I had just undergone a braingasm while reading the Inherent powers topic, and it occured to me. What if there were tiers of powers? (Lets use stamina as an example) Say you have 3 tiers to an individual power, stamina 1, stamina 2, and 3.
The way this would work, is you would just place your power point on stamina 1 (If you have already purchased the first level of stamina) and level it to stamina 2 hence that will be your power purchase. However, The initial recovery gains from stamina 1 would be the most significant, as you wouldn't want to double that rate, causing your endurance to be an infinite power source, so maybe have stamina 2 increase recovery not quite as vast as 1 did, but have it increase the amount of energy available to you.
Lets use another power for example. Say a healing aura, The first tier of healing aura grants you the ability to heal in an area of effect. The second would further increase the range maybe? the amount of healing, and perhaps reduce the amount of energy to cast it and so forth.
I'm not saying that this would be the best system to have for all powers. But maybe there are certain abilities it could work with? I cannot tell you how many times there came a level when there wasn't a power I wanted to pick, but I needed to choose one just to move on, and that seemed frustrating to me knowing I would seldom use that power when I would rather increase ones capability.
This also leads to the ability to further specialize your character IF you wanted. I don't want a system like this to have to be a "need" by the players, but rather a want.
I can see this would require working to the leveling system that's been laid down, but I figured now would be the best time to suggest such a thing if it were to ever happen. I want to know y'alls opinion of such a system.
Keep Low. Move Fast. Kill First. Die Last. One Shot. One Kill. No Luck. Pure Skill.
I actually really like this idea! But I do see several problems with it.
The biggest problem I see is that it seems that it would quickly become a necessity, as you suggested. For example, many people would not be content to be a "pretty good" healer when they could put all of their power choices into 3-4 powers and be the "best" healer. I understand the difference there that you could choose to specialize OR diversify, which is a point that I really like, but once people get their power cycles going where they chain together the same 5 attacks, it would seem like those who put all of their powers into those 5 attacks would have a significant advantage in team play, making that much more common than people diversifying.
Again, this is not really a problem exactly, as that play style would come with certain disadvantages, but I feel like it might pressure people into using that method for, say, much of the high-end content. I just can see the comments on the global chat now - "trial group looking for healer (must have maxed heal aura)" - or seeing team chats like "why wouldn't you max your nova?"
These type of statements could be hurtful to players who are simply trying to have fun and choose all kinds of powers. I know I started playing CoH when I was very young, and I took player criticism very hard, and went multiple times to delete a character and start over because somebody in Atlas Park told me that my character idea was bad. I just fear that such a thing, although the concept is great, would create *less* diversity rather than more, as well as seeming to restrict players from exploring a wide range of powers.
As the system seems to be set up now (and as it was in CoX), they allow for specialization of powers in the form of enhancements that you receive on the levels which you do not receive a power. This allows for specialization, but everyone has to put their bubbles somewhere and there is a maximum. I would have the same worries if they allowed you to have 15 bubbles on a particular power if you wanted, in which case everyone would want the healer that 15 bub'd heal other, despite the diminishing returns.
Your first statement is very true, unless you gave the players a motive to diversify they would most likely specialize. The only reason I could think to choose many would be to have a capability in all scenarios rather than to surpass in one. Say the enemy group is fire resistant, but that's all you specialized in, you will do damage but it will be minimal, whereas the one who diversified has both fire attacks and lethal range, and can shoot them more efficiently even though he is not specialized in that field. And I'm certain other fixes to the situation can be thought up, say real quick you don't want to be JUST a healer, you want to have some sort of offensive/defensive capabilities for survivability in other scenarios.
Overall I can sort of see specialization becoming what someone would want during the TF's and players switch to their alts which have specialized in different fields. One way to work around this would be to make specializing not as powerful. Enchantments are what really giving the powers it's bread and butter and I believe it should stay that way or quite similar to it, Specializing would just be taking it a step further. As I said before with tiers, if you take the healing aura, and didn't increase the healing AS much maybe 20-50% increase to healing, but increased it some, and increased it's range or something along those lines, and with the last tier have healing be increased by even less it wouldn't make it as great a necessity as it would if you doubled or substantially increased it.
