of the range icon)
[*] Hexagonal icons labeled "skills".
[/list]
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Decided to go ahead and formally make this change since it actually is clearer, and I'm using the terminology for a new post I'm currently in the process of writing up, but probably won't be able to finish before tomorrow because it's another [b]WALL OF TEXT[/b] that I'm going to want to make a different thread from this one. Previous post listing all of my [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/29594#comment-29594]Proposed Enhancement Types[/url] has been edited to reflect this change.
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I like what you did with this. Good job.
Yea! I'm glad you joined the CoT forums, Redlynne. I have always loved your number crunching and reasonable suggestions to improve game mechanics.
1) I think you and Arcanaville are related somehow...
2) I like your idea. I hate making something too complex just for the sake of complexity. One aspect that I really like is versatility. If I want an all-around guy I can slot the Globals for 1 Acc, 1 End Redux, 1 damage, 1 range etc. If I want a damage monster, I can slot 1 Acc, 4 damage. A Tanker who wants to be really invulnerable can slot for Protection.
I wonder if Taunt will be considered a factor that can be slotted for?
In any case, good thinking.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
If the two were brought together, the world would end in a pile of sketches and spreadsheets.
That said, IMHO Redlynne has quite a ways to go before hitting Arcanaville's level. Working out the necessary test plans, taking the data, and analyzing it all to reverse engineer a whole existing game engine is a [i]massive[/i] undertaking. Creating a new system is far easier.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I would consider Taunt to be a Control effect, so you may want to have a look at [b][url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/redlynne-gets-crazier-proposes-control-powers-system]Redlynne gets crazier ... Proposes Control Powers System[/url][/b] for more information on that subject, even though I haven't addressed Taunt [i]specifically[/i] in that thread yet.
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You realize that, in essence, this is following up the (only vaguely connected) idea CoX had with Inherent Stamina. However instead of having universal slots they had a free power dedicated to alleviating End problems. Your idea expands upon that to include every power effect. So you could use 1-2 U-Slots as a form of Stamina just like we did before. However we will have so many other options as well.
Me like.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
I'd throw a wrinkle into that interpretation though that insofar as Enhancements have an Effect, they need to have a Power *TO* Effect. So if there is no Stamina(-like) Power in the game, then there is literally nothing for the Global Slots to Enhance in order to "do" what Stamina did. So a Stamina Power (and Health, I would argue) would still be "necessary" in order to give the Global Slots "something" to Enhance ... and of course, you'd still be able to add Slots to such Powers, even if they are Inherent, just like City of Heroes did. And the reason for that ought to be obvious in that we're trying to [i]Re-Create[/i] the City of Heroes experience and feel, without resorting to use of the City of Heroes Game Engine that Cryptic came up with about a dozen years ago. So similar performance, but through alternative means.
Just as a side note of irony, although I'm (personally) all in favor of an Inherent Health and an Inherent Stamina, since those are Passive Powers that provide relevant and necessary services that are not replicated by anything else (really) ... I do not feel the same way about Hurdle and Swift. Hurdle and Swift basically existed as the gateway requirements to get to Health and Stamina, due to Pool Structure Requirements, and really offered little to nothing for their investment that couldn't have been done "better" (or more elegantly, if you prefer) by simply raising the Base Jumping/Running stats in order to achieve the same results and dispensing with Hurdle and Swift entirely. I'm hard pressed to think of anyone who would have added Slots to Hurdle and/or Swift, although I'm sure people have done it.
With respect to Hurdle and Swift then, I'm (personally) thinking that simply pairing Ninja Run and Sprint as the "toggle powers" for not yet truly SUPERspeed or SUPERleaping is the way to go. So Sprint would add Running Speed just like it always did ... but Ninja Leap would only add height and horizontal distance to jumps, and have a lower coefficient of friction than Ninja Run did (think halfway between Running and Flying on this) so as to change course in mid-air, but perhaps not quite so easily/quickly with Ninja Leap. Of course, you'd be able to run Sprint and Ninja Leap at the same time so as to get the best "Poor Man's" Travel Speed out of the combined Powers. Think Combat Jumping, but adding more horizontal jump distance than Combat Jumping did for Ninja Leap (as opposed to the City of Heroes Ninja Run).
