Submitted for discussion:
What it is, really?
Mechanically, it's the things you slot into your powers to make them better, and maybe get a global set bonus here or there. In the role play sense, these thing represent, to me, the amount of time and effort your toon has devoted to making that particular power better by practicing it outside of combat. There are places where this analogy breaks down of course, and in some cases a particular bit of gear might represent some physical item (like a better lens in your optic blast visor or better ammo for your super gun, etc). In any case, gear is the expression, in whatever way the user chooses to explain it, of the character's individual powers being enhanced either by science, magic, practice, money, or anything else.
Does it affect my toon's appearance like in WoW?
ABSOLUTELY NOT! Powers, temp powers, prestige powers, pets, non-combat pets, costume pieces, etc can do that but gear probably ought not to as a general rule.
How does it work?
In CoX your powers came with a single empty slot that you could put an enhancement into. You could ad more slots when you got certain levels, and no power could have more than 6 slots total. Some rule similar to this will probably be in place for CoT I would expect, actual numbers being subject to change. I could see them making the total number of slots possible greater or less, or even making it a function of the power itself. Like "this power does more base damage, but you can only put a total of 5 slots in it, this other one can have 6 slits but has less impressive base stats."
What kind of enhancements are there out there to use?
In CoX they rolled out day 1 with 3 types of Enhancements (Trainings, Double-Origin Enhancements, and Single Origin Enhancements). Then later added HamiOs and then later Invention Origin Enhancements, which had to be crafted. I would propose a system where you have something similar to this, but maybe streamlined a little. I used to use SOs etc until I got to the level cap, then started seriously thinking about what the IOs would be long term. I could see making two tiers of gear, the cheap, fast kind like SOs and the craftable, long term, more expensive kind like IOs. Then have some oddball HamiO type stuff you get from specific events, TFs, and so forth.
Buy sell?
Yes. I want to be able to buy and sell this stuff on an open in-game market. If a bit of gear is TOO good to be able to buy and sell, then don't make it in the first place. Seriously. This requires the devs to make every effort to ensure than no bug or exploit allows people to crank out a lot of very rare stuff cheaply and quickly.
Rarity?
I like a spread of different stuff like CoX had upto and including purples. But I also like the fact that you could do the game without the best possible gear just fine.
Set bonuses?
I liked them. It allowed you to try to mix and match to get the effects you were trying to achieve. It made character building fun and complex.
Crafting?
As I said above, I liek the idea of having non-crafted stuff to just use as you level up (like SOs) and then have crafted IO-type stuff that's more of a long-term investment.
Wear and tear?
I wouldn't be against the idea of having the effectiveness of the enhancements slowly drop off over time such that you eventually want to replace worn-out old enhancements with newer ones. This creates an influence sink, which help the economy. This is controversial and a lot of people don't like it. Devs have said no to this idea already here and there on the forums and that's fine, I just wanted to put in my two cents and maybe create some talk. Even if every enhancement had a "high value" and "low value" and it only went from one to the other after a certain amount of in-game time spent playing the toon, that might be good I think. I think this is better in some ways than outleveling SOs every few levels like CoX had.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Regarding set bonuses, having the bonuses increase as you got more of the set was nice. It not only gave a sense of improvement as you added another member to the set but it also allowed for 'franken-slotting' where you might have 2 of one set and 3 of a different set in the same power.
However they do it, they need to just do it. Even CoH devs said one of the problems getting a bigger fanbase in the beginning, was a lack of gear. IOs filled that void, but they also came a little late.
There were also the Titan Enhancements - which were a bit of an odd duck. Usually not worth the effort considering they bled off rapidly on the way to 50.
The issue of "gear fade", in my opinion, heavily depends on what the boosts do exactly, how many we can slot, how we gain them, and how they fade. It also depends on what the player economy will entail, both "solo" (selling stuff to npc "stores") and multiplayer (auction house/online marketplace).
I really can't comment until we have more info on all of the above - BUT - going by CoH as an example - I really didn't have much issue with how they handled Enhancment fade for "regular" enhancments (Training/DO/SO) and crafted enhancements (no fade but were static).
That said they should have made Titan Enhancements and other special ones like the ones at the Yin's store more relevant by turning off the fade. What unholy frankenslotting there could have been if we could have thrown those into the mix at 50 - but unfortunately the were rendered worthless in a few quick levels.
Well, since one of MWM's goals is to some extent to start a little past where CoH left off game-mechanics wise, I'd think that they'd be intending to do this.
What they released in the "Highway to the Danger Room" update about their Power Augmentation system also seems to indicate this.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
To quote Mrs. White from the movie CLUE ... "Men should be like kleenex. Strong. Clean. Disposable."
Ironically enough, this makes for a very close approximation of the kind of system I'd like to see get used for Enhancements (or Boosts, if you prefer).
It should be a "strong" system in the sense that it is well designed.
It should be "clean" in the sense that the way it functions is streamlined and simple to explain to a newcomer.
The itemization used for it should be "disposable" in the sense that Permanency promotes Item Inflation (by reducing/removing demand), ruining economic value over the game's lifespan.
Suffice it to say, that by the time IOs arrived in City of Heroes, the Enhancement system was neither "clean" nor "disposable" any longer, and as for whether the *design* of the Enhancement system could be considered "strong" was debatable. "Features" like the Rule Of Three enhancement value "cliff" being one of the major points I'd argue as being anything BUT "strong" by the definitions I'm laying out here (since it was a KLUDGE used for forcing outcomes).
Needless to say, I'd want City of Titans to do (much!) better than City of Heroes did in this regard.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I like the idea of enhancements getting worn out over repeated use tot he point where you either need new ones or need to some how fix the ones you have. I'm not sure how best to implement that, but I don't like the thing CoX had where you outlevel them as you level up. The wear and tear mechanic should apply to level-capped toons as well, I think. So for that sake I'd tie the wear and tear metrics to something like total number of times the power is clicked or total amount of "toggled on" time etc instead. That way the newbies don't have to worry so much about replacing worn out parts but the veterans do. I wouldn't limit this to the "quick cheap SOs" either. If it were up to me, I'd make the "crafted for the long haul IO" type enhancements subject to this as well.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The only problem with the rule of three was it came late and some people couldn't handle it :/ If the game had started with it, no one would have ever cared and I think CoH would have had a bigger fanbase.
Without getting into the specifics, we have set up the preliminary system for our augments and refinements. Those which are more 'disposable' won't be persistantly good, but far more forgiving than the old game handled drop off of effectiveness. The crafted augs / refs are intended to be more persistant.
The reason we aren't going with aug / refinement 'damage' systems as a whole is due to the fundamental stance we have in that augments and refinements are not 'gear'. They may be 'gear' for some players, learned skill for others, natural ability, and any other application desirable to the player to assign for their use and application. We intend to carry this over to how the crafted augs / refinements are made in that the crafting itself can be 'customizable' to cover broad categories of 'design'.
