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Immortality Curve or Attrition Model?

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Umbral
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Immortality Curve or Attrition Model?

The title pretty much says it all: will the survivability model of CoT be the immortality curve (e.g. what CoX used) or an attrition model (e.g. what pretty much every other MMO uses)?

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The title may say it, but

The title may say it, but definitions would be useful. I presume there is a difference between these models, and one can be described as a curve, but beyond that, I have no clue.

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Yup, I'm a master of the

Yup, I'm a master of the English language, but this means nothing to me. Please un-pack it a bit, Umbral?

Be Well!
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I'm not an extreme expert on

I'm not an extreme expert on all MMOs but I have played 4 or 5 of them semi-seriously over the years. With that experience I can say I've never heard of the concepts of the "immortality curve" versus the "attrition model".

I can only guess you might mean that somehow it was maybe "easier" to survive most content in CoH than other MMOs or maybe you're somehow referring to the relative lack of a heavy "death penalty" when you died in CoH versus other MMOs that made things more annoying (like having to go on ghost runs to recover your equipment).

Like the others mentioned you might want to define your terms first because apparently they're not as self-evident as you thought.

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Yeah, I have no idea what it

Yeah, I have no idea what it means either - which means I can't answer you either. Even though that's my job.

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Shadow Elusive wrote:
Shadow Elusive wrote:

Yeah, I have no idea what it means either - which means I can't answer you either. Even though that's my job.

Maybe we can assume that since CoT is a "spiritual successor" to CoH it's likely that whatever CoH did in regard to Umbral's question is the same thing that CoT will end up doing. *shrugs*

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Umbral
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Foradain wrote:
Foradain wrote:

The title may say it, but definitions would be useful. I presume there is a difference between these models, and one can be described as a curve, but beyond that, I have no clue.

Immortality curve and attrition model are both survivability schemas that focus on different fundamental "end games" even though they use the same mechanisms overall. The immortality curve focuses on allowing the player to survive forever until a given, non-trivial incoming damage threshold is reached, whereupon they will end up dying rather quickly. The attrition model focuses on extending the amount of time it takes a character to die with the knowledge that any non-trivial amount of incoming damage will cause their death.

As an example, consider the */Regen Scrapper from CoX, which was the most famous for abusing the immortality curve. As long as the amount of damage incoming was beneath the rather obscene amount of damage they would naturally recover over the next few seconds, it was impossible to kill a */Regen. When maximizing the effectiveness of */Regen, the focus was then trying to push that number as high as possible (e.g. extending the curve). Rather than trying to stave off your hp eventually hitting 0, you were instead trying to prevent your hp from ever being something other than full for a short period of time. Another way to say it would be that you tried to ensure that you would never die rather than trying to make sure that you had enough time to kill the other guy before he could kill you.

The attrition model, on the other hand, assumes that, under any source of non-trivial incoming damage, you will eventually die, which means that optimization is built around extending that time as much as possible in order to ensure that you will kill the other guy before he kills you. CoX didn't really use this model seeing as every character (with the ability to focus on survivability) had rather appreciable recovery mechanisms, what with the default regeneration, Health pool power, and other +Regen or +hp sources that made attrition largely impossible, but you could make the argument that it applied to Blasters (though their focus was on increasing kill speed rather than increasing survivability directly).

It should also be mentioned that it's possible to apply one model to players and a separate model to NPCs. CoX used the immortality curve for both players and NPCs (because NPCs had naturally regeneration which scaled with their max hp; if you couldn't deal more than ~1% of their max hp each second in damage, it was impossible to defeat them; it didn't really matter for most enemies, but archvillians were sometimes impossible to kill because of this) and most other MMOs apply the attrition model to both (players tend to have a trivial amount of natural regeneration but NPCs tend to not have any at all), but it's not necessary. It's possible to design players around the immortality curve (by giving them access to appreciable native regeneration or healing capabilities) while designing NPCs around the attrition model (by making it so that they don't really heal or regenerate anything).

The problem I've always found with the immortality curve is that it makes creating difficult-but-not-impossible content extremely difficult to design because it creates a very small range where incoming damage can be high enough to be a threat without very quickly translating into simply demolishing the player, especially if the focus of gameplay is going to be on passive/toggle mechanisms rather than active mechanisms, like CoX had. Of course, it also focuses on making sure there's as little downtime as possible (since you're basically either dead or at full health), which is a definite feather in its cap from a playstyle perspective.