Once Ninja Run became available in City of Heroes, it plus Sprint were my "Travel" Powers, with Hover used as a backup for "flying" when there wasn't enough ground available (ie. Shadow Shard). My Ninja Princess Mastermind didn't even have Hover, and she got around places like Grandville using Sprint and Ninja Run with the occasional need to throw in the Good vs Evil Jump Pack in order to get over things that had sheer walls and other height prohibitive obstacles (like buildings in Mercy Island that were [i]just tall enough[/i] to be "too tall" to get on top of using Ninja Run). That kind of performance was possible simply because while on the ground, Ninja Run added just about as much of a boost as Sprint did, so using Ninja Run and Sprint at the same time on the ground produced a "double Sprint" kind of speed ... which usually got me up into the 60 mph range for Running, and that was perfectly adequate for me, since that was close to the Fly speedcap until Afterburner came along.
Me likey my system too.
But then, as advertised ... I'm crazy ... ^_~
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
No, it's not. In CoH, if you needed, say, 33% accuracy, you had an enormous variety of choices in how you got it - you could slot a single accuracy SO, you could stack set bonuses with a pair of acc/dam/end/rech quads, you could use the appropriate HO, etcetera. See? Choices. Under your system, if you needed 25% accuracy, you'd slot one accuracy enhancement. No other options. The only choice you have is whether that accuracy should go in the global slot or not... except, oh wait, if you have any powers that don't use accuracy, using a global there wastes a slot, so that one accuracy should always go in the power.
Quick rule of thumb: if there's a "build choice" in a game, and there's a single right answer, then it's not a choice and shouldn't be presented as one. (But you say, variety! Uh, no; being able to eight-slot accuracy is not variety, it's just a newbie trap.)
...I had a bunch more points typed up, but apparently the crappy hotel internet I was using when I last visited the boards ate that post, so you'll have to suffer with a quicker summary:
I don't agree with homogenizing enhancements. Yes, you loved pre-ED CoH, I get that. I did not. I do not want to go back to a system that offers far less room for build customization*, no way to advance at all once you've hit max level, no money sinks worth mentioning**, and nothing worth buying or selling to other players.
Global slots? Grand notion, that. Get rid of TOs and DOs? Good idea. Make something that's inbetween inventions / HOs and regular enhancements - maybe a sort of vendor-supplied HO-lite type enhancement? Sure. Ease up the ED limits somewhat so that a purple +52% damage IO still gives you, say, +10% damage? Sounds good. But homogenizing enhancements [i]entirely[/i] sounds like a recipe for a very boring build system and an anemic game economy.
footnotes:
* You say "you can't imagine how your system wouldn't lead to an explosion of build options". I can't imagine how it would lead to anything other than a few cookie-cutter selections of global enhancements, putting max slots in your "best" powers (for whatever definition of "best" is in play), and each power having an obvious "right way" to slot it where, if you do anything other than, say, one accuracy, three recharge, four damage, you're just doing it wrong. Whereas under CoH, you didn't always want to put max slots in your best powers; sometimes you could get close-enough performance out of only four slots, and the other two were more valuable elsewhere. Your system doesn't offer that as a reasonable choice, because you've relaxed the diminishing returns so far that it's always worth adding more slots.
** Yes, you suggested a money sink of destroying enhancements. Not a good plan, that - it has the same flaw that CO's star loss death penalty does: it triggers a spiral of failure. If you try something that's hard, and die, suddenly you are even less capable; instead of being able to come back, learn from your mistakes, and figure out how to play better, all you learn is that it's best to fight easy opponents that can't beat you in the first place.
Phoenix Rising Token Minidragon
Did I miss a post that said they were planning on going the enhancement route?
Wyvern ... considering the fact that I'm trying to set up How Things Work so that the RULES are set up correctly, using an approach of Simplify, Simplify, Simplify is entirely appropriate for STARTING this kind of conversation. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I'm advocating this is somehow the END POINT of this topic, that I'm trying to place a marker for how what I'm talking about is the STOPPING POINT rather than the BEGINNING POINT.
