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Essential Ranged Attack Powers

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McNum
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Essential Ranged Attack Powers

So we have a lot of new powerset ideas here, which is cool, some of them are really creative, but also really specialized. Which got me thinking, which powersets do we, as a community, think are most important to have in the game in a way that would allow the most character concepts to be made.

Since there are so many kinds of powers, let's start with Ranged Attacks. And remember that CoT will have extensive customization of color and emanation points.

My question to you is then: What FIVE powersets would you deem the most necessary and versatile for character concepts in the category of Ranged Damage?

Why five? Because it's many enough that you need to think beyond the very basics, yet few enough that you have to leave some out. Also, don't just list five, give a reason to why you want each of them. And to show what I mean, I'll start.

1. Energy Blast
If you want versatile, you gotta have Energy Blasts. Is it a plasma cannon? A ki blast? A force construct? Pure magic? Radiation? Concussive eye beams? Darkness? Weaponized love? Yes, yes it is. All of the above and more. Basically, Energy blast is the go-to for most energy projecting character types.

2. Fire Blast
While this one is somewhat narrow, it's also so very, very iconic in comic books. Every comic books stable has a fire blaster, and with decent coloration options you get both common, mystic and dark fire from this. Or just a recolored flame for style.

3. Ice Blast
The polar (heh) opposite of fire, but also very common. Plus it'll go well with an ice slice travel power. Maybe have it so it can be made to look like crystals as well, but the classic slow-down and freeze powers can't really be done in another set than Ice.

4. Small Projectiles
Guns, big guns, thorns, maybe even arrows. Fast pointy things that do fast pointy damage. It will be a very wide set, with a lot of wepaons needed for power customization, but like Energy Blast, this could be a very versatile set.

5. Psionic Blast
Mind bullets. Can also work as weaponized love. Mostly for a game balance point of view, to have something that cuts through physical defenses, but works less well against the mindless. This does share some similarities with Energy blast, and is probably my weakest pick for essential, but it's also an attack style that's kind of hard to copy with another powerset.

Of course, these are just my five. I hope the rest of you will join in and post your essential five. Would probably be useful to the developers to know. If this one works out, we could do other categories, too. But let's start with this easy one.

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Well, if I'm not mistaken,

Well, if I'm not mistaken, the plan for CoT is to have players instead pick a damage type and then an animation for it (possibly with limits).

Burning Damage then you pick an effect and color it. There isn't a Fire Blast exactly, since you can make it look like toxins or some such.

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

Well, if I'm not mistaken, the plan for CoT is to have players instead pick a damage type and then an animation for it (possibly with limits).
Burning Damage then you pick an effect and color it. There isn't a Fire Blast exactly, since you can make it look like toxins or some such.

I'm not sure how it's going to work, but I dislike the idea of giving the character build too much freedom to pick and choose different effects, blast types (single target, area, cone, etc) coupled with secondary effects (slow movement, slow regen, slow recharge, slow recovery, debudd defense, debuff accuracy, debuff damage, endo drain, stun, knockback, etc).

If you let people take any combination of damage type, area of effect, secondary effects, range, animation time/interrupt time, accuracy, recharge time, endo cost, etc you end up with min/maxxers quickly finding the "right answer" powers possible within the allowed framework and spamming them to the exclusion of all else. At that point everyone becomes expected to use ONLY those powers, because anything else "sucks" and you're not allowed to "suck" if you want to be a contributing member of a PVE team, or PVP, or whatever, right?

Therefore, I'm in favor of MORE structure and limitation on power characteristics, because it allows for/requires more diversity among powers people use. Sadly, this equates to making some people (based on archetype and powerset) have to settle for seemingly disappointing attacks to make up for the really good ones they get elsewhere, but I think that's fair and I think you only get diverse builds if you have that.

It's probably a lot easier for the developers to just give up on design and say "here's what's possible, you guys figure out what you want..." but in the end the game will only be fun for all archetypes if there are clearly defined powers which fit into clearly defined power sets, which involve clearly defined damage types (dark does -acc to target, electric does -endo to target, etc) and delivery styles (AoE, cone, single-target accuracy-based, single target auto-hit, etc).

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To respond to the OP my "Top

To respond to the OP my "Top 5 Blast types" would be:
1. "Energy" whatever that means. I'm thinking Energy Blast from CoH because it's our main point of reference. That said, I'm not saying it has to be given the knockback secondary effect per se, it could maybe get something else, I don't know what.

2. "Fire" kind of a no-brainer, must-have type. Again, whether this involves secondary damage over time or something else I'm not saying, just that something which looks like "fire" should be there in some way.

3. "Cold" or "Ice" or something similar. The counterpoint to "Fire". Nuff said.

4. "Dark" Some kind of shadowy damage type with its own graphics, not just Energy Blast colored black.

5. "Radiation" you might be thinking "Isn't this the same as Energy?" and that misses the point. These are supposed to be different sets with different secondary effects, attack chains, etc. One could argue that "Electric Blast" is not terribly different from "Energy Blast" either, but remember these are meant to be different types of sets with different amounts of AoE, Cone, etc, and different secondary effects.

Things I expect to see beyond number 5: Electric, Psionic, something that's the opposite of Dark like "Bright Light", conventional projectile (i.e. guns), telekinetic, and bow/arrows.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

Brand X wrote:
Well, if I'm not mistaken, the plan for CoT is to have players instead pick a damage type and then an animation for it (possibly with limits).
Burning Damage then you pick an effect and color it. There isn't a Fire Blast exactly, since you can make it look like toxins or some such.