The problem with the attrition model is that it basically forces support characters to play "healer" to some extent, with non-healing support mechanisms having to take something of a backseat to "resetting" the attrition timer, especially when you're delving into progressively more difficult content. It also generally requires some amount of increased downtime for solo play unless you dramatically increase regeneration outside of combat (which is actually a pretty common solution).

As long as NPCs don't use the immortality curve, I'll be happy since I *really* didn't like the obscene strength of -Regen when fighting hard targets like AVs and EBs and I can appreciate the advantages of both the attrition model and the immortality curve for players.

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Okay, so this is "I don't

Okay, so this is "I don't want to get defeated, ever, but when it does happen, am I going to get one-shotted to death or slowly chipped away over time?"

I would expect the difference there depends on the class. Fragile classes (CoX's Blasters) will probably be subject to a lot o fall-or-nothing type of "oops, I just died" events whereas the Tankier types will definitely go down after a lot of arduous fighting.

That was CoX, it had variation among the classes. I think you really don't want all of the classes in CoT to be the same in that sense, you want variation there too.

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Umbral wrote:
Umbral wrote:

As long as NPCs don't use the immortality curve, I'll be happy since I *really* didn't like the obscene strength of -Regen when fighting hard targets like AVs and EBs and I can appreciate the advantages of both the attrition model and the immortality curve for players.

Thanks for explaining your terms. I think you're basically talking about degrees of damage regeneration and/or resistance and how it's handled from game to game - by using the words "curve" versus "model" it sounded like you were talking about two completely different things to me.

Again the simplest answer is probably the most likely; as a "spiritual successor" to CoH I would initially assume that CoT will handle damage regen/resist in fairly similar ways. I expect there will be powersets (like Regen Scrappers) that allow players to maximize regen/resist as well as other powersets that focus on just not getting hit in the first place (like Controllers).

It seems the real choice here is between a system where your character is expected to regen/resist damage until you can't anymore and then you're basically instantly dead (your Immortality Curve) and a system where you simply have a ton of HP and you're expected to kill the enemy before you run out of HP (your Attrition Model). Under the first system it almost wouldn't matter if you even had HPs because it's basically a very binary situation - you regen damage or you're dead. The other system completely relies on a huge pool of HP because that's the resource you lose bit-by-bit over time to avoid death.

I would agree that CoH probably leaned more toward the regen/resist damage paradigm as opposed to the absorb damage side of things and that's probably why the game, in general, didn't rely on the need for "healers" as much as other games do. But as Radiac pointed out it had some builds that relied more on a huge pool of HPs than they did on regening damage. A mix of both would be better than all one way or the other.

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

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Umbral wrote:
Umbral wrote:

Immortality curve and attrition model are both survivability schemas that focus on different fundamental "end games" even though they use the same mechanisms overall. The immortality curve focuses on allowing the player to survive forever until a given, non-trivial incoming damage threshold is reached, whereupon they will end up dying rather quickly. The attrition model focuses on extending the amount of time it takes a character to die with the knowledge that any non-trivial amount of incoming damage will cause their death.

Spike Damage is required to defeat Regeneration.
"Lucky" Combo Hits are required to defeat Super Reflexes.
Both of these protect schemes function on a "sudden death" sort of basis.

Sustained "pressure" damage is required to defeat any protection scheme relying on Resistances.
Note that lacking a source of healing, such sustained "pressure" damage is also perfectly capable of grinding down Super Reflexes as well, so long as DPS received exceeds Regeneration.


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there's a third combat system

there's a third combat system that isn't being addressed that, all-in-all, has my preference. That'd be active-defense combat, like what we're seeing more and more often lately in games like TERA and Guild Wars 2. The idea is, quite simply, if you just facetank everything outside of a few certain builds, you won't survive at all, but by evading, using your attack nullification skills (such as blocks, invulnerabilities, and damage reducers) intelligently, and managing your resources properly you can theoretically fight something much stronger than you.

The thing is, I don't want any of these options to be unavailable. What's most in tune with comic book heroes than having different characters capable of different things? Take the Justice League for example. A group of robots is firing lasers at them. Batman rolls behind cover while tossing out some batarangs that explode on impact (Evasion). Flash uses his super speed to evade them (another evasion, or power use). Wonder Woman uses her silver bracers to deflect them (skill use to block) and Green Lantern uses his ring to generate a blocking wall (skill use for a block). Superman doesn't do anything to defend himself , instead choosing walk up to a robot and crush it like a tin can against a jock's forehead, because his invulnerability is strong enough that he doesn't need to worry about the shots being fired (passive defense).

I think both passive defense and active defense models have a place in Comic Book inspired stories. One would obviously favor a more skill based twitchplay setup, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, and forgoing the active defenses setup would still be viable for people who like the idea of their character shrugging off strikes straight to the face. It'd be a tradeoff.

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Halae wrote:
Halae wrote:

there's a third combat system that isn't being addressed that, all-in-all, has my preference. That'd be active-defense combat, like what we're seeing more and more often lately in games like TERA and Guild Wars 2. The idea is, quite simply, if you just facetank everything outside of a few certain builds, you won't survive at all, but by evading, using your attack nullification skills (such as blocks, invulnerabilities, and damage reducers) intelligently, and managing your resources properly you can theoretically fight something much stronger than you.
The thing is, I don't want any of these options to be unavailable. What's most in tune with comic book heroes than having different characters capable of different things? Take the Justice League for example. A group of robots is firing lasers at them. Batman rolls behind cover while tossing out some batarangs that explode on impact (Evasion). Flash uses his super speed to evade them (another evasion, or power use). Wonder Woman uses her silver bracers to deflect them (skill use to block) and Green Lantern uses his ring to generate a blocking wall (skill use for a block). Superman doesn't do anything to defend himself , instead choosing walk up to a robot and crush it like a tin can against a jock's forehead, because his invulnerability is strong enough that he doesn't need to worry about the shots being fired (passive defense).
I think both passive defense and active defense models have a place in Comic Book inspired stories. One would obviously favor a more skill based twitchplay setup, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, and forgoing the active defenses setup would still be viable for people who like the idea of their character shrugging off strikes straight to the face. It'd be a tradeoff.

The big problem here is making a skill system and combat mechanics were you can choose between active and passive defense on an individual basis while still making both of them equally viable.

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Well I know that in Wildstar

Well I know that in Wildstar whilst they have the "active" style of evasion, the "tanks" are either "stupid hard, soak the hits" (Warrior), "avoid the hits lots whilst standing there" (Stalker) or "Buffed to high heaven by pets" (Engineer).

So you can have both styles. Just that in *some* cases, even a super hard tanker might have to get out of the way, because even THEY can be knocked down/killed by the hit, if they are unlucky

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Halae wrote:
Halae wrote:

there's a third combat system that isn't being addressed that, all-in-all, has my preference. That'd be active-defense combat, like what we're seeing more and more often lately in games like TERA and Guild Wars 2. The idea is, quite simply, if you just facetank everything outside of a few certain builds, you won't survive at all, but by evading, using your attack nullification skills (such as blocks, invulnerabilities, and damage reducers) intelligently, and managing your resources properly you can theoretically fight something much stronger than you.

Problem.

That style of play relies on low network latency, fast internet connections, split second timing and requires a "twitchy" gameplay performance from the Player. Just about all of those necessities run counter to what City of Titans is trying to accomplish, let alone re-create.

Don't get me wrong, it's a more ... involved ... way to play games. Tabula Rasa had it (sorta). TERA has it (definitely), and from the sound of things, Guild Wars 2 is leaning in that direction as well. But this approach has already been summarily evaluated and rejected, even though Unreal Engine 4 is perfectly capable of sustaining this model of game play.

As soon as you get into a gameplay model of Rock, Paper Scissors, Lizard, Spock, Block, Counter, Lock ... you're immediately handing an unfair advantage to any Player with both faster reflexes and lower network latency to the server, and an unfair DISadvantage to any Player with slower reflexes and higher network latency to the server (cue lamentations of unavoidable lag from European, African, Asian and South American Players). It takes the "easy" gameplay experience of City of Heroes and defenestrates it.


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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

Well I know that in Wildstar whilst they have the "active" style of evasion, the "tanks" are either "stupid hard, soak the hits" (Warrior), "avoid the hits lots whilst standing there" (Stalker) or "Buffed to high heaven by pets" (Engineer).
So you can have both styles. Just that in *some* cases, even a super hard tanker might have to get out of the way, because even THEY can be knocked down/killed by the hit, if they are unlucky

Halae made it sound like you would have to choose between either active avoidance/block system or a passive mitigation (and perhaps passive avoidance/block) system (or possibly a hybrid). It sounded like the defensive power set determined if you could do active avoidance/block in the first place (and if so how much you could utilize it), not how much is necessary for you to utilize it to stay adequate.

In Wildstar all tanks (and players in general) are supposed to avoid most attacks, and the active avoidance is built as a core part of the combat system for every class. Last I checked all tanks (and classes) had the same potential to avoid damage, thus making those who can soak up more damage having a significant advantage.

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

(cue lamentations of unavoidable lag from European, African, Asian and South American Players).

Were you lumping Australia in with Asia, or do we have to wait even longer for their lamentations to reach us? ^_^

Not that twitchy games can't be fun, but it wouldn't be the game MWM are trying to make.

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Halae wrote:
Halae wrote:

One would obviously favor a more skill based twitchplay setup, but that's not necessarily a bad thing...

You're right, it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a thing that the Devs have said from day one that they aren't going to include.

I personally don't have any problem with some twitchplay, but it's not in the plans and most likely never going to happen--unless I'm missing something.

FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)

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If twitch mechanics aren't

If twitch mechanics aren't required, Grandparents can then play alongside their grandchildren of 4+ years of age without too much trouble as well. (age range: ~4 to 60+)

But, for things like PvP... those mechanics sound great. Rock, Paper, Scissors, Block, Sock it, etc... should be a mental guessing game, plus fast reactions, in order to win. (age range: ~13 to 35+)

But maybe that's just me. I've been playing a bit of Street Fighter 4. ;)

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blacke4dawn wrote:
blacke4dawn wrote:

Gangrel wrote:
Well I know that in Wildstar whilst they have the "active" style of evasion, the "tanks" are either "stupid hard, soak the hits" (Warrior), "avoid the hits lots whilst standing there" (Stalker) or "Buffed to high heaven by pets" (Engineer).
So you can have both styles. Just that in *some* cases, even a super hard tanker might have to get out of the way, because even THEY can be knocked down/killed by the hit, if they are unlucky

Halae made it sound like you would have to choose between either active avoidance/block system or a passive mitigation (and perhaps passive avoidance/block) system (or possibly a hybrid). It sounded like the defensive power set determined if you could do active avoidance/block in the first place (and if so how much you could utilize it), not how much is necessary for you to utilize it to stay adequate.
In Wildstar all tanks (and players in general) are supposed to avoid most attacks, and the active avoidance is built as a core part of the combat system for every class. Last I checked all tanks (and classes) had the same potential to avoid damage, thus making those who can soak up more damage having a significant advantage.

Not quite true. You have the telegraph attack (which is the one that requires manual dodging), and you have the standard "white damage" which is the normal attack with no telegraph. Manual dodging only affects the telegraph attacks.

The "passive" form of tanking is for "White Damage" which not every class can excel at. And yes, whilst potentially "every class" can dodge a white damage attack (or even a Telegraph attack when caught in the middle of one[1]), it is like saying that a blaster can main tank Recluse. He *could* potentially avoid all the attacks that recluse does without any outside interference... common sense says "no" he won't. The odds of it happening are very very slim.

Having fully done Genetic Archives (the 20 man raid) I can say that whilst ALL players are (potentially) able to avoid the telegraph damage, sometimes the tank is (for whatever reason) specifically in the way (to keep it focused away from the raid).

And even then, not all raid telegraph attacks will one shot you... they will HURT, but not necessarily one shot you (cue the number of times that I screwed up, got caught in the red, and *almost* died).

And whilst having a *low* latency is highly recommended, it is still perfectly playable with a latency of up to 250ms. I am not so sure about it with other games, but I have managed to deal with it. The one thing that gets me though is *unstable* latency, but I am not so sure that many people could cope going from 60ms to 350ms and back again....

[1] Yes, this can happens, does happen and will happen. I have had it happen to me. Not for *all* Raid boss telegraph attacks, but occasionally. It is definitely something that makes me go "Oh poop, oh poop, oh poop... oh WOW I am still alive"

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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

blacke4dawn wrote:
Gangrel wrote:
Well I know that in Wildstar whilst they have the "active" style of evasion, the "tanks" are either "stupid hard, soak the hits" (Warrior), "avoid the hits lots whilst standing there" (Stalker) or "Buffed to high heaven by pets" (Engineer).
So you can have both styles. Just that in *some* cases, even a super hard tanker might have to get out of the way, because even THEY can be knocked down/killed by the hit, if they are unlucky

Halae made it sound like you would have to choose between either active avoidance/block system or a passive mitigation (and perhaps passive avoidance/block) system (or possibly a hybrid). It sounded like the defensive power set determined if you could do active avoidance/block in the first place (and if so how much you could utilize it), not how much is necessary for you to utilize it to stay adequate.
In Wildstar all tanks (and players in general) are supposed to avoid most attacks, and the active avoidance is built as a core part of the combat system for every class. Last I checked all tanks (and classes) had the same potential to avoid damage, thus making those who can soak up more damage having a significant advantage.

Not quite true. You have the telegraph attack (which is the one that requires manual dodging), and you have the standard "white damage" which is the normal attack with no telegraph. Manual dodging only affects the telegraph attacks.
The "passive" form of tanking is for "White Damage" which not every class can excel at. And yes, whilst potentially "every class" can dodge a white damage attack (or even a Telegraph attack when caught in the middle of one[1]), it is like saying that a blaster can main tank Recluse. He *could* potentially avoid all the attacks that recluse does without any outside interference... common sense says "no" he won't. The odds of it happening are very very slim.
Having fully done Genetic Archives (the 20 man raid) I can say that whilst ALL players are (potentially) able to avoid the telegraph damage, sometimes the tank is (for whatever reason) specifically in the way (to keep it focused away from the raid).
And even then, not all raid telegraph attacks will one shot you... they will HURT, but not necessarily one shot you (cue the number of times that I screwed up, got caught in the red, and *almost* died).
And whilst having a *low* latency is highly recommended, it is still perfectly playable with a latency of up to 250ms. I am not so sure about it with other games, but I have managed to deal with it. The one thing that gets me though is *unstable* latency, but I am not so sure that many people could cope going from 60ms to 350ms and back again....
[1] Yes, this can happens, does happen and will happen. I have had it happen to me. Not for *all* Raid boss telegraph attacks, but occasionally. It is definitely something that makes me go "Oh poop, oh poop, oh poop... oh WOW I am still alive"

*sigh* We don't really need to go further into how WS has done it since it is a hybrid system that uses both, due to their usage of "white" unavoidable damage. As you have said yourself, one can't survive by relying on only one of those mechanics alone.

The point I was trying to make was that making a combat system that can accommodate both extremes, full active defense or full passive defense, will be very hard. Especially when you also have to build the offence system to accommodate it for it to function.

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One thing I'd like to see is

One thing I'd like to see is to make the defensive or restive or regenerative powers for "tough" classes (scrappers and tankers for CoX) more "click-to-activate, lasts for a duration" than "toggle" or "always on". You definitely reduce the DPS of a toon when they have to use a click-to-active power in combat repeatedly, so that type of thign would give you added damage avoidance or reduction at the cost of giving up some DPS for it. One added benefit though would be that presumably "toggle" powers drop when you get stunned or mezzed, whereas a click-to-activate power ought to remain up for its full duration regardless of that stuff.

I would think classes that are supposed to have a little less DPS for the sake of being harder to actually take down would be like that. So like if you're a tanker, you want to take your click-to-activate power that gives you awesome resistance or whatever but you need to put recharge reduction and/or duration enhancers in it so that you can keep it up permanently, but then you also want it to be as endo-cheap as possible and you need to enhance it for the effects it actually has as well.

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Okay, first the easy part: We

Okay, first the easy part: We have indeed entirely rejected action based gameplay from day one, for the reasons stated by Izzy and Redlynne. May as well state it officially. I would also like to say that Black4Dawn is absolutely right in pointing out that trying to have both active and passive makes for a much more complicated combat system design challenge, one we're not interested in tackling.

Which brings us back to the OP. Thank you for explaining in such detail Umbral. That's a very sophisticated question from a design standpoint - I suspect someone inside does have an answer but it will need to be someone very close to the gameplay development. I will try and dig it out for you.

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Quote:
Quote:

But, for things like PvP... those mechanics sound great. Rock, Paper, Scissors, Block, Sock it, etc... should be a mental guessing game, plus fast reactions, in order to win. (age range: ~13 to 35+)

But maybe that's just me. I've been playing a bit of Street Fighter 4. ;)
.

Nope...I fully agree....the watered down form of PvP that CoH (and presumably CoT) offer will do little to bring players in.

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Okay, I got an answer. We do

Okay, I got an answer. We do indeed frequent the immortality curve, just as CoH did. However, we can avoid the problems you mentioned Umbral, about bosses becoming invincible under certain circumstances as a result. We can avoid it thanks to our Momentum mechanic, which allows us to make defeating bosses much more dynamic and strategy (not reflex, note) based. Thanks to Momentum, defeating bosses doesn't have to be a matter of simply hitting them until all their hp is gone. They can exhibit behaviors, have openings and weaknesses, that appear based on the PACE of combat, instead of triggering at HP thresholds. So any team that plays the boss right will get an opening they can use to beat him, even if it's a team with a low damage output.

As for PvP - yup, watered down's the word dude. We're not making a PvP centric game. CoH was not PvP centric, before or after whichever issue that was that supposedly ruined it. We're not out to draw anyone in with our PvP. We're not ignoring it, we're allowing for it from the beginning so we can accommodate it without bending way over backwards and singing dixie on a tightrope, but our PvP is not going to be an *attraction*, it is going to be an *option*. We'll do it right, we'll treat it right, and we'll even do some interesting things with it in time, but we'll also keep it in its place. It's not where the heavy push belongs, and it is not the part that will drive how things are designed. A game can really only be one or the other, primarily. We chose PvE a long time ago. PvE will drive development choices, and we'll make sure we're not mutilating PvP while we're at it. That's how our priorities are on the matter.

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Shadow Elusive
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I'm sorry, I forgot to add

I'm sorry, I forgot to add the link to the Momentum update to that post. Here it is.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/1058094

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Tannim222
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Both methods being described

Both methods being described are not always entirely exclusive from one another. It depends on the game (and combat mechanics there in). The thing is, and this is using the specific reference to a curve, not all curves are necessarily alike. This is where we get bounds of performance, including sustainability: the ability for an entity (pc or npc) to survive combat over a given metric of time.

The best way I can answer the OP's question is: both yes and no. This isn't necessarily a one size fits all solution. PCs will have access to many combinations of powers between primary / secondary and the effects of those powers, along with access to Tertiary sets which can expand on the possiblities the character has access to. Any class can take protection tertiaries, or control tertiaries, or support secondaries, and so on. Then there are Reserves (our version of inspirations), temp powers, possible buff stations from bases. Over time, the more a player character has access to, and depending on the build, will most likely attain something close to the OP's examples of the immortality curve explained in his responce post. But that doesn't mean that every build will have the same curve.

The same can be said for how NPCs can be designed. Or to be more accurate we can design them to be as easily defeated or as immortal as we desire.

Now there is a specific reference made to the prevalence of regeneration debuff being so prevalent toward success vs. a particular npc rank due to how the high regeneration rate they had. Regen debuffs could simply decrease the time to defeat the target (which appears to act like the attrition model), but it also could, depending on the team make up, change the nature of the encounter from the immortaility curve to the attrition model. Some power set combinations (or even certain ATs) could be at a point where their damage could not exceed the regen rate of the target, or debuff the regen thus reducing the sustainability of the target, allowing for the damage output to effectively with time, defeat the target.

Case in point, a certain player's Archery / Psi blaster build leveraged Drain Psyche's regen debuff in order to allow the (admittedly high) dps to defeat incredibly hard targets including GMs.

As to how we will handle the NPC sustainability, it again will not be a one size fits all situation. Each rank of NPC will have their own sustainability metric. Some will be incredibly easy to defeat (relatively speaking), and some will be very difficult (again relatively speaking). One thing we are avoiding is making one particular debuff resulting in a deciding factor of victory as has been used in example already. Not every rank of NPC will necessarily be the same from faction to faction. Some may have more sustainability toward certain damage types, or play styles (better at avoiding being hit vs resiliant toward being hit for example).

The short answer: PCs will be capable of high sustainaiblity, some easier to achieve than others depending on classification and power combinations. Mostly designed toward "immortal until dead". While NPCs will be something like a mirror to that: some easier to defeat than others, mostly designed toward dead until immortal*.

*immortal carries the caveat of "you had no business in the first place trying to do that (hyperbolic example: level1 PC taking on a 50 AV).


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islandtrevor72
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Quote:
Quote:

As for PvP - yup, watered down's the word dude. We're not making a PvP centric game. .

I never expected you to. The combat system that CoH used and presumably what CoT will use is just not suited for pvp. It has its supporters and detractors but in the end its just not popular enough to warrant special attention.

But I was just voicing my agreement with izzy that the system exampled would be a fun PvP system....not that it should be the PvP system in CoT.

So as to not derail the thread...let just drop the pvp angle.

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Shadow Elusive wrote:
Shadow Elusive wrote:

Okay, first the easy part: We have indeed entirely rejected action based gameplay from day one, for the reasons stated by Izzy and Redlynne. May as well state it officially. I would also like to say that Black4Dawn is absolutely right in pointing out that trying to have both active and passive makes for a much more complicated combat system design challenge, one we're not interested in tackling.

Shadow Elusive wrote:

Okay, I got an answer. We do indeed frequent the immortality curve, just as CoH did. However, we can avoid the problems you mentioned Umbral, about bosses becoming invincible under certain circumstances as a result. We can avoid it thanks to our Momentum mechanic, which allows us to make defeating bosses much more dynamic and strategy (not reflex, note) based. Thanks to Momentum, defeating bosses doesn't have to be a matter of simply hitting them until all their hp is gone. They can exhibit behaviors, have openings and weaknesses, that appear based on the PACE of combat, instead of triggering at HP thresholds. So any team that plays the boss right will get an opening they can use to beat him, even if it's a team with a low damage output.
As for PvP - yup, watered down's the word dude. We're not making a PvP centric game. CoH was not PvP centric, before or after whichever issue that was that supposedly ruined it. We're not out to draw anyone in with our PvP. We're not ignoring it, we're allowing for it from the beginning so we can accommodate it without bending way over backwards and singing dixie on a tightrope, but our PvP is not going to be an *attraction*, it is going to be an *option*. We'll do it right, we'll treat it right, and we'll even do some interesting things with it in time, but we'll also keep it in its place. It's not where the heavy push belongs, and it is not the part that will drive how things are designed. A game can really only be one or the other, primarily. We chose PvE a long time ago. PvE will drive development choices, and we'll make sure we're not mutilating PvP while we're at it. That's how our priorities are on the matter.

This is the kind of stuff that makes me really happy and excited about CoT.

Spurn all ye kindle.

Shadow Elusive
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islandtrevor72 wrote:
islandtrevor72 wrote:

Quote:
As for PvP - yup, watered down's the word dude. We're not making a PvP centric game. .
I never expected you to. The combat system that CoH used and presumably what CoT will use is just not suited for pvp. It has its supporters and detractors but in the end its just not popular enough to warrant special attention.
But I was just voicing my agreement with izzy that the system exampled would be a fun PvP system....not that it should be the PvP system in CoT.
So as to not derail the thread...let just drop the pvp angle.

Sounds fair to me friend - on all points, not just the last one :)

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Shadow Elusive wrote:
Shadow Elusive wrote:

Okay, I got an answer. We do indeed frequent the immortality curve, just as CoH did. However, we can avoid the problems you mentioned Umbral, about bosses becoming invincible under certain circumstances as a result. We can avoid it thanks to our Momentum mechanic, which allows us to make defeating bosses much more dynamic and strategy (not reflex, note) based. Thanks to Momentum, defeating bosses doesn't have to be a matter of simply hitting them until all their hp is gone. They can exhibit behaviors, have openings and weaknesses, that appear based on the PACE of combat, instead of triggering at HP thresholds. So any team that plays the boss right will get an opening they can use to beat him, even if it's a team with a low damage output.
As for PvP - yup, watered down's the word dude. We're not making a PvP centric game. CoH was not PvP centric, before or after whichever issue that was that supposedly ruined it. We're not out to draw anyone in with our PvP. We're not ignoring it, we're allowing for it from the beginning so we can accommodate it without bending way over backwards and singing dixie on a tightrope, but our PvP is not going to be an *attraction*, it is going to be an *option*. We'll do it right, we'll treat it right, and we'll even do some interesting things with it in time, but we'll also keep it in its place. It's not where the heavy push belongs, and it is not the part that will drive how things are designed. A game can really only be one or the other, primarily. We chose PvE a long time ago. PvE will drive development choices, and we'll make sure we're not mutilating PvP while we're at it. That's how our priorities are on the matter.

I like it. I'm not gunna lie to you, I'm a PVE guy at heart, so I'm fully ON BOARD with this plan. Sign me up. Put me down for two of them, actually. I'm with it. I'm "down" as they say.

R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising

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Shadow Elusive wrote:
Shadow Elusive wrote:

Okay, I got an answer. We do indeed frequent the immortality curve, just as CoH did. However, we can avoid the problems you mentioned Umbral, about bosses becoming invincible under certain circumstances as a result. We can avoid it thanks to our Momentum mechanic, which allows us to make defeating bosses much more dynamic and strategy (not reflex, note) based. Thanks to Momentum, defeating bosses doesn't have to be a matter of simply hitting them until all their hp is gone. They can exhibit behaviors, have openings and weaknesses, that appear based on the PACE of combat, instead of triggering at HP thresholds. So any team that plays the boss right will get an opening they can use to beat him, even if it's a team with a low damage output.
As for PvP - yup, watered down's the word dude. We're not making a PvP centric game. CoH was not PvP centric, before or after whichever issue that was that supposedly ruined it. We're not out to draw anyone in with our PvP. We're not ignoring it, we're allowing for it from the beginning so we can accommodate it without bending way over backwards and singing dixie on a tightrope, but our PvP is not going to be an *attraction*, it is going to be an *option*. We'll do it right, we'll treat it right, and we'll even do some interesting things with it in time, but we'll also keep it in its place. It's not where the heavy push belongs, and it is not the part that will drive how things are designed. A game can really only be one or the other, primarily. We chose PvE a long time ago. PvE will drive development choices, and we'll make sure we're not mutilating PvP while we're at it. That's how our priorities are on the matter.

...and there was much rejoicing!

Seriously, if you guys can somehow design a sustainably "casual" PvP system, even by accident, that is sem- fun to play... Heck, I might even try it!

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Throughout the design process

Throughout the design process I have kept an eye on how combat mechanics would effect pvp. Even though the game isn't centered on pvp, we want to avoid creating barriers of entry due to powers behaving too differntly, or end up having to change vhange the fundamental,function of a mechanic due to pvp. Just because we aren't a pvp focused game doesn't mean we won't have a healthy pvp community even if it is a minority group, and if we do things well, it could even be a fairly large group as we also have plans for many forms of pvp invcluding indirect pvp like the winter games from the old game.


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(Yet) another reason to avoid

(Yet) another reason to avoid twitch systems, aside from latency issues and human reflexes is graphics. You build a bad guy with a huge attack that they telegraph for days so that even a senior citizen playing on bad wi-fi from Tibet can avoid...but in the middle of a team with multiple AoEs going off there might be no way to SEE the telegraph. I'm very glad the Devs have long ago decided against this.

As for the rest..."Okay, I got an answer. We do indeed frequent the immortality curve, just as CoH did. However, we can avoid the problems you mentioned Umbral, about bosses becoming invincible under certain circumstances as a result. We can avoid it thanks to our Momentum mechanic, which allows us to make defeating bosses much more dynamic and strategy (not reflex, note) based. Thanks to Momentum, defeating bosses doesn't have to be a matter of simply hitting them until all their hp is gone. They can exhibit behaviors, have openings and weaknesses, that appear based on the PACE of combat, instead of triggering at HP thresholds. So any team that plays the boss right will get an opening they can use to beat him, even if it's a team with a low damage output."

This makes me smile a lot. I always hated the idea that there was only one way to defeat some foes. One of the things CoH did right was to make a lot of different ways to do things. I'm sure we all remember the cries in the early days of 'Need a Healer' or 'Need a Rad or Sonic to take on MegaDeathGuy.' In the final years of the game these faded to almost nothing. Towards the end you might here 'Doing a TF a Tank might be nice' but it was more of a choice of what you COULD bring as opposed to something the team HAD to have.

The idea that a themed team that is running a little low on the DPS scale still has a chance to defeat the Boss but they have to be smart about it and act as a team makes me warm and fuzzy all over...

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

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Comicsluvr wrote:
Comicsluvr wrote:

(Yet) another reason to avoid twitch systems, aside from latency issues and human reflexes is graphics. You build a bad guy with a huge attack that they telegraph for days so that even a senior citizen playing on bad wi-fi from Tibet can avoid...but in the middle of a team with multiple AoEs going off there might be no way to SEE the telegraph. I'm very glad the Devs have long ago decided against this.

CoH itself didn't depend on telegraph emotes; it would put up a message right in the middle of the screen telling you Shit Was Going Down.

Of course, the one of those we were perpetually in fear of was, "Lost Connection to Mapserver."

Comicsluvr wrote:

I'm sure we all remember the cries in the early days of 'Need a Healer' or 'Need a Rad or Sonic to take on MegaDeathGuy.'

And we remember the team of 8 rads that went through Synapse TF and just melted everything...

Comicsluvr wrote:

In the final years of the game these faded to almost nothing. Towards the end you might here 'Doing a TF a Tank might be nice' but it was more of a choice of what you COULD bring as opposed to something the team HAD to have.

It depended on the situation, really. The first time I ran the Positron TF, the "mapserver" above happened in the second mission, and when I got back on it was just my blaster and one other blaster. We finished it. Took a while...

There was an amount of "you need X to beat Y," but I think people saw a lot more of that than there was because they'd infer the unwritten clause, "... with no strategy more complex than an armed mob of hooligans."

Comicsluvr wrote:

The idea that a themed team that is running a little low on the DPS scale still has a chance to defeat the Boss but they have to be smart about it and act as a team makes me warm and fuzzy all over...

Tanker Tuesdays live!

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