The other thing is that what you're complaining about is that the ITEMIZATION isn't chock full of a bewildering array of choices FROM THE BEGINNING ... while giving short shrift to the sheer quantity of Content Creation, Game Balancing and full on Economic Theorizing the kinds of multiplicative ITEMIZATION options you describe would require and enforce upon a game [b]That Doesn't Even Have The Basic Structures Built Yet[/b].
In other words, you're complaining about the interior decor design for a house that hasn't even been built yet. I'm trying to pour the foundation slab, and you're saying the upstairs bedroom ought to have 3 windows in it, not 2, because you've got these lovely curtains you want to hang up there but they won't go with that's in the room, so a [i]redesign of the entire house[/i] is called for in order to make you happy. And while we're at it, the view from the upstairs windows isn't what you'd like it to be (in a house that hasn't even been BUILT YET) so if all possible could the entire construction be moved to the hill on the other side of the canyon [i]Over There[/i] (vague hand wave) because the view is so much nicer than what it is here.
Look ... there's no [i]polite way[/i] of saying this, so I'll just say it straight up.
If you want to CLONE the City of Heroes Invention System [i]so badly[/i] ... by all means ... Get Started. If you want to have the results of EIGHT YEARS of game development created for your gaming pleasure within TWO YEARS so that everything is tested, vetted, balanced, approved and ready to roll in time for Game Launch ... you're kinda sorta going to need to pitch in on that effort. These things don't just "happen" because somebody wants them to, so someone ELSE is obliged to pick up the task and finish it "on time" to the first person's satisfaction.
I'm laying out in plain, simplistic terms what I think stands a reasonable chance of being ACCOMPLISHED within the time span available. In other words, I'm not starting from a position of trying to bite off more than anyone could reasonably be expected to be able to chew. I'm personally of the opinion that trying to create content for, implement (and BALANCE!) an entire Invention System in time for Game Launch is simply A Bridge Too Far. Doing such a thing AFTER LAUNCH ought to be doable, but you want to at least make sure the foundational structure of the game is "set" and [b]stable[/b] first before going to that extra step of adding on the additional layer of complexity.
All I'm saying is get the baseline established FIRST, make sure that it works, and THEN entertain notions of extending and building more onto it. Right now, we haven't even got a baseline to work with! We all have "feelings" about what City of Titans ought to play like (ie. City of Heroes 2.0) but none of the parts and pieces of HOW THAT WILL WORK have been publicly established, let alone revealed yet.
Trying to do the incredible array of the Invention System [i]from the beginning[/i] is nothing short of an incredibly massive Feature Creep that stands extremely excellent odds of sinking the entire project under its weight. Remember, Cryptic wanted to do Inventions from the very beginning, and it took them MULTIPLE iterations [i]and 3 years of development[/i] to get it "right enough" to actually be playable in Issue [b]*9*[/b] without wrecking everything that had been done before. And even then, you STILL wound up with a pile of Cookie Cutter Sets that didn't offer anywhere near as much build diversity as it would at first appear, on paper. Got an AoE attack? Slot anything besides Positron's Blast and you're just gimping yourself for no good reason. Have a nice game.
And just to be clear ... I've never ruled out the possibility that after game launch there could be an Invention System of some kind. I've never said that the very basic structure I'm trying to build here is the Be All, End All, Forever And Ever, AMEN. And to be honest, I have a hard time imagining why you would even think that.
What I'm trying to do is build a STABLE and ACHIEVABLE foundation that contains enough structure and innate versatility in it that it can be EXTENDED IN THE FUTURE to allow the kinds of things you've been talking about.
Or to put it another way ... I'm not expecting 8 years of content creation put into a dead game to somehow "automagically" crop up in a game that is only starting its content and systems development NOW and is due to be released in 2 years. I'd prefer to set goals that can be achieved(!!) in that time frame, and then build on those accomplishments [i]once they've been accomplished[/i] in an iterative process of advancement and development ... rather than set an impossible goal of shooting for the moon immediately after the discovery of heavier than air flight, with the anticipation of being able to get there in 2 years.
Learn to walk before you try to run.
Learn to ride a bicycle with training wheels on before taking the training wheels off.
Learn to fly the simulator before you try flying the real aircraft.
Make sure you can chew bubblegum before you start walking around ... while trying to chew bubblegum.
