I came up with this and alluded to it in other threads, I'd like to throw it out there for everyone to give opinions on.
Okay, assume CoT will have something like IO enhancements in CoX, whatever they might be called. Further assume that when you get defeated, the only penalties are XP and/or Influence debt, like in CoX.
Now, what if there were a form of Very Rare enhancement that you could buy, sell, trade, slot, unslot, etc freely, and it's like REALLY good for whatever it does when it's slotted in, as good as a purple was in CoX, BUT, when you get defeated it has a 10% chance of being permanently destroyed. Poof. Gone.
I feel like this adds a fun element of risk to encounters, plus it would be an Influence sink to some extent. Also, this might actually cause some people to run away from a close fight occasionally rather than just stay in and get killed every time.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
When you write 'Very Rare', do you mean that they are, in fact, very difficult to find/obtain or that they are of a particular quality (e.g. 'purple', which normally are considered to be very rare)?
I can get behind the idea of quite expensive, easily replaced, superior enhancements which carry the risk of being lost upon defeat. A rather standard risk for reward scenario.
The main pitfall to avoid is that they should not be so good that they are obvious must-haves. In case of doubt, I'd rather see this idea shelved than see 'non-risky' enhancements/sets saddled with a gimped status.
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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!
As with every "risk versus reward" concept I'd wonder if there would be a way to reduce the risk down so far that you'd basically be getting the reward -without- the risk.
For instance could you have as many of these "uber-IOs" as you wanted? If the answer to that is "yes" then it might be possible to fill out your entire build with these things making you so incredibly powerful that you basically couldn't be killed. Without the fear of death you'd be getting huge advantages for effectively no drawbacks. Even if you could occassionally be killed losing one of these things might not matter to you too much if you already had like 30 or 40 others.
I'm not necessarily against the idea, just playing Devil's Advocate to make you think about it a little more. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
In my mind, there would only be a few (maybe 20-25) different specific ones, and they'd be treated like uniques were in CoX, e.g. that you can only benefit from one copy of a specific "fragile" IO in your build at a time, and that they'd designed to slot into specific types of powers. I was envisioning them to be as rare as the "rare" recipes in CoX were at the least, with maybe some Purple ones in that tier. I feel the added risk and influence sink should bring with it a considerable upside not available outside of "fragile" enhancements, but I also think that this sort of thing ought not to be absolutely necessary for a toon to be playable, just capable of making the toon cut through mobs a little faster and/or providing some handy "transcendent" bonuses like the procs and uniques did in CoX. I mean, when CoX rolled out IOs they announced that they weren't making the mobs any tougher to compensate and as such IOs were somewhat optional, though good. I know some people who like to optimize their builds tend to act like anything that's the best option at it's particular slot is by definition mandatory, but I disagree with that. You can settle for something less if you don't want to take the risk of losing it, and thereby the influence you invested in it.
I have no idea how or if this should interact with PVP at all. I feel like these things should be "lost via PVE defeat only" but then you get into the problem of what happens when you get defeated by a Crab Spider in Warburg. Does it get destroyed or not? And why?
I feel these things should be truly optional, like PVP, as in "enter at your own risk" with the reward that the fragile IOs give when they're there being proportional to the risk. People who want to live dangerously can do that, people who hate losing stuff when they die, or know they're going to die a lot, can take the cautious tack and not bother. It's up to the user.
Another idea that came to me would be that when the Fragile IO does get destroyed, it gets replaced by some really common generic thing that might have been in that same slot. So when, for example, "Fragile Healing Power Unique" get's destroyed, it get's replaced by a generic healing SO or IO of some level. The replacement item would be a known thing, that is, when you read the description of "Fragile Enhancment X" it tells you what it will revert into when destroyed.
If there are going to be sets, I would think these things would not be parts of sets , and in that sense you'd have to make the choice of either putting 6 pieces of Awesome Set X into a power or only 5 and the Fragile you have, thus making it a set bonus tradeoff as well.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
To Lothic's point, I thought of that as soon as I posted my first post, hence the "Uniqueness rule" in the second, but the problem of people "backing up the truck on them" would have to be dealt with in various ways, Uniqueness being one, and then maybe you could impose an upper limit on how many of them you can have slotted at a time in your build overall, etc.
I'm not sure if the 10% chance of destruction is a good number either, it might need to be higher or lower, I don't know.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Yeah having them as "uniques" would probably work to limit them.
I like your "degrade down to a standard IO" idea as an alternative to having the slot go completely blank. Maybe as one step further instead of "10% chance of permanent downgrade" what about "25% chance of being downgraded for an hour". After that hour passes your special would have had time to recharge/repair itself back to normal. This would impose a new type of death penalty without the basic annoyance of losing the special IO completely.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
The temporary loss idea, though doable certainly, seems inherently against the spirit of the thing as I envisioned it originally. Even though the "permanent loss" mechanic probably wouldn't be a good influence sink for the sake of sinking influence out of the economy in general (unless we're talking about an enormous amount of influence to acquire and slot these things), I like the "playing with fire" aspect that permanent loss adds. It livens up combat by raising the stakes and makes you put something valuable to yourself at risk in such a way that you never get the item back if you screw up and wind up dead. There's a "playing for keeps" element I like about that, just as a thing in itself. It's a thrill.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
This always makes me think of the Eve Online rule "Never fly what you cannot afford to lose".
Not a fan of this idea. I've never been a big fan of losing anything that I've worked hard to achieve or paid a ton of money to get. It's like saying, "I spent 5 million dollars on this really cool house but there's a 10% chance the IRS might take it away from me." It would really just force people to use the "sub-par" enhancements to not risk losing all the tons of money they spent on their build. I've said it before, there are better ways to find money sinks. Personal Housing, Bases, Costumes, Boosts, Auction House fees, Pets, Auras, Transportation, Hospital Fees, etc.