A closer approximation to gear for CoT will be temporary powers. This was one of the determined underwhelming aspects of the old game where it has been felt we could improve upon. Many of the crafted tempoary powers were either highly situational, useless, or good for a giggle. Character powers are considered to be more consistant in application, the stuff you can always count on. Temporary Powers can be things to use to extend an ability, gain a new ability, or temporarly change an existing ability. These temps aren't entirely useless (or actually worth while to use), but they come with a cost; anywhere from how many can be 'carried', used at a time, number of charges, time limits of usefulness, and degraded effectiveness per use. One suggestion was to even include temporary cosmetics - a special weapn skin that was only available as a temporary power - once activated an appropriate power uses the new weapon skin as its animation / emanation point.
Perhaps it would be better to use the above examples as a better frame of reference for thinking about gear systems for CoT, where the Augs / Refs are thought not so much as traditional game gear and more of character centric improvements, and temporary items could fill the role of 'gear'.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Will the temps be useable in all instances? Temps were not useable in incarnate challenges.
Outleveling the TO/DO/SO every 5 Levels created a synchronized turnover problem. Every 5 Levels you simply HAD TO replace every Enhancement you'd been using, and you basically needed to do so all at once. This created demand "spikes" in which you needed to go to a vendor and buy everything, because your in hand inventory was nowhere NEAR enough to cover the need, and in order to do that you needed to have huge amount of INF on hand to cover the purchases. How much? Try "all of the INF you've earned in the last 5 Levels" to get an approximate amount.
Before IOs came along, it was extremely common for characters to remain "broke" in INF terms until they reached Level 50 ... after which they turned into gravy trains, simply because they no longer "needed" to spend INF on replacing all of their Enhancements every 5 Levels (being at the Level cap).
The problem, Radiac, with any sort of "repeated use" tally for Powers is that some get "used" way more than others. Toggles are just left always on. Attack chains get used with abandon, while utility Powers occupy tray space and are rarely needed. Just the bookkeeping alone for this method makes me want to toss the spreadsheet across the room and go do something else.
So one way to measure "expiration" of Enhancements was the City of Heroes way ... Level Advancement. The problem with this method is that it runs out of "up" once you hit the Level Cap, at which point replacements are no longer necessary and the Enhancements in effect become "permanent" in a way that is NOT true while still gaining Levels.
Another way to measure "expiration" would be the method you've suggested ... Use induces wear and tear. The problem with this method is that not all Powers get "used" in any sort of equalizing fashion, and I shudder to think of how to balance frequently used (let alone "always on" Passive Powers) against infrequently used ones (think Resurrection). And that's before getting into the Toggles vs Clicks vs Passives aspect of the idea. Can of worms, do not open!
A third way to measure "expiration" would be ... time played on character. Essentially, each Enhancement would carry a marker recording the time point in the character's history when it was slotted, and compare that against the current time played on that character. Once the differential becomes large enough, the Enhancement degrades and then becomes "fit" for replacement. Thus, the longer the character is in play, the greater the degrading of Enhancements.
Note that this "Degrade by Time" system could be rigged on a sliding scale, such that the time to degrade increases as the character Levels Up. For simplicity of example, I'm thinking something along the lines of 1 hour of play time per Level of the character. This would mean that any Enhancements slotted at Level 1 would last for 1 hour of game time ... while Enhancements slotted at Level 30 would last for 30 hours of game time. So the "burn down" time would slowly decrease, but never go away entirely (unlike the City of Heroes every 5 Levels model).
Also note that using a system like this would produce a sort of "constant" demand and "churn" in the Enhancement market, and that if drops of these Enhancements are "plentiful enough" (because they are common) then you can avoid the all at once turnover pressure of the Every 5 Levels system. Simply use some of the random drops you're getting to replace your existing Enhancements (to top them up on duration) every so often and just keep going. Net result is that instead of selling EVERYTHING that drops for you as vendor bait, only a FRACTION of what drops for you gets considered to be vendor bait.
Rig a mouseover popup window on your Enhancements that can give you an exact time to expiration and have a green/yellow/red indicator to clue you in on how much time is left on each specific Enhancement and you're basically all set. After that, it's just a matter of having a large enough inventory for drops to be able to handle the sorting of what you aren't going to be selling.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I like Red's idea above, for the record. It's probably less difficult to code, requires the game to track fewer numbers so it reduces game lag (I think) and serves basically the same purpose as my idea.
That said, on a completely academic note, I would argue that the fact that different powers would grind up and spit out enhancements faster than others is not a bad thing. It certainly would need to be tweaked by the devs to find the happy medium if there is one, but I don't think that should be a deal breaker. It might make certain types of enhancement harder to get and more expensive on the market due to faster burn-through rates, and it might cause certain less-frequently-used powers (like rezzes) to be less of a "tax burden" than your fast-recharge attacks, but that's not a problem or a drawback to my way of thinking, as it adds design space to the game. You now have one MORE dimensional axis on which to rank different powers you might take. Maybe you take the rez power you'll likely not use terribly often BECAUSE it lowers your overall "cost of living" and provides your toon with some needed set bonuses from those IOs that are in it and will last longer for that reason.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I'm with Tannim on this idea. The "Enhancements" weren't technically "Gear". They weren't something that you physically attached to yourself to make you better, i.e. Chest Plate, Shield, Grieves, Gauntlets, etc. It was more like fine tuning your power by enhancing it with training, cybernetic implants, or magical spells. I understand gear degredation in games such as WoW, DDO, and NW. Those are physical objects that receive wear and tear through usage. Obviously Armor is going to crack after it's been beaten long enough and weapons will dull with usage, so it makes sense to have to repair those items. Powers, on the other hand, only get better the more you use them as you are fine tuning them over time. Once you get to a certain point, you may have maxed out that power and can no longer enhance it anymore.
I know there is a huge desire for intense money sinks, I understand the reasoning behind it, but I think there should be other avenues looked at for those money sinks besides "Gear Degredation". Also, Infamy and Influence weren't technically currency. Yes, we adapted it to a currency format because we were buying enhancements with it but it wasn't "Cold Hard Cash". It was reputation that earned us rewards. I have no problems with Temporary Powers degrading like Tannim suggested, they are temporary after all. I am against seeing our regularly used powers degrading, it just doesn't make sense to me at all to have that happen.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
My ideal system uses a traditional gear model that I call "Training"
Basic Training - Purple Gear
Advanced Training - Blue Gear
Special Training - Green Gear
Expert Training - Yellow Gear
Master training - Red Gear
Custom Training - Deep Red Gear.. actually called "[Insert Character Name] Training" and is the rarest. For instance mine would be "Kontrol's Tenacity Training"
Custom Training would have a rare drop rate and from Story Arc Bosses only at endgame. Also the custom training is not trade-able. I know being untradeable sounds like a death-nail to a gear system but I think it works really well to keep players incentivized to keep running content.