One step at a time ... and it helps to make sure those "steps" aren't so big your legs can't stretch that far ...
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
To my knowledge, the Rednames haven't really said much of anything about how City of Titans is supposed to "work" under the hood. They've got some zone environments they're working on and the trailer showed them testing a few simplistic opportunities for Powers (the one I saw looked like a Stealth fade out, but it was hard to tell what I was supposed to be seeing, honestly).
Everyone EXPECTS City of Titans to work on a Powers with Enhancements basis [i]because that's how City of Heroes worked[/i] and operated, so there's something of a "don't reinvent the wheel" sense along with the "ain't broke, don't fix it" with regards to THAT aspect of things. I personally find it simpler and easier to relate concepts and ideas using the "common language" that City of Heroes used in this respect, since it represents something that everyone ought to already understand and be able to grasp quickly. But you'll notice that even then, as soon as ANY deviation or changes are made to those expectations, people IMMEDIATELY start saying "but that's not how it went/worked before" and then the need to explain, clarify and educate takes a lot of words and time to accomplish. Take a look at the confusion over the question of "what's a Blaster in City of Titans?" for one of the more obvious examples of this phenomenon.
So no, nobody's come right out and SAID that City of Titans will be running on a Powers and Enhancements model for both Level Advancement and Itemization. It's just merely a reasonable expectation and "bet" that a Powers and Enhancements system is going to be what gets used, in part because that's what we're all expecting. I'm just playing the odds in supposing that City of Titans will try to parallel the structures and "rules" that City of Heroes used, even if the actual "shape" and form those things take are not exactly the same (ie. brick and mortar vs concrete and steel as building materials). After all, the intent is to make a game that is LIKE City of Heroes ... rather than make a game that [b]IS[/b] City of Heroes ... all the way down to the War Walls.
So I'm just theorycrafting in a vacuum over here, rather than having an inside track on what's going on. And as you'll probably have noticed, the Rednames have been somewhat conspicuous by their absence in either of my "crazy" threads where I offer structural ideas on how to "build" these aspects of the game, and do so in ways that are extensible into the future. I'd LIKE to think that what I'm proposing has in some (small) way sparked a conversation about possibilities and How To Do Things that might not have been taking place previously ... but at this point I have no indications that even THAT has occurred yet.
So we'll just have to see ...
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I like the thinking here. Of course we have no clue what the developers are working on along these lines and probably won't for a while, but this is, at the very least, a strong proposal that can inform power design.
There's simple-but-interesting - and there's no-meaningful-choice. Your system is heavily weighted towards the latter; what you've described would be better implemented without enhancement slots on powers at all - just use CO-style power upgrades, and a few global enhancements, and you'd get the same results.
Which, honestly, is not necessarily a bad idea - you'd probably want to hand out a few more global slots if they're the only enhancement slots, but that might be an interesting system. It's just that you've added this extra layer of "apply enhancements to powers" that accomplishes nothing beyond opening up the option that someone who doesn't know what they're doing could get it wrong.
And yet any time anyone's suggested having something more interesting than plain SOs, you've come across as incredibly hostile to the idea. You've said flat out that a major advantage of your system is "not needing" anything more than plain SOs. You've said that you're trying to recreate the feel of the game pre-ED and pre-invention-system. So it should not be hard to see why someone might think you were against the notion of such things existing.
On the flip side, you've made some assumptions that I find rather less reasonable.
Do I expect a clone of CoH's invention sets? Of course not. I even explicitly mentioned making something akin to HOs more accessible, so I really don't know where you got this idea from.
Do I expect a full range of enhancement sets to be in game at start? Of course not. CoH was adding new sets up until the very end. Again, I don't know where you got this notion from; all I've said is that going with [i]only[/i] SOs removes an entire layer of interesting choices.
But if CoT does go with an enhancements-applied-to-powers system, I do expect to see something with a bit more variety and build choice than just plain SOs. (And hopefully more accessible than the Titan Origin enhancements CoH shipped with.)
Phoenix Rising Token Minidragon
The CoT system will be called boosts, and will be significantly more powerful/flexible than CoH's was. This is not as hard as it sounds, because CoH was not originally built to have an Enhancement system, whereas our game is being built from the ground up to accommodate Boosts. They also plan to have global boost slots, which will unlock in predetermined amounts at predetermined levels, which are not yet predetermined because they haven't done any playtesting yet. Global boosts are a different boost, not regular Boosts slotted into Global slots.