What I loved the most about CoH was that it wasn't like every other MMO out there. Now everybody seems bent on trying to make CoT like every other MMO out there. Please don't. I don't want gear, I don't want gear degredation, I don't want item loss, I want CoT to be a model like CoH. I want it to be unique from all the other MMOs that everybody else is playing. That is what drew me to CoH, that is what will draw me to CoT. If it turns out to be like every other MMO I'll more than likely stop playing it and just wait for Zombie CoH to be resurrected and spend my time there instead.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I'll reply to each paragraph of this separately. First, I agree that this idea, "Fragile" or "Risky" enhancement, is not a good idea for an influence sink. I see it as being a way of adding an element of risk to the combat system, which personally would like. I bet some people will prefer not to lose their hard earned influence (or whatever it's going to be called), and those people have that option. People like me, who are willing to live dangerously, have our option too. Everybody wins.
Second, on the subject of "stop ttying to find money sinks", you have to understand, for thiose of us who played CoX for all 8 years, we all had TONS of unused influence by the end. I picked the game up and put it down a few times to the point where, in September of 2011, I had on my account one or two level capped toons and about 10 in various lower levels. IN a year (sept 2011 to the end, Nov 2012) I got like all of them to 50 and got them Incarnated up and had about 10 purples saved up and had 2billion+ influence. I accidentally spent 444 million influence on a cheap piece of salvage at Wentworths (Radioactive Isotope, I think?) one time, was mad at myself for like 5 min, got over it, regenerated the influence in like 3 weeks with my Mastermind. Yawn. There was basically too much Influence in the system and nothing to spend it on. Influence, as a currency, was not that useful. We needed more things to spend Influence on.
I'm not saying that it should be impossible to get "rich", just that there need to be things to spend influence on to maintain its usefulness in the game, and getting fabulously wealthy should take time. Admittedly, the Masterminds were a big part of that, given the sheer income levels they had. That and AE exploits.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I played from issue 3 until the day it closed. At most I maybe took a few months off because I was forced to, whether by lack of money or by my ex-wife's intense hatred of the game. I too had over 20 characters at level 50. I played the Auction House and was able to fully kit out most of my characters. If you are looking to burn off extra inf. try holding costume contests. Give away millions for someone having the best costume in your opinion. Find a random newbie and just give them some of your extra cash, I'm sure they'd appreciate it. There are ways to get rid of extra income if you are tired of holding on to it.
Now if you want to add some extra enhancements that add some kind of excitement, fine. I'm just not sure you should make them so that those that don't want to play with that risk will be forced to try to decide between the two. Make two sets that are equal, but have one set with the risk of loss and one without.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I'm going to skip past the main topic ("fragile" IOs) without comment, and instead point something else out, simply because this seems like a useful place to do it: the largest problem with money sinks in most traditional senses is that in order to even *hope* to counter the effect of "free money" (that earned while you're doing other stuff, as opposed to being earned for the sake of earning the money), the sinks have to be so brutally punishing that they simply drive players to other alternatives.
A classic example would be the way the changes to the AH in Champions (which occurred alongside the F2P shift, and turned it from something with long listing times and relatively reasonable seller risk to something with very short listing times and high seller risk) caused an explosion of shout-spam advertising items in the zone channels. Even with trade channels existing. For the simple reason that it was safer and less risky to hazard getting smacked with a shout-ban for a few days than it was to take the (extremely high) risk that any given high-value item would not sell fast enough to avoid destroying any profit on it.
Similar things happen in most places with sinks. The only one I know of offhand that *doesn't* do that is the "wear and tear on gear" model, and it has its own problems -- namely that it A) isn't really any different from just handing out less money in the first place, when operating at its best ability, and B) far more commonly leads to an active destruction of any form of casual grouping, as people become unwilling to risk their own money / gear on an unproven player's ability to tank, or do damage fast enough, or any other arbitrary job the game mechanics happen to define.
I can assure you that the devs are painfully aware of the problems that the hyper-inflation of the economy on CoX caused issues, including several that most folks often don't even realize were rooted in that. We have a variety of plans for different ways to deal with it. Some of them probably won't work well, with any luck some will; we will definitely be arranging ways to test how well they work out *in practice* as part of the process of letting users beat on the game and try to break it in various ways. Beyond that, I can't go into detail right now, in no small part because a couple of the approaches are subject to distortion if you're working with a small sample set *and* the sample set is aware of what is going on. Once we're talking about a full-open game the 'small sample set' side stops being true and it isn't a big deal for folks to know about them, but until then all I can do is promise that we have to treat all of our experimental subjects humanely.
At least, I'm pretty sure that was written down somewhere, anyway...
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If I'm following you ... going to be very tough to balance the benefit of being 'fragile' against the potential loss. Most of my heavily IO'd characters rarely died doing 'normal' stuff, the few deaths I had happen tended to be doing very hard things with my main, a scrapper, hard things like trying to do Arcanaville's scrapper challenge in the MA (or on up and coming characters who were not by and large IO'd with sets anyway) . All I see fragile stuff doing is taking characters already highly durable (IO'd high level/Incarnate characters) and making them even moreso defeating the purpose of becoming any sort of influence sink. Further I foresee issues with such characters 'farming' for fragile IO's and then simply passing them on to the next up and coming character the player is trying to IO out, unless, of course, they start binding the IO to the character stuff (something I have zero interest in seeing). Over all my number one reason for not dying as I said elsewhere, has absolutely nothing to do with the penalties in game at least in CoX ...ever even way back when it sort of actually resembled a penalty and everything to do with my wishing to avoid death on my character because [b]I the player[/b] viewed it as 'failure' in my own eyes. It didn't require any 'incentive' from the game to avoid death.
