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Is Enhancement Diversification Going on the Ash-heap of History?

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Consultant
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Is Enhancement Diversification Going on the Ash-heap of History?

Why not let us maximize a trait at the expense of others?

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what makes you think this won

what makes you think this won't be a feature?

not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM

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I think the devs have stated

I think the devs have stated somewhere that there will be hard limits on how much our characters can be buffed but I'm not exactly sure exactly what that means - if it applies to boosts, buffs or both.

I, for one didn't mind Enhancement Diversification, nor the GDN - and I played a lot of tanks. The problem was the devs took a while to get the "second half" of the plan into action to help even things out. In addition, it made non-EMP Defenders much more popular. ;^p

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I don't know what's coming..

I don't know what's coming...my question was not rhetorical, although I sometimes ask those too.

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Humorous answer: Are we

Humorous answer: Are we playing the answer questions with a question game?

Legitimate answer: We're going to have to be able to see how the enhancement/boost system works first before this question can actually be answered.

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Let's think about it

Let's think about it realistically for a second: Despite all the whining and gnashing of teeth Enhancement Diversification literally saved CoH and allowed breathing room for the entire IO and Incarnate systems to happen. Without it the game would have continued to be horribly unbalanced and would become more unworkable as new abilities/features were added to the game.

The only real problem with ED was that it wasn't part of CoH from Day One. Had that been the case then no one would have known any different and we would have been spared all the angst involved with that. Far from being relegated to the "ash heap of history" I would be incredibly shocked to see this new game start without its own equivalent of ED baked into its foundation.

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

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Far from being relegated to the "ash heap of history" I would be incredibly shocked to see this new game start without its own equivalent of ED baked into its foundation.

This!

It makes more sense for a game that is allowing massive customizations to encourage some form of enhancement diversification. Albeit may not take the same for as those in other games of the past. I love diversity but also variety in implementation. Most games I play that I don't even like still have one or two good mechanisms in place for some aspects of the game. The tough part is incorporating them together into a game players want to play.

I'm sure some form of enhancement diversification is coming.

"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

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The problem I always had with

The problem I always had with ED was not the diminishing returns on additional slotting of the same enhancement, which I thought was a good idea and should have been in from the start, but rather the sudden cliff that the diminishing returns took. It made 3 enhancements the obvious point to stop. I'd have liked to have seen a more gradual dropoff in effectiveness, leading to more meaningful decisions about whether to add another damage or another accuracy.

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I remember reading on the MWM

I remember reading on the MWM forum that an IDEA the devs were looking at (as in not confirmed, do not expect this to be fact when the game is released. et all) that all Boost Types (Acc/Dam/Def/Res/End/Rech/etc) will be able to be boosted to 90%.
I dont recall if they discussed going beyond that so either 90%+ = 90%, or 90%+ = 90% + x% of the remainder (like ED was).

The Phoenix Rising Initiative Rules Lawyer

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I can't speak to this on a

I can't speak to this on a tech issue, but I know there's been a tremendous amount of thought, discussion, friendly arguments, occasional knife fights... errr, I mean, the occasional after dinner conversation on this subject. (And read very little into the MWM logo below my post here, I received that in a box of cereal last week. :)

What I can say, is that I've heard almost every one of the things said here - discussed both in the previous forums and online chats. MWM is very much aware of ED and it's high and low points and keep in mind that a lot of what happens with games is that you plan, you design, and you think it's 'just right' and then it gets into the open with testing and suddenly you find things don't work the way you expected. I won't say that what's being planned will mean there's no need for it, because I to be honest don't even know what powers we have or are planning to have, what their mechanics will be like... or anything like that.

What I can say, is that the goal of MWM has always been to provide people with that sense of wonder we all had playing a hero. That "Wow" moment. Everyone involved in the planning, will put that at the forefront of decisions. The goal will be that everyone can have that moment of being ... awesome.

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The enhancement system in CoH

The enhancement system in CoH was poorly thought out. You must consider edge cases when designing such a system (e.g. What happens if characters use the same enhancement in every slot?) They failed to do that. If they had thought this out properly, they would have put in appropriate limits from the start.

Moreover, the way enhancement diversification was handled was really unfortunate. A system should reward players for thinking outside the box, not punish them for wanting to min/max. For instance, (just off the top of my head) you might have divided enhancements into types, and given enhancement slots matching types. If the type of enhancement in a particular slot matches the slot, it gets a bonus. Then you design the system so the base values are lower. You could still use the same enhancement in all slots, and the effect of each would be lessened, but you are rewarding the player for diversifying instead of punishing them.

The bottom line is that many players will do whatever they deem to have the best reward, even if it isn't fun. Those of you that played Aion may remember the summer event where players got rewards for being logged in. Predictably, you had hundreds of characters running or jumping in place so they weren't logged out.

You must consider player psychology when designing game systems and events.

Tl;dr
Figure out how you want players to act, then use positive reinforcement to get them to play in the ways you want, rather than punishing undesirable behavior. Everyone will have more fun that way.

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ED from launch will be

ED from launch will be received relatively well. How will players actually design their toons around it? Well, human behavior is extremely hard to predict, so I think it will be beneficial for the Devs to ask for frequent feedback going into Beta.

(Currently developing the Sapphire 7 Initiative)

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You make a good point

You make a good point Inspectre, if there is a way to circumvent the perceived "hard way" the tenacious will find it, fun or not. Though it is difficult to anticipate every extreme players may entertain (even in a more or less closed system) it is a good idea to plan for the outliers from the onset as much as possible, such that the extreme choices are still viable without breaking either the game or the character, after all it's more fun to test the game against whatever extreme of play style a player can think up than forcing an ill-conceived limit.

Catherine is right too. Lots of Beta Test, Feed Back, Tweak, and repeat will help make whatever system they design work better! Dev's can't be expected to predict everything the clever players will concoct. It can't be easy to write code that is bulletproof from crashing and meets player expectations for fabulous game playing! Hats off for taking so much into consideration! What a huge undertaking and all by volunteers!

"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

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I'm far from a mathematician,

I'm far from a mathematician, but I'm always amazed at how frequently MMO designers have made what seem to be obvious mathematical bad ideas. IIRC, in the original Star Wars Galaxies, it was possible to make a pistoleer-teras-kesai master built that was all but mathematically impossible to hit. Much of the CoH's original enhancement system was similarly problematic.

I have nothing against "diminishing returns" strategies... but not pasted on like it was with CoH, not as steep as applied in CoH, and not as it fit into the CoH mathematical models, but I'll save all that for another post.

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chase wrote:
chase wrote:

I have nothing against "diminishing returns" strategies... but not pasted on like it was with CoH, not as steep as applied in CoH, and not as it fit into the CoH mathematical models, but I'll save all that for another post.

I still believe the only problems with CoH's ED were:

1) It wasn't in place from Day One and,
2) It happened a couple of years before the IO Enhancement and Incarnate systems were in place to fill the gaps ED created.

If ED, IOs and Incarnates had all been in place from the beginning there would have been zero trouble. The "trouble" came from half-finished systems and people knowing what things were like before ED happened.

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

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chase wrote:
chase wrote:

I'm far from a mathematician, but I'm always amazed at how frequently MMO designers have made what seem to be obvious mathematical bad ideas. IIRC, in the original Star Wars Galaxies, it was possible to make a pistoleer-teras-kesai master built that was all but mathematically impossible to hit. Much of the CoH's original enhancement system was similarly problematic.

I think it's less that they make bad ideas, and more they did not look for abuses in their system. So when the Beta comes along lets all strive to break the game and find those abuses as much as hunting down bugs.

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chase
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syntaxerror37 wrote:
syntaxerror37 wrote:

chase wrote:
I'm far from a mathematician, but I'm always amazed at how frequently MMO designers have made what seem to be obvious mathematical bad ideas. IIRC, in the original Star Wars Galaxies, it was possible to make a pistoleer-teras-kesai master built that was all but mathematically impossible to hit. Much of the CoH's original enhancement system was similarly problematic.

I think it's less that they make bad ideas, and more they did not look for abuses in their system. So when the Beta comes along lets all strive to break the game and find those abuses as much as hunting down bugs.

Agreed.

IIRC, there was a certain individual appearing on the org charts who, if still involved in this project, may be frighteningly good at countering our efforts.... God knows she worked wonders from the player's side of things in our preceding game.

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Enhancement Dysfunction, as

Enhancement Dysfunction, as implemented in CoH was incredibly bad in that it took working builds (such as my MA/SR) and just turned them into rubbish overnight ... particularly when combined with the Global Defense Nerf (so I got double whammied). It just turned my main from being a passably viable character into being a completely unviable character in nearly all content until Inventions game along. During the two year interim ... I was very happy with playing WoW instead of CoH.

The simple fact of the matter is that any enhancement system that doesn't involve diminishing returns is practically begging for an abuse of its structure. The flaw in Enhancement Dysfunction was that the Devs set this up as being a cliff, rather than a curve. The ideal shape for this kind of thing would be a parabolic curve such that increasing investment yields diminishing returns.

So diminishing returns from enhancements in City of Titans ... yes.
Building a "cliff like" drop off in returns ... no.

Build the structure such that the question of "how far to go" in terms of stacking slots becomes a Value Judgement on the part of the player, rather than a "no brainer" because the game mechanics have been "rigged" so as to "force" the answer that the Devs have unilaterally decreed as being the best/right/only answer to the question.


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Mendicant wrote:
Mendicant wrote:

The problem I always had with ED was not the diminishing returns on additional slotting of the same enhancement, which I thought was a good idea and should have been in from the start, but rather the sudden cliff that the diminishing returns took. It made 3 enhancements the obvious point to stop. I'd have liked to have seen a more gradual dropoff in effectiveness, leading to more meaningful decisions about whether to add another damage or another accuracy.

I agree with this.

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I'd also agree the ED

I'd also agree the ED enhancement effectiveness drop-off line could have been a little more 'curve' and a little less 'cliff'.

Instead of three enhancements being the logical stopping point the drop-off should have been skewed so that the choice of whether you wanted to plug in a "fourth of a kind" would be fairly grey and really depend on what you wanted to accomplish instead of being a no-brainer NOT to do it.

Hopefully the Devs of CoT will account for this in the new game.

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

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chase wrote:
chase wrote:

I'm far from a mathematician, but I'm always amazed at how frequently MMO designers have made what seem to be obvious mathematical bad ideas. IIRC, in the original Star Wars Galaxies, it was possible to make a pistoleer-teras-kesai master built that was all but mathematically impossible to hit. Much of the CoH's original enhancement system was similarly problematic.
I have nothing against "diminishing returns" strategies... but not pasted on like it was with CoH, not as steep as applied in CoH, and not as it fit into the CoH mathematical models, but I'll save all that for another post.

I think your other post has already been done. :D

Take a look specifically at Post #11 (as well as the entire thread).

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FYI, I have a post on another

FYI, I have a post on another enhancement-mechanics thread describing what a logarithmic-growth diminishing returns enhancement curve would look like, if any of you are interested. The net effect is that you get a lot more out of enhancement #1, less out of 2 and 3, and more out of 4-6. The curves can be adjusted, of course, but they'll still wind up looking about like that.

Basically, it's the system I thought was in CoX when I first started playing, only to be horrified later by the lack of any diversity in anyone's build. Though not as horrified as I was by the ED "curves" (more like brick wall) they actually used.

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

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Post ED I felt like a hero.

Post ED I felt like a hero. Pre-ED, I felt like a SUPERHERO(and some times a god). It was an awesome feeling. Rounding up an entire map of Werewolves. Perma-hasten/Unstoppable. Super regen with Instant Healing.

I can people saying "that's over powered!" Well pit my Perma-Unstoppable tank against Mother Mayhem, or my Regen scrapper against something with a lot of high burst damage. They'll go down if you don't play smart. Pre-ED, there were many different play styles and even more different ways to achieve those different play styles.

No one should be forced to play a certain way, directly or indirectly. That statement makes sense for both the numbers people and the role players. If you want to solo the game, you should be able to. If you want to play as a group and still be challenge, you should be able to. Let the players create their own experience.

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As others have mentioned, ED

As others have mentioned, ED was part of a larger series of nerfs that dramatically changed how people's characters worked in COH. Issue 5 saw the Global Defense Nerf, plus targets were capped (to avoid herding/mass carnage). Controller pets used to be able to "stack" (ie my grav/rad controller could have 3 singularities out at once) and controller AOE holds used to last longer and recharge faster. I'm not saying that the changes in I5 were bad, but tons of people were affected in a major way. Then I6 and ED drops 2 months later.

Some things about ED that aren't always obvious. Yes, you couldn't 6 slot a damage power with damage anymore. But you couldn't 6-slot hasten for perma-hasten anymore, either. You could only effectively 3-slot stamina. Years later, with inventions and global bonuses, you could adapt to this, but at the time it was pretty severe. Of course, you might say "well, now that you could only 3 slot damage, you could still put in some recharge and end reduction enhancements". But that doesn't take into account how people with high-end builds were slotted at the time.

In issue 6, respecs were not easily available (vetspecs were introduced with I8) and players only had a single 10 slot enhancement tray. Enhancement Bins weren't introduced until I7. Hami-Os were the only end-game enhancements. With no AH, the only way to get HOs was to raid and trade. Players who had put a lot of time into a character suddenly had the rug pulled out from under them and were left with no easy way to change course. Unless someone wanted to just slot over a HO, it could take 2 or more respecs to pull out and mule their excess HOs. Needless to say, respecs in COX were a bit cumbersome and there were all sorts of hidden pitfalls (like forgetting to take a travel power). Even if a player accepted the power nefts and ED in stride, they were still faced with the unpalatable prospect of multiple respecs in order to avoid throwing away hard-earned HOs.

I don't think the take-away from ED is that "ED=bad". I do think, however, that the big mistake was in not considering how it would affect players.

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But Enhancement Dysfunction

But Enhancement Dysfunction WAS BAD because the way it worked was a "cliff drop" instead of a "curve drop" on its diminishing returns formula. That's where it was Bang Head Against Brick Wall Until Bloody Stump Achievement Is Unlocked flat out stupid. The problem wasn't that there was a diminishing returns formula put into place, since a lot of people realized and admitted that such a thing WAS actually needed/necessary/appropriate. No, the real objection was that the shape of the diminishing returns formula that Cryptic chose was just Railroad Track To STUPID™. THAT was what was unforgivable. The ... shape ... of the diminishing returns imposed by Cryptic basically said "play YOUR game OUR WAY or else!" and THAT was what engendered a lot of the feelings of Hatred and Betrayal in the Community that was playing at that time.

To this day, I still have a highly irrational HATRED for Statesman because of how poorly Jack Emmert handled the situation, and how when the response from the Playerbase was SO OVERWHELMINGLY NEGATIVE that it crashed the official game forums for THREE CALENDAR DAYS while Cryptic tried to dig their way out from under the avalanche of hate and anger that had fallen on top of them (and which they had fully, completely and totally EARNED!) ... they simply didn't respond to any of the negative criticism and just left Enhancement Dysfunction in place, as is, for the rest of the lifetime of City of Heroes. The Players yelled at the top of their internet connections "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!!!!" and Cryptic just shrugged and, in effect, replied, "Sucks to be you..." and proceeded as if they'd done nothing wrong, totally whistling past the graveyard.

They could have adjusted the formula for the diminishing returns, but they didn't. Ever. People TRIED to give them all kinds of alternative formulas that involved slopes and curves, rather than The Cliff™ ... and every single time Cryptic just replied (if they replied AT ALL!) with a "polite brush off" which everyone (correctly) interpreted as "why do you care? because WE sure don't!" ... which didn't exactly help things much.

So yes ... Enhancement Dysfunction WAS BAD ... not because it wasn't necessary, but because it was done in such a clumsy, stupid and ultimately STUBBORN way that took any and all feedback on the subject and routed it to the shredder/trash/recycle bin. Cryptic wasn't listening to its Players, didn't CARE what it's Players thought or felt (so long as they kept paying for their subscriptions) and just figured they could brazen it out and make the Community swallow the changes.

City of Heroes NEVER RECOVERED from the loss of subscriptions caused by this incident. A LOT of people voted with their wallets (including me) and left to go play other games. It took me two YEARS before I even considered returning to City of Heroes, and what did it was the Invention System in Issue 9. In the intervening time, City of Villains had launched but Cryptic Studios had been reduced to only the Fighting Fifteen Devs (that's right ... 15!) who kept the game alive on life support, barely maintaining it as it limped along, until NC$oft bought out the IP and created Paragon Studios.

Enhancement Dysfunction CRATERED the game and almost killed it. I have a hard time viewing the WAY they did it as anything BUT the textbook definition of BAD.


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I only came in to CoH in the

I only came in to CoH in the last year or so, when all of this enhancement stuff had been set in place and running for years. I do remember always wondering why ED was necessary: the system seemed self regulating. If you maxed out power, you had additional accuracy. If you maxed out recharge, you were burning endurance. Etcetera. Then somebody explained how IO's would have been impossible without it, and it all made more sense.

But, our game isn't going to use IO's. We're designing from the beginning to have the bad, keep the good. We aren't going to need ED. We will have global boost slots, and power boost slots. Separate Boosts for each. Plus properly set hardcaps per archetype, based on what their performance is meant to be and what would completely shatter them (i.e. no blasters with maxed defense). These limits and this system should solve the problem.

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I think it would be silly for

I think it would be silly for even the most ardent supporters of ED to not accept that its initial rollout was textbook bad. Clearly IOs should have been introduced at roughly the same time to counter-balance the impacts of ED.

This is why I have reasonable hopes that the devs of CoT will act on the lessons learned and make sure that these things are handled better this time around. The fact that they are already "flattening out the curve" of diminishing returns shows that they are mindful of such things.

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

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Young Tutor wrote:
Young Tutor wrote:

In issue 6, respecs were not easily available (vetspecs were introduced with I8) and players only had a single 10 slot enhancement tray. Enhancement Bins weren't introduced until I7. Hami-Os were the only end-game enhancements. With no AH, the only way to get HOs was to raid and trade. Players who had put a lot of time into a character suddenly had the rug pulled out from under them and were left with no easy way to change course. Unless someone wanted to just slot over a HO, it could take 2 or more respecs to pull out and mule their excess HOs. Needless to say, respecs in COX were a bit cumbersome and there were all sorts of hidden pitfalls (like forgetting to take a travel power). Even if a player accepted the power nefts and ED in stride, they were still faced with the unpalatable prospect of multiple respecs in order to avoid throwing away hard-earned HOs.

I'm sure the CoT team understands the negative impact of ED. What I'm worried about is they don't realize the other bits that Cryptic got wrong: respecs. Respecs need to be easily accessible (but not cost-free). Difficult-to-get respecs make every other problem in the game worse, because players can't easily correct their own mistakes or adjust their builds to account for changes in the game. Respecs shouldn't be free, but they should be accessible and unlimited.

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Don't forget Travel

Don't forget Travel Suppression in that same period, Red.

And yeah, Jack Emmert was and is a... donkey of epic proportions. He's nothing more than a suit of the worst type and I certainly don't grace any of his creations with my money.

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Respec availability is

Respec availability is definitely something still under advisement, the sort of thing that, even if there's a current consensus, can be easily changed in the face of a compelling argument. So, go ahead and elaborate in that respect, it's a good subject and a good time.

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Pleonast wrote:
Pleonast wrote:

Young Tutor wrote:
In issue 6, respecs were not easily available (vetspecs were introduced with I8) and players only had a single 10 slot enhancement tray. Enhancement Bins weren't introduced until I7. Hami-Os were the only end-game enhancements. With no AH, the only way to get HOs was to raid and trade. Players who had put a lot of time into a character suddenly had the rug pulled out from under them and were left with no easy way to change course. Unless someone wanted to just slot over a HO, it could take 2 or more respecs to pull out and mule their excess HOs. Needless to say, respecs in COX were a bit cumbersome and there were all sorts of hidden pitfalls (like forgetting to take a travel power). Even if a player accepted the power nefts and ED in stride, they were still faced with the unpalatable prospect of multiple respecs in order to avoid throwing away hard-earned HOs.
I'm sure the CoT team understands the negative impact of ED. What I'm worried about is they don't realize the other bits that Cryptic got wrong: respecs. Respecs need to be easily accessible (but not cost-free). Difficult-to-get respecs make every other problem in the game worse, because players can't easily correct their own mistakes or adjust their builds to account for changes in the game. Respecs shouldn't be free, but they should be accessible and unlimited.

Ensuring that respecs are rare and/or hard to acquire would run counter to the spirit of the game that MWM is aiming to create. I speak with zero authority and knowledge, but WRT respecs being accessible, I'd be floored if, for example, a 100% soloist with only 60 mins to play per session had no other choice but to team up and do some 90 min event in order to swap out a few powers.

(Currently developing the Sapphire 7 Initiative)

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This was a point that

This was a point that Positron made at one of the Player Summits, when I challenged him over "Terrible Volta" as a Respec Trial.

If somebody has a completely messed up character that is just about totally unplayable and gimped on every day that ends in "Y" ... why should they be needing to complete a "hard mode TEST" to determine whether or not they can respec that character so as to be able to salvage it and try again? Essentially, you shouldn't be setting a Respec Trial up such that it only rewards people with "good" builds, which allow them to defeat the Trial successfully, because presumably they're going to "need" a respec less than people who have TERRIBLE builds that are just hopelessly bad and they NEED a respec in order to not be locked into just being an incredibly worthless character build (short of rerolling). In other words ... how do you build a Trial that even a BROKEN character can succeed at in order to get access to a respec, since they probably need it more than some min/max Player who's been doing everything "right" up until now and they just want to rearrange everything so as to exploit some mechanic in how the game works that may not have existed before.

It's a very good question. I'm not really sure I have an "all cases" answer to it, either.


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

This was a point that Positron made at one of the Player Summits, when I challenged him over "Terrible Volta" as a Respec Trial.
If somebody has a completely messed up character that is just about totally unplayable and gimped on every day that ends in "Y" ... why should they be needing to complete a "hard mode TEST" to determine whether or not they can respec that character so as to be able to salvage it and try again? Essentially, you shouldn't be setting a Respec Trial up such that it only rewards people with "good" builds, which allow them to defeat the Trial successfully, because presumably they're going to "need" a respec less than people who have TERRIBLE builds that are just hopelessly bad and they NEED a respec in order to not be locked into just being an incredibly worthless character build (short of rerolling). In other words ... how do you build a Trial that even a BROKEN character can succeed at in order to get access to a respec, since they probably need it more than some min/max Player who's been doing everything "right" up until now and they just want to rearrange everything so as to exploit some mechanic in how the game works that may not have existed before.
It's a very good question. I'm not really sure I have an "all cases" answer to it, either.

Which is why I kinda like WoW's system.

You just pay some gold for it (although the more often you respec in a period of time, the more expensive it gets. The price then decreases over a period of time).

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ED: Non-terrible idea, not

ED: Non-terrible idea, not especially ideal implementation, and what might well be the worst PR campaign in the history of… well, most of the hyperbolic choices would invoke certain Internet Laws and result in a lack of further useful information on the thread, so let's just not go there in the first place.

So just up front: I'm not the guy in charge of the core mechanics. I'm one of a handful of folks who are looking at, well, just about everything under the sun as possibilities. Some of them have promise, some of them are, to be blunt, stinkers that no photons should ever have been wasted to convey — though thankfully there aren't many of those.

One of my personal inclinations is to look for reasonable asymptotic (or similarly self-limiting) curves in preference to hard clamps, though there are certain cases where hard clamps can still make sense (streak breakers come to mind). There are actually quite a lot more of them in the CoX system than some folks probably realize; I have theories about why this might be true (that mostly involve other information about the Cryptic code-base that has shown up over the years), but they're not really all that relevant.

What *is* relevant is that pretty much everything is "on the table", especially in terms of stuff like enhancement mechanics. And in fact there's a good chance that secondary mechanics will probably *stay* on the table until we have a much more solid core to "hang them on". Because, well… Math. It tends to work rather better (as several folks here have noted) if you actually have a coherent system to start from, along with several more nebulous things like "what things annoy people *and* are best to deal with at this part of the system?"

However, one bit I can reassure folks about: by the time you (the players) are actually subjected to it in any form, it will have been in the hands of people who do to numbers what… okay, that's going to go beyond a T rating. Let's just say that while it is entirely possible folks will find corner cases, the chances of it being a *profoundly* broken corner case, rather than one where there's a "// CONSIDER: is this broken, or just at the outer edges of non-broken?" on it somewhere in the internal documentation, should be reasonably low.


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Short answer: Enhancement

Short answer: Enhancement Dysfunction IS GOING INTO THE ASH HEAP OF HISTORY as far as City of Titans is concerned.
Longer answer: Diminishing Returns WILL BE A PART OF the Enhancement System of City of Titans.

All hail the demonic sheep that bleat for our ... um ... pleasure? ^^;


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Shadow Elusive wrote:
Shadow Elusive wrote:

We will have global boost slots, and power boost slots.

Well, this sounds interesting. Tell us more, Unca Shadow. :D

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I don't really know that much

I don't really know that much more. The team themselves probably don't know that much more, they just know all the ideas being floated around. All I know is that Global slots will be awarded automatically, in predetermined amounts at predetermined points, as a character grows. Actually determining both won't happen without a lot of playtesting. but the idea is pretty simple and obvious. We control global boosts by separating them from the power boosts and limiting the number of slots (global boosts are a different kind of boost from the standard power boosts). Instead of planning out how to accumulate thirty 2% bonuses to get a stacked 60% effect, you slot two global boosts. Makes planning much simpler. So you can still combat particular weaknesses or create a particular overarching strength for your character, but not break your character, and you don't need the kind of insane shenanigans you did with IOs. I'm not sure I ever would have understood them even if I'd gotten them before the game closed.

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Pre-Ed - build your toon with

Pre-Ed - build your toon with 6 damage in every slot. Dumpster dive. Win.
Post-ED - build one of these million other builds, fuck dumpsters. win.

/nutshell.

If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
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GH, I cant' recall the rest

GH, I cant' recall the rest of the thread, but I don't think anyone is objecting to what ED did, just how it did it.

I'm glad there will be DR on slotting. I'm equally glad it's not going to be the cliff drop off that ED did.

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I always thought it would be

I always thought it would be cool if each character could add a seventh slot to just one or two powers of his/her choice. That would make it much less likely that any two builds were identical, and also allow some real experimentation and customization.

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Mendicant wrote:
Mendicant wrote:

Shadow Elusive wrote:
We will have global boost slots, and power boost slots.
Well, this sounds interesting. Tell us more, Unca Shadow. :D

Sounds like set bonuses...or an Alpha Slot.

...I want both...:'(

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Cymmetri wrote:
Cymmetri wrote:

Mendicant wrote:
Shadow Elusive wrote:
We will have global boost slots, and power boost slots.

Well, this sounds interesting. Tell us more, Unca Shadow. :D

Sounds like set bonuses...or an Alpha Slot.
...I want both...:'(

Why does it have to be one or the other?

Ultimately, both set bonuses and the Alpha were the same mechanic at work, if you boil it down.

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Regardless of the end result

Regardless of the end result I'd like to see boosts similar to CoH's "has chance to do X bonus damage of type Y". Assuming there are specific damage types and corresponding resistances. Heck I'd love to see boosts that specifically improve certain damage type or add new functionality to power such as:

Dual damage booster: half of the inflicted damage is X and half is fire (i.e. fire and acid) (assuming resistance is calculated per type)
Burning booster: your fire attacks also always inflict bonus fire damage over time.

I find them more interesting than stacking six +damage

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I'm one of those that read

I'm one of those that read about ED after the fact (I came in about I8) and thought 'They didn't have something like that in place from the start?'. Hindsight and all that.

An easy way to avoid the painful respec issue that CoH suffered from early on? Use a system similar to CO's Power House. Call it a Danger Room or something that won't make lawyers cringe.

You pick a power when you level up, you can just select it (if you had it before and are sure it's what you want) or you can test it out against dummy targets or whatever. This is the point where you get to make whatever choices you're allowed with regards to effects, color and so on. The biggest thing for many players will be 'Does this do what I THINK it does?' at least at first.

We always want to remember that there needs to be an influx of new players for any game to survive. We want the CC process to be as friendly as possible. For new players this includes builds, power selection and respecs.

I'm also in favor of the 'partial respec'. Doing a full-on respec of a 50, complete with vet powers, temp powers et al was a PITA! You mean I gotta re-do EVERYTHING just to get rid of the last power I chose?

However as much as it pains me to say I am a strong supporter of the 'no total respec' idea. That is, if you want to change your initial powerset selection you need to make a new toon. With a Freeform in CO you can COMPLETELY strip a toon down to their costume and completely rebuild them no matter what their level. This has led to threads that have 'leveling builds' (those that you play from 1-40) and 'non-leveling builds' that you respec into AT 40. I personally feel that this sort of thing can kill a game.

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...

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*shrugs* Depending on *how*

*shrugs* Depending on *how* they plan to do the levelling up process they could always take a leaf out of Wildstars tree.

Bit of background. Wildstar has their normal skills, they have skill points, they also have an "AMP" system (which boosts your character in various ways, it can also unlock skills, if you go down a tree far enough).

Because you only have access to 8 skills (out of the 30 that you will learn) at any singular point in time, the Carbine developers have decided that you can swap your skill loadout at *any point* that you are not in combat. You can also change the skill point allocation at the same time. So you can customise your skills whenever you are not fighting.

Need more CC?
Drop that skill in.

Need that long range snipe?
Drop that skill in.

Need more DPS?
Take skill points from a heal that you are not using *right then* and bump it up.

You can do ALL of that at any point you are not in combat...

You *cannot*, however, respec where you have spent your AMP points for free. You have to pay for that.

However, they have said that they are going for the multiple build route, so you can swap between different AMP setups (and also skill layouts), at any point that you are not in combat. Like CoX, I believe that you have a certain level to access the secondary build. (if they will allow more is still being discussed internally)

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

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I can see this in the comic

I can see this in the comic book scheme of things Gangrel. Say I'm running GadgetGuy and I'm invading an enemy base with some friends. I've fought these guys before and I KNOW they loves them some traps. I'm not using my 'Social Graces' skill right now but I sure could use some Traps skills and maybe some Keen Eyes. I would see it as cramming before a test or one of those scenes where the team is seriously gearing up for a night of mayhem. If your toon gets jumped walking down the street he has to react NOW with what he's got. However if he has time to prepare, mentally and physically, this sort of makes sense to me.

In CoH terms this would be fetching Temps and Insps from the Base before setting out I guess.

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...

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CoX's ED seemed like a way to

CoX's ED seemed like a way to balance many mechanics of the game, just the easiest way for them to do it. Their implementation of it was terrible and, to me, points to poorly thought out game mechanics and balance before release. There are lots of ways to do this (adjust the mechanics of the AI/NPCs, max the buffs to attributes on a character, ED, etc.). Most games incorporate balance through multiple mechanics and these all aim at making the player get more engaged in how they play, level, and experience the game. CoX implemented it in such a way so as to reduce the 'Super Hero Feel' of everyone's characters and that sucks when you want to feel like a Super Hero. If the right balance mechanics are put in place from the beginning and combined with features that allow players to feel super, it's a win.

It's reassuring to know that the devs recognize how important this failure or our past loved game is to this community. I don't want an answer now, just to know that it's in the discussions.

"it's a long road to wisdom, but it's a short one to being ignored." The Lumineers