The thing is, Redlynne, you'd have been truly awesome to have had in the old forums about six to nine months ago. These things, while far from finished, have been advanced far enough now it's quite difficult and awkward to make useful suggestions for us non-red names. I suspect trying to explain exactly where and why that is is just as awkward for them, hence the lack of input.
On the other hand, do stuff like this enough, and you're gonna get tapped :D. The last two people I knew willing to mess with this sort of thing so thoroughly came to the new forums as devs.
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
No doubt about that. Only problem is ... I didn't even KNOW this project existed until like 2-2.5 weeks ago ... and I've been camping the forums ever since (as you've seen).
I figured that was essentially the case. After all, [b]WALL OF TEXT™ CRITS YOU!!!![/b] doesn't exactly make for light reading. And if the Teams are already committed and locked into a particular course of action because of decisions taken 6-9 months ago, then That Ship Has Sailed and no amount of shouting from the dock to "come back!" is going to be of much help. Wouldn't be the first time I'd missed the boat like this.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
You may have missed that boat, but if you asked to be part of the team after putting all this up, you'd probably get in. Like I said, I've seen people on the forums who could do stuff like this become devs, all the time. There's still lots of work to be done and you've got all the necessary talents.
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
Already ahead of the curve on that score. Sent my forms in before I even did the first post of this thread.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Well, it would be nice if the devs had a list of what they've worked out and what they haven't so we don't create exercise-in-futility threads. I'd love to contribute, too, but there's not much to do if the only dev feedback you seem to see is "we're not doing it like that."
Anyway, Red is great for taking a rules system and finding all the holes and weirdnesses in it. In other words, Concept QA. I've got a story about that.
Years ago, I showed Red a pen-and-paper starship combat wargame called Starfire which had expansions that made it into a virtual 4X game, years before Civilization came out. In a nutshell, you have spaceships which were built on hulls (escort up to super dreadnought) that had a certain number of spaces, engines per movement point, turn rate, etc. There are Tech Levels which determine which systems are available, and systems included things like weapons, shields, armor, datalinked fire control, cargo holds, etc. all with their own rules. The 4X expansion dealt with shipyards, Imperial economics, building settlements, supply lines, and so forth.
I let Red borrow the game and expansions for a week. The next weekend Red had a fully typed up set of rules for building O'Neill Colonies. It was a cross between the rules for building space stations (which had no hull space limits, but were fragile and couldn't be towed) and the rules for transporting colonists (which spelled out required accommodations, supplies, and other logistics). It needed playtesting, of course, and it was insanely expensive, but if you wanted to park a settlement (i.e. logistics point) in a strategically-located system with no inhabitable planets to work with, it was better than nothing. I think I still have those rules somewhere on my hard drive.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, ZM quote:
Right now I'm willing to bet that the only thing they've got worked out is that they wish they had announced a two week break after the Kickstarter. ;)
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Umm, actually, those two things are not in opposition. The whole point of development and alpha stages is that, as DSFH put it, things are at best "set in mud" and can be changed at any time. My point being that developers shouldn't sit on things until they've got it all locked in, they're emotionally invested, and it hits beta. It gets to the "release early, release often" strategy of development: getting things in front of as many eyes as is practical will get bugs found eariier and faster, and when they're cheaper to fix.
We have a poster at work that reads: "There comes a point in the life of every project when you must shoot the engineers and begin production."
My usual example is ED in CoH: it was pushed to the live servers, unchanged, less than two weeks after the player base even saw it. Nobody had time to prepare, nobody had time to counterpropose anything, nobody had time to do more than point out that the cliff curve was pure BS. ED wasn't a fundamentally bad idea, but its implementation was, and the patronization of the player base was the worst part. And the fact that it never changed was just salt on the wounds.
I'm not saying anything here is that bad; in fact, it's been a lot better than expected for something this early in the cycle.