Its strange really when you think about this, because the Looking For Group finder in most other MMO's do this quite a lot, and they are a very handy tool to get groups together, without necessarily having to wait for a long time. Sure this is for their "instanced" content (Dungeons/adventures/raids) but with the exception of the *hardest* content would you generally "PUG it".
So either I have been *incredibly* lucky with the groups I have been in or this fact is actually slowly dying away now, but it seems like the wear and tear model is something that most other players are not really worried about. I have seen more groups fall apart because the group wiped which meant that they couldn't get X achievement (in a PUG as well) than due to excessive "wear and tear" on items.
Yep, it was the failure of getting an achievement rather than anything else that made the player quit the team (and he hadn't even notified the rest of the PUG group that he wanted this achievement when we started).
Reading DeathSheep's post assures me that more and better minds than just mine are working on this stuff in a serious way, and as far as that goes, I'm satisfied that the MWM effort in this area is duly diligent. All is well so far as that goes. For what its worth, I think PUGs have their issues in all games, even CoX when it was up and running, with people not being able to get along, griefing, taking a long tiume to get a TF started, people not wanting to run iTrials, etc. Even just having something to gain by success in a TF or trial etc is an incentive to avoid some really sketchy PUGs. Adding in a risk element would certainly exacerbate that, but if it's strictly optional, and if the Fragile IOs could be unslotted (probably costs influence), I don't think it would be a big problem. We're not talking about mandatory deletion of all IOs here, just the ones the user CHOSE to put in there, risk and all. Besides that, some people just solo their toons mostly anyway. Also, people are going to troll if they're apt to troll, and that causes PUGs to disband too.
On to other comments, oOStaticOo wrote: "Now if you want to add some extra enhancements that add some kind of excitement, fine. I'm just not sure you should make them so that those that don't want to play with that risk will be forced to try to decide between the two. Make two sets that are equal, but have one set with the risk of loss and one without."
First, since options are by their inherent nature optional, giving people more options is not forcing them to do anything. Sure, you need to look at the options and decide which one you like better, but that's the nature of options. How can you argue that giving people a choice is bad? What you're in effect saying is "Don't give me more options, because then I have to make a decision, and I hate it when I have to do that."
Second, without the Fragile IOs being somehow more effective than the "Durable" ones, people would clearly have no reason to use the Fragile ones at all. Why would anyone use Fragile ones when ALL they have that makes them different is a drawback? You are, in effect, saying "I'm risk-averse, so please don't offer ANYONE, including me, an option that has a risk-reward proposition, because I dislike having to decide things when there are options. Also if you do make Fragile IOs, please make sure, for the sake of those of us who intend not to use them, that there is no actual reward for having taken the risk when it is supposed to actually pay off. The payoff should be nothing. You should get no reward for taking the risk, because if there were a reward then I'd feel like I was missing out on something by avoiding the risk."
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I find it incredibly funny that tell static that he shouldn't knock options as they are not bad to have then go on to explain why his desire for more options is bad to have. I mean I get what you are saying and agree with the idea behind it...its just a funny conversation.
On topic....I personally love the fact that 'gear' was not a major focus of CoH (at least until IO's came out) and would like it very much if CoT followed suit.....
Well to be honest, IO's were an optional game play addition, seeing as the developers said that they had balanced the game around SO's and not IO's.
They didn't increase the difficulty of mobs just to cope with IO's. It would have been (quite understandably) a bit too unfair to do that to the F2P players. Infact, it would (in my mind) be the definition of Pay To Win.
But yes, this would be a problem with *ANY* game that has crafting of stuff that can improve your own performance. It does become a "gear based" setup, even if it isn't the stereotypical "kill X for a chance to get Y item".
The only reason as to why I wouldn't say that CoX was a "gear based" MMO pre-IO is because with the *very* noticable exception of Titan/Hami-o's you could kit yourself up with stuff from NPC's. If anything the NPC was the normal route to get stuff, and the drops were the "back up route" for them.
But once again, that is from my own experience and could well be different in the long run. I will be honest, I don't know of any player who *NEVER* used an NPC to get enhancements for their build. Not saying that it didn't happen. But once you got up to the SO stage, there were so many different types of enhancements, that it could take a very long time to achieve the goal, and you would only really the goal at level cap.
Okay, but you were arguing for people who like to play with a little more risk why should they not be allowed to play that way? So I simply responded by saying make both sets of enhancements for both players. The people who want to play risky can use the risky ones. The ones that don't, don't. Why do the riskier ones have to be more powerful for this to work? How is it fair for the people that don't want to take the risk? They don't get powerful enhancements, only those that are willing to take the risk do? There are people who like to gamble and there are people who do not, why should the people who don't like to gamble be punished?
Person X has a fully kitted out build with highest level risky enhancements.
Person Y does not, but is fully kitted out with the highest level non-risky enhancements.
Person X fights person Y and proceeds to stomp a mud hole in them six feet deep because all of Person X's enhancements are so much higher than Person Y's due to the fact that there is a small percent of chance that they might lose them upon defeat.