I must also stress that I HATE when a game releases new gear instead of releasing new levels. It's a cheap way to get $. The training tiers MUST remain static for a level based progression. I really, really don't like "gear" based progression as seen in Champions Online.
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The training comes in three forms (and each form has two equal slots):
Magnitude Training: For DPS this is where offense/damage training goes. For Crowd Control this is where debuff/cc training goes. For Tanks this is where defense/threat training goes. For healers this is where the buff/heal training goes. For pet-masters this is where the damage/hp/whatever mod goes for pets.
Defense Training: This is where you can train in Defense, Dodge*, Armor**, and/or Tenacity***
Utility Training: This is where you can train your Momentum, Energy, Cool-down Times, and/or Movement Speed
*Dodge mechanics TBD
**Armor is a minimum threshold of incoming DMG removed
*** Tenacity is Crowd Control Resistance
A character's ultimate goal is to get customized training in the field of their choice. Also this gear system keeps magnitude in mind for all classes instead of focusing on offense always. The training gear table grows with level if there be a level cap increase.
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Training CAN be crafted (including custom training at extreme cost). I would use a system like Wildstar where the EXACT way to learn a training changes upon each craft and it relies on advanced knowledge of the system. Nothing set in stone in my mind besides that.
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Training does wear ONLY if you are defeated and none of your allies come to rez you. If you respawn to a spawn point the training wears down. The higher the training the less wear per defeat you'll get but it can only be re-trained by either crafting or a minigame like a Combat Simulator. I really like the SHIELD Simulator on Marvel Heroes 2015 for an example of how you could re-train your character to full strength. This also encourages teams about to go and raid to go into the simulator together first to be sure they are trained for the larger mission. I'm thinking you must survive at least 10 waves of increasing enemies in order to up your training a level.
For instance a Custom Training has 30 points.. at 22 points the custom gear becomes Master Training efficiency (but is still custom training). You can go to the sim and build up the Training back to 30 by performing really well a few times .. or by doing "okay" 8 times.
If you have the knowledge of how to craft Training you can use a blueprint to train your points back into a training as well. Crafting is great for Inventory Management and the Auction House and some people REALLY love the crafting minigame. My idea of crafting also follows Wildstar's model in that you can learn to craft only a few training forms on any one character.
Crafting model is almost COMPLETELY dependent on the gear and temporary boost items which is why I support the traditional MMO gear model.
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That's my utopian gear system. I am sure some will and some won't like it. I'm only presenting this for discussion.
(Is this discussion best here on in the Gear/Crafting Section of the Forum?)
Crowd Control Enthusiast
To respond to Tannim's point, which I think many agree with, about "gear" in this game not being analogous to "hardware that can erode through use" like it would in a DnD type game, I will say that I agree to the extent that this game's "gear" needs to be thought of as more of an abstraction than, say, WoW's gear does. That is, we need to make room for the players themselves to imagine on their own what the heck that Damage SO in their blast power really is doing and how it's doing it in their own minds so as to jibe with their toon's imagined theme or whatever.
But that said, the game mechanic of "Damage SO needs fixing because it's effectiveness erodes over time" is not per se limited to the WoW type of gear anyway, IMO. Even if your Damage SO in your Punch Face attack isn't representing added batteries, more gunpowder, or the current state of the spiked gauntlet you may or may not even be wearing, that Damage SO, in the abstract, can still erode in usefulness over time in some imaginable way. I don't think simply passing off Damage SOs as "not representing a physical object, so not subject to erosion" is a good enough attempt at role playing realism. In other words, I think the laws of thermodynamics (energy is conserved, entropy increases over time) will ensure that WHATEVER your Damage SO is actually representing, that abstraction can be assumed to lose effectiveness over time somehow, if one chooses to do so. Don't get me wrong, anyone can come up with a convenient back story like "My toon is powered by magic, so his stuff don't erode, I ain't gotta explain it beyond that, it's magic, deal with it" but that's a cop out on it's face. The fact that the user might not be inclined to TRY to come up with a good sounding, toon-specific, thematic reason for their stuff to lose effectiveness over time is not, to me, a compelling reason to say "so we can't do that".
If, from a design perspective, you want your game to have currency sinks in other places to deal with inflation and you want to leave gear alone, fine, that's it's own decision and maybe you can come back with a system that works well in that regard. But please don't tell me that role play immersion is the only reason we're not going to have gear degradation. I think the only compelling reason would be because more people hate the results of the mechanic than like it and and thus don't want it. I accept that reason, I don't agree with it, but I accept it.. The flavor text reasons can pretty much take care of themselves if people want them to.
For example, let's say my punch attack is not enhanced by strong armor or a good weapon, I just punch people with my bare fists. Well, in order to do that I'd probably need to be highly trained and keep my strength up through exercise and so forth. So if I slack off in the gym, my punch attack gets weaker over time. Slacking off on the training in the RP sense would then be represented in the game by letting your Damage SOs start to erode and not replenishing them. You're not devoting the rime and effort (or in game terms, Influence earned while fighting badguys) to keeping that particular muscle group well-maintained, so it starts to atrophy. No matter what power source you name that your powers work with, radiation, electrical energy, magic, etc you can always come up with a convenient reason for why the enhancements in the powers powers start to erode over time and need to be refreshed, if you actually want to.
So what I'm basically saying is, you COULD leave the question of "what are enhancements?" up to interpretation by the players, but still give them a system in which the Damage SO, as a purely abstract thing that you the user must define for yourself on a case by case basis, still nonetheless erodes over time.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Its an issue of fundamentals. The primary push for such a system is in an attempt to somehow combat the possibility of inflation by creating a constant currency sinkin what is the most oft function of the character - the very use of their powers. Concerns over the economy aside (there are so many other factors to consider with economy), more important to me is the psychological impact to the player cannot be disregarded in this appllcation. Over time every action experiences a loss in effectiveness, it's not the extension of the character - their "gear" that is holding them back, it is now the very function of the character itself. It seems like a minor distinction but it is far more significant in how it affects the mindset of game play.
It also would require multiple rules to maintain parity of performance and compound issues of effectiveness over levels, how augments and refinements are gained, and more. If augments / refinements drop, the commons could be prevalent enough to not warrant "repair costs" and simply keep replacement on the fly. In order for the Augs and refs degradation to be worth bothering to keep and maintain, they can't be readily available or restricted in application. Games that typically emply these systems are designed around the accumulation of these gear items and the ever escalating search for gear.