I'm not sure how it's going to work, but I dislike the idea of giving the character build too much freedom to pick and choose different effects, blast types (single target, area, cone, etc) coupled with secondary effects (slow movement, slow regen, slow recharge, slow recovery, debudd defense, debuff accuracy, debuff damage, endo drain, stun, knockback, etc).
If you let people take any combination of damage type, area of effect, secondary effects, range, animation time/interrupt time, accuracy, recharge time, endo cost, etc you end up with min/maxxers quickly finding the "right answer" powers possible within the allowed framework and spamming them to the exclusion of all else. At that point everyone becomes expected to use ONLY those powers, because anything else "sucks" and you're not allowed to "suck" if you want to be a contributing member of a PVE team, or PVP, or whatever, right?
Therefore, I'm in favor of MORE structure and limitation on power characteristics, because it allows for/requires more diversity among powers people use. Sadly, this equates to making some people (based on archetype and powerset) have to settle for seemingly disappointing attacks to make up for the really good ones they get elsewhere, but I think that's fair and I think you only get diverse builds if you have that.
It's probably a lot easier for the developers to just give up on design and say "here's what's possible, you guys figure out what you want..." but in the end the game will only be fun for all archetypes if there are clearly defined powers which fit into clearly defined power sets, which involve clearly defined damage types (dark does -acc to target, electric does -endo to target, etc) and delivery styles (AoE, cone, single-target accuracy-based, single target auto-hit, etc).

You shouldn't worry so much about min/maxers. It's been shown that no matter how insignificant an advantage is, a min/maxer will look for it. Plenty of MMOs out there have shown that their min/max player base will herd towards a specific race/class for what they see to be the best, even if that best is only by .01%

We also know nothing of the intended system to make the idea flawed. For all we know, all Tier's of the same style of attack (ST, AOE, PBAOE, CONE) can do the same damage number wise, with the effectiveness of the attack being based on the targets level of resistance to the damage type.

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I guess what I'm saying is, I

I guess what I'm saying is, I would prefer a world where the min/maxxing of a Gravity Controller is different from that of an Ice Controller or any other AT/powersets combo. The ATs and powersets should have enough specificity and "character" of their own that you have to minmax them within themselves, not just pick and choose anything you want from the entire gamut of ALL possible power properties.

I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about:

Let's say your Blaster has either Energy Blast or Radiation Blast as options. If you take Energy Blast, your attacks tend to be longer ranged, do good damage at long range, and can prevent badguys from getting close to you to get you into melee (knockback, slow movement, whatever). If you take Radiation, you get shorter ranged attacks in general, but your attacks reduce the badguy combat effectiveness in melee is some ways (-acc or -dam or a combination). So your Energy Blaster can be minmaxxed for long range, be a classic glass cannon, and try to play the long range game as well as possible, but your Radiation guy has to devote some thought to what he's going to do when badguys get into melee with him, because he knows it's going to happen in most encounters. This means the Rad guy needs more damage mitigation powers (maybe a pool power like Toughness, which the Energy guy feels he can skip in favor of something else that makes him move faster or do more ranged damage, or whatever). Stuff like that. I want to have to THINK about my builds separatley from eachother and not just be funneled into the same set of "good stuff" that everyone else always takes. That's all I'm saying.

EDIT: The above being said, the more "sub-classes" you have withing the existing heading of say, "Controller", the more of that build thinking is being done for you, so there reaches a point where the devs have to give the players building toons build enough rope to hang ourselves, so to speak, because the more specialized the sub-ATs already are, the more narrowly defined your toon is before you even start to build it and you run the risk of eventually refining the sub-ATs to the point of "so... do you want red shoes or black shoes? Them's the only options, because everything else is figured out for you out-of-the-box..."

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McNum ... you're not even

McNum ... you're not even talking about "Powers" ... you're just talking about Damage Types and the Visual FX that go with them.


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

McNum ... you're not even talking about "Powers" ... you're just talking about Damage Types and the Visual FX that go with them.

I agree.. (for now Redlynne... for now)

There will be more than just damage attacks.. but even still there are many variable therein.. is it single target, cone target, line of sight target, PBAoE target, ranged target AoE, No target AoE (eewww), melee distance, short distance, medium distance, long distance, sniper distance, does it have movement (lunge or jump back),

And then all the other types of casts.. shields, bubbles, mez, stealth, buffs, debuffs, pets, ...

Asking for a few damage types for inclusion does not provide me with much insight into what it is you're looking for.. perhaps you could be more detailed in what it is you're looking for OP

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One last note. I don't want

One last note. I don't want a game where I can make all my blasts LOOK like red and yellow flames, but have them do, say, "Ice" type damage, when I look at the official damage report. A power that looks like fire should be "fire typed" in the official sense, for whatever that's worth. Being able to change the colors of the flames, make the flamses shoot out of a gun or my eyes or my chest or whatever is fine, and I like that the powers will have different areas of effect, cones, etc, but I don't wat there to be any "deeking" people with powers that look like one type but are officially something else.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

One last note. I don't want a game where I can make all my blasts LOOK like red and yellow flames, but have them do, say, "Ice" type damage, when I look at the official damage report. A power that looks like fire should be "fire typed" in the official sense, for whatever that's worth. Being able to change the colors of the flames, make the flamses shoot out of a gun or my eyes or my chest or whatever is fine, and I like that the powers will have different areas of effect, cones, etc, but I don't wat there to be any "deeking" people with powers that look like one type but are officially something else.

Respectfully disagree.

If i shoot flames of psychic energy I dont want people telling me "Hey that shouldn't look like fire". Or if I stab someone with a pink colored katana I want it to do psychic damage i don't want people saying "hey! thats supposed to be cutting damage".

Create your character based on their THEME of what they're resistant to (and I'm betting every character will have some innate weaknesses to SOME type of energy).

Thats FX of the casting and the power.

Now I DO think there's room for the FX of the affected targets to have built in tells. If a target hit by psychic damage there could be pink dots that appear on the effected enemy. If a target is hit by fire damage (no matter what color/fx of the fire you shoot) the effected target could have orange flames appear on them.

If I want to shoot squirrels from the FX set then dammit let me shoot squirrels. IF I want to rain fire instead of rain water as an AoE then why not (Champions Online weather control character will be used to it).

Id go as far as to say that THEMATICALLY each character has a way of displaying their power that is unique.. Sunspot tells of when he first began to practice manifesting his power all he could manage were dots. Psylocke said the same thing but she always pictured butterflies..

If I want to shoot butterflies then I should be able to shoot butterflies without caring what the mechanics do coming out of my character.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

I guess what I'm saying is, I would prefer a world where the min/maxxing of a Gravity Controller is different from that of an Ice Controller or any other AT/powersets combo. The ATs and powersets should have enough specificity and "character" of their own that you have to minmax them within themselves, not just pick and choose anything you want from the entire gamut of ALL possible power properties.
I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about:
Let's say your Blaster has either Energy Blast or Radiation Blast as options. If you take Energy Blast, your attacks tend to be longer ranged, do good damage at long range, and can prevent badguys from getting close to you to get you into melee (knockback, slow movement, whatever). If you take Radiation, you get shorter ranged attacks in general, but your attacks reduce the badguy combat effectiveness in melee is some ways (-acc or -dam or a combination). So your Energy Blaster can be minmaxxed for long range, be a classic glass cannon, and try to play the long range game as well as possible, but your Radiation guy has to devote some thought to what he's going to do when badguys get into melee with him, because he knows it's going to happen in most encounters. This means the Rad guy needs more damage mitigation powers (maybe a pool power like Toughness, which the Energy guy feels he can skip in favor of something else that makes him move faster or do more ranged damage, or whatever). Stuff like that. I want to have to THINK about my builds separatley from eachother and not just be funneleed into the same set of "good stuff" that everyone else always takes. That's all I'm saying.

I think we'd have to see their planned power frame setup to know exactly how this part of it will play out.

Especially with your examples. Both are the same type of damage types (more than likely) with the difference being animation. Maybe someone's radiation blast does KB instead of how we saw it in CoH with -ACC/-DEF...etc...etc.

They could also make it so, for example...

Tier 1 ST Blast does 500 Damage. Add KB effect, it loses 20 points of damage. Add -ACC it loses 25 points of damage (numbers just pick randomly btw).

I myself like the idea of picking the damage type, the visual effect, and then the matching secondary effects. For instance, this could easily keep a Fire Blast as being more damage, as it doesn't add a secondary effect. Or maybe a secondary effect can be added damage through DoT. It takes away from the base damage, but adds more through DoT.

That would work with both Fire, Electric, and even Radiation style powers. Who says Radiation has to give -ACC other than that's how CoH did it.

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Agree to disagree, but (and

Agree to disagree, but (and call me crazy here, but...) I think a power that looks EXACTLY like conventional flames ought to do "Fire" damage. Powers that do "Psychic" damage ought to look "psychic" to basically everyone looking at them. I doubt the game software will be capable of letting us pick which woodland creature we want our blasts to look like from the list of millions of available options (aardvark through zebra). So I expect there WILL be limitations on what the powers can and can't look like. I think a cone attack ought to look like it's covering a cone-shaped area when it animates, not be an apparent narrow snipershot that just happens to actually cover a cone-shaped area, which area is not even remotely discernible to the onlooker.

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I'm with Kontrol on this.

I'm with Kontrol on this.

The kickstarter indicated that secondary effects will be specifically different than the animation effect which will be specifically different from effect point-of-origin (hands, eyes, magic-staff, Master Sword, etc). I've seen instances where someone wants to roll a toon that is a cold-fire, where it is mechanically ice powers but it's colored and animated with a light-blue flame, which would be different than the purple/lavendar of a psionic fire. Say I want to be a trick-arrow/energy assault vindicator down the road and I want to have the energy blasts come out of a sword or be shot by my bow...

If their planned customization is as far-reaching as Brand X describes, I'd be really happy, because then I could take a hero that uses ionic manipulation or something like it and customize into a structured powerset powers that are more heat-centric or electric-centric or plasma or radiation. The underlying point would have to be that within the classification system and the base powersets we have this customization, because then it could really be as few as 3 different sets for each group to make millions (possibly billions) of combinations with minimal table upkeep.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

Agree to disagree, but (and call me crazy here, but...) I think a power that looks EXACTLY like conventional flames ought to do "Fire" damage. Powers that do "Psychic" damage ought to look "psychic" to basically everyone looking at them. I doubt the game software will be capable of letting us pick which woodland creature we want our blasts to look like from the list of millions of available options (aardvark through zebra). So I expect there WILL be limitations on what the powers can and can't look like. I think a cone attack ought to look like it's covering a cone-shaped area when it animates, not be an apparent narrow snipershot that just happens to actually cover a cone-shaped area, which area is not even remotely discernible to the onlooker.

Well, I do agree with you on some points. Psychic Fire for instance may just be a psychic attack that looks like fire, but is purely a mental assault...that would be psy damage.

Creating fire with one's mind because they're a pyrokinetic (creates fire with their mind) then it wouldn't have psychic damage, as it's not causing damage to one's mental facilities.

Psylock's psi-blades for instance didn't do slashing damage. They were a melee attack on one's mind. If she created a telekinetic blade, then it would be slicing/lethal/whatever CoT decided to call it damage, unless the other aspect of the attack is also messing with the enemies mind to do psy damage as well.

If the fire attack also messes with one's mind, then it would make since for a Fire/Psi combo of damage. If the attack only effects the mind, it could look like fire as purely a physical manifestation of the attacks aura or what have you.

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You do have to separate the

You do have to separate the mechanics from the graphics/animations.

The mechanics include the To Hit, the DMG type, Energy Cost, Recharge time, Range/Shape...and so on.

The graphics/animation include the emanation points, the colors, the actual look.

The mechanics would define the power...the rest is a skin, and could be applied to any of the powers.

Most of this has already been discussed and I think is part of the core of the CoT power sets.

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JayBezz wrote:
JayBezz wrote:

I agree.. (for now Redlynne... for now)

Don't worry, JayBezz, it won't last. ^_~


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Energy Blast

Energy Blast

Fire Blast

Firearm Blast (projectile, like Assault Rifle, or Dual Pistol)

Psi Blast

Radiation/or Ice Blast I'm partial to Radiation, but it just seems right to have Ice in the top 5 list

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I think it's absolutely

I think it's absolutely crucial that we have Banana Blast.

I want to whip out a pair of Bananas and Freem! my enemies with pure banana-flavored goodness!

Be Well!
Fireheart

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For some reason Fireheart

For some reason Fireheart when you talk about Banana Blast the first thing that comes to my mind is that skit by Monty Python!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piWCBOsJr-w

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To answer some of the

To answer some of the objections here, yes, I am talking about on a theme level. We have no hard data on powers to work with yet, so this is more a list of power themes that we would want, or rather, that we think the game would need at launch.

Like in the Force Field thread in the Powers forum, we're not actually at a point where suggesting mechanics will be of much use, but suggesting how a powerset should "feel" and what it would need to be able to do to feel "right" is what matters at a conceptual phase like we're still in.

And yes, the point of picking exactly five is to make us have to drop a power theme that we'd like to have, but not need to have at launch. I consider Electric Blast a good idea, but it's not versatile enough.

I mean, we already know that a "Shoot bullets" power will have the ability to be fired from a variety of weapons, several emanation points on the character and who knows what else. I suppose you could actually make a character who stares bullets at the enemy. Now there's a weird idea...

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Chains

Chains
Fire
Ice
Energy
Guns...lots of guns!

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I kind of see what McNum is

I kind of see what McNum is getting at I think. In CoX dmg types was a mostly invisible numbers thing. Late in the game's life we were starting to get alternate animations, and we had a long stretch of color customization. In the vein I think the stuff mentioned in kickstarter is a natural progression.
But powers in CoX also had a "feel" a large part of it was that otherwise similar powers in different set played at a different speed though the end result was arguably the same. For eg Katana vs Broad Sword. Another part of the "feel" was in the secondary effects. An Ice tank felt like an Ice tank in no small part because of the secondary effects applied. Radiation Blast is another example.
While I like the proposed variety I don't want to completely lose the themed feel of certain sets, even if I need to choose the rights options to build it in myself.

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Fembots with Guns?

Fembots with Guns?

Ridiculous!

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Just to clarify, I guess it

Just to clarify, I guess it wouldn't be game-breaking to have Psy or energy blasts that look like Fire, or whatever, but then that's the nature of "energy" and"psy" as damage types to some extent. They're so mutable, they could look like just about anything. But for the most part, other, more well-defined damage types tend to strongly suggest their own specific set of characteristics that one would expect. I mean, we can argue about whether Psylocke's psy-knives look like they should do piercing damage or psy damage, but my original point was (or should have been) that we can all agree that Psylocke's psy-knives DON'T look like "Ice damage" by any stretch of the imagination. If your game allows for the player to abuse the character builder to the point where anything could look like anything else, it get's ridiculous.

On a more general note, and this is probably just me, I personally would like it more if each damage type has it's own "nature" in the game, for whatever that means. In CoH, Fire powers generally had flamey-looking animation graphics and often had some residual DoT component to them which was different from what other damage types got (e.g. electric got lightning bolty effects and endo drain, etc). I want to be able to associate each "element" with a set of properties I expect that element to have, in game, in a fairly reliable pervasive sense. For me, it reinforces my suspension of disbelief and leads to a better sense of game immersion, although I do admit that it restricts the character build somewhat. But that restriction, I feel, adds to the game experience rather than subtracting from it. The idea that some tools are going to make a whole set of Ice damage powers that look exactly like fire blasts merely for the sake of annoying and confusing people irks me to say the least, and harshes my RP because you know they're not doing it for flavorful reasons, they're abusing it for the sake of abusing it, right? That's all I'm saying.

As I imagine it, if you had the ability to pick your attack-type progression completely independently of what damage type you want, then pick damage type completely independent of what secondary effects you get, then pick secondary effects independently of everything else, then pick graphics independently of everything else, you end up with a guy that pulls out an AK-47 and shoots you with what looks like bright green and pink fire, but it actually does "dark" damage, has -endo as a secondary effect, and it's a PBAoE even though the animation has him standing there shooting in one direction the whole time. I'm not saying you need to eliminate all of those choice options, but you need to structure things enough that people can get some clear idea of what the heck is really going on when a power animates based on how it looks and sounds.

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The animation sets need to

The animation sets need to have an animation for melee, cone melee, Aoe Melee, Cone short distance maintain, Medium distance maintained damage line, medium distance single damage, long distance line of sight,etc..

The animation and FX of each type of power would need to correlate to the same type of attack in the database.

But I still disagree with you. If I want my AK 47 to shoot mental bullets that look like green fire then by all means I should be able to. For the affected enemy they would still recoil as though they were being attacked with psychic damage and have some FX on the receiving end to correspond.

Just because I use a orange colored boomerang of energy doesn't mean it does electrical damage.. it may be made of plasma and thus need to do fire damage.

- -

To restate: I think the caster should be able to look and move however they like in as many combinations as the devs can sell. The affected character however should be where the predicted outcome should be told (as well as avatar UI status symbols for combat status),

Yes there will be "pink ice" that does physical damage, but for the player who wanted a "Crystals" theme they were just satisfied and didin't have to explain why their concept is freezing things. Every scenario that you find and think is "Bad" could be just the concept that someone else has been waiting for. Would you rather wait months (YEARS) to get the concept visualization you want to be individually created and then PRAY that the mechanics work the way you think they should? Or would you rather just pick the mechanics and let the devs take WEEKS coming up with replicated FX that fit MANY themes. One persons energy blades may be telekinetic and do physical damage.. and and another person with the exact same animations may be using katana swords.

Would you really like the devs to sell you the wolf ticket of two different sets? That's what they did in Champions Online and instead of giving the animations to you at their real value they sell you a whole new framework as though it were new work they performed.

The "Feel" of your build should be chosen at the build mechanics level. Some people's concept of fire is the DoT set.. some people use fire as pets.. some people want to blast with heat wave spike damage, some want to set patches of fire down on the map. You shouldn't NEED the fire set just to do DoT. Choose the build that specializes in the mechanics you want then choose your damage. If your fire is orange flames, great.. if my fire is made of heatwaves, great, if someone elses fire looks like liquid (magma) GREAT. It doesn't have to look one way from the caster's point of view.. but once it hits the target, the target should BURN.

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Energy

Energy
Fire
Ice
Archery
Bullets

Those would be my top 5, seem the most iconic of the superhero genre.

As for all the other stuff that has come up in conversation: I am for keeping things simple. My philosophy is: the more bells and whistles something has, the more things can go wrong with it. If the team thinks they can get customization to a point where I can have a "blaster" that shoots energy, emanating from his eyes and hands, but deals cold damage, that also has a -ACC effect, then good on them. But I would rather have a canned power set (just customized coloring and emanation points) than to have them over-extend themselves and create a mess in the costume creator.


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I have to be honest, I didn't

I have to be honest, I didn't hate the original "year one of CoH" power sets. I didn't find that it stifled my creativity to an annoying extent to have to live in a world where the Fire blasts were orange and yellow and did DoT, the electric ones were blue-white and did -endo and the other ones had other effects. Sure, you can have fire area attacks, fire ranged attacks, fire projectiles, fire pets, fire holds, fire melee attacks, a fire tanker set, a fire controller set, and even fire travel power if you want them, I'm not saying I want to prevent that. Wanna change the colors? Sure go for it. But in the specific case of the blast powers as a category, I personally LIKE being able to associate some set of physical properties to "Fire" as a damage type, because that, to me, helps define what "Fire" actually IS, in this game, and what makes it different from "Ice" for example.

I want that because it gives me the ability to understand or internalize what the nature of "Fire" blast powers will tend to be like wherever I encounter them. I want to live in a pretend world where "Fire" is what all people understand "Fire" to be. I don't want to have "my Fire is different from his Fire, which is different from hers, or anyone else's" I don't like having to guess whether my opponent is hitting me with the kind of "Fire" that does DoT, or -endo or -acc, or etc etc. I mean really, what's the point of calling a damage type "Fire" if that term ("Fire") has no real meaning in-game in the first place? If "Fire" doesn't mean the same thing to everyone, then what makes Fire Fire? How is it different from things which are not "Fire"? In CoH, "Fire" was associated with a set of characteristics, it had, or could be expected to have good damage and often extra DoT as a side effect, but was commonly encountered and resistible for the most part, as opposed to Psy damage which was less common, less easily resistible, and had other known or expected quirks. The asymmetry of those two damage types (and all the others) was part of what made the damage types different and thus part of what make the choice of one over the other meaningful in a build.

If you take the "free-for-all mix and match" approach, while I agree that you open up lot more permutations and combinations of different properties for powers to have, you make the choices themselves far less meaningful in the first place, in a game mechanics sense. And if you're doing the mix and match on a power-by-power basis (i.e. this blast attack has -endo, that one has -acc, etc) it get's even more arbitrary and more meaningless what damage type you're using. Project that forward and think about tanker resist and defense sets. Is Psy-resist as hard to get as it was in CoH? If so, why wouldn't most blasters take Psy damage just for the sake of getting their blasts resisted less? In the old days, the argument against that question was that Psy blast sets had slower animations, they were originally only a Defender secondary, not a blaster primary, they didn't get the good side effects that some other blast sets got, there was less AoE, or whatever. There were checks and balances. The game had different damage types that were different in meaningful ways to the character builder, made different bosses more or less beatable by different people, etc. There was variation. There was a give and take.

Ignoring aesthetics, which I grant you are important, from a game-design and mechanics sense, designing a fair and balanced blast set in and of itself is not easy. It requires play testing and thought to make sure the set isn't overpowered or underpowered. Some combinations of things blow up in your face and get really powerful really fast, and that's just within one set in and of itself, never mind the effect of different sets and synergies possible when teamed, etc. The CoH devs had a learning curve on this, and they were professionals getting paid to design a game. Imagine how broken the kind of stuff we're going make for ourselves is going to be if we're given the freedom to mix and match damage type, attack type, and secondary effects to our hearts' content? I believe it would get ridiculous.

In CoH every blast set had it's own set of advantages and limitations, and that made them fun to play. Some animated more slowly, some more quickly, some had more AoE, some had arguably better or worse secondary effects, etc. All of this had to be taken into account when crafting those sets and the powers that went into them, and that effort paid off in the form of sets that were reasonably balanced and fun to play and try to optimize. If you allow ME to make my own powers and sets, I'm FAR more likely to arrive at a broken combo somewhere than the devs were, because they were looking to eliminate that stuff, and I'm not. Assigning different secondary effects to different damage types is one example of a limiting constraint that can do some good in nipping those sorts of problems in the bud, I think.

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As someone who's favorite

As someone who's favorite blast set came late in the game, wasn't all that great, and was about to become the worst in the list if the next patch went live, I don't know if I'd say they were balanced. :p Unless the fact that I loved to play it more because of it's animations and hated the other blast sets because their animations were so boring, made it balanced?

That's why I like the idea of what I /think/ CoT is trying to do (or maybe just hope?).

Tier 1 does 500 Damage, costs 50 End and recharges in 30 seconds (obviously I just threw out numbers here)

Want to add a DoT effect (which I think more than Fire concepts can do additional DoT) then you have the option of higher cost or higher recharge, both of which take 100 damage off the base so you do 400 Damage + 150 DoT, or take 100 damage off the base and do 100 Damage as DoT with no additional End or Rch cost.

Want to add a slow effect? Costs Damage, additional Recharge or more End.

Make it an AOE? Cost happens.

Basically, each tier does the same amount of damage for everyone at the same cost of End and Recharge regardless of type of damage. And the effects you want all have a cost to them. Maybe the -END effect only costs 10 Damage, where the -Regen effect costs 50 Damage.

Each damage type can then be further limited to what effects it can choose. Maybe the Fire Damage attack can't do -END (though looking back at CoH I'd argue that most damage types had a way of doing some sort of secondary effect in one of the sets).

Dual Damage types (which is common) cost nothing extra for the ones that make sense (melee fire fueled punch) but the more exotic Fire/Electrical attack costs something.

Likely to complicated, and possibly to complicated for many CoH players, who don't want to think and put any effort into their character, or the PvPer who just wants to pick the best premade set.

But it would add lots of options for concepts!

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I am a fan of dev made builds

I am a fan of dev made builds that do NOT offer the players choice in mechanics. Sure there may only be three Ranged DPS builds (lets say Single target/ Line of sight Spike, AoE/DoT Maintains, and Accuracy Sniper), but the devs can measure their DPS to be balanced against one another and it comes at no lack of concept for me.

Yes, Radiac, the builds would mechanically work similarly.. but I think that's a good thing.

- -
YES the defense types would need to be chosen on a per-damage type basis. As one example in one post I identified the 5 damage types that exist in comics to be:
Temperature (heat/cold)
Physical (blunt/sharp)
Particle (electric/dimensional)
Bio (Toxic, Vital)
Supernatural (Magic, Psychic)

In my perfect world every build would get to slot 7 damage resistance slots.. no single damage type can have more than 3 slots in it. So if you wanted to be nearly immune (i'd cap it at 75% so no true immunity exists) to temperature damage you'd spend three slots in temperature damage and the other four slots in whatever damage resistance you see to fit your character. This creates a metagame where the builds are given intrinsically equal value but no single damage type becomes FoTM because other players will choose their resistances according to what their build desires. It's worth noting that in my tiny bubble of perfect world ideals dodge is a completely separate mechanic from damage resistance and is "true dodge" that will never go above a cap without investing in the Third Tier power pool (after the role defined power pools comes things like leadership, growth, minimizing, dodge and other fun character designed mechanics that are unique and balanced against themselves separately).

- -

I'm not a dev, but I want to restate that I support giving a plethora options for concept. I DO NOT support giving options for Min/Maxing. Builds should be balanced against themselves which to me means every build has the same mechanic potential as the next. I DO NOT want to live in another game where dual swords and darkness reign supreme NOT because of their theme popularity but because of their mechanic dominance. All telepaths need not do tiny amounts of DoT damage or holds.. some people just inflict telepathic pain and don't want to be pigeonholed into being a crowd controller. The way one player interprets "heat" damage (I'll forever stop calling it fire damage just for you Radiac) should not deter other players from THEIR interpretation of heat.

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EDIT:

EDIT:

JayBezz wrote:

I am a fan of dev made builds that do NOT offer the players choice in mechanics. Sure there may only be three Ranged DPS builds (lets say Single target/ Line of sight Spike, AoE/DoT Maintains, and Accuracy Sniper), but the devs can measure their DPS to be balanced against one another and it comes at no lack of concept for me.
Yes, Radiac, the builds would mechanically work similarly.. but I think that's a good thing.

This example is for RDPS only.. obviously Support could have three or more dedicated build types too (Heals, Fields, Buffs as a top of my head example). But my point remains.. I didn't want anyone thinking I'm saying 3 TOTAL types of damage builds... Just 3 (or more) pre made builds for Raged DPS.

JayBezz wrote:

YES the defense types would need to be chosen on a per-damage type basis. As one example in one post I identified the 5 damage types that exist in comics to be:
Temperature (heat/cold)
Physical (blunt/sharp)
Particle (electric/dimensional)
Bio (Toxic, Vital)
Supernatural (Magic, Psychic)
In my perfect world every build would get to slot 7 damage resistance slots.. no single damage type can have more than 3 slots in it. So if you wanted to be nearly immune (i'd cap it at 75% so no true immunity exists) to temperature damage you'd spend three slots in temperature damage and the other four slots in whatever damage resistance you see to fit your character. This creates a metagame where the builds are given intrinsically equal value but no single damage type becomes FoTM because other players will choose their resistances according to what their build desires. It's worth noting that in my tiny bubble of perfect world ideals dodge is a completely separate mechanic from damage resistance and is "true dodge" that will never go above a cap without investing in the Third Tier power pool (after the role defined power pools comes things like leadership, growth, minimizing, dodge and other fun character designed mechanics that are unique and balanced against themselves separately).

I am not trying to suggest that tertiary pools incorporate defense mechanics already found in the "Tank" builds.. for instance tanks could have (Dodge, Forcefield, Damage Threshold type builds.. you would not take the dodge tank build and add more dodge through tertiary build.. so I was instead talking about innate dodge.. not a Dodge Tank build as chosen at the Role/Build stage of character creation.

I hope that clarifies more than it confuses about my hypothetical

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I have to say quite loudly,

I have to say quite loudly, that I DO NOT favor any reduction in build customization from what we had before. I am not saying completely freeform, that way lies chaos.
But if you take away the ability to handpick power selections and slotting you take away the chance so many of us (myself especially) have to make that character be the special snowflake we cherished so much.
In most of the old AT forums the hottest threads were frequently the ones where folks compared mids builds competing to best achieve some obscurely focused one off build.

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To respond to Brand X's

To respond to Brand X's comments, I understand the idea of a "Power Builder" that makes different perks each cost you something. I just don't trust that system to prevent broken builds (an old game from like 2002 called Freedom Force had something like that, and all the builds I made were WAY overpowered). I think there are too many non-linear interactions for it to work. In a vacuum, adding -endo to ONE blast attack ought to cost you something. Putting it on all of your powers is a different story, and the end of that story is vary dependent on the actual amounts involved on a case by case basis. For example, -endo on a blast power is pretty useless if you only have it on one attack and it only drains the guy for like 1% endo per hit. But if all of your blasts have -endo in varying amounts and are slotted for -endo, you can turn your guy into a pretty brutal "Sapper" pretty quickly, I would think. Other things like that would be like the -acc problem that CoH had in the early days. If you can spam enough -acc on all of your attacks, you could go essentially full-Invis without the drawbacks of the Invis power hampering you. Stuff like that is just too common.

Aesthetically, I like having the freedom to make my toon's blasts look any way I want and do anything I want, and in a perfect world I would love that in CoT, but in THIS world, I know that people will try to abuse anything that's there to be abused, and will usually find abusable stuff you didn't even know was there. Backing up the truck on one "minor" effect to the point where it becomes broken is one tactic, combo-ing up on different ones that synergize with each other really well is another. Making your blasts look JUST LIKE one thing but actually be something totally different is another. Having absolutely no choice is no fun, but completely unlimited options is equally unfun too in a different way. If you give people total freedom, everyone always ends up making a toon which can be best described as "Like Superman, but with Green Lantern's ring, and the ring never runs out of power, and he's not vulnerable to Kryptonite, and he has Thor's Hammer, and he can read minds, turn invisible, and change shape." At some point you have to say enough is enough. People actually need some structure within which to create well-defined characters, and those characters need limitations. Less is more, to a point. It's important to find that point.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

To respond to Brand X's comments, I understand the idea of a "Power Builder" that makes different perks each cost you something. I just don't trust that system to prevent broken builds (an old game from like 2002 called Freedom Force had something like that, and all the builds I made were WAY overpowered). I think there are too many non-linear interactions for it to work. In a vacuum, adding -endo to ONE blast attack ought to cost you something. Putting it on all of your powers is a different story, and the end of that story is vary dependent on the actual amounts involved on a case by case basis. For example, -endo on a blast power is pretty useless if you only have it on one attack and it only drains the guy for like 1% endo per hit. But if all of your blasts have -endo in varying amounts and are slotted for -endo, you can turn your guy into a pretty brutal "Sapper" pretty quickly, I would think. Other things like that would be like the -acc problem that CoH had in the early days. If you can spam enough -acc on all of your attacks, you could go essentially full-Invis without the drawbacks of the Invis power hampering you. Stuff like that is just too common.
Aesthetically, I like having the freedom to make my toon's blasts look any way I want and do anything I want, and in a perfect world I would love that in CoT, but in THIS world, I know that people will try to abuse anything that's there to be abused, and will usually find abusable stuff you didn't even know was there. Backing up the truck on one "minor" effect to the point where it becomes broken is one tactic, combo-ing up on different ones that synergize with each other really well is another. Making your blasts look JUST LIKE one thing but actually be something totally different is another. Having absolutely no choice is no fun, but completely unlimited options is equally unfun too in a different way. If you give people total freedom, everyone always ends up making a toon which can be best described as "Like Superman, but with Green Lantern's ring, and the ring never runs out of power, and he's not vulnerable to Kryptonite, and he has Thor's Hammer, and he can read minds, turn invisible, and change shape." At some point you have to say enough is enough. People actually need some structure within which to create well-defined characters, and those characters need limitations. Less is more, to a point. It's important to find that point.

Which is why I said, it would take work to figure out how much the secondary effect would cost for such things.

And yes, you'd have to concentrate on some secondary effects to make it effective.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

Aesthetically, I like having the freedom to make my toon's blasts look any way I want and do anything I want, and in a perfect world I would love that in CoT, but in THIS world, I know that people will try to abuse anything that's there to be abused, and will usually find abusable stuff you didn't even know was there. Backing up the truck on one "minor" effect to the point where it becomes broken is one tactic, combo-ing up on different ones that synergize with each other really well is another. Making your blasts look JUST LIKE one thing but actually be something totally different is another. Having absolutely no choice is no fun, but completely unlimited options is equally unfun too in a different way. If you give people total freedom, everyone always ends up making a toon which can be best described as "Like Superman, but with Green Lantern's ring, and the ring never runs out of power, and he's not vulnerable to Kryptonite, and he has Thor's Hammer, and he can read minds, turn invisible, and change shape." At some point you have to say enough is enough. People actually need some structure within which to create well-defined characters, and those characters need limitations. Less is more, to a point. It's important to find that point.

Maybe I'm just understanding your fear.. I think I hear what you're articulating is that "too much choice is not fun" because "frankenbuilds".. but I have no problem with a "frankenbuild" if it has the same mechanics as another.

I will note that I think the damage type choices should be limited to 1 per role build. (Lets say you're Tank/Support you'd get one damage type for your tank build of choice and one damage type for your support build of choice .. we haven't received word on this "third" build type but it has been eluded to by the combat designers so I will go ahead and give that one a damage type too). But Storm of the X Men could be happy with cold, electric, blunt damage (wind/rain being blunt).. and she's pretty "frankenbuild-y".

Should there be an advantage for staying within one damage type? Debatable and I can see the merits of why (especially in the damage mitigation model I presented).. But overall I am trying to explain to you that I TOO am against frankenbuilds that are overPOWERED. This is why I advocate more restrictions on build mechanics and less restriction on build flavors.

I have no problem being hit by Phoenix Flame that looks like fire and is Psychic Energy (except of corse the IP License rights, LOL). I don't see it as a danger and you seem to.. can you explain to me why it is a danger? I am being sincere in that I hope there's something you're forecasting that I am not.

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I guess while the idea of a

I guess while the idea of a conventional flame thrower that shoots red and yellow flames and for some reason does "Dark" damage irks me to no end, if they can do it in a safe, non-abusable way (which I remain skeptically pessimistic about until I actually see it) it wouldn't be a game-killer. I'll concede that point. Visual creativity is something I can understand the desire for.

But on the subject of the Power Bulder, I have a different take. In CoH we got to pick powers off of menus. The Devs decided what went on each menu, we decided which menus we wanted to draw from, and we decided which options to take and not take from the menus we chose. This sometimes meant taking a lackluster attack power just to fill in the attack chain, or dipping into a pool for a decent attack power, etc. and as disappointing as those types of choices were, there was some beauty in that in the sense that you were figuring out how to do the best you could with what you were given to work with. I enjoyed that.

That said, if CoT is going to let the players write the menus ourselves, I would expect that once you've written your menu you MUST stick strictly to it. That is, we're not going to be making primary sets for ourselves with the intention of having lackluster powers on there, and we're certainly not going to make sets that contain powers we don't end up actually using. Therefore every power we build in our primary set get's used by us, because we designed it. This has profound implications for the power builder and what it should and should not allow us to do, or how much it should make things cost at any given point in the character's leveling. Every power in your entire character build could get more or less useful based on what OTHER powers you currently have or INTEND to make in the future. The marginal utility of a power at the time it is taken upon leveling up (that is, the amount of benefit you get from adding it to the tray) will be dependent on what other powers you already have, what you were charged for building them when they were built, what level you currently are, etc.

Call me a pessimist, but I'm very uneasy about the idea of letting players like me build all of our powers from the ground up and add them to our list of powers one at a time as we level up like that. I don't think anyone can write an equation for what the cost of different things should reasonably be in all cases, because it's too complex and organic. You just have to play test and figure out where the exploitable stuff is and then design the power set around it. In that sense if the pricing algorithm contains even ONE mistake in my favor as a player, it's a huge disaster in game design.

And we all know what happens when the game devs give us something "uber broken" then try to take it away. *COUGH* Enhancement Diversification *COUGH* So I think it's better to make things too restrictive at first then start to open it up a little over time, because you really can't go the other way. People hate that.

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A fiery blade or a punch with

A fiery blade or a punch with a fiery fist, I would think would be 2 damage types Fire/Lethal or Fire/Blunt. So I don't see the problem with dual damage types.

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Intellectually I don't WANT

Intellectually I don't WANT the devs to take away our ability to choose from the menu. I want there to be some choices in my characters mechanics vs the next person because.. well. I'm special and they're not LOL. But in my gut, my heart is telling me what i've had as my most major complaint in RPGs is that "I don't want person Y to become overpowered" and "I don't want to be able to gimp myself with my choices just because I'm new and picking for theme".

I want gear to play a role (I call the disciplines for lore reasons)
I want mobility (travel powers) to play a role
I want some defining character traits to play a role (My character is a leader and should have some cool leadership shouts!)
I want some non-combat related uniqueness (Morality Slider and Faction slider)

But at the end of the day.. Build Parity is so important to me that I'm willing to sacrifice some of the choices I'd usually make for my self (like how many single target powers do I want vs how many AoE and should I get the one with longer cooldowns or shorter etc). If my character focuses on Single target I'm glad to pick single target and trust the devs to give me a build that rewards that choice (hopefully throwing in an AoE and the powers I need to be effective like run and gun abilities over stand and shoot abilities because I only kill one enemy at a time). This is basically saying I want an archetype only model that I can customize. And I know that is scary because the archetypes used in other games.. can suck. But they can always release new archetypes to adjust with the times or simply change the old ones.. But ALL the builds are affected and not just creating a new FoTM or GoTM.

I also don't want to wait 3 years for a "Sonic damage" framework that works the way I want it to (Ranged Debuff FYI).. so I'd rather be able to pick up Blunt/Particle Damage and use the AoE based RDPS powers with slow/knock based crowd control powers. (PS I haven't talked about the ability to hybridize damage types because.. I don't know mechanically how it should be done.. I'm thinking likely in the gear system but thats for another day)

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First off apologies, I

First off apologies, I suspect this discussion wanders a bit from the op but.........

Build Parity would require so much rigidity that it would be more like a console game. Besides which even if it goes down to something as simple as chocolate vs vanilla some bozo will declare for arcane and dubious reasons that you are a fool for choosing the other option. And for some reason a goodly number will listen to him.
Which brings me to nerf herding. We are going to be playing superheroes and villains. We are SUPPOSED to be over powered. So long as it requires an investment to achieve that power level I'm fine with it. The investment can be in time to design the build, time spent leveling a late bloomer, investment of loot for enhancements, time spent mastering tactics to make it work, whatever really so long as there is some cost to the power level.
If you paid your dues you should be able to pull on super man's cape, spit into the wind, pull the mask off the old lone ranger, and on a good day even mess around with jim.

-joe

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McNum
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Joined: 10/31/2013 - 06:49
Abnormal Joe wrote:
Abnormal Joe wrote:

First off apologies, I suspect this discussion wanders a bit from the op but.........

Oh, it has, by quite a bit, really. Not really what I thought was going to happen, but it's been interesting to read anyway.

Also, I must have forgotten something when I made this thread, as I remember now that CoT will have themed Power Suites, not individually themed powersets. Like Fire will have Blast, Melee, Control, Defense and so on. I speculate this is to conserve art time so all fire effects draw from the same pool of animations and particle effects. And so if a new set of animations are added to Fire down the line, all Fire sets will be able to use them.

I don't think Freeform was ever really on the table, powers will still be locked as to their effect combined with their Suite, but how it looks and where on your character's body it originates from will be customizable. to a certain degree. So you can throw fire, kick fire, breathe fire, stare fire, summon fire, and so on, in any color you'd want, but it will all be the same power, just animated differently.

LaughingAlex
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Joined: 10/08/2013 - 15:55
Ballistic weaponry could be a

Ballistic weaponry could be a set. If we are going for the allowing a shotgun or smg or pistols to fire any kind of projectile, we definently want bullets/pellets ect. But i'd say it'd be best if things like shotgun blasts actually be shotgun blasts rather than a "cone AoE". Simply put I am tired of seeing mmorpgs treat them like that, when in reality, a shotgun is far more destructive up close, not equally destructive to multiple targets in a cone for less damage than a bullet.

I realized something today(5/8/2014) that many MMORPG players, are not like us who enjoyed CoX. They enjoy repetitiveness and predictability, rather then unpredictability. We on the other hand enjoy unpredictability and variety.