Person Y now calls for the nerf bat to be applied at once to Risky Enhancements.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
To answer oOStaticOo's question of "Why reward risk?", I posit the notion that a reasonable person will only take an unnecessary risk if there is some form of reward attached to it. So if you were apt to include Fragile Enhs for those who like to live dangerously, that is self-defeating if there's nothing to be gained in taking the risks, because no reasonable person can be expected to actually use the Fragile Enhs if they offer no advantage over the Durable ones. I should point out that Enhancements don't always just provide effects that enhance the combat power of the powers they're in. For example there were some (really lousy) sets in CoX that had "Debt Protection" as a set bonus. These Fragile Enhs could behave just like the existing Durable ones as far as combat goes but then provide other buffs that aren't terribly combat-intensive, like debt protection, improved XP gain rate, added Influence on random drops, improved chances of getting rare salvage on random drops, improved chance of getting rare recipes on random drops, improved chances of better rewards from mission/TF/Trials, etc.
So in this case, the proposed reward is a better enhancement, and the risk is that you might lose it, and therefore the influence you sank into making and slotting it. And by better I mean measurably somewhat better, but not BROKEN better. Also, there wouldn't be that many different ones, they wouldn't be parts of sets that give set bonuses (so you'd have to FORGO a set bonus to use one in some spots, maybe), and they'd probably have to be unique, so you can't have more than one copy of any of them. Also it's unlikely that anyone would be able to slot all of them given the different types of powers you could make them for. In short, I agree that the problem of "someone's going to back up the truck on these things and make a totally broken toon" would exist and that it would need to be curbed in the various ways I just mentioned, and maybe some others. You could put a hard cap on the number of Fragiles a toon is allowed to have for example. This was said between Lothic and myself already above.
As for the PVP aspect, it is my understanding from reading PVP posts that even the best PVPers get defeated in PVP with some regularity, or that defeat is at least a LOT more common in PVP even among "good PVPers" than it is in PVE among "average" players there. As such, if these thing have a chance of getting destroyed when you get fragged, and you're getting a fragged a lot in PVP, then you won't have them for long. What's worse, you'd have to constantly reslot them as they get destroyed in order to keep your build they way you want it, and doing that during combat is probably going to get you killed more. Also you'd have to carry around extras in case one of them get's destroyed. Even the "downgrade to SO instead of destruction" idea turns what was a really good IO into a really disappointing replacement in mid combat. In short, I wouldn't expect most PVP builds to be heavily invested in Fragile Enhs, due to the in-combat problems attached to it, and due to the amount of influence you'd have to spend to maintain them. If people DID start using them a lot in PVP, the fact that they tend to get destroyed would probably cause the street price of them to skyrocket, making that an expensive roll of the dice.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I'm still not convinced about this idea. I understand what it is you are trying to go for, don't get me wrong. However, I still feel like it's a bad idea and that it's trying to shoe horn in the same mechanics other MMOs use that CoH didn't. Still feels like people are trying to make CoT like every other MMO out there that everybody is tired of and can't seem to keep playing longer than a few months on. The feel of CoT should be the same as CoH, that is what the goal of the Devs have been since CoH shut down. Trying to bring back the same community and uniqueness CoH offered, but better. I'm still not for it.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Generally, I'm not attracted to the idea, but I might be able to stomach an alternative with a particular purpose of providing an influ-sink (just one of many) in-game...
When you and your risky enhancements are defeated, enhancement strength degrades (via some curve) per instance of defeat, and there would be very significant repair costs incurred for those wishing to return their risky enhancements to their original state. This would be in conjunction with Lothic's idea that risky enhancements repair themselves (at no cost) over time...and it should be a very long period of time IMO.
Related: Anyone with risky enhancements (assuming they are uber-strong) could be flagged for PvP "opt-in to fight" purposes.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/26pBVBG.png[/img]
([i]Currently developing the Sapphire 7 Initiative[/i])
The exact costs and times could be beta tested to find what values work best. But the main idea here is that if you suffer defeats you will pay for them: either you pay money for instant repairs or you pay via waiting a certain amount of time for automatic repairs.
While I agree with your "significant" money costs idea for instant repairs I don't favor the "very long periods of time" portion of your idea. I don't think the auotmatic, time-based repairs should take more than a few hours even for the worst case scenarios. For instance: Let's say a newer player has some really bad luck and dies a few times in a row but doesn't have the money for instant repairs. It should be possible for that player to choose to relog an alt (or log off for the night) and have the chance to try again say the next day with a clean repair slate. This will keep the concept of dying a "bad thing" to happen but not something that would keep a player in permanent disrepair.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I know this will sound strange coming from me, but I am actually *kind* of against the degradation of performance after dying.
And this is coming from someone who has no real problems with repairing of gear and corpse runs. I know that if I really had to, I could always rez at the graveyard (World of Warcraft style) and have a 10 minute penalty to my stats... but that penalty is enough to actually take me out of the game until it wears off. So having a penalty like that would indeed make me wary of using them.
And yet, as I said earlier on, I have no problem with having "repair" costs ie they work at 100% until they get broken, then its 0% effectiveness.
So as a hypothetical let's say we had a system where if you get defeated there was a chance that one of your enhancements would become 50% effective but you could either pay money to instantly fix it or wait an hour for it to be automatically restored to 100%. From what you've said it sounds like the part of that scenario you don't like is the "50% reduction" part - you'd rather it become 100% inactive until you either paid instantly to fix it or wait an hour for automatic restoration.
Forgive me when I say I'm not quite sure what making the enhancement in question go fully inactive really adds to this situation if you could pay for an instant fix either way. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
There's a big difference between a system where ALL of the good enhancements work this way versus one where only a very few of them do, and those that do are not 100% necessary to have in PVE. I really and truly do want this to be optional for the thrill seekers who go on rollercoasters and go to horror movies and want to add some of that kind of excitement to the fighting in CoT. It adds an element to the game that gives you some adrenaline and makes you go "OH $h!T" when you're about to get defeated, not unlike your toon should feel when all-but-certain defeat is imminent.
