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Making Hybrids viable in group content

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Deathwatch101
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Making Hybrids viable in group content

I wanted to bring forwards the discussion of Hybrids in games, In I guess almost every game ive played Hybrids have never been viable in Group Play/Raid Play - Mainly due to the game design of raid or dungeon content having timers rather than relying on the parties ability to survive and keep going.

By using Raid Timers, it made Hybrids which could have decent survive-ability in comparison to a DPS though they dealt reduced damage (My best example of this in my personal mmo play was in Wildstar, I developed a build around the Engineer, that gave them the ability to if i remember this correctly heal the team, deal decent damage and be pretty hard to kill) I believe the ability to have Hybrid Character in late game content is important and strongly believe Raid Timers are rather the bane of late game content, it focuses on min/maxing rather than working well as a team.

I think if the content was hard enough but allowed for Hybrid Play, for example you could have numbers of decent strength mobs that require to be directly attacked to keep their aggro (no AoE's etc) this would hopefully mean rather than bringing extra tankers other than your limited tank and off-tank, you could have sturdier slightly lighter damage dealers.

Secondly, I mentioned in another thread a down system, these type of systems can work well for Hybrid types, when you have some people carrying additional debuffing potential and reviving potential.

Does anyone else have views on Hybrid Playing or making it viable without being unbalanced.

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CoH was pretty forgiving when

CoH was pretty forgiving when it came to teaming. Sure there were some Archetypes that did more DPS or were better at "Tanking" than other Archetypes. But despite all that there was practically no "wrong" way to build a team as long as the players fully understood how to maximize their characters' abilities and worked with each other. Weird teams that might never work in some games (i.e. with "no Tank" or "no Healer") were still viable in almost every situation in CoH.

I know other games can get super picky about team dynamics. They have raids/trials that strictly require exact types of characters to be on the team else you'd be doomed before you even tried. None of that truly existed in CoH so it likely won't be the case in CoT either.

If I understand your use of the term "Hybrid" there should never be a problem with playing any of these types of characters in any raid in CoT. CoH simply did not have the working concept of "you can't play class A in raid X" for any arbitrary reason I can think of.

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

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

CoH was pretty forgiving when it came to teaming. Sure there were some Archetypes that did more DPS or were better at "Tanking" than other Archetypes. But despite all that there was practically no "wrong" way to build a team as long as the players fully understood how to maximize their characters' abilities and worked with each other. Weird teams that might never work in some games (i.e. with "no Tank" or "no Healer") were still viable in almost every situation in CoH.
I know other games can get super picky about team dynamics. They have raids/trials that strictly require exact types of characters to be on the team else you'd be doomed before you even tried. None of that truly existed in CoH so it likely won't be the case in CoT either.
If I understand your use of the term "Hybrid" there should never be a problem with playing any of these types of characters in any raid in CoT. CoH simply did not have the working concept of "you can't play class A in raid X" for any arbitrary reason I can think of.

I think the way I look at it was from when I was playing MMO's hardcore, now I was playing City of Heroes and WoW close to the same point, but didn't get into Raiding until the very end of Vanilla to BC WoW, now by the time id returned to City of Heroes and all my memories of its endgame content was more of just pummel everything in sight.

I think the major issue I find is the way people socially act if your not a min/maxer even if you show you have a viable build, they insist you run this "god" build because thats the best even if you show you perform better using builds that suit your brains style of working.

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Deathwatch101 wrote:
Deathwatch101 wrote:

I think the major issue I find is the way people socially act if your not a min/maxer even if you show you have a viable build, they insist you run this "god" build because thats the best even if you show you perform better using builds that suit your brains style of working.

I played CoH pretty regularly for its entire 8.5 year run and I very rarely ran into any group of people who ever got hyper-picky about making sure everyone in a given team was using "perfect god" builds or the like. Sure I guess there were a few groups or SGs out there like that (especially maybe the PvP oriented ones) but in terms of casual play CoH was (once again) very forgiving of team dynamics. In fact there were famous stories of "All Defender teams" or "All Tanker teams" which on paper should have been disasters working incredibly well in practice.

Basically very few people ever quibbled about character builds on teams in CoH unless you did something really, really stupid (like play an Empathy Defender that somehow avoided taking any healing powers). I would expect CoT to foster that same "non-picky" style of play.

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

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Nobody in CoX ever cared what

Nobody in CoX ever cared what your build was like, really. At most you'd get people looking for defenders for TFs or tankers with taunt.

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From what I've seen about

From what I've seen about raid content, it seems as if the tail is wagging the dog in some cases. Games that rely on teams made from the trinity of Tank, DPS and Heals, design their content to require the best of each. That's only natural. In other words, the content is optimized to the playerbase, not vice versa.

It would seem that if you want to make hybrids viable in raid-level content, you would need to change what your content tests.

For instance, your Hybrid Engineer in Wildstar would be an excellent raid member if you were fighting a raid boss who caused an earthquake and the floor collapsed into the lava lake below. All the raid members found themselves scattered across a bunch of floating rock islands on the lava river in groups of two or three or even alone, determined at random. And while they are floating down the lava river, too far from each other to offer a full measure of support, they are being attacked by salamanders. The rock islands eventually come to rest at a bend in the lava river where the party members that survive can hop off and continue the fight as a unified team.

In a game that reveres the trinity, that scenario would cause the players to revolt unless you gave them a crutch like giving them an advance notice of which parts of the battlefield will become islands so the players could form up on a selected island before they collapse, placing the islands so close together the team could reform if they hurried, or some special mechanic to activate that protects them until they come to the bend.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

Nobody in CoX ever cared what your build was like, really. At most you'd get people looking for defenders for TFs or tankers with taunt.

In my experience, it saw a lot of people who cared whether your defender had heals or not. My Trick Archer defender was kicked off a lot of teams when people found out he wasn't a healer.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

From what I've seen about raid content, it seems as if the tail is wagging the dog in some cases. Games that rely on teams made from the trinity of Tank, DPS and Heals, design their content to require the best of each. That's only natural. In other words, the content is optimized to the playerbase, not vice versa.

One of CoH strengths seemed to be it's general "relaxation" of the strict need for the MMO Holy Trinity. Sure if you organized a CoH team squarely on the classic Tank, DPS and Heal concept then you could generally blow through content like tissue paper but even with what would be considered (in other games) to be "sub-par" teams you could usually manage to succeed in CoH. That didn't mean that CoH's content was completely trivial - the main point was that the game's archetypes were flexible enough that you could get away without needing (for instance) a dedicated healer 100% of the time if you had plenty of buff/debuff and/or tanking to cover the shortfall.

Hopefully CoT will also be able to allow for this kind of class flexibility so people aren't just pigeonholed into the Holy Trinity mindset.

Huckleberry wrote:

Radiac wrote:
Nobody in CoX ever cared what your build was like, really. At most you'd get people looking for defenders for TFs or tankers with taunt.
In my experience, it saw a lot of people who cared whether your defender had heals or not. My Trick Archer defender was kicked off a lot of teams when people found out he wasn't a healer.

I think the simplistic "If you're a Defender you MUST have heals" mindset was a reflexive left-over from other games where you had to religiously stick to the Holy Trinity. I'm not denying that you experienced problems with your Trick Archer but I think the teams that kicked you were likely led by people who didn't realize that CoH teams could function WITHOUT healers constantly spamming heals. Basically I'm suggesting the idiots who kicked you probably weren't worth playing with anyway. *shrugs*

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

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As the others have pointed

As the others have pointed out in CoH you could play almost anything you wanted and be viable either solo or in a group. That's one of the fundamental "spiritual successor" goals for CoT.

That's not to say that you won't run into people who insist on having a tank, healer, or particular kind of DPS. Maybe that's the way they want to play or, as Lothic mentioned, they're too accustomed to the common H3 approach and haven't learned that it's not necessary.

By the same token, CoH never had raids that were as tightly tuned as the ones you'll find in games like WoW.

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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

Radiac wrote:
Nobody in CoX ever cared what your build was like, really. At most you'd get people looking for defenders for TFs or tankers with taunt.
In my experience, it saw a lot of people who cared whether your defender had heals or not. My Trick Archer defender was kicked off a lot of teams when people found out he wasn't a healer.

It all depends on the time frame you're talking about.

My first toon was a Storm/Electric defender who had a heal, I think. He also had TERRIBLE endo problems and had Hover at a time when they had not yet invented the respec, so I deleted him and made Radiac, the Rad/Rad defender. I got some guff for not having a good enough heal, or for not being able to heal the entire 8-person team I was on a few times, again in the early days. I also got idiots saying things like "Hey, this end boss is easier to beat now.... for some reason. Must be that Red SO I just put in Brawl." while I was throwing debuffs all over the place and getting yelled at for not healing. Fast-forward to a couple years later, I was constantly getting requests to join teams that wanted me to debuff Infernal for them. It took the CoX community art large a while to understand how good debuffs were, but they eventually did.

Tankers not having Taunt was maybe a little more of a thing that persisted, but it was about the only one, and if your tank could at least take the incoming alpha strike, or was willing to, you were okay. A Tanker I used to hang with a lot, da vinci (no caps, that's how he spelled it) used to get killed a lot just due to nerfs to powers and his own casualness, but he was fine anyway. I can still remember the one team I was on where the tanker kid was like "I took all offense powers, because my damage is low, so no taunt because it doesn't do damage, and I didn't waste a lot of slots on resistance power, because I figure I can avoid getting attacked instead." which is a perfectly fine ethos for a Blaster, or if you like melee, a Scrapper MAYBE, but if that's your play style, you don't want to be a Tanker. We kept trying to tell him that Tankers were basically expected to be able to survive a huge attack, and were probably the only class that could, and that his choice of class was unfortunate for that reason. He was like "I made a Tanker because I wanted to avoid getting killed as much as possible" and he played that way. He was very sheepish about taking damage and kept screaming for more healing. It was bizarre. But that was one time.

R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

It all depends on the time frame you're talking about.

True enough but I'd still always keep an eye out for people crying about "we need a healer" to assess whether a team I joined was experienced playing CoH or not. I could probably count on one hand the number of legitimate situations in CoH where having a god's honest 100% dedicated healer was effectively necessary (e.g. end-game Master trials where you could not afford to let anyone drop even once). Besides that I don't think any part of the Holy Trinity was ever strictly necessary in CoH, except of course DPS... you'd have a very slow game without that.

Radiac wrote:

Tankers not having Taunt was maybe a little more of a thing that persisted, but it was about the only one, and if your tank could at least take the incoming alpha strike, or was willing to, you were okay. A Tanker I used to hang with a lot, da vinci (no caps, that's how he spelled it) used to get killed a lot just due to nerfs to powers and his own casualness, but he was fine anyway. I can still remember the one team I was on where the tanker kid was like "I took all offense powers, because my damage is low, so no taunt because it doesn't do damage, and I didn't waste a lot of slots on resistance power, because I figure I can avoid getting attacked instead." which is a perfectly fine ethos for a Blaster, or if you like melee, a Scrapper MAYBE, but if that's your play style, you don't want to be a Tanker. We kept trying to tell him that Tankers were basically expected to be able to survive a huge attack, and were probably the only class that could, and that his choice of class was unfortunate for that reason. He was like "I made a Tanker because I wanted to avoid getting killed as much as possible" and he played that way. He was very sheepish about taking damage and kept screaming for more healing. It was bizarre. But that was one time.

Yeah I ran across a few people who used to try to do everything they could to play "against type". Sometimes they were doing it on purpose almost as an experiment to see if they could get an archetype to be successful doing something it wasn't designed to do. I'd throw in "human form only Peacebringers" into that category, and maybe the times I'd become delusional and do a better job tanking for a team with my Fire Controller than an actual Tank could. If a player doing those crazy things was skilled enough they could usually pull it off without overly endangering a team.

But then of course you'd run into the completely clueless players (like your Tanker example) who had no idea what they were doing and played archetypes wrong because they simply didn't know any better. I suppose there's really nothing that can completely eliminate stupid. ;)

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

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Sounds like that kid was

Sounds like that kid was going for a build with max HP and nothing else.

I've only met one person who wouldn't play with my main toon because it was an Inv/SS tank (after the big nerf) and "everyone" knew that they were now useless. He was also pissed because I didn't have Teleport and how could I shift places in a fight when I was rooted? As far as he was consecrned the only real tank was a Stone Tank with TP.

I Hated/Loved Taunt. I played with that so many times, and always wished that those powers that had a taunt built into them could be boosted to be more effective. Taking Taunt meant losing a slot for another attack power ( I wanted all of them to maximize my ongoing DPS). Here's hoping that we can boost the effectiveness of powers with a built in Taunt mechanic.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Deathwatch101 wrote:
I think the major issue I find is the way people socially act if your not a min/maxer even if you show you have a viable build, they insist you run this "god" build because thats the best even if you show you perform better using builds that suit your brains style of working.
I played CoH pretty regularly for its entire 8.5 year run and I very rarely ran into any group of people who ever got hyper-picky about making sure everyone in a given team was using "perfect god" builds or the like. Sure I guess there were a few groups or SGs out there like that (especially maybe the PvP oriented ones) but in terms of casual play CoH was (once again) very forgiving of team dynamics. In fact there were famous stories of "All Defender teams" or "All Tanker teams" which on paper should have been disasters working incredibly well in practice.
Basically very few people ever quibbled about character builds on teams in CoH unless you did something really, really stupid (like play an Empathy Defender that somehow avoided taking any healing powers). I would expect CoT to foster that same "non-picky" style of play.

The all Mastermind LRSF....... mmmm, memories.

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Well, if you're going down

Well, if you're going down that memory lane, how about the All Tank LRSF, the All Scrapper LRSF, the All . . . . we tried almost all the variations to try and find the perfect group dynamic to take that SOB out.

I tried WoW for about 6 months after a year of playing CoH and was I ever shocked at how they treated Hybirds. In my DnD (not ADnD) days, I used to love playing the Fighter/Thief class. I tried to recreate that in WoW only to find that I would never get invites because of it.

I ran back to CoH so fast and never left BECAUSE it didn't matter! As long as you knew how to play your character based on the powers you selected, you almost always had a blast. I remember doing a TF with an all Defender team and mowing down everything that got in our way; an absolute blast! In a properly balanced game, it's not What you Play, it How you Play!

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StellarAgent wrote:
StellarAgent wrote:

Well, if you're going down that memory lane, how about the All Tank LRSF, the All Scrapper LRSF, the All . . . . we tried almost all the variations to try and find the perfect group dynamic to take that SOB out.
I tried WoW for about 6 months after a year of playing CoH and was I ever shocked at how they treated Hybirds. In my DnD (not ADnD) days, I used to love playing the Fighter/Thief class. I tried to recreate that in WoW only to find that I would never get invites because of it.
I ran back to CoH so fast and never left BECAUSE it didn't matter! As long as you knew how to play your character based on the powers you selected, you almost always had a blast. I remember doing a TF with an all Defender team and mowing down everything that got in our way; an absolute blast! In a properly balanced game, it's not What you Play, it How you Play!

My worries isn't that the people here won't go in with CoH intentions but any others that are attracted to the game.

That has the ability to corrupt the general views of a player base over time.

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But that's the thing! In CoX

But that's the thing! In CoX Hybrids were as successful, if not more so in certain circumstances, than your typical "Holy Trinity". Believe me, Hybrids will be embraced as heartily as those who want to build their dedicated DPS/Tank/Heal character.

In fact, as I understand how Masteries work, almost every character will be a Hybrid, as you can use them to tweak your character to your personal playstyle from the "get-go".

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Deathwatch101 wrote:
Deathwatch101 wrote:

My worries isn't that the people here won't go in with CoH intentions but any others that are attracted to the game.
That has the ability to corrupt the general views of a player base over time.

When everyone was "brand new" to CoH (back in 2004) no one really knew that the Holy Trinity wasn't strictly required. Everyone had to learn regardless of their past experiences. People who start to play CoT will learn just like all the original CoHers did.

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

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Deathwatch101 wrote:
My worries isn't that the people here won't go in with CoH intentions but any others that are attracted to the game.
That has the ability to corrupt the general views of a player base over time.
When everyone was "brand new" to CoH (back in 2004) no one really knew that the Holy Trinity wasn't strictly required. Everyone had to learn regardless of their past expereiences. People who start to play CoT will learn just like all the original CoHers did.

+1

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I feel there should be a cap

I feel there should be a cap on how far Taunt can be boosted (augments and the like for CoT).
My thinking behind this is, if your very high damage toon hits a boss with the most damaging attacks in a very short time span, no matter how frequently another player Taunts, the foe Boss WILL go after you! Its your job to gauge how much is too much damage output, and opt to use a different power that has minimum damage (or none) and some mitigation effect, to knockdown, or knockback the foe, etc.., before they take you down.

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Izzy wrote:
Izzy wrote:

I feel there should be a cap on how far Taunt can be boosted (augments and the like for CoT).
My thinking behind this is, if your very high damage toon hits a boss with the most damaging attacks in a very short time span, no matter how frequently another player Taunts, the foe Boss WILL go after you! Its your job to gauge how much is too much damage output, and opt to use a different power that has minimum damage (or none) and some mitigation effect, to knockdown, or knockback the foe, etc.., before they take you down.

I think the best way to do this type of thing is to make the boss send ads after you, for example if im being locked down by a "tanker" really why would you want to turn your back to them.

By sending ads out, it means there are additional hostiles that other tankier characters need to intercept and deal with this promotes more off-tanks or hybrid sturdy-dps.

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Deathwatch101 wrote:
Deathwatch101 wrote:

Izzy wrote:
I feel there should be a cap on how far Taunt can be boosted (augments and the like for CoT).
My thinking behind this is, if your very high damage toon hits a boss with the most damaging attacks in a very short time span, no matter how frequently another player Taunts, the foe Boss WILL go after you! Its your job to gauge how much is too much damage output, and opt to use a different power that has minimum damage (or none) and some mitigation effect, to knockdown, or knockback the foe, etc.., before they take you down.
I think the best way to do this type of thing is to make the boss send ads after you, for example if im being locked down by a "tanker" really why would you want to turn your back to them.
By sending ads out, it means there are additional hostiles that other tankier characters need to intercept and deal with this promotes more off-tanks or hybrid sturdy-dps.

You're thinking in terms of Taunt the way it was design in CoH (and often is used in other games) where "taunt" places the taunt caster on top of the AI aggro list. Other games use it has a threat multiplier. Our taunt powers may also have a compknent to raise the caster's current threat representation, but "threat" is actually sepearate from "taunt" itself.

Our Taunt is an effect like other powers, which does not manipulatw the AI but affects how a target operates, regardless if it is a PC or NPC. The mechwnics of threat and taunt are now completely distinct and perform different functions. In theory it may be possible to have a taunted enemy attempt to attack someone other than the taunter. I can't reveal the answer to the question of "what"s the purpose of tsunt then?". But it will still have an noticeable effect on the flow of combat in even this type of situation.

With regards to the concern of "hybrids". First, let us move away from the term and instead say Support or Control users. Especially since everyone willmhave access to support and control powers in Tertiary Sets.
In a manner of speaking, every Classification csn potentially be built to provide some formmof supportmor control.

Now, one of the smart parts of the decision behind the types of Classifications is the high degree of combos of Support, Offensive, and Defensive Manipulation Sets. This results in many potential Classifications which have entire sets providing buffs, debuffs, and controls. Then there are Masteries which further leverage the use of these types of powers.

This will get players who are used to the trinity style of play used to a more fluid team dynamic.


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Right, because the Best

Right, because the Best 'taunt' belongs to the Fire Controller, who locks you in the oven and sets you on fire! Taunt is just another control-scheme - a simple behavior-modifier. Realizing that, the Devs have put taunt in line with the other control-schemes and you don't have to worry about it, until we actually see how it works in-game.

Check out http://cityoftitans.com/forum/updated-classification-and-specification-chart, as it explains how the Archetypes will function, basically.

Be Well!
Fireheart

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Fireheart wrote:
Fireheart wrote:

Right, because the Best 'taunt' belongs to the Fire Controller, who locks you in the oven and sets you on fire! Taunt is just another control-scheme - a simple behavior-modifier. Realizing that, the Devs have put taunt in line with the other control-schemes and you don't have to worry about it, until we actually see how it works in-game.

It's funny you mentioned Fire Controllers and the Taunt mechanic being another type of control scheme because I used to suffer from the working delusion (based on hundreds of hours of successful evidence) that my main Fire Controller alt was one of the best "pseudo-tanks" I ever created. She obviously didn't need/use Taunts directly but she could (via controls) effectively tank maybe 99.5% of anything in the game. ;)

I always sort of considered the actual Tank archetype in CoH to be a sort of pseudo-controller (and/or vice-versa depending on your POV) anyway so it makes sense to treat Taunt as a more generalized method of control in CoT.

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

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Our Taunt is an effect like other powers, which does not manipulatw the AI but affects how a target operates, regardless if it is a PC or NPC. The mechwnics of threat and taunt are now completely distinct and perform different functions. In theory it may be possible to have a taunted enemy attempt to attack someone other than the taunter. I can't reveal the answer to the question of "what"s the purpose of tsunt then?". But it will still have an noticeable effect on the flow of combat in even this type of situation.

Misdirect-type powers? Or maybe the basis for a [url=https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Confuse_(Status_Effect)]confusion/mindcontrol[/url] effect?

Izzy
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i have to wonder if a power

i have to wonder if a power with a Summoned AoE that lasts a while, like Tar Patch, should always have a way to target the middle, and be defeatable? Would have loved that when fighting Knives of Artemis with their Caltrops. This was one of those times that you NEEDED someone on team with Speed Boost or the fun factor just depreciated by 80%... and the name of the game is Fun!

That situation wasn't a Hard Challenge, it was Devoid of Challenge. If there was a mechanic to destroy the caltrops, taking the attacking focus from the Foes, and onto the Caltrops, that would be more of a challenge. Like it was defeating Sappers when fighting Malta!

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Izzy wrote:
Izzy wrote:

i have to wonder if a power with a Summoned AoE that lasts a while, like Tar Patch, should always have a way to target the middle, and be defeatable? Would have loved that when fighting Knives of Artemis with their Caltrops. This was one of those times that you NEEDED someone on team with Speed Boost or the fun factor just depreciated by 80%... and the name of the game is Fun!
That situation wasn't a Hard Challenge, it was Devoid of Challenge. If there was a mechanic to destroy the caltrops, taking the attacking focus from the Foes, and onto the Caltrops, that would be more of a challenge. Like it was defeating Sappers when fighting Malta!

I'm not a fan of 'targeting' the center of a bunch of tossed caltrops or a tarpit to make them go away.

The number of interactions that could exist to counter buffs and debuffs would be great. But one of the downsides to our aesthetic decoupling concept is that many of these interations can no longer be.

For instance, if you were up against caltrops, a tornado effect could disperse them harmlessly. If you were up against a tarpatch, a cold AoE would solidify it or a burning attack would change it into a burning AoE instead of a slowing AoE.

With aesthetic decoupling, however, there are no such interations because hot, cold, wind, rain, water, poison, electricity and any other effects are only visual overlays. The mechanics of the powers are completely divorced from what we see, and so the potential to portray how our powers interact with the objects of the world is lost.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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blacke4dawn wrote:
blacke4dawn wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:
Our Taunt is an effect like other powers, which does not manipulatw the AI but affects how a target operates, regardless if it is a PC or NPC. The mechwnics of threat and taunt are now completely distinct and perform different functions. In theory it may be possible to have a taunted enemy attempt to attack someone other than the taunter. I can't reveal the answer to the question of "what"s the purpose of tsunt then?". But it will still have an noticeable effect on the flow of combat in even this type of situation.
Misdirect-type powers? Or maybe the basis for a [url=https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Confuse_(Status_Effect)]confusion/mindcontrol[/url] effect?

Neither. Misdirect manipulates threat which is seperate function than Taunt. Confuse like effects are a type of control, and since Taunt is also a type of control, it works with the same mechanics of all other control powers that have an effect on actions. But what Taunt does and confuse effects (we use the term charm) do are not the same.


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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

I think the simplistic "If you're a Defender you MUST have heals" mindset was a reflexive left-over from other games where you had to religiously stick to the Holy Trinity.

"I can heal many things, but I can't heal STOOPID."
- smart Defender


Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.
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Izzy wrote:
Izzy wrote:

I feel there should be a cap on how far Taunt can be boosted (augments and the like for CoT).
My thinking behind this is, if your very high damage toon hits a boss with the most damaging attacks in a very short time span, no matter how frequently another player Taunts, the foe Boss WILL go after you! Its your job to gauge how much is too much damage output, and opt to use a different power that has minimum damage (or none) and some mitigation effect, to knockdown, or knockback the foe, etc.., before they take you down.

That's pretty much supposed to be the design principle. The tank's taunt + wimpy damage should be just under a DPS character going nuts. The tank's game becomes keeping his rate up as high as possible, and the DPS' game becomes not going nuts. Healer, similarly, they keep the tank healed along with the occasional out of control DPS, and if the DPS takes too much aggro, the healer must heal too much, and they then take the aggro.

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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.