On a related note, we really need a non-NDA wiki (an FAQ isn't going to be enough) where those of us on the outside can keep track of this stuff. So there's some kind of "boosts" thing going down... what do we know, when did we find out, is it still valid? Is it like the glyph system in Tera, which is really quite weak and inflexible compared to CoX's enhancement system (even the pre-ED one)? Is it like WoW skill trees? etc. etc.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Point taken. I read your previous post to mean you were looking for a list of items that were, more or less, locked in. A list of "this is how we're thinking of doing these things" that could get feedback from the community could be a fulfilling experience for both sides.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
I came in after ED, right around I10 or so, and the horror stories I heard were scary. Then I heard about builds before ED and I was puzzled. Based on how the game launched, what dope thought that people WOULDN'T find the most efficient way to do everything and do it that way? When one way is clearly superior, the majority will gravitate that way because despite what we all claim most people are NOT stupid.
Yes, it sounds like ED was horribly implemented. Launching without some form of it was a huge mistake IMHO. Didn't anyone test this in BETA? Didn't the Devs see how toons were being built and realize the problem? I felt the same way when I heard about how aggro originally worked. One guy Taunting a whole map by himself? And NOBODY saw a problem with that?
The CoX Dev team did wonderful things. often with poor resources and little hope of getting more. However some of their decisions boggled me. I have every reason to believe that we won't repeat those same mistakes this time...we'll make new ones instead. That's how life is...
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
I think Arcanaville posted at one point that it was amazing that City of Heroes even HAD a balance point, given that a lot of the early work was done blindly with an exceptionally poor grasp of where things would go, let alone where they'd wind up later on. The mere fact that the game "settled" into the balance that it had was more by accident than it was by design, and then once those norms got established they became entrenched. It's why Illusion Control was something that would NEVER have been created later on, simply because it was an inherently unbalanced and unbalancing powerset ... but it was already established and entrenched, and therefore you couldn't ever take it way and do it over again. Arbiter Hawk stated that bluntly, flat out, on more than one occasion, that Illusion Control as it wound up was simply a "rule breaking" powerset for how things ought to be made and balanced.
Defense, and how Defense "worked" (until, of course, it DIDN'T) was another one of those things where if you were making it now, you'd NEVER want to do it the way the Cryptic did it in City of Heroes. When Arcanaville reverse engineered how Defense ACTUALLY worked, it was one of those "you have GOT to be KIDDING me!" kinds of moments that just looks like someone bungled the concept even before the math got involved. It was just one of those "why would ANYONE do it this way?" sorts of things that makes no sense ... unless that's the way it's already being done, and you're stuck with it.
I hated Enhancement Dysfunction with a passion that defied all reason simply because it took my main, Redlynne, a MA/SR Scrapper from having a Defense somewhere up in the low to mid 40s down to somewhere in the low 30s. Suddenly I was taking 4x the hits and 4x the damage I had before Enhancement Dysfunction, and was rendered too squishy to stand up to even a few Minions without needing to have a Healer constantly spamming green power at me. My signature [b]NO GET HITSU!![/b] was broken, and now I spent far too much time accumulating Debt (on a Scrapper!) because my Defenses were pathetically inadequate. They were so inadequate that it wasn't until Inventions in Issue 9 came along that I was able to make up the deficit of what Enhancement Dysfunction [b]HAD STOLEN FROM ME[/b] to be able to reclaim my mantle of [b]NO GET HITSU!![/b] that had been the entire purpose and intent of my "birthright" Secondary ... and even then, my Powers when Enhanced only gave me 2/3rds of the Defense I needed to get to the Defense Softcap, with the remaining 1/3rd having to come from Set Bonuses, which ... surprise, surprise ... [i]could not come from Defense Set Inventions[/i] (gee, thanks). So I wound up being "forced" into doing things like slotting [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Razzle_Dazzle]Razzle Dazzle[/url] into my Stun Attacks just in order to get my Defenses up high enough to make survival possible (which of course meant I couldn't slot those Powers for what they needed, which was DAMAGE!). It was clumsy and suboptimal ... but it "worked" in that I was able to reach the Defense Softcap (barely!) and able to reclaim the ability to play the game again.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Actually I was angling more towards a list of "We've thought of this and rejected it because..." so we don't rehash something that's nixed.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Redlynne, despite what anyone else may say I think you are onto an excellent foundation for basic level progression and boosts (enhancements) implementation.