As I said, the influence sink factor, though it is there, might not be very big unless these things are VERY popular and/or VERY expensive and people STILL get defeated a lot because they don't want to run away ever, which I can totally see some people doing, even when the harshest "it get's deleted when you die on a 1 in 10 chance and you get an empty slot in its place when that happens" rules are in place. Some people have an alligator death roll mentality of "don't relent until the fight is over, one way or the other" in video games.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I think in general you have a good idea here. Obviously some of its elements can be debated and/or beta tested to determine how to optimize it. But ultimately while this could provide for a new kind of "death penalty" or "money sink" I think it's fair to say that we don't need to rely on this as the ONLY type of death penalty or money sink in the game. If it turns out that this only inposes a relatively minor disincentive for death or a tiny money sink for the overall playerbase that'd be perfectly fine.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Yes, I agree. All the contributing units (time, duration, cost and "degree of fun") could/should be weighed and balanced.
Although, I would say that for the "new player", s/he would not have "enough hours played" to be able to acquire risky enhancements...as long as gated goodies =/= gated content.
Of course, if there is to be new content related to risky enhancements then that wouldn't fly, but perhaps the only practical "need" for risky enhancements would be for non-gated, globally accessible content of "ludicrous difficulty" (e.g., +5 level / 10 player team size), soloing TFs, etc.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/26pBVBG.png[/img]
([i]Currently developing the Sapphire 7 Initiative[/i])
Because in most other MMO's that have a "repair cost", you actually don't have a drop in effectiveness with the gear that you have until they are *fully* destroyed/durability reduced to zero. This would be multiple (typically between 10 and 20) deaths before you were FORCED to spend money.
So this means that I am able to still keep on going now, still with damaged gear, and then pay the penalty fee later. Hell, I might even get a replacement piece of gear so I wouldn't have to pay that cost.
The "repair for effectiveness" though is something that *does* rub me the wrong way.. because it would be a penalty that you would have to pay *immediately* to get your effectiveness back.
As I said, it is just something that rubs me the wrong way, even though I understand on a higher level its merits; my gut just goes nope in response.
Infact, this would be more similar to the older "gear maintenance" that some older games did where the more damaged it was, the less effective it was until it eventually broke and if it broke, you had to get a replacement. You couldn't replace something that was destroyed.
As was mentioned in the other post about defeat penalties I don't want to lose any kind of ENH that I have, no matter if its a TO/DO/SO/IO/IOSet or whatever we will have.
The idea of the "Risk vs Reward" providing NOTHING as a reward is weird. Don't die and you don't lose anything. Die and you may lose something? Where is the POSITIVE in that?
OK I wont take on the tougher bad guy just yet as I don't want a 5-10%?? chance to lose my LotG +Recharge.
Instead provide me with a POSITIVE reward for taking the risk. I suspect that this will already be in place in terms of more XP/more $/more chance for a better drop (although this is almost never a big enough inc for better drops - for example in Wildstar I used to always try and take on the tough enemies and in all the ones that I did and I defeated them I think only a very small number gave me a "green" (+1) drop and never a "blue" (+2) drop or higher. The reward of better drops wasn't enough to risk it and then have degraded equipment).
Why take away something I paid for or got lucky via a drop?
Making me pay $ for being rezzed at the hospital ok fine, but not to lose something I don't care how easy it is to replace unless I can get it from wherever I am like a virtual vendor, but in that case just take my money.
The Phoenix Rising Initiative Rules Lawyer
The risk being referred to isn't taking on the tougher bad guy. It's slotting the fragile but more effective (until it breaks) improvement in the first place.
Don't want that risk? Don't slot those. Stick with the ones that aren't quite as effective, but more reliable.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
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[quote=cybermitheral
Instead provide me with a POSITIVE reward for taking the risk. I suspect that this will already be in place in terms of more XP/more $/more chance for a better drop (although this is almost never a big enough inc for better drops - for example in Wildstar I used to always try and take on the tough enemies and in all the ones that I did and I defeated them I think only a very small number gave me a "green" (+1) drop and never a "blue" (+2) drop or higher. The reward of better drops wasn't enough to risk it and then have degraded equipment).
Why take away something I paid for or got lucky via a drop?[/quote]
Yeah, the drop rate for stuff from *normal* "primes" (the tough mobs) is a bit screwy. They at least count more towards various quests/challenges compared to a normal mob (sometimes between 5 and 10 times more).
If they are *NAMED* "primes" then they have a higher chance (although not 100%) of dropping rarer stuff. Or at least their "named" item.
Remember though there is also no "mob tagging" for loot/XP/Cash (bar a few exceptions with Faction tagging I believe). Everyone can join in and kill them and get at least *something* out of it (even if it was just XP/share of cash).
But then again, in City of Heroes it was the same thing. You could pound on AV's and kill multiple ones, and you might not personally get a drop off them, even though someone on your team did.
But it is something that can be worked on/balanced accordingly... even if it doesn't work in ONE game, doesn't mean that it doesn't work *full stop*.
You also want to prevent "mob farming" to a certain degree, where X/Y/Z mob becomes a loot piñata due to it always dropping something with more value, above its normal rate. This is what CoX had a problem with and its AE farming, where you could get a certain value item (tickets) at minimal risk to yourself due to how the quest/mission was setup.