Quite honestly. This is not the type of game we intend to create. The resources for power applications being used are time (when a power is available, when is it possibly the best time to use it in concert with other powers, etc...), and energy (how much energy will it take to use this power, will it cost to much at thus time, etc...). If there were degredation of effectiveness everytime something was used, energy probably wouldn't be as necessary a gauge, instead the gauge would be how weakened is the power becomes after it is used? This is not the direction we are going.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Fair points, Tannim. My point above is mostly an academic one, I'll admit. But I think a lot of good ideas could possibly be ignored or killed due to the same argument (that argument being "works, but not 'superhero' enough, so not for this game, sorry"), and a lot of bad ideas and stuff you want to avoid can, on their face, seem like very "on theme" things to have given the superhero nature of the game. That said I'm not the one writing the code, and wrenching the nuts and bolts, so those of you who have that job to do have to make these decisions and I respect that.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
It is much less about 'super hero' and more about the type of game play desired to be invoked. I'm not disparaging all versions of dear degradation. If it fits the style of the game design intended for the game, great. There are many such systems that have and do work for the game their intended for. What I'm saying is, CoT isn't intended to by that type of game.
When the team got together (multiple teams actually as the discussions occured more than once) to put together the game play and systems and eventually toward our version of 'enhancements', a lot of thought went into the current system we intend to use for the game. These very ideas expressed in this and other threads of similar concepts are have been gone over both for their merits and flaws and we settled upon what we intend the augments and refinements mechanics to represent within the game and how the game plays. This isn't to say that there are great ideas that may not have been brought up being discussed now, but at a certain point, the frame work of the game is settled and going back means tearing parts of the framework up and reconstucting the frame work - especially when the suggestion affects the type of game intended to be created.
This is why I provided a frame of reference to use in the current discussion.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Ohh, so it wont be like this?
[img]http://i.imgur.com/iLIo54p.png[/img]
Never Looses Effectiveness, just gets closer and closer to the RED ZONE of Ineffectiveness as you level up?
I'm not talking about the effectiveness degrading over level of the certain types of augments / refinements. There will be such a system in place (more...forgiving than the old game's method). I was speaking more toward the constant upkeep mechanics being suggested within this thread.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
To clarify the system that I was explaining, the Green/Yellow/Red would have zero impact on the "effectiveness" of slotted Enhancements. Instead, the colors would simply denote time remaining before expiration. Also, the Enhancements themselves would be "level-less" in the sense that they would offer the same "degree" of improvement at all Levels. Instead, what you have left is a system that tells you "[b]You have 20 minutes to reach minimum safe replacement[/b]" (or words to that effect).
My thought would be that Enhancements that "expire" simply self destruct.
How to prevent that problem? Replace them before they expire (or after they expire). When you slot in a replacement, you start the clock over again based on the character's current Level at the time the Enhancement gets slotted in.
The end result is that you'd need to (slowly!) keep replacing the Enhancements that you've got slotted, but as you Level Up the time between "oil changes" just gets longer and longer, giving you more time played to accumulate replacements for a larger number of Enhancements slotted. And you wouldn't [i]have to[/i] change them all out at once ... although you could if you wanted to, particularly if that was simply convenient for how you played. And if the drops of Enhancements are sufficiently "common" then this isn't all that much of a problem. You'd want to do some testing to balance the supply vs the demand, but it could be something "dialed into" and refined over time at the development level and by observing market trends.
As for the objection Tannim has raised, I think that Radiac has given the correct answer ... ENTROPY.
Even with something as intangible as "training" ... that training [i]needs to be maintained and refreshed[/i] if it is to remain effective/useful. Skills (or in this case, Powers) can "atrophy" or otherwise become known (and thus more easily countered), "degrading" the effectiveness of those skills/powers. In effect, abilities that don't receive "investment" to keep them fresh/powerful can over time decline and need to be rebuild/relearned/remade.
One of the CLASSIC tropes of not only the superhero genre but also in anime and manga is the heroic figure who thinks they can overcome anything and they get their butts handed to them. The defeated hero then goes on a training regimen to [i]regain the edge that they'd lost[/i] before returning to the opponent who defeated them. They INVEST the time/effort/will/dedication to "renew" themselves so as to become the best at what they do all over again.
{cue montage sequence with appropriate music}
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Oh Boy... I dont like Farmville too much. :/
Can I punch or Kick something instead? :D
There are two things I would dislike about time-based expiry.
First is the complexity of maintenance. It would be a burden to have to individually identify and keep track of all enhancements that are near expiry. One thing that was convenient about gear damage in WoW is that you could go to any number of vendors and simply click the anvil icon to automagically repair all of your broken gear. It's still a financial burden, but it's simple. I would find it very inconvenient to go through the reslotting process on a recurring basis.
Second, I would see it as unfair to those characters who don't spend as much time earning drops. For instance, if I had a character who I mostly RP'ed with and only occasionally helped friends out with tough missions, I would feel overtaxed for having to spend extra time and money just to stay ready for that one moment I need to throw down. I understand "training" as a possible justification for this, but it represents a constant and tedious burden that I'm not sure is necessary.
I realize that I've used the word [i]burden[/i] more than once in this post. Certainly any time or money sink would be a burden for players, and a total absence of such sinks would result in inflation. However, I feel that the perceived severity of any burden must be minimal, and self-destruct timers on individual enhancements would leave a constant, nagging reminder in the back of my mind that downtime to slog through maintenance is inevitable. I get that kind of feeling from paying bills, and it's not exactly thrilling.
"Training" of you abilities and powers could be RP'd by logging off. During the times you are not actively playing your character and taking down bad guys, or just hanging out with all the other Catgurls in Pocket D, your character is off training his abilities to keep them in tip top shape in his own personal Danger Room, Gym, etc.
I also am not a big fan of the "Timed Expiration" enhancements either. As Plexius mentioned it would be a pain in the butt to try to keep track of all the different enhancements that are about to expire and need to be replaced. What happens when those enhancements expire in the middle of a long drawn out Boss fight? I've been a victim of that many times where I'm in the middle of fighting through some dungeon then the next thing I know I look up and my armor is red and about to fall off. Can't stop in the middle of the dungeon and say, "Hey guys, I need to go run back to town real quick and repair my gear. You keep the boss occupied while I do that."
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
What if (thought bubble) Aug/Ref DIDNT degrade at all but rather every X A/R levels (maybe every A/R level) the Bonus increases.
Example:
(Numbers are purely random and no thought was put into balancing them or making them 'fair' - only used for example)
Level 5 Dam = +5% Dam Boost
Level 8 Dam = +9% Dam Boost
Level 10 Dam = +11% Dam Boost
Level 20 Dam = +24% Dam Boost
etc
So At level 30 I can still use my level 5 Aug/Ref but its nowhere near as efficient as a Level 30 Aug/Ref. This mean I don't have the Enh Cliff when I level up mid-combat (YAY Level 25!! CRAP all my ENH went red ohhh sh!t) but I still need to obtain/purchase level appropriate A/R to stay competitive.
