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Achilles' Heel

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WarBird
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Achilles' Heel

I wonder what game/story possibilities could come out of a personal weakness. The super hero genre is rife with them and it adds complexity to the character.

Superman - Kryptonite
Batman - Losing utility belt
Wolverine - Magneto's magnetism
Green Lantern - The color yellow (yeah, I know...dur)
Human Torch - water
Capt. America was still bada$$ without his shield, but you see what I mean. Even Spiderman occasionally ran out of web fluid.

The PnP version of Champions, if I recall correctly, had 'Disadvantage" and "Focus" levels that you could trade for more power points. This might be a difficult mechanic to include, but maybe something that gives you trouble in the game like how the Warriors were susceptible to flame-based attacks. It could be linked to origins, or it might be an obvious drawback based on the power-set, or something. Could be you get a different tree of options based on the combination of the two. I'm not suggesting a debilitating handicap, but maybe for some Villains you'd want to ask for some help from the SG, or recruit a partner. Any other ideas?

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The biggest part of working

The biggest part of working with this is that once you know your weakness (fire, for example) you pick and choose your foes to avoid that weakness. That happened very efficiently in CoH's "Architect" system, where farms were made just for certain archetypes with know defensive disadvantages, but also happened through the game itself with people choosing enemies that didn't play to their advantages. its rather easy- if you're "strong, except for X..." well, then you avoid X.

The devs gave Kheldian's a kryptonite by seeding all the enemy mobs with a chance to have a void-armed adversary that could threaten them, and I guess you could try that encounter, but that seems kinda forced.

Another possibility would be to reward you enough for facing your vulnerability with XP- the idea being that if you succeed despite your handicap, you learn more. It could be a system like:
night vision: -20% accuracy if fighting during the "day" cycle. +5% XP during that time
Vulnerable to cold: enemies with at least 50% of their attacks being cold-energy-based reward x% xp bonus, but you take y% more damage.
Mineral X: a 10% that a foe will have access to a mineral that reduces your max hp by y% while in the instance... more as you face the foe handling it. You get x reward for dealing with it.

Its still an issue that can be min/maxed, but its a starting point....

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I like the concept of a

I like the concept of a weakness for characters if it could be worked in - I think it could add unique flavor to the game. You go up against a mentalist and you take additional damage from mental attacks and yet somehow defeat them.

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Hmm. I do like XP for "facing

Hmm. I do like XP for "facing your fear". That would give an incentive not to pick and choose. Besides that, opportunities to pick and choose might not be that available. In CoH, with a Science Origin, I spent plenty of time fighting in Orenbega. And if you're teaming on someone else's story arc...well, I wouldnt want to be the guy that says "Oh, You're going after IcicleMan? Ahh, well cold powers scare me, so...."

Sure, in Mission Architect I saw lots of blunted bad guys. It's too bad that it became such a farm factory.

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This topic was debated on the

This topic was debated on the CoH forums over the years. While I support the idea from the unique roleplay opportunities it would provide I think most people came to the conclusion it would be very hard to sell this kind of thing for a Superhero MMO for two big reasons:

1) As already stated there'd be a huge drive to abuse the concept through various kinds of min/maxing strategies. You'd have people figuring out ways to exploit it in both PvE and PvP and it'd require some tricky game-balancing from the Devs to keep it from being more trouble than it's worth. It'd be a double-edged sword - the more tempting/useful you'd make this system the more likely it'd be used badly.

2) There's an underlying loathing from many MMO players against any feature or system that could possibly even remotely weaken or limit their characters in any way. Remember the backlash from ED? Despite the fact that personal weaknesses are a standard comic book meme many people would not care about that and only react to this like "WTF! Why the heck would I want to willingly weaken my SUPER-UBERS-KILLER character with that?!?!" The only way any system of character disadvantages would ever fly in this game would be if it was totally, 100% optional and with that you've probably already limited the percentage of the playerbase who would want to use this to a small minority.