Yes, but again.....what is the reward for doing this? Easier kill? Meh, I'll take the longer route. Enhanced PvP capability? I don't play PvP, where's my reward? This is just a straight up risk only. No reward. I think that is really the main thing that has been bugging me about this other than the fact that it's introducing degrading gear, which I hate, that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Give me a reward for doing something like this, like an enhanced percentage of purple drops, and I'll feel a lot better about it. Otherwise it's just not appealing to me in the slightest.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Going back to the original post, I think this is an interesting idea, but it seems to me that the risky enhancement should not be terribly expensive...in fact it might be interesting if replacements were easily obtained, then a player who wished to use them could actually pay for and carry a replacement. I like this idea as an influence sink, especially if it is optional. In fact, some "wealthy" players might simply give replacements away to teammates if they are readily available.
One key question is what should the price be for one of these enhancements? I suggest that roughly the amount of money that one gets from 30 minutes of street sweeping at your level would be good. Enough to count, but not enough to impoverish a player.
Of course if you get killed every 2 minutes, then using these enhancements may not be your best strategy. :)
The cost for it all depends on their source. If they are NPC vendor only, they could make a good cash sink; if they are from normal drops then not so much of one. If they are able to be sold on the AH, then the price is dictated by the player base and what they are willing to pay.
I'm thinking NPC vendor, in an easy-access location like Atlas Park (equivalent).
As far as the Influence sink factor is concerned, I agree with DeathSheep that sinks like this are tantamount to just handing out less influence in the first place, although, that in and of itself is not necessarily a reason not to do it anyway, in my opinion, but I digress. DeathSheep has said they're working on this, and for what it's worth I'm content to let them figure it out in due course, even if that's a bumpy ride at first. I definitely don't want this game to turn into WoW with some jerk yelling at me over Ventrilo and everyone calling everyone else "NOOB!" etc.
Another drawback to the Fragile IO concept, if I may be so masochistic as to point out flaws in my own idea, is that the dedicated min/maxer will likely want these Fragile IOs in spades, if they are demonstrably better than the Durable alternatives, but will become even more risk averse for having slotted them, causing that person to probably just do really easy farming and so forth instead of anything that might result in possible defeat, for fear of getting all that hard earned loot destroyed. Thus one's riches become one's shackles, so to speak. So this could have the reverse of the intended effect, namely that people just end up doing MORE boring farming instead of actually doing challenging missions with the improved swag for the thrill of it.
oOStaticOo wrote "Yes, but again.....what is the reward for doing this? Easier kill? Meh, I'll take the longer route. Enhanced PvP capability? I don't play PvP, where's my reward? This is just a straight up risk only. No reward. I think that is really the main thing that has been bugging me about this other than the fact that it's introducing degrading gear, which I hate, that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Give me a reward for doing something like this, like an enhanced percentage of purple drops, and I'll feel a lot better about it. Otherwise it's just not appealing to me in the slightest."
I disagree with this statement in the sense that I don't believe you when you tell me what you personally would do given the Fragile versus Durable options you might be presented with. I'm trying not to say you're wrong about your own opinions, but I find it very difficult to believe you'd bruskly dismiss the option of a Fragile IO as being a pure disadvantage with no compensating upside, even if it were measurably more combat effective than all of the Durable alternatives. You claim, essentially, that some amount of added combat effectiveness would not entice you to try to slot a Fragile IO, but from my experience, it seems like EVERYONE likes "better" if "better" is available. I mean, don't get me wrong, I can believe that some people would prefer to play it safe and just stick to the Durable IOs, especially if you're an archetype that is really squishy, but for you to say "Additional combat effectiveness has no value, you're really just making people assume risk for nothing in return." just rings untrue to my ears. To me, an IO that's measurably and noticeable better in terms of hard numbers is going to be more desirable to people. It just has to be. The fact that it has a chance of getting destroyed is a drawback, to be sure, but that's the trade-off. I am unmoved by your argument on this issue and remain steadfast in my belief believe that there is, in fact, an "assume risk and gain reward" proposition at work there.
Consultant wrote: "Going back to the original post, I think this is an interesting idea, but it seems to me that the risky enhancement should not be terribly expensive...in fact it might be interesting if replacements were easily obtained, then a player who wished to use them could actually pay for and carry a replacement."
I have to say I don't like this idea, because the whole premise at work here, originally, was to add an element of risk and excitement to the "fight or flight" equation during combat and give people pause to MAYBE run away once in a while instead of just fighting to the point of face-planting themselves and beyond EVERY time.. if the thing you stand to MAYBE lose is not terribly hard to replace, then you're not going to care about taking the rick that you MIGHT lose it, A) because you're still more likely NOT to lose it anyway and B) because you can always replace it even when that does happen, in fact you might even have a backup already. So instead of giving one the feeling of "the chips are on the table and I gotta stay frosty and play my cards right" you're left with a feeling of "getting killed here is a minor annoyance since I slotted those Fragile IOs, because of the 30-45 min of grinding I'm going to have to do to replace them." I think in order for this to have the desired effect, the recipes/IOs need to be about as rare as the Luck of the Gambler +Def or the Zephyr +4 KB protection thing were in CoX. They need to be things you know you can't just replace that same day by walking down the street and getting a new one at the convenient store, or they're not working as intended. As for the influence sink factor, see DeathSheep's post above.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
And you are wrong. I do feel this way very strongly. If there is no reason for me to risk something other than the ability to kill at a faster rate or have a stronger PvP character, which I do not play PvP, then there is no reason for me to take these options. Risk and Reward. That is the idea. You risk something for some kind of reward. If the reward isn't good enough then there is no need to risk. I'm sure different people have different opinions about what is worth the risk, but I will bet that the majority of people will choose not to risk their earned inf. for harder numbers only. As I said, if there is an equal reward to balance out the risk then people will be more opt to take it. 10% chance of destruction and a 10% increase in Super Rare drop I'll take. 10% chance of destruction, but only an increase in percentages of acc, dam, end red, etc. I'll pass. I'll just go for the maximum percentages I can get without having to risk losing the enhancements. I'm pretty sure there are a lot more people that feel the same.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Saying "I personally would not take that risk for that reward." is fine, I have no problem with that. These things, if they existed, would be optional, so people can opt not to use them, that's an important part of the whole idea. But when you said "This is just a straight up risk only. No reward." (and that's a direct quote) you were making a statement about the Fragile IO itself that it offers what is tantamount to NO REWARD AT ALL, and that's not the same thing as NO REWARD oOStaticOo WOULD FIND COMPELLING ENOUGH.