???
The Phoenix Rising Initiative Rules Lawyer
I like what I'm hearing, Tannim. Looking forward eagerly to a KS update that explains in more detail, whenever you folks feel it's time to share that.
Spurn all ye kindle.
I've found if people just repaired their gear before the dungeon, this doesn't happen. It's when they go into a dungeon after a long period of fighting without repairing it.
Not that I'm a fan of time limit. Should just be wear and tear. Though, if they made boosters/enhancements degradable by damage, then people would likely start thinking "I'm wearing these!" which is an immersion breaker.
I think the immersion is still ok in that scenario. For example, a person who does kung fu might look at their gear degradation and think "If I go into that warehouse and try to rescue that hostage, my left arm, which is pretty raw as it is now, will likely get broken or dislocated, but I guess I gotta take that risk. and then when your gear does get gimped you're like "oooooh, that fight took more out of me than I thought it would, better heal up and then hit the gym again."
Or if you're a magic guy, your "reserves of mystical life force" are low and you might "sever your connection to the arcane magicks" if you push it, etc.
I still contend there are perfectly reasonably role-play explanations for gear degradation as a thing, even in this genre. You just have to use your imagination.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Of course there is, but sense that failed in CoH, I figure it will fail in CoT.
When the idea of making the enhancements look like like chest/leg/hand gear before posters didn't like the idea because they said it felt like having gear.
Define (and I quote): "minimal"
Most people would define "minimal" as being equivalent to "none" or even "never" if they could get away with it. You concede the point that "need once but never again" is an incredibly weak Demand in the face of a never ending Supply ... also known as the textbook definition for the source of Inflation. Rampant Supply meeting Negligible Demand is a formula known as [b]You're Doing It Wrong™[/b].
Bear in mind, I'm postulating a system in which any given Enhancement slotted by a Level 30 character would take 30 HOURS of logged in online playing game time before it expired. How many Enhancement drops do you think you'll get during 30 hours of game play? In City of Heroes, my expectation would have been in the multiples(!) of hundreds (possibly even more than a thousand) over that time span. In City of Titans, I'd anticipate a similar drop rate. Is it a [i]burden[/i] to expect a portion of those drops to be USED rather than SOLD as Vendor Bait?
I already gave the answer to that ... Green/Yellow/Red/Poof!
If it's Green, you don't need to worry about it for "a good long time" yet.
If it's Yellow, you might want to replace at some point "soon" but there's no hurry yet.
If it's Red, do a mouseover and check how much time is left, then make your own judgement call(s) on priorities.
If it's "Poof!"ed on you already, go ahead and replace it.
I'm not finding this a terrifically challenging task, so long as the UI is designed to make evaluations and comparisons easy and obvious. It is straightforward and simple, as far as I'm concerned ... just like seeing Green/Yellow/Red on TO/DO/SO Enhancements was in City of Heroes.
Depends on how you want to do it. There is more than one strategy for dealing with "maintenance" in the system I proposed.
If you want to replace all your Enhancements all at once, so that they all expire at roughly the same time, THAT'S YOUR CHOICE. You aren't forced into managing your character(s) that way, you merely chose to.
If at any time there's some downtime (waiting at a mission door, etc.) you open up your Enhancements window for a spot check to see if you've got any Reds, and if you do you just drop in replacements from what you've got in your inventory, you're only going to be replacing "onesy twosy" and spacing things out over time rather than doing it all at once. Just make a habit of checking after you exit Missions and you'll probably spend less than 30 seconds each time topping yourself back up and can spread out the reslotting over time ... and you won't need to go back to "town" or a specific NPC or crafting table to do it. Open window, top up with what you've got on hand, close window.
Of the two choices, the former will push you towards hitting up a Vendor (or the Market) for supplies, because your demand will "spike" for large quantities of supplies in a very short window of time. The latter choice by contrast is more of a "survivalist" strategy that relies on periodically checking if you can consume what you've earned, whenever you feel like it, using what you've scavenged from drops recently and spreading the demand out over time.
Characters that are used for RP more than for looting/combat are already making a choice about where their priorities are, and economic advancement is rarely (if ever) the primary reason/rationale people use to justify heavy RP. I understand that your point is that you're worried a resource sink could be "too much" for an RP character bear. I simply don't agree that the resource sink that I'm proposing would be punitively burdensome for RP characters. Taken to (really extreme) extremes, it could be argued that any sort of "cost" imposed upon a purely RP character, who never "earns" anything except through charity from other Players, would be unfairly impacted ... but even then, if you're RPing that much [i]with friends[/i] (you did mention friends) I'd have an expectation that your friends would help you support your RP activities, rather than just leaving you to fend for yourself. So again, I don't agree with you that this is a serious or major concern. A minor one, granted, but you have to be spending an awful lot of your time doing RP (only) for this issue to be(come) a problem for you.
And that's overlooking other sources of income and altruism ... such as Costume Contests with "cash" prizes as well as other players giving away Enhancements to strangers ... both of which happened quite frequently in City of Heroes (especially on Virtue server). So, again, I'm not seeing this as a dealbreaker concern.
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I've never been fond of the "play the game by NOT playing" angle of game design ... even when extended to Day Jobs and "Rest" by logging out at an Inn.
1. If your Enhancements break in the middle of a major fight using the system I've described, WHO is at fault? I'd argue that it is the PLAYER'S fault for being inattentive. As Brand X points out, the time to check your gear and do maintenance on it is BEFORE the big boss battle. If you can't be bothered to maintain your character, that's your problem ... literally.
2. With the system I described, you wouldn't need to run back to town, interact with a specific NPC or go to a crafting table. All you'd need to do is open a window that you always have access to and replace anything that shows up as Red. Do that and you're going to be fine ... assuming the final boss battle you were talking about takes less than 3 hours to finish (which most City of Heroes boss battles did, so I'm assuming the same for City of Titans). The one hitch is that you'd need to have the inventory of Enhancements on hand to do any replacing. Of course, it goes without saying that most final boss battles came at the END of an arc (with lots of drops along the way) rather than at the beginning of it ... so ... what was the problem again?
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There's a very simple solution for the 'My character spends 90% of its time RPing rather than running missions, etc" issue.
Determining if a character is in combat is simple enough. Several factors (such as health/endurance regeneration, certain 'in-combat-only' auras, etc) already trigger on whether or not a character is in combat. Simply have the 'Countdown to Poof' timer only run when the character is in combat. Time spent RPing would have zero effect on when the enhancements time out.
Also, while a character may be able to replace enhancements in the field, it'll only be possible if the character happens to have a suitavble replacement on them. If an endurance drain enhancement is about to expire and the character does not have any endurance drains on them then yes, they will need to find a vendor before they can replace it.
Not to keen on the idea of having to run out to find the same enhancement that I already obtained, just so I have a replacement on hand. I'd much rather have to just repair it, unless the idea is repairing equals back up to 30 hours of game time.
However, if we do it that way, doesn't seem like people would be repairing often, but for all I know it could equal out to what people do for repair costs in other games now.
I think that Enhancements, if they must degrade over time, should degrade as you earn currency in combat or through mission completion. It would be as if, in CoH, your Level 50 Enhancements turned red when you earned the amount of Influence you would have expected to earn in getting to Level 53, if there were a Level 53.
A difference is that there would be no Level 55 Enhancements; instead each slotted Enhancement has a degradation counter that gets advanced based on how much the character has been rewarded for defeating enemies and completing mission objectives while it is slotted.
Even if there were in-combat only timers there could easily be situations where people train spawns onto other people who were minding their own business and suddenly their combat timer dings because they got hit by splash damage or some other superfluous action. That's not exactly fair either.
Grief behavior can occur in unexpected locations as it is and in of itself is bad enough when causing disruption amongst unaware players becomes much worse when unaware players now have an in-game monetary cost for any form of combat.
Either way seriously moot since it is not the intended type of mechanic we intend to employ.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
+1
Thank you Tannim.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Disclaimer: I'm not a psychologist nor an economist. Most of what follows is my opinion. I also left out a lot of text for the sake of brevity, but if there's anything I failed to address, please say so.
I stated that the "perceived severity of any burden must be minimal," not to imply that cash sinks should be negligible. I meant this in a psychological sense in how a player perceives the burden. In my opinion, the more cognitive effort the maintenance requires, and the more frequently a player is forced to perform that maintenance, the more burdensome it would seem, even if the financial cost is minimal.
It's also my opinion that having a ticking timer on every enhancement would provide a steady reminder of impending drudgery, even if the timer is long. Again, like paying bills, it's something you'd always have in the back of your mind that you'll have to take time away from the action to do something mundane. Even if it's only once a month, it's still a buzzkill.
I'll contrast it again with gear repair in WoW. The system you propose would require constant vigilance, inventory management, and a checklist of things that need to be replaced. In WoW, you simply click a button every so often and the problem disappears. It was so natural in WoW---at least for me---that it was practically a reflex at just about every vendor. It couldn't have been much more convenient. This may sound like a lazy excuse, but I'd personally rather pay my taxes with a simple button than face a recurring distraction from actually playing the game.
The visualization would help with the task, but I still dislike the idea of having to go down the list and make note of what needs to be replaced simply because it requires effort. Again, it's a lazy opinion, but I'm serious. Why should I have to schedule downtime for the sake of a cash sink? Why shouldn't there be something less involved if the purpose is for players to dump cash? In other words, why add a time sink to a cash sink?
To further clarify my stance, I personally disliked having to refresh enhancements every 5 or so levels in CoX. It was tedious and time-consuming. The fact that IO's didn't expire was a godsend. I could replace them at my own pace when I was good and ready to upgrade. This may have reduced demand and hurt the economy, but I don't claim to have the knowledge to weigh in on that.
I'll concede that this probably wouldn't be a severe problem in practice. My reasoning was that if you happened to spend most of your time RP'ing (or taking screenshots or admiring scenery or whatever), you'd still hear the echoes of those enhancement timers, and you'd realize that at some point that you'll have to pull yourself away from your activities in order to stay combat-ready. My point was aimed at the reslotting being both a distraction and a tax, and even though the monetary cost may be manageable, it still takes you "out of the zone" so to speak.
...
I guess the tl;dr version of my arguments is that constant reslotting, on any schedule, would be an unnecessary distraction. I'm all for cash sinks, but I'm not so crazy about coupling cash sinks with time sinks. That's my opinion, anyways.
Actually, while reading your answer, I came up with a much more likely cause for the problem you cite.
Base Editing.
I know from my own sessions of doing Base Editing that it was a time intensive endeavor with few (if any) in-game rewards of the game mechanical variety. I once spent 18 hours during a double XP weekend editing a room in my SG Base. That was time spent in-game where I was getting no drops, and forgoing extra XP (which would have meant extra INF and Prestige in my case, being at the Level Cap already). But I'd worked out a beautiful 3D plan and I just had to try putting it into practice, and that was the first opportunity to do so ... and being the obsessive/compulsive type that I am, I poured every waking moment I could spare that weekend into realizing that dream and making it "real" inside the game.
Architect Entertainment could be just as time intensive when creating in-depth content. When using all the bells and whistles it could take dozens of man-hours to complete even a single story arc package ... especially if you were creating custom NPCs to populate it with.
Point being, there are more activities for Players to "squander" their in-game time on than just combat and RP. ^_~
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For what it's worth, I agree with Plexius on the subject of drudgery and dread in having to track and maintain fifty to a hundred individual enhancements and their current state of wear and tear. Since Tannim222 tells us that this is a purely academic discussion at this point, I'll leave it there, suffice to say that there would need to be some way around that.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
This is absolutely true, and believe you me, I spent countless hours in the mission architect, the base builder, and the Shadow Shard just to zone out. I'm sure players will find many secondary activities to spend their time on in City of Titans, and to my point, it's my opinion that players should be free to pursue whatever activities they choose without feeling like they're behind on an obligation or being distracted from doing their thing.
I would turn that observation on its head and take the inverse to its logical conclusion ... that having Drops at all is similarly a form of drudgery which produces the dread of having to go off to a vendor to sell off your trash. At which point, why have Drops at all that wind up being >99% Vendor Bait? Why not just eliminate the drops entirely and increase the cash payout and let everyone "buy" what they need, when they need it?
Consider that in City of Heroes the Drops consisted of Inspirations, Enhancements, Salvage and Recipes.
In City of Titans:
Inspirations will not Drop because that function is being replaced by Reserves (the inverse of Momentum).
Enhancements could Drop, but without a sink for them they become little more than Vendor Bait (and thus a "burden" to dispose of).
Salvage would only be used for a Crafting System, which the game very well may not launch with.
Recipes would only be used for a Crafting System, which the game very well may not launch with.
So if the most common "use" for Enhancement Drops winds up being as Vendor Bait ... why not just cut out the middle man? Don't bother with Dropping Enhancements and simply bump up the INF rewards, creating a highly liquid resource system in which characters only need to visit NPC Vendors very infrequently (if ever?). Why infrequently? Because if you want your "stuff" to last forever and never degrade in any way shape or form ... once you finish out your build you never need be [i]bothered[/i] by thinking about it ever again.