Of course, having said that I should also note I never did care for the invention system. All the recipes, and the go get this and that, or buy it at millions a pop system for getting an enhancement that for all (my) intents and purposes changed the whole reason for playing. For me that all becomes work rather than play. Work is not fun, play is fun, I want to play. I like the idea of keeping the system simple enough to not require complicated collect & assemble mechanisms. This helps out the fun factor loads for me.
Don't get me wrong I am good with numbers but not like some of you guys that have all this stuff down to spreadsheet science. I don't enjoy knowing stuff to that level. When figuring out how to best slot a power requires more than in-my-head (and I'm no brain surgeon) logic/math then the game is losing it's appeal. I'm thinking I'm not alone in that boat but maybe I am...
The only part of playing COH that resembled work (that I enjoyed) was trying to make teams work despite how imbalanced they may have been. Sometimes it's more fun to actually figure out how to get around your characters short comings so the team gets through a mission. In fact, this was especially fun when you had to work together to manage getting through a mish.
Not everyone builds their character the same way, this is the whole point of playing. I like concentrating on making my character the way I want it to look and feel. Then when playing try to work out how to manage in a variety of teams or soloing rather than taking all the time to pencil out the best way to maximize each power in each set. I get that some people really like doing the latter and all the invention crafting stuff to get there but for me it is just more like work than fun.
I can't say enough good about the K.I.S.S. method and all the work everyone is doing to make this game with this in mind. I really hope this thread is read by the devs and that they see the merit in your concepts! Great work!
Not everyone will like this next part...
The only thing I like about the idea of special enhancements is the idea that through game play I can maybe get a unique drop that can't be bought. Then my character can be more unique without anyone else doing the same through farming and buying. I think some things are simply better randomized than dispensable. I also realize I am likely in the minority on that point. Maybe I would like a way to share it with one of my alts or something but I'm not a strong proponent of the whole auction house idea in games. I know the game economics must be managed but I don't care for these two methods (auction houses, crafting systems) as I have seen them thus implemented.
"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
The rest of your post is clearly just a difference of opinion - but this, this I have to take exception to. Why? Well, imagine that, in CoH, purple set IOs dropped in the fashion you've described. Who would end up with purple sets? Well, the farmers get them - they're the only ones playing enough to see large numbers of rare drops. And the lower you push the drop chance to try and make it a "unique drop" and "discourage farming"... the more farming becomes the only way to acquire the things, and the more players become frustrated that there's no way to acquire the things in any sane time-frame.
The only way to allow wider access to a rare drop is to allow players to trade those drops - and at that point you're right back to the market and game economy you've said you don't like.
Phoenix Rising Token Minidragon
That's nothing more than the desire to be a Special Snowflake. It's an attempt to "thwart" copycats and Cookie Cutterism™ by having something in your build that is quite literally unobtainable by anyone else. I understand the urge to be UNIQUE, but this is taking it a bit too far.
Interestingly enough, I believe that TERA has something akin to this ... Drops that are so rare, powerful and game unbalancing that they are basically limited to One Item Per Server. Such Itemization inspires awe and envy ... and a heck of a lot of jealousy, spite and ill will. Not exactly something I'd recommend be incorporated into a game, particularly since this is the ultimate expression of HAVE vs HAVE NOT.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I should have been more specific, by "special enhancements" I mean for those drops to be cosmetic not something along the lines of SO's and the like. Not powerful just aesthetic. The ability to give your character more individuality in appearance and what not. I get this idea from the general theme in comics of characters undergoing changes as they go through missions that sometimes add interesting quirks to their abilities, not necessarily making them more powerful but usually more interesting. For example, something that may alter the way one of your powers looks when it interacts with other powers. Say for example an aura looking different when hovering versus flying or something on that order. I didn't mean making one more powerful through the drop. I would add that such a change I would expect to either be temporary or reversible through some game mechanic.
"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
Even if it is just cosmetic, you still end up with the Have vs Have Not dilemma. "I have the Tiara of Awesome and therefore you can't have one." And with the costume creator's variability, there shouldn't be any problem at all in maintaining a completely individual appearance. In 8 years playing CoH, the only time I ran into someone with the same costume as mine was when we had planned it that way.
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