Saying something offers an advantage that is not good enough FOR YOU is fine, you can't please everyone, but saying it offers NO ADVANTAGE AT ALL, for anyone, is, in my opinion, incorrect. I know for a fact that they could make Fragile IOs with combat numbers good enough to make ME want to use one or two, especially if they're rare and one randomly dropped for me.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I guess it all comes down to your idea of rewards vs. others. I don't see taking 2 seconds off of your mob kill time as a significant reward. Like I said, I think you'd attract more people to this idea if you were to implement some kind of greater reward for the risk. An added bonus to drop rates, added defense against PvP, etc. You might attract a few people to this idea the way you have suggested it, but I doubt it would be enough to really warrant the implementation or desired money sink.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I agree here in that I could see Fragile IO's more being along the lines of "unconventional" improvements, rather than what the normal enhancements would give.
And that would be an easier sell for them.
For me, I would be totally fine for that... I am slightly wary of the "you die, you have to pay immediately to get your effectiveness back" if you have it slotted if it was "combat performance" related, and I am a person who had NO problem with Gear durability and repair costs; but that is because in those games the gear does not actually decrease in effectiveness until it is destroyed.
Hell, some people complained in another thread at my suggestion of a death penalty being linked to what you had slotted, even though it was NOT actually damaging those items.
So I can understand as to why there is some resistance to it.
And thinking about it more, I do actually like the idea of "unconventional" bonuses being treated this way. You can also put more limits on these types of items as well ie
Examples being:
1)only X of a type can be slotted at a time on a character
2) Bonus cannot exceed "Y". This is if you want to have different values of a stat across different rarities ie a "Rare finder" gives +2/+4/+6% with a max bonus of +20%, so you could get to +20% in various different ways, with the "hardest" being the "rare" +6% bonus.
3) Differing "downtimes" according to rarity/fragile IO type. So this could be another balance point, where the "rarer" ones could be "depowered" for less time compared to a "common" one. ie Common = 1 hour downtime, Uncommon = 30 minute downtime, Rare = 15 minute downtime.
This downtime would be the period of time where it would have no "bonus" effect unless you paid a cost for it.
Hell, you could combine 2 and 3 to make an even wider range of Fragile IO's, where with the luck of the draw you could end up with a "rare" +2% "Rare find" fragile IO with a 15 minute downtime... or the "rare" "+6% Rare finder" with a 1 hour downtime.
These would both register as a "rare" because they are both using rare stats, but find a "double rare" would be exceedingly rare (the +6%, 15 minute downtime) type...
One potential way to balance such 'fragile IOs', or at least to prevent people from slotting nothing but such augments, is to make them immune, so to speak, to the global augments/slots. The more 'fragile IOs' the character has slotted, the less valuable the global augment slots.
I don't know if the math will ultimately bear this out as a disincentive, or if it would instead prompt people to slot nothing but 'fragile' IOs (assuming this would be allowed), but I wanted to toss that idea out there. Perhaps if it were tied to a system that increases the chance of the IOs breaking the more such 'fragile' IOs one has slotted?
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
I can't see myself using these, but I have no objection if enough people wanted them. As long as I could sell any I got as drops. However, the following comment has me a bit confused:
Why do we want that in a superhero/supervillain game? It seems to run (npi) contrary to the genre. Quite a few people have pointed out that they want to see CoT encourage taking on the tough fights rather than discourage it.
Spurn all ye kindle.
A few thoughts about what has been written here in this thread recently by various people, without quoting anyone. To be clear, I'm not trying to respond to any one person but rather to several ideas that have been expressed by different people in this thread and then either agreed on or not disagreed by others:
1. Eight years of CoX demonstrated (at least to me) that people will try to use better IOs if they exist, and that those better IOs will tend to cost more fake money on the auction house, etc due to supply and demand. Anyone who ever slotted a Hamio, Synthetic Hamio, Purple, PVP IO, proc, unique, rare set, etc in CoX and didn't just stick STRICTLY to SOs cannot make a compelling argument to me that "All IOs do is make you kill stuff faster, that's not any real great advantage." I mean, that's the main purpose of those items, and they were popular in CoX. To say they're unnecessary and worthless and that better ones are not desirable (even if they might get destroyed if you're not careful) is a statement I do not agree with. I did not see any evidence in support of that in CoX and I DID see an overwhelming amount of evidence that suggests people DO want better enhancement of their powers since items that did such were highly sought after. If "power enhancement ain't so great" is your attitude, really and truly, then why did you put anything into your powers at all? Why not just leave all your slots empty and spend all the influence you save on other stuff? The only drawback there is that you take longer to do missions, and apparently you don't care about that, from what you're telling me now. Why NOT take 3+ hours to finish a single solo mission with all empty slots? The only thing enhancements get you over and above empty slots is the ability to level your toon like ten times faster and maybe be able to solo an Elite Boss or Archvillain, and according to the "Power Enhancement is not desirable" theory, there's no added benefit in that, right? Give me a break. I don't believe that. This is either a delusion or an outright lie.