Keep Low. Move Fast. Kill First. Die Last. One Shot. One Kill. No Luck. Pure Skill.
I know people, even after ED, who swore by 6 slotting same enhancements because added benefit is added benefit, especially if you have nowhere else to put a slot. As someone who set up a perma-hasten build (once I might add) post ED, this was necessary to get that...without spending a crapton on IOs which I wasn't about to do for a gee-whiz build.
ED is an extreme example of just what you're talking about. Unless it is an increase so minor that most people consider it a waste of time, then people will specialize, since there is an inherent reward to specialization that doesn't exist for diversification.
Design wise for an MMO you should end up with 5-7 abilities used all the time, another 5-7 abilities that are situational but commonly used, and then 5-7 abilities that are situational uncommonly used.
With Auto and Toggle powers (just termed passive in most other MMOs) this number can be much higher than the 15-21 referenced here. When you get beyond the 15-21 Active power range many players reach information overload and simplify their play down to the 15-21 range anyway.
So, is there any real use for diversification?
No, and as a long time player of EQ I can tell you that most players don't have a use for diversification either. There were a lot of spells for the pure caster classes that people would tell you not to bother even buying because you would put it in your book and then never use it. Considering you could only have 8 spells ready at a time...
Anyway, the point I'm making, long winded as it is, is that players want simplicity and if you reward them for this simplicity then they will take it every time.
That being said, if there were toggles that used additional endurance and buffed a number of powers generically, that might be a good way to go: IE Healing Range which would be a toggle and affect all of your healing spells. You could then slot the new power with range enhancements which would further increase it's effectiveness...
It is still specialization, to a certain degree, but it requires greater diversity in how you put your other resources.
Since my topic spawned this, I suppose I should comment here.
The big problem I have with advantage points and tiers in CO is that it feels forced. Do you REALLY want have 36 points that you spend on 11-14 abilities (11 for most ATs, 12 for some ATs, 14 for freeform)? Already you're limited on what you can take, so why limit the effectiveness of them all by adding tiers? Advantages I kinda get.. changes the utility of powers. But having to spend 4 points to fully rank ONE power.. yeah no. In ATs especially, you always feel like you have those useless powers (usually at 40) like Shatter for Glacier and Brimstone for Devastator. CoH had it set so you could have NO useless powers with 24 power points to be spent on abilities from your primary set, secondary set, and the 3 types of power pools.. not to mention the achievement powers.. Nightmare especially was built on that idea of no useless ones (Energy/Dark Corruptor? Yeah there were some in those sets that I didn't quite think fit the concept.) and had a good mix of powers from Presence, Flight and Soul Mastery. Now imagine if I also had to spend points to rank these powers up and you see my big problem with the idea. You turn the game into a number cruncher.
And the question "Did you use all your powers?" No. I didn't.. Does a true hero/villain use every power in his repertoire? Nope. Superman never hits enemies with a heat ray or such.. Batman doesn't use every batgadget on a few thugs. Same applied here. I had 3 hotbars and swapped between them whenever i was in the mood to, just to keep things spiced up. Only similarities were the Energy abilities (Torrent, Power Burst, Power Blast, Sniper) and Unrelenting.
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*raises hand* I had useless abilities that if i could, i would have totally deleted my character... But i had the zookeeper badge on him, and a few accolades.
Yeah, Empathy was *full* of useless abilities if you weren't teamed up.
That's the one thing I mentioned in another post. I hope we don't end up with all these abilities that we don't ever use and end up just mashing one attack. And I wasn't really a fan of the advantages of CO. Mainly cause I had to decide if I wanted an attack to do something specific like say generate threat or have it harder. Why can't I put the points to let it hit harder and generate threat. I just don't like the tiers of CO. And I never really liked tiers in general. I just liked that the powers got stronger as you leveled and you had the ability to enhance them like in CoH.
But yea, people do tend to end up looking for that one build and then everyone says only use that build otherwise you aren't playing right. Which is pretty sad cause then it doesn't feel like you are playing to your own play style. But, it also kinda shows that there are powers that just seem added in to fill up the power slots. When I made a blaster I never used like several of the first powers ya got cause they made no sense to me to have. Like the close combat energy thing. Why am I even that close in battle to begin with. I'm ranged. I should be off in the distance. Feels like by end game I should just get to respec and take only the powers I'm going to actually use and not respec and have to pick powers in an order. Like rather then HAVING to grab that melee blast, I could just skip it all together and grab the snipe attack instead .
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There are always odds of encountering a power that I will hardly use, but would rather choose that since it's the lesser evil of all the other choices offered at the time. Unless for show, AR/Dev was a great example of a character you played as just to look at all the neat little nick-nacks. Few of those powers I found useful, but there were some useful powers. Just less than there was useless ones. Honestly I had difficulty finding a use for the time bomb unless the enemy was going to be there a while. Didn't make sense to waste time setting it when I could just be blasting it away, but I see your point in that no hero/villain will use all the powers that are offered to them, but in this case there were few that I found efficient enough for combat.
My point being is that I would rather spend a power point to increase a powers potential than to buy an inefficient one with no better choices available at that level. Ya dig me?
Keep Low. Move Fast. Kill First. Die Last. One Shot. One Kill. No Luck. Pure Skill.
NOT A TECH NOT A PROMISE
The latest design I saw allowed for some abilities that were 'pick it once and it grows with you' and others that were 'stack picks here for more effect'; so a mix.
We will see what survives the coming months.
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Alternative to selecting a power...
Definitely a difficult nut to crack...
Personally I like the idea, instead of picking a power I can enhance an existing one. Now rather than tiering I would suggest a perma-boost/enhancement selection.
For example, say I reach a level where I didn't like any of the available powers and I knew there was one I wanted coming available in a couple levels then I might look at my existing power set and think about what would make one of my existing powers work better in whatever play style I use. More range, damage or perhaps accuracy (or whatever aspect). Now the power is working better without making me overly powerful. Unless I respec the character, that boost stays attached to that power permanently thus reducing the number of enhancements I could use for it.
Ideally the boost would give more umph than typical enhancements since you are spending an entire power point on it but not so much as to imbalance the game. Say maybe as much as a set of three DO's or IO's but for only one aspect (range,damage,accuracy,etc). Not too much power but worth the point without creating a huge imbalance in the game. And unlike an enhancement the boost could grow with the character since it is permanent.
Thoughts??? Sound like too much power? or balanced?
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
I remember Demo-Man...,
- ...my Inv/SS Tanker whom I was determined to dole out serious punishment...so even though it was after ED - I six-slotted all his attack powers for Damage. Why? Because the numbers spoke for themselves...he was -THE- Hardest Hitting SS Tank, because no one else would dream of six-slotting their powers for a singular purpose due to the rate of return drop off passed the third slotting. I was proud of him...he was slow, ponderous, but fun to play - especially with other Tanks who boasted to be 'powerful'. My character's general response was, 'You hit like a girl...whatsamatter, didn't eat your Hami-O's this morning?" ^_^
Finally, someone whose philosophy in Tanks that's the same as mine. Taking damage but spitting it out too. You should totally you know, join my club ;) We're past the dumpster in the creepy Alley, our hours are from 11 at night to 4 in the morning.
Truly though, I found there to be powers that were useless to my play style for my build of WP/SS, granted I didn't pick them, but to me it was picking from the lesser of two evils, when a power that I was looking forward to in several levels wasn't available until then, it almost made it feel like one of those "Ehh" levels where you don't pull a lot of ground from it.
Keep Low. Move Fast. Kill First. Die Last. One Shot. One Kill. No Luck. Pure Skill.