In essence, it would be possible to "win the game" and never have to worry about it ever more.
For me, any game ... even the assembling of jigsaw puzzles ... where you get everything "just so" and perfect means it's time to move on and do something else ... because you've "finished" the task. Is this not true for others as well?
In short, I am asserting that Build Permanence may impact the longevity of the game, both in terms of the in-game economy and in terms of ongoing Player interest in playing. It may not on its own be a deal breaker ... but every little bit adds up.
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I see what you're saying, but I remember playing CivIII and thinking "I really don't want to micromanage my cities one at a time, that takes forever" I can see not wanting to have 100+ enhancements to have to scroll through one by one to determine whether or not to repair them, replace them, or leave them alone for the time being on a daily basis, for each of my 6-12 toons. In CoT apparently the gear will be "eternal" and won't cause that problem, but in a universe where this does come into play, I think it would be nice if I could, say, log off in the gym that my SG base or personal lair has and come back the next day having refreshed my gear at the cost of some amount of Inf I'm now missing. That would be a decent role play of my toons working on their moves/upgrading and repairing their equipment/studying their arcane magic in their down time while I'm logged off having my down time. It would be nice to be able to set things like "spend only this much INF " or whatever, but being able to batch process the gear maintenance would be good, I feel. I mean, there are parts of the lives of these fictitious characters that we don't play or care about. They don't eat, go to the bathroom, etc. Making the gear maintenance process as repetitive and tedious as the actual push-ups and sit-ups that it represents is not fun gaming, to me.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Radiac, if "maintenance" of your character was as tedious as crafting in Dark Age Of Camelot (which was notorious for being annoying to do), I'd be right there with you in wholehearted agreement!
You mention 100+ Enhancements to scroll through. The only time I ever saw anything akin to that in City of Heroes was with NPC Vendors and their list of wares to sell. I forget exactly how many Enhancement Slots an individual character had, probably 100 exactly (when counting the "free" first slot that came with Powers), although I know you earned +67 Slots by the time you reached Level 50.
So ... do you think that City of Titans will feature 100+ Enhancement Slots by the time characters reach Level 30? I don't ... and I'm not sure why anyone would. In other words, I think you're overestimating the size of the "problem" and therefore giving it greater weight than is actually warranted.
In City of Heroes, [url=paragonwiki.com/wiki/Leveling_Chart]by Level 30[/url] a character would have gained 17 Powers and added +34 Enhancement Slots. Add Brawl, Rest, Sprint (I'll set Prestige Sprints aside for the moment) and the Health Passives of Swift, Hurdle, Health and Stamina. That yields a total of 17+34+7=58 Enhancement Slots total for a Level 30 City of Heroes character. Let's call it 60 Slots just to make the math prettier. So 60 Slots at Level 30.
Now assume that it takes a whole 20 seconds (of fiddly) to "maintain" EACH Enhancement Slot to refresh it ... which is overly generous in my opinion, but good enough for purposes of illustration. That would mean you'd have to spend 1 minute to maintain 3 Slots ... or 20 minutes for all 60 ... every 30 hours. That's a 1/90th ratio of game time played before expiration ... which is close enough to 1% of game time played as to be good enough for a guesstimate. Needless to say, once people become accustomed to the routine, they'd be able to accomplish the task even faster, and as mentioned previously, could even take the time to do it while waiting around for other things to happen (since Enhancement maintenance could be location agnostic and take place anywhere if you have the requisite item(s) in your Inventory).
Compare that with the Duty Officer system in Star Trek Online. It is perfectly possible to spend 10-15 minutes [i]per character EVERY CALENDAR DAY[/i] doing nothing but filling up the Roster for your Duty Officers. The ratio of time spent on "maintaining" Duty Officer rotations is way in excess of 1% of game time played! Heck, I know people (myself included) who have so little game time to play on a daily basis that all they can do is rotate their Duty Officers and then log off every day.
For some people, needing (or being forced) into spending as much as 1% of their game time played on maintenance activities might be a crushing burden they'd rather not have to deal with. I don't happen to be one of those people ... especially if the upside for that investment is an in-game economy that is less susceptible to runaway inflation.
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Redlynne, didn't a dev say that self-destructing enhancements are not the direction they are goin?
Indeed they did. I'm just pointing out that the supposed "burden" of the idea is nowhere near as great as was made out to be.
Then again, we gamers are a LAZY lot. There's a reason why [url=http://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A86.J5FWuOBU6V4AFlInnIlQ;_ylu=X3oDMTEzY3Nia2wzBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMQRjb2xvA2dxMQR2dGlkA1lIUzAwMl8x/RV=2/RE=1424042199/RO=10/RU=http%3a%2f%2fprogressquest.com%2f/RK=0/RS=_tj8RR26Lo8ganPb6aArNFN2GWc-]Progress Quest[/url] got developed as a ZERO Player Game.
Look, I understand the idea that "sinks" are yucky and need to be avoided at all costs. Doesn't matter if it's a time sink or a resource sink. Everybody hates sinks in a game. But if you get rid of them all ... what do you have left?
After all, the BEST games ARE time sinks (and addictive to play). Anyone who has played a game all afternoon knows what I'm talking about.
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Granted this is an academic argument, but I'm a big fan of those, so I'm continuing to hold up my side of it, so here we go:
Influence sinks and time sinks are two different things, and beyond that, making a bunch of tedious, repetitive, "click this button to refresh this enhancement" actions such that you have to do them in series instead of batch processing the whole thing (which is clearly a lot easier) MIGHT be a good idea, I feel, in the sense that you could make that the default, then sell people shortcuts like a "gym" in your lair or SG base that takes the drudgery out of it for you as I described. So what about that, a subscriber perk or microsub or even a one-time purchase or something that takes the serial enhancement fixing and turns it into "no tedium" thing instead. Is that ok?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Would it be possible to show a tiny popup dialog that shows the items that need to be repaired but also shows a button next to the list that says something like "Repair All" with a Influence $ value?
And for me, since i dont like to be bothered with that dialog, add a Checkbox also and If i enabled it, it would still auto popup the dialog after an Event/Mission/ or just after a certain amount of Repair $ Value was reached, and it would be a MINI version with minimal space waste on screen with an auto-count-down timer from 5 to 0 and it would automatically "repair all" and auto-dissaper. YAY, Just for ME!!! ;D
Radiac, Izzy ... there are all kinds of Quality of Life things that can be done, such as the ones you describe, to reduce the "drudgery" of needing to maintain your character and the strength of their Powers. The thing is, if you preclude the function of Enhancement expiration, then all of those Quality of Life possibilities get rendered superfluous and meaningless, representing wasted opportunities and potentials.