2. The problems created by the Fragile IO concept that have been identified are not insignificant, but I don't think they're insurmountable either. For one thing, as I suggested, you could limit how many a person can use overall (to alleviate the "people are going to back up the truck and load up on these things" problem). You could only make, say, 10 different actual Fragiles, and make it so that they would require you to have Fly, TP, Super Speed, Super Jump, Phase Shift, and several other "second tier" powers such that it becomes prohibitively disadvantageous to the point that you simply don't want to play a build that has all 10 Fragiles in it, because of the awkwardness of the power selection you have to go through to get them in there. Or you could make them all work only in different primary power set powers, such that ONLY a fire blaster can have the one and ONLY an ice blaster can have the other, etc.
3. Having put some thought into this next one, I feel that PUGs are going to have their ups and downs and farming is going to exist whether Fragile IOs are in the game or not, so as long as we're talking about a limited number of actual Fragiles and not "my whole build is fragile, I can't do that mission because I might die and lose 10% of my gear", then I think this will be no big problem. Even CoX, where the penalties for getting defeated were very minor, had its powerlevelrs, farmers, and PUGs you wished you hadn't joined five minutes after it got started. The way to promote PUGs is to make more team-oriented content so that people have to team up to access that content. CoX did this early on by making the TFs give out a pretty good reward at the end for everyone. And early on in CoX you had all sorts of griefing, people rezzing people against their will in the middle of a fight area, people getting Recall Friended to places they didn't want to go, people yelling "HEALER HEAL!" at my Radiation Defender becasue they had no understanding of his power set (that later got replaced by private tells from strangers asking me to help them defeat Infernal "WE NEEDZ DEBUFFZ!") etc. Fixing that stuff is important, but you can't make people team up if they don't really want to, you can't make them get along if they're apt to be jerks to each other, you can't make people want to be more skilled in their play, and you can't prevent egotists from blaming their defeats on the healer that didn't heal them. Fragile IOs are a minor drop in the bucket compared to all that, assuming the whole game isn't all Fragile IOs to the exclusion of all others, and that was not the intention of this idea.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I'll answer part of your post. In point number one, IO's did not break or get deleted. There were no risks involved in slotting IO's. So yes, people wanted the IO's because there was an advantage to using them. You got better numbers without having to pay a price other than the cost of the IO. So again, you are wrong in saying that. I will guarantee you that if IO's had a drawback to them like you are suggesting there would have been less people using them. People want maximum benefit with minimum drawback. The most bang for your buck.
If you told me that I could buy a mansion but there is a 10% chance that every time I leave the mansion it might burn down, I wouldn't buy it. It would be a waste of my money because eventually that 10% chance is going to happen. However, if you told me there was a 10% chance it would burn down, but also a 10% chance that every time I came back and it wasn't burnt down there would be a million dollars sitting inside the door I might consider buying that. That is the disconnect you seem to be having. People want something good for the risk they are going to take. If it's not good, it's not worth it. I think because this is your idea you tend to be a little biased towards it, and I understand that.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
In the last year of CoX, I mainly spent my daytime play hours soloing my Mastermind for swag by doing Hero Alignment missions to accumulate a Hero Merit every other day, and then maybe soloing some repeatable Dark Astoria missions for incarnate swag after that. Than at night I'd try to get on one of my other level 50s and do iTrials, the weekly strike target, or some other TF.
If the "+Stealth" proc I had in Super Speed had been Fragile, I would definitely still have used it when soloing the Mastermind for swag, and I had the difficulty settings pushed to the point where I had to pay attention to avoid getting killed, which happened a few times, but not terribly often. One time Flambeau killed me *facepalm* but I digress. Unslotters were fairly cheap, and as a vet I could have just used them to pop my fragile(s) out when doing some mission I know I'm likely to die in anyway, but that costs influence, because you end up using up unslotters that way. Still, not a problem for me, because the rate at which the MM got loot was fantastic.
I just think in a game like this, we should have an abundance of things to spend influence on and not enough influence to buy all of it at any given time, unless you've been playing the game pretty often for like 3 years straight. I'm not against having different archetypes that are able to accumulate inf at different rates based on how their powers work on large mobs, etc. I just think it's good for the economy if people have stuff to buy with their influence. And again, raising the stakes a little is a thrill, and that is the ultimate point of the Fragiles, you risk something ad get the reward of a better enhancement for taking the risk, until the risk has the bad come-out roll, then you lose something.
You can "let it ride" wile doing content you feel confident about and "cash out" when you feel like the content you're doing might kill you, but the house takes its cut in the form of unslotter costs when you do that.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Part of my issue with discussing the topic is for me it's very difficult to say whether I'd have any interest or not in a fragile IOs as a 'thing' is that the reward side of the equation is so completely hypothetical at this point. I can easily imagine fragile IO's,I'd be willing to slot based on their reward to a system where I wouldn't touch them with a very long pole on my scrapper (who rarely died).
At some point it seems to me, depending on the reward vs risk curve, a fragile IO becomes more like a durable inspiration (last a while then goes bye bye at a some what random point in the future) rather than a true enhancement outside the fact it is slotted rather than simply clicked on..
I think you raise a good point. These things would offer varying degrees of risk and reward in and of themselves, and beyond that, their usefulness to different archetypes would vary based on how squishy the AT is. I mean for a tanker, a Fragile that gives you considerable +endo recharge might be totally awesome, as would, I think, anything that ups your damage. On the other hand, blasters would think twice, I would think, about using any Fragile of any kind, due to the potential for loss. This is something that would need to be thought about very carefully if implemented. And playtested a lot I would hope.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising