As we all know, as you level up you get new power slots, access to new powers and so on.
I like to see alternate advancement options...such as increasing the level or ability of a power (separate for the already discussed customizations) at the cost of a new power slot.
What I find in many MMOs is that you have literally dozens of powers...many of which are more or less the same...in many cases far to many powers. Now this of course is worse in games without specializations, because everyone has to have the full suite of powers.
Often I find myself simply button mashing as cool downs expire, because the powers are so similar that I don't really care.
In CoX...there were many times where I did not want any of the powers available, and I'd rather have taken more enhancement slots.
Give use those kinds of options here as well. Give the ability to give up a power slot in order to boost another power in some way.
The only problem with this might be is that if you only opt for "more enhancement slots" instead of "new power selections" you could end up with a level 50 character who only has like 2 core powers but each of those powers have like 30 enhancement slots each. That'd be very weird to say the least.
I'm not against your idea in general but it would have to be controlled in some way to make sure people didn't end up with either unplayable characters or hyper-over-powered ones. Maybe the level up progress tree could be "normal" (as in like the way it worked in CoH) for say the first 35 levels. Then for the last 15 levels you are given the option to take either a few more powers (again like CoH) or the choice to give yourself a few additional ehancement slots instead of new powers. This way people will have the choice (by the time they're level 50) of having either the standard number of powers to work with or slightly fewer powers than CoH with the tradeoff of having more ehancments slots to work with. This should keep people from both making "broken" builds while at the same time prevent them from becoming too over-powered.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Who care about unplayable characters? Who does it harm?
OP ones on the other hand may be a problem. However this could be mitigated in any number of ways...for example softcapping the value that the upgrades/enhancements provide. That way after a certain point, there is just no value in putting more into a power in one direction.
Maybe I want to really maximize my favorite blast power, rather than using 4 different ones...so I use the extra enhancement slots (putting this in CoX terms) to boost various aspects of that single power in different ways.
There are plenty of examples of very specialized characters in comics who have only a small handful of powerful iconic powers.
This sort of trails on another comment that I had made about the Energy Free Power and Energy Builder Power in the "What CoX did wrong" thread. How many people skipped the first one or two powers in thier core set...because who need 3-4 different blasts/attacks that all basically do the same thing.
Sure some people WANT that diversification and attack cycling, and for some toons I'd not skip anything...but for others...I wanted like 3-4 powers total from the set and did not want to bother with the rest...
Hm. This is an interesting notion, but I'm not entirely sure it's a good idea. If you can make an existing power stronger at the cost of adding new powers, then suddenly the game becomes "How can I get away with as few powers as possible, in order to be able to spend the extra slots making those powers stronger?"
Which is great if you only wanted two or three powers, but rather limiting if your concept would be better represented by someone who has half a dozen different options.
Given the level of customization CoT is aiming for, I'd suggest an alternative: instead of limiting yourself to just a very few powers, reskin some of the others. So, say your big thing is eye rays. Instead of just taking one Eye Ray power and saying "I'm done", get a collection: s quick eye-zap, good for finishing off low health targets or filling in holes in a rotation; a sustained beam that's good single-target damage; a sweep attack that swings the beam across an arc, hitting a cone-shaped AoE... and so on and so forth. Unlike CoH, you won't end up stuck with "But I have to take a fire sword attack or I'm gimping my fire melee character"; you'll be able to reconfigure those extra attacks as appropriate.
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Actually, this was my standard build strategy for my MA/SR Scrapper, due to the fact that the secondary was pretty slot hungry in order to reach Set Bonuses to bolster Defense. As a result, I wound up only taking the 1, 3, 8 and 9 powers for my attacks (Thunder Kick, Cobra Strike, Dragon's Tail, Eagle's Claw) and relying on Recharge Reduction to cover the gaps in the chain. With only 4 attacks, two of which were the 26 and 32 powers, doing Exemplar content such as the Positron TF could become very frustrating, simply because I only had two attack powers available at very low levels. But then, that's all I had the slot for after filling up my Secondary and getting the slots needed into my Soul Mastery powers just for the Set Bonuses I could get there, but couldn't get with my Primary, that I needed to reach the Defense Softcap.
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The easy way to do this is still keep the slot limit on the powers. If you want to fix you blast up you can but not more than the six normal slots. My warshade was a great example of i wish i could get slots instead of powers. So after level 35 you can either pick slots or powers, but you can still only have 6 slots per power. So some of those powers you were having to settle with four slots and have a useless power, you can pick slots and slot that power the rest of the way to 6 and dump the extra slot in fitness or its equivalent.
Yeah, that sounds like a Jedi. Massacre a whole room full of people, then stand around apologizing for it. - Swtor NPC
It would hurt the entire game if the Devs allowed something like your suggestion without proper limits. I like your general idea, but I'm afraid it could far too easily create either completely unplayable builds or builds which are far too overpowered.
The combination of having to take certain numbers of powers and certain numbers of slots existed in CoH to maintain overall power balance. They might be able to tinker with those numbers a little bit one way or the other, but the Devs aren't ever going to allow the massive changes you're suggesting.
Although I didn't mention it with my 35/15 idea above I'd agree in order to keep game balance this would probably still have to be limited to 6 slots per power. This would give the flexibility you're talking about without the intrinsic over-powered problems the original suggestion didn't seem to account for.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
It sounds like you need to distinguish between "Powers" and "Attacks/Effects". For example, Cyclops really only has one power. His optic shield allows him to alter its attacks. (Wide blast vs narrow beam). If I understand the discussions in other threads, there will be some ability to change the manifestation of a certain power via animation, etc. This would go along way to satisfy my desire to fit the character to my concept.
But, I see what you mean. I would think that, as long as there is some kind of reasonable upper limit, it would be a nice option to make a few powers really "powerful" at the cost of less versatility for the player. To me, "broken" translates to "not properly supported". If someone wants a character like Cyclops, who's extremely vulnerable when not part of a team, why not?
Heck, I remember in the PnP Champions, we had a character called Piano Man. His power was the ability to point at someone, say a word, and a piano fell on them from out of nowhere. That was all he coild do. But it NEVER misfired, and ALWAYS hit.
Balance is always a concern, of course. I also see this being troublesome in PvP. (Which has never interested me) both positive and negative. A character like Cyclops, I think would suck in PvP if not part of a good team. But on a team where every player had a couple of Uber-Powers? Yikes.
All in all, while keeping balance in mind, I'd rather not try to limit the creativity of a player because their build can't be "optimized."
mitigation powers, buffs, debuffs, heals,...
ok you have attack X and attack Y and you don't want attack Z? start on the fitness pool and work towards getting Stamina...
I *NEVER* ended up with too many powers. ever. no matter what character, it could always benefit from an extra few powers. There were rare occassions where I didn't want any of the level 4 power choices but that issue went away as soon as the power pools opened up at level 6.. So out of ah 20+ powers, once in a while there was an unwanted one that i used just to progress down the tree... "ouch"??
Conversely I *NEVER* ended up with too many slots
...there's a balance there that's very deliberate.
anyway, the issue of having 2 powers with 30 slots (presumably without diminishing returns?) isn't that you'd be too inversatile, it's that you'd be absolutely utterly 'broken overpowered'. even something like Brawl, with 30 slots and no DR would become by far the most powerful attack in the game.
(edit: peacebringers/warshades were grossly lacking in slots and overloaded with powers, they could have benefited from something like this idea. Tis why the HEATs were always "not so epic".)
It harms your teammates, and would be as bad as powerleveling to maximum level in an archetype in which you had very little or absolutely no prior knowledge.
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Maybe the issue was not so much with too many powers, but too many powers that did the same thing. How many punches exactly do I need? Your typical MMO has 2-3 trays worth of power at end-game...do you really need 30+ powers...most of which are the same with a minor variation?
But in order to control something like this...you could set a limit on the slots...6 slots (keeping this in CoX terms)...but you get a finer grain of control over when you get those slots...or you could limit the enhancement values (ED style)...where adding its a diminishing return the more enhancements of the same type that you add. Either of these would help control the power and would force you into diversification.
I prefer games where you have to make choices...sometimes tough choices and you dont just get access to everything.
In the immediacy, it hurts the player who made the gimped/unplayable character.
In the long run, it actually hurts the community and thus the game at large.
Something that the MMORPG community has learned as a result of playing CoH and WoW and so many other games besides is that you really do need EVERY character type to be able to Solo content. If a character can't solo, they're in trouble over the long run ... even if they're an Empathy/* Defender who lives to be a H34l0r bot. It IS somewhat inevitable that some builds will be better than others, meaning that of all the builds POSSIBLE only a subset of those will be "viable" or otherwise successful. The challenge for the Developers though is to make sure that the range of "viable" builds is a supermajority of the builds possible, as opposed to merely being a parity, or even worse, a minority of the potential builds available ... mainly because the latter is just about the definition of Bad Game Design™ and should therefore be avoided.
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And WoW made it possible for even the *dedicated* healer options to be able to level up, maybe not gracefully, but it took time for them to get to that stage as well.
I definitely Support the ability to sacrifice the diversity of a large pool of powers for increased efficacy in a small pool of powers.
there should be limits, of course.... but there are many situations where a character may not have a variety of "tools" and yet their one gimmick is highly effective (a perfect example is someone like Cyclops or Nitro)
To that end, it should be possible to "overpower" particular powers.... SIGNATURE POWERS, if you will, at the expense of diversity.
Honestly, I have to disagree here. The reason for "solo-viability" has nothing to do with community QOL, and is much more a facet of modern MMO design that caters to a casual, self reliant gamer. The simple truth, is that many players resent the idea that they are "forced" (by specialization) to seek out companions. And so, MMO design has moved towards challenges that favor more well-rounded individuals (as the overwhelming demand lies in non-team gameplay) Outside of "Raids/dungeons"... games like WOW are little more than chatrooms with a solo campaign attached.
That isn't what we're talking about here..... this is not a community-wide requirement towards specialization, that makes it impossible for many playstyles to be viable without specific team dynamics....
We're talking about a player's right to choose... to choose to be a specialist, and choose to need a team to be viable.
Not everyone will find specialization --or this idea of a small set of signature powers-- "fun"..... but many will. Superhero games have a long tradition of roleplay builds and the balancing of advantage and disadvantage.... It's something many people enjoy.
For myself, I have always resented having more than 6 abilities in any MMO. I have always hated feeling like the game is forcing me to watch a screen full of cool-down timers and play my keyboard like a jazz piano... there is no "soul" in that style of gameplay, for me. it's all numbers and math and i'm not that kind of nerd. I don't like mini-maxing or calculating the benefits of a particular piece of gear.... That isn't what is fun, to me, about being a superhero.
I'd much rather have 6 awesome powers, then 15 powers that are exceptional when I use them all together the right way.
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As to the problem with making under-powered characters: Before inherent Stamina in CoH this was easy...take different Movement Powers for all the optional choices. There you go...underpowered toon and nothing in the rules that says you can't do it.
Seriously, people will do what they want to do regardless. No point trying to set up massive roadblocks to protect the 1% of the player base from themselves. Have clear, accurate descriptions and examples of what each AT can do (and NOT do), have clear and accurate examples of Powers, have a good tutorial and the rest will take care of itself.
I had an idea for CO back during the Beta that might help here. It goes back to the questions above about how many Powers do we really need? What if a majority of the attack Powers followed the Tap or Hold model? Tapping the button would fire the Power, holding the button would 'charge' the power for a second or two and when it went off it would essentially be a new power. So my Brawler might have as his Tier 1 Punch/Smash. If I tap the 1 key he Punches...but if I hold it for a full second he Smashes instead. The second Power would be slower and do more damage as well as having the charge time factored in. Another power might be Double Smash where the character raises both fists for a downward smash and the charged version could be a cone AoE with a slight jump animation before the smash.
Using a system like this we can cut the number of attack powers in half. Take the two that are most alike and convert them into two powers slaved to the same key, one charged and one not. You could also introduce something like the Style system from CoX where if you do 2 attacks in a row you unlock a third attack for 10 seconds or whatever.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Oh man ... I *REALLY* like the Tap or Hold notion for a user interface. I like it because the simplest way to do that in the UI is to put up a Charge Bar on the screen showing you how far you've gone on progressing towards completing your charging (so you don't overcharge and waste time needlessly). That same Charge Bar element could then itself serve a Dual Purpose for handling Interrupt Time by doing a "reverse Charge" going in the other direction, which then needs to be completed (by Holding the keybind for that Power) before any Charging in that Power can begin. You can then more finely tune and control Interrupt Time outside of the Powers themselves, including making Interrupt Time longer (or even present at all) as a result of Debuffs (such as the Partial Mez System I've offered elsewhere) or as part of a Snipe/Assassin Strike type of Burst Damage attack (again, as I've detailed elsewhere).
Same element(s), multiple uses.
Me likey.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
*looks at Wildstar Online*
[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnmlSU_nTi0]Ability Mechanics[/url]
Tap, Charges (ie 3 charges of x), channels... all whilst mobile.
[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt0k5CC27Ww]Crowd Control[/url]
Ignore the artstyle, look at how they deal with blinds, stuns, disarms, confuses etc when they affect the player.
In CO, that bar gets used for charged powers, maintained powers (like a long burst from an autofire weapon), powers that must be fully charged before they work, and crowd control effects. It's a versatile bar^_^
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I do like the Tap n Hold model...it makes sense and give the player some measure of control over an abilities power level.
TERA uses some interesting Charging mechanics for their [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81smz5tdQ5M]Berzerker[/url] class, including Overcharging, and how to use a Block as an "abort" skill. The other interesting thing about TERA classes is that some of them have a Mana Bar that starts at full and is drained by using your abilities (like CoH and Endurance) ... while other TERA classes do the opposite where your Mana Bar starts at zero and you need to build it up with a skill that grants Mana and they have a Mana Decay so that absent a use of a refueling ability it'll just drain to zero over time (like Fury for Brutes in CoH, or apparently most classes in CO). At the very least, it's important to know that a lot of the game mechanics used in TERA ought to be "available" to the Developers in City of Titans.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Yes, I also like the idea of having tap and hold be two different versions of a similar themed power (the "jab/haymaker" model)
In fact, it could be something "unlocked" in lieu of getting a "new power" (mechanically, yes, it's a new power... but from a User perspective, it's an "evolution" of a current power)
In this way, both camps could be addressed. you could either acquire powers X and Y, or modify X into power XY. The advantage/balance could be a manipulation of effect vs. activation (i.e. having X and Y allows you to fire them off almost concurrently, before they must recharge.... while XY can be EITHER a quick recharge jab (similar damage to X), or a more damaging, longer recharge power (scaling from slightly less to slightly more damaging than Y, base, depending on charge))
THAT would be a truly awesome level of versatility in power selection, providing tactical and gameplay options for players to tinker with and theorycraft.
I approve, I approve of having both options..... it could really be awesome (Call it "develop" and "evolve".... develop a new skill/ability/power.... or evolve an existing one)
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
This is why I love open forums! One person has a good idea, others build upon it, in the end it's something really special!
Ghosthack I love your idea!
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
This approach could also work for beam powers (something like [url=http://www.wowhead.com/spell=15407/]Mind Flay[/url] from WoW or [url=http://www.champions-online-wiki.com/wiki/Concussor_Beam]Concussor Beam[/url] from CO, if you ignore that it's a toggle).
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
How do you handle Recharge and incomplete Attack Chains if you effectively "double-up" all of your powers with this "Tap or Hold" model? Do you accept firing off your 2 or 3 main powers and then waiting 5-10 seconds until you can do something else? Remember the concept worked in CO because it had a different way of handling the mechanic of power recharge. You'd really have to consider the ramifications of trying to shoehorn a CO mechanic into a CoH-styled combat system.
Just as importantly how do you overcome the potential of network lag constantly screwing up your Taps and Holds? Do you just live with the possibility of having your timing messed up like that?
Again I'm not strictly against the crusade to steamline the overall number of powers we have available. I'm just asking those who support it to consider and/or defend the greater consquences of the suggestion.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I'll use my experience of playing ALL EIGHT of the character classes in TERA to address this, since that game uses a "twitchy" Active Combat System and has Tap plus Tap And Hold gameplay built into it.
Recharge is simple. Cooldowns [i]do not begin[/i] until animations are completed. Only once an attack power has completed does the recharge for it begin. Takes care of all edge cases of what happens if you don't fully charge it up or if you overcharge it or whatever. Simple, easy. Bear in mind that cooldowns on OTHER powers don't get halted while doing any sort of Tap or even Tap And Hold. Everything does its own cooldowns and recharges, so it's not like doing a Charge Up attack somehow forces every power in your tray to go into a cooldown state after it finishes animating.
The way that TERA runs its Charge Up system for abilities used by some of its classes (Berzerker mainly) is that you have Charge Levels (usually 1-2-3) and then you have Overcharge (usually 1-2-3-4) where you're basically "hurting yourself" (as in Damage To Self) for each level of Overcharge in exchange for an even bigger buff on the attack. Essentially what you're doing is "spending time" so as to increase the damage output (the "spike" damage) that an attack makes. I believe that TERA just runs this on a fairly simple 1 second per charge sort of deal, so doing a full Overcharge will cost you like 7 seconds of charge up time, plus the time to animate the attack itself once it is released. So a character class like TERA's Berzerker is a very "spiky" damage dealer when using attacks that can be Charged, because the Berzerker Class is primarily oriented around these kinds of Charge Up sorts of powers and abilities for their attacks (although they also have Clicks and Buffs and so on as well).
Now TERA also has a Glyph system which basically allows you to choose from a collection of Passive bonuses that can have a pre-determined (by the Devs) effect on how powers and abilities are used. Things like Glyph A allows Skill B to Charge at a +25% rate, so Charging happens faster (which in turn improves DPS, so long as you Hit). Or Glyph C gives Skill D a flat damage boost. Or Glyph E gives Skill F a reduction to cooldown time. Mind you, many of the skills and abilities in TERA have multiple Glyphs available to them, so you could (if you wanted to) spend to have a Charge speed increase, a damage increase and a cooldown time reduction on a single attack, dramatically improving its performance. Other modifiers include things such as extending Mez durations or adding a chance to Mez to an attack or reducing casting costs ... etc. etc., so on and so forth. You get the idea.
So in a way, your question of "how do you handle Recharge and Incomplete Attack Chains" is in many ways almost a situation of Square Peg/Round Hole, in that it's substantially irrelevant to how the gameplay actually works in practice. Tap Clicks work just like CoH clicks did, while Hold Clicks work more like powers that had an Interrupt Time on them (ie. they don't go off "instantly" on click) ... but unlike Interrupt Time in CoH, a Charge that has "levels" of charging to it works more like a "haymaker" sort of thing where you, As The Player, get to decide how much of a "wind up" you want to do before releasing the heavy hitting attack. Charge time can get "interrupted" just like Interrupt Time did, but unlike Interrupt Time in CoH, the Player gets to decide when they're done Charging, at which point the attack is released and "happens" ... rather than having an Interrupt Time delay that is "fixed" and unchanging that must be "paid" before the attack animation can "begin" and the attack is committed to.
The key point is that with a Charge type power, nothing says you HAVE TO spend the full time to Charge (or Overcharge) the power to full power. You could just Tap it and it'll use the power with almost no Charge time spent. The attack would of course be WEAKER than if you'd spent time on Charging it up, but that's how the power is built, so what is there to complain about? Bottom line is, a Charge power can be used as quick or slow as you need it to ... but the cooldown/recharge time after it finishes animating stays the same.
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I'd agree those things might be irrelevant if you were actually just playing TERA or CO. But we're talking about trying to apply those kinds of mechanics into a different game (in this case CoT) that might not be flexible enough to handle those foreign things if they design it based solely on porting CoH alone.
Basically you're proposing a completely new hybrid combat system that will perhaps make CoT behave much more like those other games than it did like CoH. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that idea, but it does introduce a whole new host of variables that would not have existed if CoT was just kept strictly as a "direct port" of CoH.
I still contend there may be many ramifications to your suggestion that go far beyond the original permise that "having too many useless/duplicate powers" was such a terrible problem in the first place that we had to open a huge can of worms like this to solve it.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Well, just have to agree to disagree then. However, this chart, which Zombie Man has been posting in a lot of places ...
[img]http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f346/zombie_guy/TPP/CoTats_zps56a08933.png[/img]
... kinda sorta implies that City of Titans isn't intended to be LIMITED TO just the Archetypes that City of Heroes had ... which then begs the question of why City of Titans would want to limit itself to JUST the game mechanics that City of Heroes had too. I'm thinking more in terms of City of Heroes PLUS, rather than in terms of City of Heroes REPLACED, as far as this goes. My point being, there are new and interesting game mechanics which have been developed since City of Heroes was created, and we [i]already know[/i] that some of these mechanics are possible to do in the Unreal Engine simply because (point point) it's already being done Over There ... Like This. That puts more tools in the toolbox for the Developers to play with.
I mean, I'm already thinking of what Titan Weapons would have played like if it was done as an Assault powerset and involving Charge Up type powers and the like, and having a "Momentum" mechanic where after completing one attack with your Primary, for a short time afterwards your next attack with Charge at an increase rate so as to be "faster" much like Momentum managed to achieve in CoH. Except with the Charge system, if you [i]don't want to wait[/i] for your attacks, [i]you don't HAVE to wait[/i] for them, because the Charge time "spent" is completely User Controlled, as opposed to being baked into the Power(s) at the game mechanical/game design level. So slow and heavy or fast and furious ... it's up to you to decide how YOU need to play, from moment to moment. Tends to make the game more interesting, active and INVOLVING to play than just mashing buttons in the same sequence every time in an endless repeat chain.
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Lothic.. my straight forward answer would be:
it's action dependent.
if you tap the power, you get the tap recharge... if you charge the power, you get the charge recharge.
And believe me, this is NOT a "quick solution to the original problem"
Neither is this a "streamlining" of powers to lower our total power list....
...this is a suggestion that hybridizes the two mindsets (fewer, "signature" powers AND many "diverse" powers) allowing players to choose which style of play they prefer.
well.... I won't pretend to be a programmer... but this concern HAS been nearly eliminated in modern MMO's. The Lag Monster still rears it's ugly head from time to time, but the fact remains that such systems rely on the INPUT, not the visual queue.... so if it's a 12 second charge, and you hold that sucker for 12 seconds, it should fire off at full strength, even if the visual doesn't match (as per my own testing in Champions)
Be that as it may, it is of course always a QOL concern, but ALL lag presents the same concern, reguardless of the clever mechanic employed.
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
Really? From what I've seen this isn't true. Many people with latency problems have complained about the use of such mechanics, people from mid-west US, Europe, and South America. It happens. If it were built into the core of our gameplay system this could pose a problem for us. Its not to say it won't or can't happen in some form, and there may be ways for use to simulate this in certain aspects while avoiding certain problems.
With regards to only taking a few powers, and increasing their base effect to make them stronger...this can cause a lot, and i mean a lot of problems from both a design and balance perspective. If one of our design goals is to say that a minim build can accomplish X things in Y time, and now we (at an extreme) lets say that one build consists of 4 powers to the routine 12 (made up numbers), we would have to make sure every instance of X is completable by the first build. While at the same time remaining within a given range of Y compaired to the routine builds...then we have to test for every possible combination between 4 and 12 powers with every possible comination of power level.
Then there is the boost system and the effect that can have on 4 powers compaired to 12 and everything between. The problem of development time from power design through testing becomes exponentially larger with each iteration.
The key here is when say an offensive power set has multiple attacks, is to make sure those attacks each do something different. The difference may be slight, from a chance in core attributes of the power from one single target attack to the next, through the effects of those powers could provide the sense of an increase in capability as the player advances through the set.
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I guess the core problem (speaking entirely on my own, here) is I dont CARE if extra powers do something different..... if I don't want to do that.
if I just want to, say, shoot beams of energy from my fists at a single baddy.... I'm looking at maybe three or four "versions" of that before it all just gets silly.
and, yes, i know that's a pretty narrow example, but i'm shooting for simple.
...some people don't want to do a bunch of different things... they want to do one or two things fantastically well. (and I'm in no way contradicting the time and effort and headache it would cause to deal with this sort of problem. I know it exists. I also know that it is a problem that can be solved, if it's wanted enough.)
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
Uh ... no ... that's not how TERA handles it, and that isn't how I'd want to see City of Titans handle this kind of a game mechanic. You want the recharge time to be "stable" and relatively constant ... predictable, shall we say ... regardless of how far you Charge a particular power. All a Charge through stages 1-2-3 and on into Overcharge stages 1-2-3-4 does is [i]add casting/animation time[/i] in exchange for a buff on what the power DOES ... not on how long it takes to recharge it so it can be used again. In other words, you "pay up front" rather than needing to "pay after the fact" in the form of a slower recharge and a longer cooldown time.
So if I have a Snipe sort of power and it has a 30 second recharge time on it, it doesn't matter how long I Charge the power up ... whether that's a quicky Tap or a 3 second Hold. But once I release the Charge keybind and the power activates/animates/takes effect, THEN the 30 second recharge/cooldown time begins for the power.
You follow me?
Keeping the recharge/cooldown time settings "even" regardless of Charge state becomes a very serious and important consideration not only for Game Balance, but also for the Players so that the behavior(s) of Powers in combat are "predictable enough" that you can get a "feel" for the rhythms that use of those powers produce ... which in turn gives rise to the idea and practice of Attack Chains.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
The key with a Charge mechanic like I've been talking about borrowing from TERA isn't that when Charged a particular power does something "different" per se, so much as it does "more" of whatever it is the power is supposed to accomplish. So for like a "punch" attack, you can either do a quick jab or wind up for a hook or haul back to deliver a powerful haymaker ... all using the same Power but at different levels of Charge, meaning you've (as a Player) "invested" different amounts of time into "casting" this particular Power. The quickest/lightest hits happen fastest, but the slowest/heaviest hits take longer, and you're paying for that in "casting time" and leaving the decision of how "long" to spend casting before unloading entirely up to the Player, based on the situation they find themself in at the time. What do you need to use, WHEN? So the Charge mechanic just buffs up a power to do "more" of whatever the power does, but it doesn't "lock" the power into working only one way.
So to use a City of Heroes example ... Thunder Kick and Storm Kick in the Martial Arts powerset could have been done as a Charge skill, where level 1 Charge was a Thunder Kick and level 2 Charge was a Storm Kick. You'd compress 2 power selections into 1 power choice (thereby compressing their needed Enhancement Slots as well!), and it would take all of [i]1 second longer[/i] to activate/animate Storm Kick than it would to do the same for Thunder Kick. So if you Tap the Power, you get a Thunder Kick. If Hold the *same* power for 1-2 seconds, you get a Storm Kick instead ... and then the Power takes like 7 seconds to recharge/cooldown before you can use it again (before Recharge Reduction Enhancements).
Little things like that would have allowed for a variety of ways to free up options out of the Primary/Secondary pools, as well as some of the Pool Powers, in a way that could have de-cluttered a lot of things. It's a way to get "more" out of "less" so you don't have to create a UI button for EVERYTHING you could ever possibly want to do.
You follow me?
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Not sure I follow you with the TERA stuff, since I never played it.
I think my original methodology was to allow players the option of EITHER having (lets continue useing your COH example) Thunder Kick AND Storm Kick as seperate powers, or have an "evolved" or "signature" VERSION of "Thunderkick" that, when charged, would function like Storm Kick.
In my original suggestion, I expected a "charge" with scaling damage based on the length of the charge, up to a max timelimit (ala CO's charge powers)
If I follow you, you're intention was to condense similar powers in all sets into these tap/charge hybrids, allowing for more enhancement slots per power.... and I'm not sure I like that. What I like about my inital suggestion is the sense of "choose your own play style." That a player like me could burn "new power" selections to "evolve" their current powers into one of these tap/charge hybrids that allow for a greater output potential (if fully charged) but suffer from being only able to use "one" power, before cool down (choosing Thunder Kick AND Storm Kick would, given enough energy, allow you to fire off both powers concurrently, while evolving Thunder Kick would allow a bigger pay off than either one alone, but require a recharge after each use)
this distinction, and option, would allow for distinctly different playstyles, based on player preference and character thematic... as well as adding a tactical component to leveling up (whether to choose to give a single power versatile uses or get two powers)... and depending on how this concept is established, could even lead to a sort of synergistic strategy, as you picked and choose which powers you wanted to evolve into which other powers (maybe tap is a single target blast, and charge is a cone, or a PbAOE.... or maybe tap is a self-heal and hold is a team heal)
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
Intention ... no, that's perhaps too strong a term. All sets? DEFINITELY not!
SOME powers in SOME sets, however, it would be appropriate for, though.
Bear in mind, that even in TERA, with a Charge mechanics oriented character like the Berzerker, [i]only a minority of their abilities[/i] uses a Charge/Overcharge styled game mechanic. The MAJORITY of their abilities are still Clicks ... and this is on the class that uses more Charge/Overcharge attacks than any other class (it's basically the class's "signature" game mechanic).
So don't over-interpret what I'm *postulating* as a [b]possibility[/b] for City of Titans here and come to a conclusion that I'm somehow trying to "mandate" this sort of thing for every power generally. Instead, I'm merely musing out loud that this sort of game mechanic [i]sounds to me[/i] like it would be a useful option for organizing Assault powersets around, such that an Assault Primary or an Assault Secondary would have SOME powers that make use of this kind of a mechanic ... which is not the same as saying that ALL powers under Assault [i]would have to use[/i] this kind of a game mechanic.
Just like how Masterminds didn't have JUST Pet Powers in their Primary, I'm saying that if using a Charge game mechanic for Assault powersets that you shouldn't make EVERY power in those powersets use the mechanic. However, that said, it might be wise to "limit" the use of such a mechanic to ONLY the Assault powersets, so as to give them a signature differentiation from the other types of powersets.
Does that help?
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
easy tiger.
My point was... that my point has not been a combining of two powers across the board, to make these tap/charge things we've been discussing.
RATHER, it should be a meta-power set mechanic.... wherin the player chooses whether to make a particular click power into a click/charge hybrid.... or not do that. It's not just that some powers in a set have two "forms", a tap version and a charge version (which it sounds like you're describing)... but that the player can choose to have a power have "two forms" at will, in exchange for a traditional new power choice.
Again, I know nothing about TERA, so using it as an example doesnt really click for me, sorry if that makes it more challenging to express what you're trying to get across, and thank you for your patience.
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
If I understand the intent, GH's 'hold' powers could be equated to those CoH powers that had longer activation or animation times. Instead of clicking and then waiting for the power to activate or finish its animation, they would have an activation time covered by the charge mechanic.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
YES! That right there. Mind you, in a CoH context this would mainly be used for powers that had an Interrupt Time on them, such as Snipe or Assassin Strike as well as powers that [i]conceptually speaking[/i] ought to involve what amounts to Particle Ingathering prior to unleashing The Big Nuke attack sort of deal (ie. Build Ups). Alternatively, you can do this kind of thing on AoE attacks so that if you Charge to Level 1 you only output 1 spinning leg kick "Dragon's Tail" attack, but if you Charge to Level 2 you do 2 of them ... for the same amount of Recharge ... and so on. Make no sense for a lot of Single Shot rifle attacks ... unless you set it up to work like an "aim" sort of thing to buff Damage, Accuracy and ... Range, maybe?
The key point is though that the Charge mechanic gives you OPTIONS for how to design powers that would otherwise just be One Note Powers that work one way, and ONLY one way. It's also something that makes PLAYING the game more interactive and reliant upon player decision making, leading to a more "involving" and active player experience, because it isn't just Click/Queue Next as far as the keyboard/mouse interactions go.
You'd only want to start "combining" different powers and effects into a Charge Levels sort of mechanic if you're trying to "limit" yourself (as a Game Designer) to using fewer "slots" for powers and interactions than you've got things to put into them. CoH had 9 Primary and 9 Secondary powers ... but what if you've only got "room" for 4 of each? Well then, "doubling up" on your interactable keybinds through use of a Tap vs Hold sort of UI element makes more sense and becomes more "necessary" as a means of being able to control more "things" using fewer keys and keybinds.
Fortunately, I don't see that latter possibility as being "needed" for City of Titans, but the *potential* for it is there [i]should it be necessary[/i] or appropriate in some special edge cases.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
For what it's worth I'm not strictly against incorporating something like this for CoT. I feel it would take some additional work (that the Devs probably could not initially afford to spend) to shoehorn this concept in, but I'd agree it wouldn't be impossible in some form or fashion as an after launch update.
But I simply don't see the link between rushing this kind of unrelated mechanic into the game as a direct solution to the idea that there were too many useless powers in CoH. Sure there were probably some powersets that had more semi-pointless duplicate powers than others. But I recall plenty of other powersets where all the powers were fairly unique and useful.
I just see this TERA power charge thing as a barely appropriate fix for a problem that was barely a problem to begin with.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
For my part. I never said that there were "too many useless powers"
What I said was, "I don't want more than 4 or 5 powers"
And I am not alone in that desire.
This whole suggestion revolves around a means of allowing "depth" in a power (beyond enhancements) rather than "breadth" in the number of powers possible.
Essentually, it is a way for players like me, who want fewer powers to "deal with", to continue to develop their characters chosen abilities without "having to" acquire more and more and more new powers, whatever their function.
The question is both mechanical (some players dont like having to play their keyboard like a musical instrument to be effective), and Thematic (some characters have a really good, powerful "gimic" but otherwise rely on some other, less combat oriented strength to carry them through encounters)
I would not want to see this, or any similar idea forced on the entire playerbase (by making this sort of "tap-or-charge" power a normal feature of powers) but rather see this as a meta-game choice for players to determine how they "acquire" their newly earned powers. (either as a new button on their hot bar, or as an "alternate fire" version of a previous power)
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
Well again for what it's worth I did offer a game mechanic solution to your specific issue earlier in this thread that was actually exactly along the lines of what people who loved playing with the Khledians had been asking for back in CoH for years. You basically just need to have the option to exchange a few powers for a few more enhancement slots and I feel that could be relatively easily achieved while maintaining overall game balance.
Beyond that you've always had a very "brute force" way to solve this problem of yours - don't like seeing a bunch of powers cluttering up your screen? Just pull all the powers you don't want to see/use off your GUI. Problem solved.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
the problem with just "more enhancement slots" is the concept of diminishing returns.... Now, if the Devs were willing to remove diminishing returns on powers you "improved" in this manner..... it might be a different issue...
....but that seems like as big a balancing problem as these other, more overt and bold versions (which would FEEL more like an improvement/evolution of a power, over just more slots.)
and, finally.... having an extra power's worth of enhancement (even without diminishing returns) slots isn't going to make your teir one blast in any way comparable to a teir three blast power (at least in respect to how COX functioned)
however, if your teir 1 power "evolves", so that when you click the power, it is teir one, but holding it activates the tier 3 power..... things seem more equatable.
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
Not to disagree with you too forcefully, Lothic, but if there's going to be a Kheldian analog in City of Titans, there are several things about them that I'd want to SCRAP before even beginning the project. The first of those considerations would be how picking up Nova Form and/or Dwarf Form granted [b]4 and 6 MORE Powers[/b] with no additional Enhancement Slots built into the system, making Kheldians very "power heavy" as well as "slot hungry" to build for (and control). You practically HAD TO come up with a set of BindLoadFiles in order to play the forms without needing hands that had more than 5 fingers. In short, they were CUMBERSOME to control and difficult to allocate resources into because they didn't follow the same "rules" as every other Archetype in the game.
The fact that the Forms used by Kheldians were Toggles was an acceptable decision. The fact that the Powers Granted by those forms were completely separate and unassociated with the Powers Granted (and used) by any of the OTHER Forms, was not.
More than once people offered the solution of converting Nova Form and Dwarf Form into being "modifiers" that didn't have their own exclusive powers, but which instead (kinda sorta) "supercharged" the Human Form powers in particular ways so as to achieve the same effect(s) through alternative means, giving Kheldians a more "normal" QUANTITY of Powers Earned from 1-50, so that the Archetype wouldn't wind up being as Slot Starved as every Tri-Form build ultimately was.
So if City of Titans tries to "recreate" Kheldians somehow, I would certainly hope there is the collective wisdom to NOT copy what City of Heroes did (remember, Kheldians were an Issue 3 release!) and instead do something BETTER that isn't quite such a "kludge" as Kheldians wound up being in City of Heroes.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Ya know, we should also consider...Active vs Passive (or Toggle) powers. If there are enough passive powers in each set, then the need for this alternate kind of advancement is limited.
The idea that in a typical DPS set...you have several variations of each power...2-3 standard single target attacks (sometimes more), 1-2 cone or AoE, plus your other utility powers.
Other MMOs are worse...5-6 single target attacks, multiple AoE attacks...all kinds of various secondary effects...just way to many powers.
I'm not sure the Devs are ever going to want "tier 1" powers to act like "tier 3" powers even as a means to add more "depth" to your self-imposed desire to specalize only in a few key powers.
Despite that I am sympathic to your claim that the diminishing returns of enhancements also makes it hard to have any "wiggle room" to expand on what any single power can do. Perhaps as another suggestion the Devs could come up with a new class of standalone enchancements that would provide specialized unique effects that could do things above and beyond anything we ever saw them do in CoH. The idea is that they could only be fitted into a power in the 6th slot (or maybe a limited-use 7th slot) thus forcing players to strongly focus on this power along the lines of what you're talking about. As a power that you've chosen to fully 6-slot this would give you something special that you could only have as someone who was "truly dedicated" to this particular single power. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
When I first envisioned the Tap-Hold thing I saw it for two powers of similar animation or effect. Tap/Punch and Hold/Haymaker sort of thing. This would make it easy to remember them for the player. Some powers (like the Nuke) might want to have their own control. However if I have a fire guy with a wide, short-ranged cone AoE Tap power and a narrow, longer-ranged cone AoE Hold Power I see no logical reason not to put them on the same button.
I hated the 3 trays for many of my CoH 50s.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Well if you just want to link two "standard" CoH powers to one key via a tap/hold mechanism there's probably a way to update the keyboard bind system of CoT without having to actually tinker with the internal "guts" of how any powers actually work in the game.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Now you are talking really just a macro/bind sort of system, where you are linking two distinct powers into the same keybind. That is really a whole seperate idea from the alternate advanced concept of less actual powers.
To pull the conversation back to the original discussion...
Its about having less powers with the advantage of those powers being more powerful, not just combining them into one power.
Now something that I could see being implemented, without the complicated overcharge concept...is that a new power simply modifies an older power...so that while you selected two power choices...you have 1 more versitile power.
For example...lets say you have a rifle blast powerset. You have Snap Shot (a quick shot fired from the hip), and Aimed Shot (an aimed shot fired from the shoulder) as your two basic power. Later on down the road you get Rapid Fire (sprays a series of shots in a cone) and Snipe (long range accurate shot).
So you have 4 shot powers on your tray that you are toggling between. However you could also implement a system where the two new powers, simple modify the existing Snap Shot and Aimed Shot to have a charge effect. A single tap would do the original Snap or Aimed shot. A hold on Snap Shot would activate Rapid Fire for as long as the duration of that power is (or until you release it); while a hold on Aimed Shot would activate Snipe...which would fire at which ever point you released it (gaining the corresponding accuracy and damage boost based upon how long you held the charge).
So now you have 4 powers that are activated on two buttons with no real changes to the underlying mechanics of how the powers work.
Then if I never took Rapid Fire, I could instead add more slots to Snap Shot to make it more powerful...at the loss of the versatility of the Rapid Fire mechanism.
In this theoritical Rifle set, you could then add the Grenade, which is a Targeted AoE and Stock Punch, which is a melee attack with the butt of the rifle.
Another example, from an Energy/Kinetic Melee (or Blast) set...lets call them Kinetic Punch and Kinetic Blast. The Punch is a melee attack with knockback (say Mag 1) on the target...later you get Kinetic Blast, which is a short ranged blast with knockback (say Mag 3) on the target. This could then modify the Kinetic Punch power, so that the longer you hold the charge the greater the range, damage and magnitude of the knockback.
Again someone could take both powers...or could skip the second one...in order to add additional slots to boost other powers at the loss of the versitility.
In both of these cases I am talking about modifying a base power with a later power. Not sure how this would work if you wanted to skip the lower power and only take the later power. Maybe again the same concept...say I skip the Snap Shot and only take Rapid Fire....I lose the quick single target ability and am locked into only the cone (which presumably has a lower damage per target and shorter range, with higher end use than the Snap Shot).
This would allow a player to choose versatility over additional power, without really adding too much additional coding. It would also allow the person who choose versatility to have a reasonable tray setup and not need 10 trays of power cluttering up everywhere.
Honestly, I'd be fine with this.... except that any sort of "super awesome" enhancement, would likewise be super difficult to acquire.... and doesn't alter the fact that I still have too many abilities to have to fiddle with.
Honestly, i could see something like this suggestion working, but the tweaking I would suggest would run us afoul of the same problems and concerns we've already got....
Signature Enhacements
at the cost of a new power, players can convert a currently owned power into a "signature" power. Signature powers are granted x number(as determined by balance and QOL value) of additional "enhancements" (not enhancement slots) which improve or alter core aspects of the power and scale by level.
This would mean you have a permanent, scaling boost to the power "in addition" to your own slotted enhancements.
my thinking would be that each signature enhancement you unlock (by level-teir, i think... so if you signature later powers, you dont get as many signature enhancements) would allow you to choose what it does from a list of available options (possibly with the option to "double up" on previous signature enhancements)
The signature enhancements could function something similar the "advantages" found in Champions online... either bolstering features of the current power (a "boost" to aim, damage, secondary effect, etc) OR actually ADD something to the function of the power (adding a new secondary effect to the power)
In this way, even a second or third power could become THE power you use, at the exclusion of other later powers (as earlier powers having several "signature enhancements" could bring the quality of the powers up to the level of later powers)
And yes, I know this would cause a MASSIVE headache, i think, for the development team.... But it is the ultimate expression of the signature power idea (in terms of bolstering enhancement slots over interface mechanics)
...and it would be pretty darned cool.
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
TBH, Cyclops from the X-Men (the quintessential Blaster), only has one real power...his Optic Blast. However the effect is defined by his visor. Having a character with one MASSIVE power would probably be impossible to balance but I still like the idea of fewer power but they're more powerful and you're better with them.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
yeah... having 'one' power is a bit hyperbolic, and really i just use it for simplicity's sake, but the sentiment really refers to the ability to develop a small pool of powers so that they will be of compairable effacy to the traditional large pool that one normally acquires in these games.
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]