Or to put it into slightly different terms ... let's say that there's one Tram system for getting around the city. You can either take the Scenic Route for free, which will take longer to reach your destination, or you can take the Instant Route, which will cost you a fee. In other words, you're given the opportunity to pay for a convenience. But if both routes are free, why ever bother with the Scenic Route?
You have kind of the same sort of dynamic emerge with gear degradation (in this case, Enhancements that can expire). If the Enhancements are "eternal" and never expire or need maintenance of any kind, then they become Buy Once items and there's no reason for them to be random Drops. On the other hand, if they do expire, then they can not only be random drops, but there can also be a variety of services offered to simplify and/or streamline the maintenance of those Enhancements. The oft cited "Repair All" option merely being one of the Quality of Life shortcuts that then becomes possible (if not assumed/expected). But you can't *DO* those kinds of things if the underlying premise of the reason for them to exist is prevented in the first place (ie. Eternal Gear that never degrades in any way).
So I'm arguing from a "Circle of Life" perspective, rather than from a "I don't want to be bothered" viewpoint.
I'm the type of gamer who believes wholeheartedly that a "good" game is one in which the Player is asked to make a lot of little decisions that add up in aggregate to be a greater strategy and understanding than any one single decision represents. The sum is greater than the parts and all that. I believe that a game which is fairly consistently presenting me with choices is one that I will be actively engaged in playing ... rather than being more of a spectator sport. That's why I'd rather play a game that gives me Things To Do rather than one which Does Things For Me, especially if there's little left for me do or decide.
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I agree that a more harsh rules set creates more design space, Make something work in a very non-ideal way at first, them that allows you to come up with all sorts of things that enhance or reduce it in the game later on.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Woowww. Why do i get the feeling when you talk about Quality of Life feature's, it seems like you're implying, all the players would STILL play a particular game, even if a few important QoL's weren't there?
Its like saying, I'll rent that apartment even though it doesn't have an on site washer/dryer?
For a number of people, those Quality of Life features determine which apartment (or game) they pick to stay in. :P
Well, i dont even have to mention electricity in this day and age. And.. other amenities should spring to mind too. ;)
If a repair mechanic ends up being a choice for money sinking, I'd heavily prefer it to be an anytime mechanic with an easy time repair all option.
Altoholicism and supergroup base upkeep were the only real money sinks in CoX. That said, I used market pvp and AE farming to fund my alt and purple habits
Speaking purely hypothetically (because, as Tannim said, we're not going the route of decaying-through-use "gear"), I think this debate over whether the time sink for maintaining them is too harsh or not is forgetting the hypothetical actual-benefit of having the decay: the need to replace the "gear" as it wears out creates a sense that you've never "finished" or "won" the game, that there's always something you can be doing just to tread water. And, presumably, to get further ahead, as well.
In that light, easier methods for automating any of the repetative, mindless maintenance tasks might be helpful. Sure, you need to go out and get the replacement for your +2 Sword of Squid Slaying, but you don't also then have to go and spend time specifically re-slotting it. Maybe when it breaks, your character automatically draws the next one, for example. This could lead to a bit of an oddity in that you wind up carrying "ammunition" stockpiles of these important gear-bits, but at least it would be automated. Without it being "now go and spend currency at a vendor."
As for reasons to go visit them, I have a few in mind, though they're controversial even internally, so I won't be sharing them here, now. (Especially since, being controversial, they may not happen at all.)
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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Obviously, a line has to be drawn somewhere between "tedious to the point of making people not play" and "engaging and fun to try to optimize" because you can make mistakes on either extreme. You don't want the game to be too tedious and you don't want it to be a "push big red button and you win, no thinking or grinding required" deal either.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
+1 to Radiac.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I dreaded levelling up in CoX because of this, especially pre IO era. When I started using IO's though (which unfortunately required me to spend money each month I wanted to play, because I hadn't unlocked the veteran perk for it), it wasn't so bad.
But boy was it annoying to suddenly level up and realise that you are actually weaker than a kitten.
*edit* Making "maintenance" quick and easy is always a good thing when it does happen. Hell, right now I still go for a entire night of raiding, die over 30 times in the night... and THEN I repair when I am back out. I am dying on average once every 5 minutes (yeah, facewiping against a boss) and still my gear is useable. Sure, I cannot die much more and have "usable" gear, but also at that point, there are people who able to drag up a vendor where we CAN repair in the instance. And even then, if there wasn't someone available, I could always jump to my housing plot to do it there if I so wanted to.
So even though I might not necessarily *LIKE* repairing all the time, it barely registers in the amount of time it takes for me to do it, and out of the hours that I put into the game, it really is a very small % of the time that I DO spend doing it (as in less than 0.0001%). I spend more time selling stuff to the vendors than I do actually repairing (thankyou "auto repair" addons).
Hmm....
Gear....
The Augments and Refinements system looks very tantalizing. I am looking forward to crafting, buying, and selling them.
Adding costume pieces to the crafting system is not real exciting for me, but I do know that others enjoyed it. I did craft many sets of wings for different characters, but naturally not for every character. Never bothered with the powerboots and stuff.
Temporary powers. I loved crafting certain temporary powers. I used the Flashback system to gain favorite temporary powers that could not be crafted. It's been over two years, so it's hard to remember which were crafted and which came from repeated mission runs, but some of my favorites were
Sub Machine Gun
Pistol
Void Rifle
Flash Grenades
There was another Grenade that did a very minor damage and had a bit of range... It worked like a Grenade Launcher might work, but I don't think that was the name.
There was a knife or sword that did minor lethal and had only ten uses.
There was a staff or wand similar to the Black Wand that had something like 10 or 15 uses.
There was a very short Hold (not the wedding band, the other one) that could be a real lifesaver in missions with a Boss that liked to run.
One of my Mission Architect story arcs ended with a Boss who fled when it got down to 50% life. Letting it escape did not change the mission outcome, but catching it and defeating it sure made it feel like a great victory!
Temp powers were also very convenient for time travel missions because they were unaffected by it. I had a full tray of them that went into Shift+ row when I ran time travel missions. Tray #5.
So for me, being able to craft Temp powers would be a very entertaining aspect of gameplay (esp. if there is time travel in the game and traveling back in time limits access to certain regular powers).
Now if some crafted Temp powers had a fixed number of uses but also were far better than CoX Temp powers by putting out something like 50% or more of the damage/buff/debuff/hold/immobilize/whatever that primary/secondary powers were capable of, then crafting these higher output Temp Powers would be very attractive indeed! They would need to have very limit number of uses, however. Maybe 5? One of would be too few, 10 would be too many.
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There was a grenade temp power that was a standard AoE damage attack with KB, but it wasn't minor damage, more like moderate. It was useful for some extra AoE, as long as the KB wasn't an issue. Loved it on low level controllers personally.
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The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame