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I think it boils down to an argument of thematics vs mechanics.
mechanically, it make sense to have AOE affect the "weakest" foes more than the "strongest", as it provides function for AOE without derailing the aoe v. single target usefulness balance...
thematically, it makes more sense to have it diminish by range, or not exist at all and just be balanced by other resistances or HP or whatever.....
The question, then.... is what is more important:
A) that the underlying mechanics make the game "feel" right, even if they don't necessarily make sense, thematically
or
b) that the underlying mechanics make "sense", even if they aren't always fair or balanced across attack types
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
Mechanically, the the stronger foes should resist more of anything than the weaker foes. Doesn't matter if it's Ranged. Melee, or AoE. So, they'd have a higher Typed resistance to stuff than the weaker foes. That would solve the issue for both mechanics and Thematics. It doesn't make sense to create 1 (or 3) brand new positional resistances to deal with something that can already be dealt with using the tools that are already available with typed resistances.
i'm not 100% sure that's accurate Twist.... the disparity between single and aoe attack damage, then, has to be that much more significant to keep the single target attacks viable (because the AOE and ST attacks are being resisted the same by the big bad as they are not by the little guys.... and so you get more over all damage from AOEs then single targets unless the single target attacks have dramatically more damage than aoes)
it is certainly the most simple solution, though...
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
Leadership ... Tactics ... as the core concept, as opposed to the Powers of the same name in City of Heroes. It's effectively functioning as something of a Leadership Aura that has more to do with Morale (in concept) which gets translated into being a Damage Resistance game mechanic that works as a PBAoE Aura around Lieutenants/Bosses/Elite Bosses/Arch Villains/etc. The individual aura buff doesn't have to be all that remarkable (3-5% maybe?) but when you start stacking it up in a massive dogpile ... THEN it starts becoming more noticeable and more of a factor (much like Nemesis Vengeance when stacked). The key point here though is that it is something that is a factor when Foe NPCs are "led" by living allies, as opposed to being something that functions like "Those heroes just smashed Nemesis Lieutenant #8472! GET THEM!!" {Vengeance power up} after Defeating one of them.
If you think of it in extremely LITERAL terms, it won't make sense, as you point out. If however you relax your interpretation just a little bit and allow yourself to entertain symbolic representation of factors that normally aren't relevant to combat, there are a few things that doing this sort of thing would fit.
Consider also that although there could be a "baseline" set for these PBAoE Foe NPC "leadership" buff auras (Lieutenants add X, Bosses add Y, etc.) you'd still be free to tweak those values for particular Foe Groups ... like Nemesis or Malta or Clockworks, or whatever. Maybe some Foe Groups offer poor leadership at the Lieutenant level and correspondingly strong leadership at the Boss level ... or vice versa. So there'd still be room for Developers to "play" with the settings to make different Foe NPCs have different flavors of challenge to them. Perhaps Snipers (Nemesis, Crey) offer particularly lousy leadership aura buffs to AoE Resistance because they're not really "team" oriented Foes, for example. Perhaps Devouring Earth Emanators have a particularly strong leadership buff to AoE Resistance associated with them, but the Lieutenants, Bosses, Elite Bosses and Giant Monsters of the Devouring Earth are "kinda lousy" on this point because they're a more "wild and chaotic" sort of Foe Group that isn't about "following orders" and teamwork (in the military sense).
Bare minimum, there's no reason to think or believe that a One Size Fits All solution would make the best "fit" for City of Titans, with respect to inclusion of such a mechanic.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
You have yet to explain to me how a boss would resist my Fireball/Grenade/Frost Breath/Lotus Drops (AoE) more than my Fire bolt/Burst/Ice blast/(Ranged ST) or a Fiery Punch (melee ST)/Ice Fist/Slash. Regardless of their typed damage resistances. In fact, with your positional Damage Resistance, you'd run into an issue where a Faction that was weak to a specific type of damage would be taking far less damage that it should because of positional damage resistance. Unless, you're advocating using both Typed and Positional to give a combined damage resistance to all foes. Which, I didn't see any mention of in the entire thread and would suggest against using. It would just make everything more complicated than it really needs to be. Especially since all the damage resistance issues can be dealt with using the typed damage resistances.
By the way, did you add the suggestion that LTs and Bosses get a PBAoE Positional Resistance Aura?
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/32968#comment-32968]LINK[/url]
That's post #2 in this thread, in case you hadn't noticed.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
....that's an RP concern, not a mechanic concern....
..not to answer your question with another question... but does it matter for the developers to justify "why" it is that way, so long as they're clear exactly "what" is happening?
why not leave it up to the player to define why an aoe attack is less effective on bosses then a single target attack... just like they would for getting new powers at level up, or stacking a power full of enhancements or why their ice crystal-looking power deals toxic damage......
the "Reasoning" in game isn't nearly as important as the resulting effect on QOL
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
There is a little thing called Immersion. An unexplained resistance to everything that comes from a certain direction (or position), despite the foe being weak, resistance-wise, to the specific attacked aimed at it, is immersion breaking. Shoot someone with a gun, stab them in the face, or explode a grenade at their feet, they should resist each of those the same. For that person to say, "HA HA! You tried to blow me up with a grenade! That just tickled, although the stab to the face hurt a lot." Would just make people scratch their heads and wonder what the heck was going on.
Most people understand this guy resists fire attacks, no matter where they come from. Or that guy resists smashing attacks, no matter where they come from. I am willing to bet that a vast majority would not understand that this guy that takes extra damage from electric attacks when he is punched, mysteriously resists a good portion of what he would have taken just because he was hit with an AoE electric attack.
Again, why unnecessarily complicate things with an additional set of resists when the same thing can already be accomplished with the Typed resists. There is no need, other than to complicate things, to add another set of resists to the game.
it's not a little thing at all... but game mechanics like this aren't necessarily about immersion. They are about something else.... Fun... which is no small thing either.
If an enemy is "weak" to a specific damage type, they're still going to be "weak" to that damage type.... but they will ALSO be affected by the type of attack, based on their rank. That's not radically out of left field.
when you throw an attack, normal minions would respond as they always have done (no additional resistance to attack types)
if they get attacked.... normal damage does 50, weakness damage (lets say fire type) deals 75 damage
if they're a boss (n-Ranks above minion)
if that original attack was single target melee, they take 50/75 damage (just like if it was a minion) all other resistances being equal
if it was a ranged single target, they might take 45/70 (completely hypothetical numbers her)
if it was a melee AOE attack, they might take 35/60
and if it's a ranged AOE they might take 30/55
there's still a distinction between resisted and non-resisted damage types, reguarless..... all that changes is how severely different enemy types are affected by the attack type.
and obviously my numbers are wacky, but that's the idea.
Enemies are still going to be resistant to damage types (or weak to damage types)... but REGUARDLESS of damage type, they will also be less succeptable to AOE damage, the higher 'ranked' they are (i.e. lt, boss, master villain, whatever)
Unlike Red, I am not talking about a "power" or toggle that causes a new resistance type.... I'm describing a core game mechanic that simply exists in the matrices of combat.....
that being:
any Boss is more resistant to AOE damage than his lieutenants and foot soldiers by a specific percentage, degree, or flat rate.
any other weaknesses or resistances are applied on top of that [i]innate quality[/i] of all enemies.
It is NOT unnecessarily complicated. It's merely a different (and direct) way of solving the question posed by this thread. It provides a CONTEXT in which AOE attacks are powerful, so that more than one attack mechanic remains viable at all stages of combat (I.e. you will NEED(within reason/good team dynamic) AOE to deal with minions and lieutenants, and you will NEED single target damage to deal with bosses)
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
and "need" in this context is more a general statement of value, not a hardcoded "requirement" of gameplay.....
I.e. "I need a drink", not "i need oxygen"
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
I don't need a positional Resist to have fun. And the only positional resist that makes sense is maybe AOE Resist, to couple with dodge as a sort of you're agile enough to avoid most if not all AOE harm. Like Evasion Roll (believe that's the PnP term in D&D).
once again, I'm not referring to a statistical resistance "ability" that is augmented or purchased.
and the whole point of this thread, is that it is NOT fun when AOE is such a dominant force in combat that single target attacks are functionally obsolete in most situations. If you don't agree with that initial statement, then how is your stance on the topic beneficial to the discourse?
This thread is all about the current state of things not being fun.
if it IS fun for you the way things stand, now (or stood in COX, as the case may be)... awesome! but that's all there really is for you to say on this topic.
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
If we're spit balling........
Positional resists for status effects not damage types. Probably a bad idea.......em/ shrug.
Repeat Offender
Tank Addict
Homeless.
so... damage is the same, but they're more/less likely to get whammied by your powers' secondary effects?
it would definitely need to be based on enemy rank then... otherwise it would really undermine certain sets and hardly touch others (and think of all those aoe's who's only real "deal" is the application of a secondary effect..... :-/)
...or do you mean it some other way?
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
Then why not just add 5% resistance to each Type for the Boss instead of adding and entire new layer (or two) of calculations into the mix that complicate things even more? That is what I mean by using what is already there. You are wanting the Boss, and to a lesser extent the LT, to be much more survivable than the Minions. I can agree with that. Up their resistance to [b]everything] in relation to their faction's base resistances. Don't arbitrarily decide that ST damage should be king of all damage. It shouldn't. AoEs should do more damage than ST attacks in their optimal setting. ST attacks should do more damage in their optimal setting. Those two settings are pretty much exclusive of each other.
You see, I had fun, with my Fire/Energy Blaster, mowing down entire groups of Minions with my AoEs. I'd mop up the stragglers with my ST ranged and Melee attacks. I also had just as much fun wading into groups of NPC foes punching them in the face with my Dark/Dark Scrapper, whose attacks were mostly ST. Fun, is a relative concept, and really shouldn't be [THE] top priority when considering the mechanics of a game. Because everyone has a different idea of what "fun" is.
And, to me, trying to figure out why someone would take relatively less damage from a fireball that exploded in his face, than the firebolt that hit him in the face, would drive me nuts and dampen my fun. It would also push me away from using AoEs.
Rooting with every attack in CoH didn't really make sense to me either. But, I understood the mechanics reasons behind that one. In addition, it was "easier" to explain thematically why you had to stop moving to use your powers, than why my auto fire did less damage to the targets than my burst did.
Having AoEs cost more and take longer to recharge (using CoH's mechanics) is a much better way of balancing the effectiveness AoE vs ST attacks than adding additional complications to reduce the effectiveness of AoEs.
All else being equal, simpler is usually better. Easier to code, easier to change if something goes wrong. Plus, the number of people who will really bake the numbers is not large. We had a handful in CoH and they usually did it to make sure the stats for the powers were accurate.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Now you're just being dense and grasping at straws in an effort to not understand what is staring you in the face.
Minions by themselves are "baseline crunchy" to attacks.
Minions LED by, and in the presence of, Lieutenants and Bosses [i]aren't quite as crunchy[/i] and are more difficult to deal with (read: they soak up more damage before being Defeated).
That's the BASIC idea. How immersion breaking is it? Is it somehow counter-intuitive that when in the presence of "leaders" that the "crunchies" will somehow fight harder, longer and be more difficult/challenging to put down and defeat?
There's basically three ways to model this kind of behavior using game mechanics.
Extra HP
Extra Defense (creating more MISS results)
Extra Resistance (reducing incoming damage throughput)
Extra HP creates a bunch of really weird edge cases that *would* be immersion breaking, up to and including the "Load Bearing Boss" kind of phenomenon, where removal of an Extra HP Buff Aura could potentially Defeat a bunch of Minions as a side effect ... which would just look weird. Not recommended.
Extra Defense creates potential frustrations (historical example: stacked Nemesis Vengeance) involving Accuracy, and at the other end can effectively be "negated" by overstacking Accuracy on the Player side of the equation, effectively negating the effect. It's an option, but can when stacked "sufficiently" yield some decidedly unintended consequences, and what we want to play is "Dogpile On Da Wabbit" free for all brawls in City of Titans.
Extra Resistance makes the best fit for making Minions (and every other Foe NPC) "tougher" when led by higher ranked members of their group, does not lead to a variety of weird edge cases (other than the fact that Foe NPCs are a little harder to defeat because they absorb more damage) and if done in a PBAoE Aura fashion can lead to an interesting push/pull strategy vs tactics dimension in which Herd And Burn isn't necessarily the optimal end all, be all method to use. Sometimes it might be more advantageous to Divide and Conquer instead of Herd and Burn, and the "threshold" for when one method is better than the other would be something that Players develop a "feel" for. Furthermore, such a mechanic could also form a part of an interactive system of game mechanics where "Herding the Map" becomes counterproductive as an objective due to the way that this particular aspect of Foe NPC interactions stack. Recommended.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
The specific topic under discussion is [b]positional resistances[/b] (e.g. resistance to AoE attacks but not ranged single-target or melee), not resistance bonuses in general.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
"Then why not just add 5% resistance to each Type for the Boss instead of adding and entire new layer (or two) of calculations into the mix that complicate things even more? "
I would think the answer to this question is self evident.Increasing the bosses resistance to damage type affects aoe and single target identically. This is exactly how it already worked, and the problem existed... so this iisn't a viable solution, as it could easily be viewed as the cause of the.problem.
under that model, aoe is either the most viable method of combat, or must be nerfed to make single targets more viable.
"That is what I mean by using what is already there. You are wanting the Boss, and to a lesser extent the LT, to be much more survivable than the Minions."
no, i want them more survivable AGAINST AOEs. This whole conversation is about finding a means of mitgating the universal effectiveness of aoe attacks in the game...
" I can agree with that. Up their resistance to [b]everything] in relation to their faction's base resistances. Don't arbitrarily decide that ST damage should be king of all damage. It shouldn't. AoEs should do more damage than ST attacks in their optimal setting. ST attacks should do more damage in their optimal setting. Those two settings are pretty much exclusive of each other."
no, right now (i.e. cox) the system works exactly how your describing, but aoe becomes the tool for the vast majority of combat. It dominates damage (re: the op).. to use your language, there is no optimal setting for single target attacks, just less relegated ones (settings where aoe is less dominant)
the ONLY solution to the problem, is to either adjust the damage output at the power (how much damage single target attacks deal or how much aoes deal) or alter how enemies RESPOND to different types of attacks, so that aoes have a specific role in combat (your 'optimal setting') while single target attacks have another.
"You see, I had fun, with my Fire/Energy Blaster, mowing down entire groups of Minions with my AoEs. I'd mop up the stragglers with my ST ranged and Melee attacks. I also had just as much fun wading into groups of NPC foes punching them in the face with my Dark/Dark Scrapper, whose attacks were mostly ST. Fun, is a relative concept, and really shouldn't be [THE] top priority when considering the mechanics of a game. Because everyone has a different idea of what "fun" is."
none of this is relevent to the discussion beyond "I had fun the way the system was, don't change it." Which is fine, but don't pretend or imply that it carries any greater weight.
"And, to me, trying to figure out why someone would take relatively less damage from a fireball that exploded in his face, than the firebolt that hit him in the face, would drive me nuts and dampen my fun. It would also push me away from using AoEs."
this, right here..... this is the only solid point you've made so far in this reply.
it poses an interesting question.... firstly, would it push you away from using aoes all together, or JUST when fighting higher ranked enemies? (If that latter..... isn't that the whole point? Defining aoe as something used to thin out the group and make fights more managable, while single target attacks function as boss killers...)
secondly, I completely understand that immersion goes a long way to making games fun for many players. But if this was fact, rather than hypothesis... would you even notice (i.e. if single target attacks 'hurt bosses more than aoe attacks of similar quality'.... would you even notice after the first thirty seconds, or would you simply addapt and imploy or imagination as to why it occured?)
"Having AoEs cost more and take longer to recharge (using CoH's mechanics) is a much better way of balancing the effectiveness AoE vs ST attacks than adding additional complications to reduce the effectiveness of AoEs."
Except that itdoesn't work (if we are accepting the original post in this threadt)
and that really is your arguement, that the balance in cox was fine, and doesnt need to change. I respect your position. Imyself could 'live with' titans functioning similarly.... but it would never feel ideal. Single target builds would always be a little harder, a little less team friendly....
Given the time until release and the clarity of hindsight, I would rather look at alternatives that could actually solve the problem that many players experienced and the original poster expressed.
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
And that is where you're wrong. Singe Target attacks had their optimal setting. Single Targets. Using an AoE on a single target was a waste of potential. You are not wasting any potential when you use a ST attack against a single target. Yes, the AoE will do damage to the target, but it never did as much as the ST attack did to that single target. Any scrapper could take out a Boss or LT faster than any AoE centric Blaster. Even my Blaster resorted to ST melee attacks to take down bosses because the ST melee attacks did more damage than the AoEs. The AoEs were strictly for taking down the minions, and possibly the LTs if I was lucky and they were weak to my AoEs type of attack. ST attacks did a lot more damage individually than AoEs. The only reason AoEs could "outdamage" ST attack was because they were used against [b]large[/b] groups. Just like they were supposed to be used.
Then why did you bring it up in the first place? My idea of fun carries exactly as much weight as yours.
The problem with the OPs stance, and yours as well as mine, is that it is an opinion. In your opinion, AoEs should be practically useless against anything stronger than a minion. My opinion is that AoEs should do a crap-ton of damage, overall, to a large group. The break-even point of AoEs should be determined by the number of foes hit, not by the number of foes minus LTs and Bosses hit.
The Endurance and Recharge costs for AoEs did work. the most powerful ones, the Nukes, had a long recharge and drained 100% of your End, then tossed a -Recovery on you to top off. The regular AoEs cost more to use than the single target attacks and did less damage individually. If you want a ST punch happy scrapper to be able to take out a entire group of 15 NPC foes as fast as a Blaster with AoEs, then you might as well remove AoEs from the game all together. If you want the ST punch happy scrapper to take out the boss faster than the Blaster, they already could.
That is a flat out mischaracterization ... and you know it.
If you cannot argue your position without resorting to slander and obviously inaccurate caricature, understand that your reputation will suffer, which in turn will not serve you well in the long term. Keep doing this and you will be held to account.
I therefore request that you retract and rephrase your baseless accusation such that it contain at least SOME truth, rather than none.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I brought it up as a counterpoint to your argument about "immersion", not to validate my opinions ON what constitutes "fun"
many players do not consider immersion into the game's setting a qualifier for "fun", and so I switched YOUR point away from the specific qualifier "immersion" towards the broader category of "fun."
....because, as I said initially, this situation is not an issue of "immersion", it is a quality of life issue.... it's about "fun".
Incorrect. In my opinion, AOE attacks should do more damage to lower ranked enemies then higher ranked ones. No extreme perspectives here. I WANT AOEs to be allowed to do an imperial ass-load of damage, I like Novas....
but the reality is, without a system the mitigates the spectra over which that damage is applied, the only option is to limit the damage output. (or dramatically increase resistances of enemies, and the ST damage output to compensate, and so on)
As do I. But If they are to do a "crap-ton of damage", they can't be "balanced" through endurance cost or cooldown time.... as those effects MITIGATE DAMAGE. The only way to balance out their "uberness" is to dramatically increase the resistances and HP of bosses.... which requires single target powers to play a game of escalation.
which isn't really balance, it's just structured crazy.
The "break even point" is defined by the PURPOSE of an attack type.
IF we agree that the PURPOSE of an AOE attack is to deal damage to many individuals at the same time, but NOT to effectively kill them all...
AND we agree that those "least likely to die" should be enemies of higher ranks (lieutenants, bosses, supervillains, etc)
AND that such survivability should be determined by how highly ranked those enemies are (minion vs lt, lt vs boss, etc)
then the "break even point" is the point at which an AOE attack defeats most minions, some lieutenants, a few bosses, and very few supervillains, etc.
when an AOE power is functioning in that fashion, then it is "working properly" reguardless of what damage numbers the game equates to those events.
There are MANY ways to accomplish this.
the most common way is to exponentially scale hit-points and resistances, so that higher ranked enemies can endure far more damage then minions.
Now, the Original poster feels that the overriding purpose of AOE attacks was not accomplished, using the above method, in previous games, and is looking for a discussion of ALTERNATIVES.
...that being said, it's totally valid to say "I liked the system as it was, I don't agree with the OP."
but that's ALL you really have to say. you have no other argument, no other position to take... no greater purpose in the overall discussion. if you go to a vegan recipe party, you can certainly say "I love beef and barley soup".... but you cant expect anyone else to be swayed by your recipe.
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
So take the damage of a ST attack and divide it by 5! When used against 5 targets it equals the level of the same tier ST attack!
/em facefaults
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I would be willing to bet that immersion counts for a lot more than you think it would to most people.
We alerady had a system that worked just fine in that regard. Melee damage, with the possible exception of Tanks, already did more damage than ranged attacks, which already did more damage than the corresponding AoE attacks. One use of Fireball on an group of 15 NPC foes wouldn't take down any of the them. 2 Fireballs probably would, as long as both of them had a damage buff like Aim and Build-up. Nova was a different case entirely because of the downside of using it and it being the tier 9 powers in the set.
Since that is the way it was working in CoH, why are you wanting to "fix" what isn't broken? I have never heard of even 1 tier 9 Nova taking down an EB let alone an AV. a Boss, possibly, depending on its weaknesses, what its been de-buffed with, and the buffs on the character using the nova.
You are correct. But that goes both ways. You don't really have anything else to say but, "I agree with the OP". Anything you say otherwise really serves as much purpose as what I have to say.
What I have been saying, from the beginning, is that there is no need to insert additional complications to a system that doesn't really need it. Since all the tools to do what you want, to make the Lts and Bosses more resilient to AoEs are already available. You mentioned them yourself. reduce damage for the AoE, increased damage for the ST attack, increased [b]typed[b] resistance for the LTs and Bosses. a combination of those three would balance out the difference between ST attacks and AoEs just fine. That's not even taking into account the HPs of said NPCs.
Correct me if I'm wrong. You want AoEs to be able to do a lot of damage to Minions, but leave the LTs and Bosses still up and fairly good fighting form for the people with ST attacks to play with. Correct? That was already what the standard AoEs already did. The exceptions to that were the Fiery Infernos, Novas, and other tier 9 AoE damaging attacks with built in major drawbacks to using them. Those, would take out the minions, possibly the LTs and leave the Bosses still standing to fight. With the addition of leaving the character that used it without Endurance, and their recovery De-Buffed so they couldn't recover Endurance without some sort of aid. Those tier 9s already did what GhostHack said he wanted them to do. You want them to do even less.
Just what problem is that supposed to solve? Because that "solution" has been brought up and dismissed several times now.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
*shrug* It makes an AOE attack in CoT not turn into Fire Blast from CoH which was an AOE attack that surpassed many ST attacks in DPS and was used in the best ST DPS Chain for Fire Blasting.
Aren't people saying that don't want that?
Actually, incorrect. the conversation is such that we are discussing possible solutions to the concern posed in the initial post, in the hopes of finding a definitive paradigm that can be applied to combat to solve a perceived problem.
If one DISAGREES with the original post, and asserts that there is no problem, there is nothing else to be said.
if one AGREES with the original post, then potential solutions to the problem must be posed, discussed and deliberated...
the purpose of this thread is to discuss how the problem could be solved in Titans as opposed to Heroes/Villains, with a focus on a deliberate and structured system to accomplish the task, rather than (as the OP put it) a "happy accident" of trial, error, and modification 'fixes'
you assert it doesn't need fixing, I believe it does.... as such, I've suggested a potential solution to the problem addressed in this thread.
my desire to make Lt's and Bosses more resilient to AOEs ONLY serves as a function of a system by which enemies are more resilient to AOEs, specifically and independantly of Single Target attacks as a means of preventing their over-effectiveness without HP bloat between ranks and without requiring the inherited system to have single target attacks do significantly more damage than AOE attacks of an equal caliber.
I mentioned those as traditional means of attempting to solve this problem that I feel is inadequate. if you reduce the overall effectiveness of AOEs, it deminishes their viability against ALL enemy types, not a scaling system by which AOE's can remain a powerful tool for appropriate situations.
This is something i'm expressly trying to AVOID. it has always bothered me that single target attacks should, for no real reason, do dramatically more damage than a similarly "strong" AOE attack. Mechanically it's necessary to maintain the viability of single target attacks under older systems, but that is THE WHOLE POINT of my suggesting an alternative.
if your talking about damage type (fire, ice, etc) then this is absolutely irrelevant to the conversation as raising or lowering damage type resistances have zero correlation to aoe vs single target damage scales. it's an independent system.
and yet we have this thread, where the exact opposite view is being expressed. The point here is not which side (it worked fine vs it didn't work fine) is "correct." The point is to explore all possible alternatives to the old system, to try and find one that is "better."
And, honestly.... you are wrong in calling my suggestion an "added system", or in any way more complicated than the balancing of three (four or five, if we count HP and ENG costs) independent mechanics.
attack actions have a delineation in the code that define them, as objects that react to those actions have to know what is acting upon them to react accordingly. Just as a "mob" knows that the damage it must take is "fire" damage, it will know if it came from a cone, pbaoe, or targeted aoe (or single target, etc) attack. Since it has to know what is affecting it, and is coded to respond accordingly already..... all programmers would need to do is determine is the severity of that effect by rank, and add it to the reaction list of actions.
since I'm suggesting a simple percentage, and since it would affect ALL abilities equally, the only "tweaking" or "balancing" needed would be to determine the optimal (for QOL) AOE death rate for groups as compared to single target rates.
It's a paradigm shift, but it's not a whole new mechanical system (I think Red was considering something more along those lines, but I haven't.)
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
It's that [i]sort[/i] of thing that i'd like to avoid. I want AOE's to remain viable as tools, to shine as a means of "thinning the herd", but be less effective against tougher opponents without "supersizing" single target damage or enemy all-purpose damage mitigation (hp, resistance, et al)
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
Taking you [i]at your word[/i]. Ready?
You're wrong.
The idea is that in the presence of Lieutenants and Bosses (and so on and so forth), AoE becomes [i]less effective[/i]. Because the game mechanical reason for this being so is due to PBAoE Auras tied to those Lieutenants and Bosses, you get the potential for stacking and the creation of a diverse variety of situations, rather than just a One Size Fits All same old same old. It means that taking out the Lieutenants and/or Bosses in a pile of Foe NPCs [i]makes a difference[/i] in how quickly any given stack of Foe NPCs can be defeated. It means that the Path Of Least Resistance (literally) is a DYNAMIC factor, rather than a static one, because it is tied to something that varies (numbers of types of opposition) and shifts (positioning of aura overlaps for stacking) such that combat has more permutations than just one, where Herd And Burn is the most efficient/effective in ALL situations and circumstances.
The idea is to set things up such that there is a pendulum balance. With X numbers of Lieutenants and Y numbers of Bosses in the mix, it is faster/more effective/more efficient to take out the "leaders" first via single target attacks (either ranged or melee) before switching over into a mass AoE beatdown. However, since the dynamics of that calculation rely on the dynamic factors of positioning and numbers, there isn't an "obvious" hard and fast rule to follow dictating precisely when the pendulum swing will favor single target attacks on the hard targets versus AoE attacks on the horde. Instead, Players will develop a "feel" for the ebb and flow of combat, making the game a more interactive and tactically complex sort of simulation, in which hard and fast "rules" for what is best to use when CHANGE as the battle progresses.
Mind you, there's nothing that says you CAN'T play the game as if there's no pendulum swinging between advantage single target vs advantage AoE when it comes to delivering Mass Carnage vs Surgical Strikes. There's nothing preventing anyone from attacking with nothing but AoE attacks if they wanted to (provided the character possesses enough AoE attacks to do so, of course). It may not be "wise" to do that, but there wouldn't be anything is the game mechanics to prevent that from being allowed. Instead, the AoE Resistance Auras would instead ... discourage ... indiscriminate AoE use (at all times), because they would reduce (but not eliminate!) the "value" of AoE attack damage by reducing damage throughput onto Foe NPCs, thereby making them "tougher" to Defeat when they are "well led" by Lieutenants, Bosses, etc.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
So, yes... Red's suggestion is definitely more complicated than mine, less "elegant" and simple, but much more comprehensive in terms of function (meaning that AOEs would be less effective as the group make up included more"important" people, rather than less effective ON the more important people, specifically.)
Moving forward, it would probably be best to consider them separate, and address them individually.
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
I see only one problem with Red's proposal and that is that it encourages AoE-centric toons to sit out the first round of combat while the higher-ups are taken out. The philosophy might be summed up as 'Tank goes in (or Trollers lock down everyone), STs take out the leaders and then the AoEs finish off the underlings' am I right? If not, then the STs draw aggro (and ranged ST shooters tend to not be good at surviving aggro...) and it's dog-pile on the team.
I like the idea of Lts and Bosses encouraging/bolstering their troops. CoH had something like this (I think) because some of the leaders had Leadership to support their minions. However something we should ALL remember:
The players won't do it this way. They never do. All of the complaints about AoE breaking Sleep and so on? Yeah...a typical team won't care about tactics once they get rolling. ST the leaders or don't...won't matter. The team will do whatever is the easiest and require the least amount of thought. Why? Because MOST of them do it for fun and plodding up to each mob and waiting for everyone to say 'ready' gets boring. They'll roll up to a mob, maybe a Tank goes in...maybe not...and then the shooting starts. Maybe they'll notice that they progress faster if the STs shoot the leaders first...maybe not. If they want to figure it out we put a text blurb in the leader's description, maybe something in the tutorial, then let them do what they want. They will anyway.
So I say use whatever works the easiest for the Devs and the servers. Forget the players...they won't care. The only different between 'team charges in shooting at everything' and 'team charges in, STs shoot at leaders while AoEs target the grunts' is targeting and that's something the players will work out for themselves.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Not really. It means you AOE just like before, it just won't be a quick, HAHA minions are dead.
Herd and burn would still be doing damage to the minions. They just won't melt as fast as they did in CoH, but likely would still melt fast enough, after all, everyone is AOEing.
I would comment, but because I disagree with the premise of the original post, I am not allowed to make any comments on the mechanics of this "fix" to a [b]perceived[/b] issue.
something like that, yes. More accurately, you should state your specific opinion openly ("I don't agree it's a problem, COX did it fine.") and move on. You aren't able to be objective and constructive in discussing alternatives.
you're allowed to do whatever the boards allow, but your contrarianism just cycles through justifications for why the old system is fine rather than exploring alternatives (which is the intent of the thread)
you're allowed to step into an RP thread and talk about roleplay servers.... but that doesn't mean you should.
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
Brand X answered with what I was going to say.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
To get back on topic (remember the topic?):
The problem with CoH and the trend towards AoEs was not how strong they were but how often they could be applied. CoH was designed as a team game. You COULD solo but it was intended to be harder and slower on purpose. Now take a typical Controller. They have a ST Immobilize, a ST Hold, an AoE Immob, an AoE Hold as well as a variety of other effects. The ST attacks did the most damage because...well...because they only hit 1 guy. There's your Lt or Boss focus. The AoE Immob was on a fast enough recharge out of the box that you could perma-Immob a spawn. However doing do meant that the spawn would shoot you to death before they were defeated. The AoE Holds were designed to last 15-30 seconds out of the box but with long enough Recharge that there was NO WAY to stack them without outside help like Speed Boost from Kinetics. This encouraged team play since more members of a team meant safer xp as well as faster xp.
After ED and before Inventions this was less of a problem. It was impossible to get the best AoE powers to be perma without outside help or a team. Then Inventions came in and the genie was out of the bottle. The Forums were filled with builds that enabled perma-Hasten and perma-Dominance. From that point on is when the gap between haves and have nots really began because the good gear that enabled some toons to do really well became expensive. This is largely due to the fact that for two years high-end toons had very little to spend Inf on. Now 50s could drop millions on the Market for an extra 5% Recharge and were glad to do so.
IMHO this is a perfect storm of problems that culminated because several things happened in order. ED came along and stripped much of the power from many characters. Players naturally wanted that power back. Then Crafting and the Market opened after two years of saving Inf which resulted in instant inflation. Now many toons that could solo before, albiet slower, could plow through content like nobody's business where before only a team could accomplish this. Inventions enabled many characters to do things that they were never designed to do originally. This is where the game broke. The trick is how to avoid all of these problems with our shiny new CoT.
Crafting and the Market will be available from the beginning so there will be no chance for bored players to hoard their wealth. Problem solved there.
ED will not be taking place mid-stream (if at all...) so no worry of the whole slash and burn of some character's power levels. There will be tweaking but hopefully these will be small and thus easily dealt with.
Crafting will be an issue if we don't set some sort of standards early on. How much should a character be able to improve their performance through Crafting and gear? Assuming that Boosts will enable us to add 100% to the effectiveness of a power (doubling the damage, halving the Recharge time etc) then how much MORE should crafting give us? THIS is the issue we need to address. If an AoE power will slaughter an entire spawn but only be usable every 5 minutes then who cares? You put 5 of those in a team and it's STILL a minute between firings. Ah but if everyone has 150% Recharge because of Boosts and crafting now the 5 minute power can go off every 2 minutes. 4 on a team means one of those every 30 seconds. 8 on a team is essentially once per spawn = massixe XP injections.
Teams have always been able to combine their effects to gain faster xp. I don't think there should be an xp bonus for teaming because leveling speed is its own reward IMHO. There is every chance that clever players will figure out some way to use Power A to enhance Power B beyond all planned limits which will, in turn enable faster leveling than is desired. That's what players DO. So we have to make sure that things are kept under control even at the extreme end.
In other words, what is the absolute fastest we want the OMG WOW Powers to fire? Once we determine that, we can begin to sort out how effective ST should be versus AoE.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
So long as each has its fair share of opportunities[color=red]*[/color] to shine, I'm not too fussed about trying to find other ways to create 1:1 comparisons. For an example, let's turn the dial all the way over to 'farm'. There ought to be missions, or the possibility to create them, that allow ST oriented characters to be efficient as AoE oriented characters in farms tailored to them (over a given period of time). If one or the other is clearly better, there should be some explanation for this. Such an explanation could be as basic as, "ST characters are PvP specialists while AoE characters are PvE specialists, so your ST character will not complete missions/farms as quickly as an AoE character."
As to the how, I feel that making it less than trivial for players to get more than the ideal number of targets into their AoE attack is a good place to start.
[color=red]*[/color] These can be missions, TFs, trials, factions, individual (boss) fights, etc.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Actually, mob size was also something I would adjust. What if the Diff slider adjusted the maximum number of targets for an AoE? Easy would be the max (likely 16 or so) while higher Diff would reduce the max number of mobs that an AoE car target (down to maybe 8?). So instead of having every spawn being +4/X8 you could simply have the AoEs have a smaller max number they can affect.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Looking back as the Original Post, I am going to respond to it, and none of the rest of the responses.
This statement I agree with. Personally, I didn't find that AoEs outstripped ST damage by an extreeme amount. but then, I also didn't run with speed TF runners either. I'm not saying that you did. It just wasn't in my experience.
The same result, Lts and Bosses still standing, could be attained without the use of having to add an additional layer of resistance. Fine tuning the resistances of LTs and Bosses, the damage of AoEs, the damage of Non-AoEs, even the HPs of the LTs and Bosses would give the same result that you are asking for as the Positional Resistance would. Without the added layer of resistances to complicate things.
Giving the LTs and Bosses AoE defense would also help alleviate the Issue of AoEs. It would also tend to urge the players into using a "smart" play-style. The tactical decision in this case would be to use ST attacks on the bosses and Lts instead of AoEs.
Now, a Positional Resistance as a gimmick for a specific faction (Nemesis), I don't have a problem with it. As a game-wide mechanic, I do have an issue with it.
For this statement, I would say that it would depend on the rank of the enemy. It should be as easy to defeat 12 minions with a tier 9 AoE as it is to defeat 2. It would be a waste, but it should be just as easy. LTs and Bosses, with their typed resistances and larger HP pool, should survive the tier 9 assault. Unless, of course, the team uses multiple tier 9s. Then I would think that even the LTs shouldn't stand up to that, and the Bosses should be seriously hurting at least.
This is all assuming that the character is not at the damage cap, which I would hope would be made impossible to reach alone. Simplest fix for that would be to make the like-type consumables non-stackable. In other words, you'd only get the benefits of 1 Damage inspiration, instead of stacking 10 of them for 10 times the boost. But, I think we're getting into yet another topic for discussion with that.
I rather like this proposal, especially since it also nibbles on one of the roots of the problem discussed in [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/knockback]a certain other thread[/url]. Unless the available ST attacks are capable of taking out a Lieutenant in one volley (or near enough for the AoE attacks to finish him off in spite of the PBAoE Aura), the quickest way to get rid of that Aura may be for someone with [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110442/trivia?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu]Yellowstone[/url] levels of ST knockback to knock the Lieutenant away. Sure, he'll just get up and move back in, but in the interim the AoE attacks are chewing up his flunkies. It's also less effective when there are multiple Lieutenants and/or Bosses etc., but it would presumably still have some effect, if you target the Biggest Bad for the knockback (or at least the biggest bad that you don't think has knockback resistance).
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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if your single target toon is in competition for minion targets then you are playing wrong. scrappers were boss and lt killers. AOE's were not really effective against those. nerfing AOE's so you can be king of the hill wont work very good
believe me, I have no intention or desire to see AOE nerfed....
actually I think my biggest concern was always that I felt it was silly that all single target attacks "had to" be significantly more damaging than comparable aoes, because otherwise aoe's are just universally better.
To me, the solution is finding some way to contain the effectiveness of AOEs without minimizing their damage...
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
Well, only one thing holds back AoE damage in real life, and it's already been mentioned (and dismissed) above: friendly fire / collateral damage. The US military, after developing mind-bogglingly effective AoE weaponry (carpet bombing, cluster bombs, thermobaric weapons, even [i]nuclear[/i] weapons) has spent enormous sums developing not just precision-guided, but specifically [i]less[/i]-destructive weaponry -- from the Small-Diameter Bomb to Griffin Missiles designed to destroy a single room in a building to a close-in point defense gun system whose projectiles disintegrate in midair to avoid collateral damage they might cause when they land. In military and police actions, there's inherent tension between choosing an area weapon to get all the bad guys and using precise single-target weapons to avoid harming good guys or damaging infrastructure.
That inherent tension would be a good thing to add to a game where tactical choices are a big part of gameplay. If you look at established superheroes in comics, the majority of them are entirely or mostly single-target specialists for exactly this reason -- if we need just the one terrorist taken out without harming the hostages, call Wolverine or Cyclops or Daredevil. If we want a whole building full of nothing but terrorists taken out, the authorities have lots of area weaponry that can do the job (heck, old-fashioned artillery would work fine) and they won't need to call the superheroes in the first place. (Sure, some area-damage heroes exist, but they either carefully limit their area damage or it becomes a major plot element., like when Dark Pheonix ate a star, killing billions of innocents.)
I'm not trying to say we shouldn't have AoEs -- quite the opposite -- but that using them should be more of a tradeoff tactically than just "less damage."
My previous suggestion for friendly fire/collateral damage was met with the reminder there would be griefing possibilities. That's true. However, there might be ways to fight that. For example, if damage dealt to allies and "innocents" [i]cost the user experience points[/i] AND could drop the user in levels, even down from the level cap (so that it could never be a non-factor). And if that exp penalty increased geometrically with concurrent uses, it wouldn't be too bad if players had occasional [i]accidents[/i], but punish systematic griefing by disabling the character used to grief (reverting that character to level one, ultimately). And this might be the ONLY part of the game where exp loss was possible -- I envision this purely as an anti-griefing code for AoEs, not as a routine game mechanic (for example, not a penalty for simple defeat).
That might seem too extreme. My point is that it's theoretically possible to make griefing prohibitive, if not this way than in some other way, and thus the desirability of a "friendly fire" system that mirrors both real-life and the comics should not be deterred merely by concerns about abuse.
Captain of Phoenix Rising
With that, you'd have the possibility of reverse-greifing. There could be a guy that stands in the middle of the prime AoE spot to intentionally make people lose XP, and possibly levels, if they use the AoEs on the NPC opponents. Granted, that guy probably wouldn't last long on a team, but if it's not in an instanced mission, the guy wouldn't have to be on team in the first place.
The poster-child for this tactic in SWTOR is Tatooine, which is the first 'shared' (both factions on one map, allowing for PvP encounters) world in SW:TOR. High-level PvP jerks (the sort of player whose self-worth is measured by how fast they can gank PCs who are so many levels lower that they have no chance of even [i]injuring[/i] him, but who won't face even-level PCs because they might [b]lose[/b]), using one of the 'stealth' classes will flag themselves for PvP and sneak into the middle of some NPCs that are about to be attacked by a member of the other faction so that they get hit by an AoE, which turns on the attacker's PvP flag, allowing the jerk to gank them. With some goals -- each planet's World Boss, for example -- the open-world nature of most of the content encourages high-level characters to use tactics like this to allow them to clear out members of the other faction who might 'claim' the goal by attacking it first.
Strange, I have never experienced that, but unless they changed it on PvE servers from when I was playing (at launch), I never PvP'd another player (accidentally) unless I went into Outlaws Den, or Illum for the PvP area there.
This was on a PvE server as well, and even during the events where players would mix together from both factions, I never got PvP flagged (at least as far as I can remember) accidentally either.
The frequency of it happening depends on the server. I play on the Euro servers where it seems to happen less. I have had it happen to me once though. I actually played on the Asian servers before they were closed down to avoid the mass of humanity that I didn't want to deal with. Unfortunately, the powers that be wanted me to play with others.
Progenitor server here (RP PvE server).
I tend to go for the RP servers, because even though I don't RP in MMO's (well nothing beyond the casual RPing side, as and when I like it), I tend to find that the *general* crowd is far better compared to the other server types.
That is not to say that there are not decent community orientated PvE/PvP/RP-PvP servers, but that in general, either the rule set doesn't appeal to me (PvP), but If there is a choice between a PvE or a RP server, I will go for the RP or the "unofficial" RP server
Same strategy here. I find that the immature players tend to avoid servers labeled "RP" and "No PvP".
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
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