It wouldn't really be worse because this is how the powers are PROBABLY (it might not at launch, but this is how the devs are thinking about making the powers work.) going to work

http://cityoftitans.com/forum/how-basesthemesanimations-work-together

Atleast according to shadow elusive. Making something like a small army of weak creatures or having a large powerful creature would be bases that you can add themes to make what you want. Therefore it would be possible after making your standard mastermind pet setups to make these more diverse setups without having to "redo" everything. Also I would suggest sticking this in either the suggestions forum or in the general classifications forum so that more people can read it, including the devs.

Then do what you can to help drum up funds and volunteers! This is going to be the most work of all the Classifications, by far, so they need much more resources for it. :)

I don't know who might have made you a target for your love of MMs (which I share), but they can go jump in a crocodile-infested lake. "Illegitimi non carborundum", as the not-real-Latin phrase goes. :)

Master Minds a class I also enjoyed is the hardest. Like Dow2117 said it's a lot of work. Like everything else to get it right best to take the time needed.

as to the OP's line of thinking though...

since visuals are separate from function (if things go as planned)... it doesn't seem particularly unreasonable that one of the "powersets" involves boosting the function of a small pool of actions.

whether that be melee attacks, ranged attacks, mezz abilities, or pets.

basically some sets would have many "types" of abilities... while other sets would have a few "types", but with the ability to modify the affects of those few types (like, say, putting on one toggle that makes all your attacks have property X added to them, while a different toggle would add Property Y.... or they could be long term clicks instead of toggles... or pet upgrade type powers (they could even be personal "upgrade" powers))

so, you could either focus on lots of abilities (or pets) at your command at any given moment... or the ability to boost or improve a small pool of abilities (or pets)...

Sort of, a "Tactics vs Strategy" type vibe.

magical cards or swords would make me happy...

but the idea of having a "familiar" (not really the same thing as a pet) being the "cast point" of a power really isn't the same sort of thing as a controllable pet.

desviper wrote:

Tiger has a great idea there. Having a ranged attack coming from the pet would be awesome, and it makes perfect sense for an MM, especially robots, toys, or pets.
Only issue i could see is that it makes the MM look weak, but the option moving it back to the toon solves this.
Another issue could be coned attacks, maybe it'd be an unfair advantage for an MM to be able to move the vantage point to anywhere he can place the pet...or this could be a totally fair advantage for arguably the squishiest of classes.

I think in the case shown in the picture, the "pet" is really more of a costume piece, not an individual entity with it's own HP bar. Just like targeting drone it would move in a set pattern or just hover constantly over your shoulder. It just serves as another focal point for ranged powers to blast out from.

"There is no quality quite like quantity" would be the MM's creed. Many "popcorn" pets would be situationally different from a few pets or one gigantic one.

Thugs' Gang War gave you randomly 10-13 little popcorn pets with a weak, slow attack each. Their real power was to divide-and-be-conquered by the monster or group of monsters, diverting and absorbing an attack or two each before dying, thus those attacks didn't go onto you, your teammates, or your main pets.

A real "bee swarm" consisting of 100 independent bees (forget implementation efficiency for the moment) would be supremely cool in this aspect. They wouldn't do much each, but that's 100 attacks they absorb that you and your teammates do not.

[b][url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC5h27sinjM]Be Amazed[/url][/b] by what having female "pets" as a Mastermind could have looked like in City of Heroes.

Full Disclosure: every time I have to reference this video I lose (another) 4 minutes of my life.

Gorgon wrote:

"There is no quality quite like quantity" would be the MM's creed. Many "popcorn" pets would be situationally different from a few pets or one gigantic one.
Thugs' Gang War gave you randomly 10-13 little popcorn pets with a weak, slow attack each. Their real power was to divide-and-be-conquered by the monster or group of monsters, diverting and absorbing an attack or two each before dying, thus those attacks didn't go onto you, your teammates, or your main pets.
A real "bee swarm" consisting of 100 independent bees (forget implementation efficiency for the moment) would be supremely cool in this aspect. They wouldn't do much each, but that's 100 attacks they absorb that you and your teammates do not.

I understand the idea of the "bee swarm" as you put it would be interesting. But making something like that which can effectively absorb dozens of attacks would have to be carefully balanced and I honestly doubt they could ever justify anything much better than what the Gang War power provided.

You see there's a reason why Gang War was 1) limited to only one type of Mastermind, 2) only lasted a short time with a long recharge and 3) only had a very limited offensive capability with no way to directly control them: That reason was the first version of fire controller Fire Imps. You might not remember but the very first iteration of the Fire Imps power was quite a bit different than the version we ended up with. That power went through 3 or 4 significant nerfings to finally get it down to being non-overpowered.

Fire Imps started off as a timed power that (with each casting) allowed you to have a random number (from 3 to 6) EVEN level imps. What that meant was that if you could Haste yourself enough it was routinely possible to have 2 (and oftentimes 3) separate castings of Imps up at the same time. With luck you could continuously have 12+ even-level imps running around which was simultaneously glorious and laughably overpowered. Over a period of about six months the Fire Imp power was nerfed back from being grossly exploitable all the way down to a single-cast 3-Imp-only power which produced weaker below-even-level Imps.

So with that lesson learned when it came time to create something like Gang War for CoV what we got was a pre-nerfed power that was weak enough to be useful without being absuable. I suspect CoT will do its best to prevent any "pet swarm" type power from being overpowered as well.

Female versions of thugs already existed with player costume choices. For that matter, so did males (I cloned the brute to exact detail as a PC to give him a life independent of my MM for thr fun of it.

I am not sure what extra effort there would have been. Even a few new costume pieces couldn't be that much effort given CoH was set up to generate a hundred new ones a year.

There was one female model used in the Controller Illusion Pets, i think. :/

Redlynne wrote:

Doesn't change the fact that Lothic is right that none of the Mastermind powersets featured a female model (unless if you want to count Demon Summoning).

...There weren't any females in that powerset. There was the "Girlfriend from Hell" enemy from the Hellions faction, but that was a NPC, not a powerset minion.

I always wanted an army of catgirls, but I guess the devs never saw the humor in it I did. 25 years in Japan has completely dulled me to the overt sexuality so many westerners find in Japanese anime. Mostly I just find them silly.

Still, an army of catgirls, especially if I could customize the color of their costumes, now that would have been tremendous fun!

But, aside from that, I played every single Mastermind power the game had in it. I honestly do not understand the point of the OP. Every set was dramatically different in how they fought, how well/badly they responded to commands, what kind of strategies worked best, and which secondary suited them. There were the obvious choices, Robotics/Traps, Ninjas/Trick Arrow, Zombies/Dark, but that was just barely touching the surface of the Mastermind class.

The 1st Tier Robots become less and less useful as you rose in level, unless you mastered some of the macros and keybinds that made the class work. Being able to send a single Tier 1 robot in to draw fire, self-destruct, ambush a boss from the flank, or whatever proved to be an extremely useful feature. In higher levels they made excellent pawns, far better than any other of the Tier 1 pets. The 2nd Tier Ninjas when buffed threw down damage like nothing I've ever seen. Critics like to complain the Mastermind class was a full team unto itself, but that was seldom true. Even though the 2nd Tier Ninjas when property buffed were almost as effective as player characters of the same rank, they were even harder to control. They did not like taking orders. At least not from me. And the Beastmaster set, well, that was like inventing Masterminds all over again. Swarm, wolves, lions, the hawk, the Dire Wolf and so on. The class played entirely differently than any of the others.

On paper they looked very similar, but I found each set completely unique in combat and requiring completely different tactics to maximize their effectiveness. And that doesn't even touch on what happened when you paired them up with different secondary powers!

The CoX Mastermind class was unlike any character class I have encountered in any other game, including games with pet classes. CoX Zombie Mastermind vs. Guild Wars Necromancer? Give me the CoX version any day of the week. CoX Demon Summons vs. WoW Warlock? Not even a close contest in terms of versatility and playability. CoX Beastmaster vs. Druids/Rangers in any game where they have pets? Try getting one of those other games single or double animal pets to divide and conquer the way three wolves, two lions and a Dire Wolf can!

Fire/Fire anything in CoX was nice, but really, not dramatically different from fire casting or fire melee in any decently made fantasy game. But the Mastermind? There was a class no other game has come close to matching.

But I really would have loved a Catgirl Mastermind. Now that would have been hilarious!

AAlbusUUmbra wrote:

I examined them closely whenever there was a lapse in combat, like when I retreated and activated the Rest power. It was the only half-interesting thing to do. The demons had large chests, sure, but there were no "mounds" to speak of.

They didn't look like mammals to me, so I'm not surprised at the absence. I think we'd have to look elsewhere to know for sure, and even that could be problematic. Especially in a Teen-rated game. :-)

I think the idea of limiting pets to male only because someone might make a pimp style PC was just a bad idea. What got done instead? Pimp with male prostitutes instead. PC was the prostitute and the thugs were her pimp (or the male was a male prostitute).

You're playing a game based on heroes and villains. A game based on comic books. All of it has been done in superhero comics, so why limit at all? Not that I'm encouraging the concept, but no different than all nude character...which the X-Men movies have...that were just terrible jokes anyways. :p