I fully understand that this is a core concept of the PnP version of Champions and I actually liked it quite a bit in that setting. I'm just not convinced it could be cleanly adapted for a Superhero MMO without major problems. This may be another case where a human GM can handle the case-by-case details of the situation better than a deterministic computerized MMO.

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Didn't think it would be

Didn't think it would be "easy". ;) Cool and unique aspects to games rarely are, or every MMO would adopt them. I like Chase's idea where you trade XP for Damage. Something like that. The weakness selection process is a tree of possibilities, where you don't get to choose the severity, just the 'flavor'.

The more I think about it, the less likely I would be to make it optional. I recognize that you can never defeat min/max'ers with a deterministic system. Of COURSE noone would use it if they had a choice. But if everyone has a weakness, it becomes just another game mechanic to deal with. And if you know you're getting compensated for taking a harder hit on some missions, would it really be that bad?

For me, COX was always about the creativity, and the unique creations that we, as players, got to experience. I'm not looking for a game where I can create the Baddest A$$ in ToonLand and whip through every mission on my way to LevelCap++. Anything that can add opportunities for individuality and depth to the characters I want to put out there for consideration.

So yeah, Lothic, I hear you. I see your point, and raise you: Let's determine if it's valuable and possible. Then decide if it's difficult or worth it. :D That goes for every aspect discussed in these forums. And I sure hope the Devs are taking the same attitude, while listening to us dream and blather.

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WarBird wrote:
WarBird wrote:

Didn't think it would be "easy". ;) Cool and unique aspects to games rarely are, or every MMO would adopt them. I like Chase's idea where you trade XP for Damage. Something like that. The weakness selection process is a tree of possibilities, where you don't get to choose the severity, just the 'flavor'.
The more I think about it, the less likely I would be to make it optional. I recognize that you can never defeat min/max'ers with a deterministic system. Of COURSE noone would use it if they had a choice. But if everyone has a weakness, it becomes just another game mechanic to deal with. And if you know you're getting compensated for taking a harder hit on some missions, would it really be that bad?
For me, COX was always about the creativity, and the unique creations that we, as players, got to experience. I'm not looking for a game where I can create the Baddest A$$ in ToonLand and whip through every mission on my way to LevelCap++. Anything that can add opportunities for individuality and depth to the characters I want to put out there for consideration.
So yeah, Lothic, I hear you. I see your point, and raise you: Let's determine if it's valuable and possible. Then decide if it's difficult or worth it. :D That goes for every aspect discussed in these forums. And I sure hope the Devs are taking the same attitude, while listening to us dream and blather.

If everyone had some kind of specific weakness then it might be considered "fair". But then the argument would be that I don't think my character concept should be forced to included a specific weakness. For instance maybe I'm satified that my character is only a squishy crowd controller who doesn't have as many HPs as a Tank. Maybe low HPs is the only "weakness" I want my character to have. Essentially you're talking about shoehorning what should be a player concept choice into being a requirement whether you want it or not.

Another thing to consider about the idea of "linking" disadvantages with XP bonuses to balance them out is that most of the time they don't really make sense from the point of view of the character. For instance the "night vision" example (-20% accuracy if fighting during the "day" cycle. +5% XP during that time) seems strange because how would you justify getting a continual benefit from doing something your character might otherwise quickly learn to avoid? Sure the extra XP might motivate you (the player) to want to do that but why would your light-sensitive guy want to go out of his way to cause himself pain? How many times would he have to burn/blind himself to get the idea that "bright light is bad"?

Again I want to stress that I actually LIKE the idea of disadvantages, especially related to the superhero genre. I'm mostly just trying to play Devil's Advocate to motivate you (and perhaps the Devs) to come up with a feasible way to finally make it work well in a MMO setting.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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You could have a choice of

You could have a choice of avoiding your weakness avoiding the day light or the villain that uses light powers. Heck, Superman does not actively seek out people who use kryptonite, but once they learned about that weakness they used it on him. So if it becomes noticed that you are hurt by the gamma ray beams more than others - I think it would be cool if villains had an increased chance of using against you. I also think not everyone needs a weakness but if they choose not to have one they don't get a bonus - Superman has many weaknesses but it is matched by lots of abilities (i.e. in this case additional xp).

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Khaos wrote:
Khaos wrote:

You could have a choice of avoiding your weakness avoiding the day light or the villain that uses light powers. Heck, Superman does not actively seek out people who use kryptonite, but once they learned about that weakness they used it on him. So if it becomes noticed that you are hurt by the gamma ray beams more than others - I think it would be cool if villains had an increased chance of using against you.

I refer you to the "grand experiment" the Devs of CoH tried with Kheldians. The Devs initially designed Khelds with a very Superman-esque weakness to negative energy attacks and even created Voids and Quantum villains to implement that weakness. Almost instantly the playerbase screamed and cried that it was "unfair" to force them to accept a built-in weakness like that and eventually the threat of negative energy against Khelds was nerfed back so much that they effectively eliminated it as a built-in disadvantage. In a nutshell the Devs tried to give us a classic superhero-styled weakness concept and the playerbase revolted against it.

Quote:

I also think not everyone needs a weakness but if they choose not to have one they don't get a bonus - Superman has many weaknesses but it is matched by lots of abilities (i.e. in this case additional xp).

This would clearly be more acceptable from a "full freedom to chose how your character concept works" point of view.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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What about an optional system

What about an optional system which offers some sort of reward for acccepting a weakness? In the following example, I'll use XP, but there might be something else that could be substituted as a reward.

No Vulnerability = +0% XP
Minor Vulnerability = +5% XP
Intermediate Vulnerability = +10% XP
Major Vulnerability = +15% XP
Catastrophic Vulnerability = +20% XP

The original "DC Heroes" PnP game from the early 1980's had a system similar to what I've suggested. It was available only at character creation, and, if I remember properly, you got extra character creation points (aka "Hero Points"); whatever Hero Points were not used in character creation could be "banked" and then used during the regular game (Hero Points could be used to attempt a feat a bit beyond a character's normal capabilities -- that is, it added something like either +1 to the die roll or gave a "column shift" to the next column on the success table, making the roll slightly easier).

Lothic
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Amerikatt wrote:
Amerikatt wrote:

What about an optional system which offers some sort of reward for acccepting a weakness? In the following example, I'll use XP, but there might be something else that could be substituted as a reward.
No Vulnerability = +0% XP
Minor Vulnerability = +5% XP
Intermediate Vulnerability = +10% XP
Major Vulnerability = +15% XP
Catastrophic Vulnerability = +20% XP

What you're describing here was at least indirectly accounted for through the CoH mission difficulty system. Players had the option to run harder missions (effectively giving themselves a generic disadvantage) for the chance to get more XP.

As far as "balanced disadvantages" go I think the only way they could really work is if they were directly balanced by themselves and not with something generically useful like XP. For example I'll use the "night vision" idea again. Instead of giving a XP bonus for "suffering" the Disad I think it should read something like (-10% ACC when in daylight, +10% ACC when in moonlight). This way it only works outside and is dependent on a game mechanic (the day/night cycle) that is not controllable by the player.

Quote:

The original "DC Heroes" PnP game from the early 1980's had a system similar to what I've suggested. It was available only at character creation, and, if I remember properly, you got extra character creation points (aka "Hero Points"); whatever Hero Points were not used in character creation could be "banked" and then used during the regular game (Hero Points could be used to attempt a feat a bit beyond a character's normal capabilities -- that is, it added something like either +1 to the die roll or gave a "column shift" to the next column on the success table, making the roll slightly easier).

Like Champions I think most PnP superhero games handled the idea of Disads fairly well one way or the other. Again I suspect that's because the human GM running those games were flexible enough to account for them through the course of play.

But CoH even sort of introduced your "Hero Point" idea through the use of the Ultimate Inspiration - this gave people the option to temporarily boost themselves beyond their normal power. I would assume we'd get that kind of thing in CoT too.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Like I said, just putting it

Like I said, just putting it out there for consideration. I think the Kheldian Experiment was razzed as "unfair" because only those characters had to deal with them. Honestly, my Kheld hardly saw them in solo play, and while teaming, the other players just adjusted and covered for me. Didn't really seem a problem and added depth. I can see the argument both ways as far as optional/required. It would come down to whether the bonuses were worth it for most, but others (like me) would weigh it against the almighty Character Concept.

Again, I wouldn't make it debilitating, just something that would make you adjust your tactics against certain types of mobs.

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Amerikatt wrote:
Amerikatt wrote:

What about an optional system which offers some sort of reward for acccepting a weakness? In the following example, I'll use XP, but there might be something else that could be substituted as a reward.
No Vulnerability = +0% XP
Minor Vulnerability = +5% XP
Intermediate Vulnerability = +10% XP
Major Vulnerability = +15% XP
Catastrophic Vulnerability = +20% XP
The original "DC Heroes" PnP game from the early 1980's had a system similar to what I've suggested. It was available only at character creation, and, if I remember properly, you got extra character creation points (aka "Hero Points"); whatever Hero Points were not used in character creation could be "banked" and then used during the regular game (Hero Points could be used to attempt a feat a bit beyond a character's normal capabilities -- that is, it added something like either +1 to the die roll or gave a "column shift" to the next column on the success table, making the roll slightly easier).

That's what I'd proposed, but I'd go so far as to tie the bonus to encounters with your weakness.

You've got a weakness to cold. You take extra damage from it or your powers are less effective against it.
- When facing foes that have mostly cold attacks, you get the xp bonus.
- When facing foes that have no cold attacks, you get no xp bonus.

I suffer when exposed to daylight. I get an accuracy penalty in the daytime and well-lit zones.
- when fighting in those situations, i get the bonus.
- when choosing my battles to avoid it, I don't.

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WarBird wrote:
WarBird wrote:

Like I said, just putting it out there for consideration. I think the Kheldian Experiment was razzed as "unfair" because only those characters had to deal with them. Honestly, my Kheld hardly saw them in solo play, and while teaming, the other players just adjusted and covered for me. Didn't really seem a problem and added depth. I can see the argument both ways as far as optional/required. It would come down to whether the bonuses were worth it for most, but others (like me) would weigh it against the almighty Character Concept.
Again, I wouldn't make it debilitating, just something that would make you adjust your tactics against certain types of mobs.

For the record I never claimed that I screamed or cried about the Kheldian weakness to negative energy. Like you it never proved to be that bad once I was aware of it and it did add something different to the game. Still I suspect if everyone was forced to accept something along the lines of that kind of weakness there would be a mass riot/revolt against the game. I simply don't think you'd get away with this being mandatory because despite this being a superhero game most people wouldn't willingly weaken their characters without a very good (possibly gamebreaking) bonus in return.

That being said if they offered an interesting system of balanced/consistent options along the lines of what I suggested in my last post I'd probably be willing to try a few of them on a few of my characters just for the sake of conforming to the superhero genre.

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chase wrote:
chase wrote:

Amerikatt wrote:
What about an optional system which offers some sort of reward for acccepting a weakness? In the following example, I'll use XP, but there might be something else that could be substituted as a reward.
No Vulnerability = +0% XP
Minor Vulnerability = +5% XP
Intermediate Vulnerability = +10% XP
Major Vulnerability = +15% XP
Catastrophic Vulnerability = +20% XP
The original "DC Heroes" PnP game from the early 1980's had a system similar to what I've suggested. It was available only at character creation, and, if I remember properly, you got extra character creation points (aka "Hero Points"); whatever Hero Points were not used in character creation could be "banked" and then used during the regular game (Hero Points could be used to attempt a feat a bit beyond a character's normal capabilities -- that is, it added something like either +1 to the die roll or gave a "column shift" to the next column on the success table, making the roll slightly easier).

That's what I'd proposed, but I'd go so far as to tie the bonus to encounters with your weakness.
You've got a weakness to cold. You take extra damage from it or your powers are less effective against it.
- When facing foes that have mostly cold attacks, you get the xp bonus.
- When facing foes that have no cold attacks, you get no xp bonus.
I suffer when exposed to daylight. I get an accuracy penalty in the daytime and well-lit zones.
- when fighting in those situations, i get the bonus.
- when choosing my battles to avoid it, I don't.

Again I'll just ask why a character would continue to gain something beneficial from doing something they know is bad for them. I know that walking around in traffic is bad for me and if I get run over (and survive) I'll probably remember that experience vividly (my XP bonus if you will). But would that single vivid memory be enough to motivate me to want to keep walking out in traffic again to gain new vivid memories?

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Again I'll just ask why a

Again I'll just ask why a character would continue to gain something beneficial from doing something they know is bad for them. I know that walking around in traffic is bad for me and if I get run over (and survive) I'll probably remember that experience vividly (my XP bonus if you will). But would that single vivid memory be enough to motivate me to want to keep walking out in traffic again to gain new vivid memories?

Ah, c'mon, Lothic! :D With respect: Fighting bad guys is a dangerous and painful hobby. Why would anyone do that? Because that's what makes you a hero. A hero doesn't avoid doing the 'right thing' because a given scumbag is more dangerous than another, right? Of COURSE they keep going back out onto the mean streets night after night to bring justice to the city. It's what they do!

But...in the cynical world of MMO gaming, we have to give everyone a cake whenever we take away a cookie. I get that, too.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

chase wrote:
Amerikatt wrote:
What about an optional system which offers some sort of reward for acccepting a weakness? In the following example, I'll use XP, but there might be something else that could be substituted as a reward.
No Vulnerability = +0% XP
Minor Vulnerability = +5% XP
Intermediate Vulnerability = +10% XP
Major Vulnerability = +15% XP
Catastrophic Vulnerability = +20% XP
The original "DC Heroes" PnP game from the early 1980's had a system similar to what I've suggested. It was available only at character creation, and, if I remember properly, you got extra character creation points (aka "Hero Points"); whatever Hero Points were not used in character creation could be "banked" and then used during the regular game (Hero Points could be used to attempt a feat a bit beyond a character's normal capabilities -- that is, it added something like either +1 to the die roll or gave a "column shift" to the next column on the success table, making the roll slightly easier).

That's what I'd proposed, but I'd go so far as to tie the bonus to encounters with your weakness.
You've got a weakness to cold. You take extra damage from it or your powers are less effective against it.
- When facing foes that have mostly cold attacks, you get the xp bonus.
- When facing foes that have no cold attacks, you get no xp bonus.
I suffer when exposed to daylight. I get an accuracy penalty in the daytime and well-lit zones.
- when fighting in those situations, i get the bonus.
- when choosing my battles to avoid it, I don't.

Again I'll just ask why a character would continue to gain something beneficial from doing something they know is bad for them. I know that walking around in traffic is bad for me and if I get run over (and survive) I'll probably remember that experience vividly (my XP bonus if you will). But would that single vivid memory be enough to motivate me to want to keep walking out in traffic again to gain new vivid memories?

Remember- XP is an abstract item without real-world counterpart.

You've managed to persevere against a foe despite being significantly handicapped.

1) in gameplay terms, that's no different than fighing foes at a higher difficulty level (which gave an xp bonus)
2) in "real world analogy' the additional struggle led you to reach deeper, struggle harder, and learn more while surviving the encounter than if you breezed on through.

I'd rather compensate the person seeking a challenge out than reward someone for manipulating the system, choosing a really nasty disadvantage then avoiding it by his selective mission-handling.

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Yeah! and what Chase said ^

Yeah! and what Chase said ^ :D

Ah, eloquence! If only I, uh, well, if I, um said stuff, y'know better. And stuff. Like you guys!

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WarBird wrote:
WarBird wrote:

Again I'll just ask why a character would continue to gain something beneficial from doing something they know is bad for them. I know that walking around in traffic is bad for me and if I get run over (and survive) I'll probably remember that experience vividly (my XP bonus if you will). But would that single vivid memory be enough to motivate me to want to keep walking out in traffic again to gain new vivid memories?

Ah, c'mon, Lothic! :D With respect: Fighting bad guys is a dangerous and painful hobby. Why would anyone do that? Because that's what makes you a hero. A hero doesn't avoid doing the 'right thing' because a given scumbag is more dangerous than another, right? Of COURSE they keep going back out onto the mean streets night after night to bring justice to the city. It's what they do!
But...in the cynical world of MMO gaming, we have to give everyone a cake whenever we take away a cookie. I get that, too.

Heroes doing heroly things and villains doing villainy things is the fundamental purpose of the game. What I'm talking about are specific min/max scenarios. If I were a hero allergric to sunlight I don't think I should be getting ANY benefit from being dumb enough to be contantly running around in the sunlight.

Basically trying to link disadvantages to other advantages in an attempt to mitigate the disadvantage is a recipe for min/max abuse. I could see were people would (again with the night vision example) just boost themselves with every +ACC boost possible and ALWAYS fight in the sunlight to ALWAYS get a permanent XP bonus. :(

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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chase wrote:
chase wrote:

Remember- XP is an abstract item without real-world counterpart.
You've managed to persevere against a foe despite being significantly handicapped.
1) in gameplay terms, that's no different than fighing foes at a higher difficulty level (which gave an xp bonus)
2) in "real world analogy' the additional struggle led you to reach deeper, struggle harder, and learn more while surviving the encounter than if you breezed on through.
I'd rather compensate the person seeking a challenge out than reward someone for manipulating the system, choosing a really nasty disadvantage then avoiding it by his selective mission-handling.

But your "disadvantage linked with XP bonus" concept can be easily manipulated into scenarios where all you get is the XP bonus after the disadvantage has been completely mitigated. At least with CoH's mission difficulty system you had to face more critters to get more XP.

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Well, everybody's got valid

Well, everybody's got valid points, sure enough. I just think it's such a big part of the genre that we oughtta look at it closely. And I can hope that our Wise and Benevolent Devs might find a way to include it that would add flavor without wrecking the fun.

I sure like a passionate discourse, though. ;) Props to everybody. We obviously care about this stuff.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

chase wrote:
Remember- XP is an abstract item without real-world counterpart.
You've managed to persevere against a foe despite being significantly handicapped.
1) in gameplay terms, that's no different than fighing foes at a higher difficulty level (which gave an xp bonus)
2) in "real world analogy' the additional struggle led you to reach deeper, struggle harder, and learn more while surviving the encounter than if you breezed on through.
I'd rather compensate the person seeking a challenge out than reward someone for manipulating the system, choosing a really nasty disadvantage then avoiding it by his selective mission-handling.

But your "disavantage linked with XP bonus" concept can be easily manipulated into scenarios where all you get is the XP bonus after the disadvantage has been completely mitigated.

that is the challenge.

That's one reason why I'd try to tie it as close to the actual foe as possible.

If you defeated the "ice" enemey, you get the bonus xp for that ice enemy you face... rather than say "you've avoided all ice enemies so you don't have to face your danger, so here's bonus xp for that fire enemy."

There will be ways to get around this- having a teammate focus on your weakness- for example- much like we had teammates of Kheldians target the quantums before they could take down the friend. That's fine- you've managed to adapt while facing your weakness/fear through teamwork.

There is a min/maxing factor here that comes into play- where and how you apply the modifier:

- can I easily offset the accuracy penalty for daylight fighting? if so, it should be less of a reward for it.
- you don't let someone have a -20% resistance to fire if their archetype's already has 0 resist to fire. You make the fire attack have a bonus to damage and/or unresistable damage. A bit tougher to calculate if you're a dodge-based mechanic, as you get hit less overall, so the impact of a bonus to damage would need factored to that, but again, the goal here is to reward a resonable effort to face your weaknesses and persevere.

Lothic
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WarBird wrote:
WarBird wrote:

Well, everybody's got valid points, sure enough. I just think it's such a big part of the genre that we oughtta look at it closely. And I can hope that our Wise and Benevolent Devs might find a way to include it that would add flavor without wrecking the fun.
I sure like a passionate discourse, though. ;) Props to everybody. We obviously care about this stuff.

Please believe me when I say I would LOVE to have a dynamic disadvantage system in CoT and I mean nothing personal against this idea.

My main point here has been to show that trying to implement such a system into this game in an effective and balanced way is not going to be simple. If it were we probably would have had it in CoH already. They've got to make the disadvantages meaningful but fair without allowing for them to be easily twisted or mitigated via min/maxing.

For what it's worth I hope they manage to dream up something cool for this that'll actually be used without being game-breaking.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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chase wrote:
chase wrote:

Lothic wrote:
chase wrote:
Remember- XP is an abstract item without real-world counterpart.
You've managed to persevere against a foe despite being significantly handicapped.
1) in gameplay terms, that's no different than fighing foes at a higher difficulty level (which gave an xp bonus)
2) in "real world analogy' the additional struggle led you to reach deeper, struggle harder, and learn more while surviving the encounter than if you breezed on through.
I'd rather compensate the person seeking a challenge out than reward someone for manipulating the system, choosing a really nasty disadvantage then avoiding it by his selective mission-handling.

But your "disadvantage linked with XP bonus" concept can be easily manipulated into scenarios where all you get is the XP bonus after the disadvantage has been completely mitigated.

that is the challenge.
That's one reason why I'd try to tie it as close to the actual foe as possible.
If you defeated the "ice" enemey, you get the bonus xp for that ice enemy you face... rather than say "you've avoided all ice enemies so you don't have to face your danger, so here's bonus xp for that fire enemy."
There will be ways to get around this- having a teammate focus on your weakness- for example- much like we had teammates of Kheldians target the quantums before they could take down the friend. That's fine- you've managed to adapt while facing your weakness/fear through teamwork.
There is a min/maxing factor here that comes into play- where and how you apply the modifier:
- can I easily offset the accuracy penalty for daylight fighting? if so, it should be less of a reward for it.
- you don't let someone have a -20% resistance to fire if their archetype's already has 0 resist to fire. You make the fire attack have a bonus to damage and/or unresistable damage. A bit tougher to calculate if you're a dodge-based mechanic, as you get hit less overall, so the impact of a bonus to damage would need factored to that, but again, the goal here is to reward a resonable effort to face your weaknesses and persevere.

I think the promise of guaranteed XP bonuses from this is what's raising red flags for me.

I understand you're trying to come up with an incentive that would dissuade people from choosing bogus disadvantages that they could easily avoid. But if those people gain no specific ADVANTAGE for avoiding those disadvantages what does it matter? I think you've locked yourself into thinking "I must get some kind of bonus to offset any disadvantage" but I'd counter that by asking why?

Yes I'm totally aware that the chances of people picking disadvantages for themselves that don't give them any kind of bonus in return is probably close to nil in practice except for the strict roleplayers. But I could easily argue that almost ANYTHING you come up with in a MMO setting that would serve as a counter-balancing bonus to a disadvantage could be exploited to the point that it would be game-breaking.

I simply feel that a guaranteed XP bonus is valuable enough that people would go out of their way to exploit it. Maybe instead of guaranteed XP this idea of yours could be modified so that there's like a random 1% chance drop of an Ultimate Inspiration when you face critters specifically geared towards your disadvantage. This would provide your "incentive" to face your proverbial fears without making it a guaranteed source of benefit.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

Cymmetri
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I'm working on an inherent

I'm working on an inherent Origin Power system that takes some of this idea into account: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/origin-inherent-powers

The list isn't complete(or up yet), but it grants thematic buffs with some debuffs. (i.e. Technology: Robot has Lethal, Psi and Sleep Protection, but vulnerability to Energy and EMP)

The plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces are called Aglets; their true purpose is sinister.