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Masters/Operators/Masterminds and Upgrade Powers

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Von Krieger
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Masters/Operators/Masterminds and Upgrade Powers

I'm not actually sure where this belongs, if it's in Suggestions and Ideas, General Powersw discussion, or the Operator/Master forum itself.

Mentally poking over things from CoH and the potential of CoT, I found myself wondering this morning what would be the best way to handle upgrades to one's minions?

CoH devoted two powers of the nine in its primary pet sets to upgrading, along with three attack powers, three summons, and one miscellaneous power that varied greatly depending on the set.

It seems, to me, that the upgrades were intended to be a speed bump, essentially, for Mastermind players in CoH. MM's required a huge amount of setup time and blue bar. Remember that originally you had to use your three summons, and then upgrade each pet for both levels of upgrade, resulting in having to upgrade 12 times.

Standing around and doing nothing but making your critters suck less isn't very much fun, and the devs realized this and made the upgrade powers AoE.

With a Pet/ primary, your pets are your offense and your defense. At times (like I Trials) the churn rate on minions could be fantastic. Being a bit of a chore to try and keep your pets alive so that they could do damage and keep you alive, as well as having to hit the two "Suck Less" buttons each time you had to bring in fresh pets.

Since with CoT we're going to be building the MM's equivalent from the ground up, I was brainstorming what could be done with regards to upgrade powers.

First of all, are they even needed to begin with? I'm not actually sure how MM pets and upgrades worked from a technological sense, if they opened up new bits of code to add to the pet's AI, if they replaced a pet with the upgraded pet, or what exactly they did.

If, from the very beginning, MM pets gain new powers as you level up, there might not be any need for upgrade powers. I'd be happy with that option. It would allow for additional powers to be placed in the Pet/ primaries. Just summoning stronger, better versions of pets when you yourself are of a high enough level to do so.

Though if the upgrades remain, I would rather like them to have some additional usage baked in.Having them serving double duty. Maybe as a buff/debuff/heal sort of thing. Some help supporting your minions, even if you're not /Support. Like Mercs/ first upgrade functioning as a decent single target heal on the target. Maybe even going so far as to have it working on allies as well as pets. Bots/ had the issue with Repair. Why would you bother taking it when Heal Other does pretty much the same thing and isn't limited to your minions?

In short, I view the two upgrade powers as things that slow down a Pets/ primary class and feel that they may not even be required in CoT. But that they can be made more tolerable by giving them additional function if the dev team does decide to go that route.

Anyone else have any other ideas, thoughts, or feelings on the matter?

BIZZARO MEDIA FOLLOWER

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Von Krieger wrote:
Von Krieger wrote:

If, from the very beginning, MM pets gain new powers as you level up, there might not be any need for upgrade powers. I'd be happy with that option. It would allow for additional powers to be placed in the Pet/ primaries. Just summoning stronger, better versions of pets when you yourself are of a high enough level to do so.

I'm behind this idea. As VK points out, even with the change to an AoE buff the mastermind remained fairly team-unfriendly. Unless there are reasons not to upgrade the minions (which could be cute but will most likely be an unnecessary complication) it is nothing more than an annoyance to have to go through three steps in order to have the minions ready to go.

I'd even vote for a 'summon all' button so that the MM needn't have all pets present and active at all times. Thus if the character runs into an emergency or ambush, or the team asks if everyone is ready, the player can hit the one button and be good to go.

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Hmm.. Depending on the Team

Hmm.. Depending on the Team size, and the Number of pets out... the buffs could scale down (if allot of pets are out), or scale back up (if 1 to 2 pets are out).

When i played my MasterMind, and I was on a large team... I only had 3 pets out.
I ran a Thugs MM, so naturally, Bruiser and 2 Enforces... thats All i would need. And for the majority of the game, I didnt need Thugs or Gang War. And I was very content. :)

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Being someoen who loved

Being someone who loved playing MMs (I like having minions. Yes, I'd love to have the funny little yellow things on my team but that opens up a can of copyright.... LOL)

Sorry, a slight digression there....

Anyway..

Being someone who played MMs A LOT, having to re-summon was laborious. In the midst of a fight, you had to summon, improve, summon, improve, summon, improve. (I can't remember if the AoE was all pets or one group). Originally, before the AoE addition, you were doing this 5 times with a slow refresh.

As an MM (or the CoT equivalent), this does need to be streamlined. In the comics / Superhero Lore, someone with minions will bring them in already ready to go, not summon them and go "wait, I need to arm my people up! Annnnnd, GO!" In the time you enhance your minions, you're having a bad day.

My other problem was minions could be very squishy though, thinking about this more, you had your Mooks (the first three), a couple of Lieutenants (the second summon) and a Boss (the third summon). Making the first tier of mooks slightly less squishy would be nice though..

I do like the idea of a 'summon all' which would basically summon any minions you didn't currently have with you (or all if you were alone). I also think that summons should come out as prepped as your level dictates without you having to stand there at the back for 2-3 minutes enhancing everything before you can move in (maybe that time is a little exaggerated but you get the point).

Above all, the summoned minions are the MM's primary attack and defense so they need to be able to do that job well (no, I'm not saying they should be invulnerable - though your minions could be other hero/villains - there's a thought....!!! - Creating your own minor league super team as your minions...!!!! :))

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I also played MM a LOT..

I also played MM a LOT...mostly solo because the team never wanted to wait for me to summon the whole horde and then buff them up. Going in without the buffs could often be bad as well. It was generally a lose/lose situation.

I like the idea that the pets level with the Master so if level 12 unlocks some more Pet abilities, simply summoning Pets after lvl 12 grants those abilities.

I'd also like to see some of the summoning sets break away from the 3-2-1 mold. I know this will be a bear to code but why not have an Elemental being able to summon 4 pets instead of 6? Each would be a little bit stronger but their sum total would be the same as the traditional 6 pet scheme.

I'd like to see more of the Master's Powers affect his Pets AND his team mates. If all of the good buffs are Pet-only then teammates will be left out. This could make Masters undesirable.

Another factor that often came up was simply moving around. In the end Pets could enter instances with us but in the beginning we had to resummons every time we hit the door. Another not-good situation.

I'd like to try and eliminate the negative aspects of Masters before we even get them built, rather than launch with them and then try and fix them. They were very popular in CoX and would have been more so if their AI had not been developed by a suicidal version of HAL 9000.

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Let's not forget, removing

Let's not forget, removing the two upgrade powers makes room for more cool abilities to further differentiate each Operator build!

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Another method is "upgrade"

Another method is "upgrade" powers could be passive. Summoned minions would have whatever passive upgrades have been bought by the player when summoned.

So playing with this idea, we could have three upgrade powers; Offense, Defense, and Utility. Just purchasing the power would add to the pets abilities. Further enhancing the powers would buff the pets further. For example, Offense would add attacks to the minions. Boosting say the damage would increase the damage of all the pets. Since there are going to be (eventually) 3 different Operator classifications this would allow the pets to be further tuned to fit the play style and needs/wants of each classification.

Outside of upgrades, I was wondering how minions should scale with the Operator's level. Getting more HP and base damage would be a no brainier, but what else should increase as they level independent of upgrades? Would some of their inherent powers increase, like say additional base resistance or defense? Just something else to think about.

-----------------------------------------
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syntaxerror37 wrote:
syntaxerror37 wrote:

Another method is "upgrade" powers could be passive. Summoned minions would have whatever passive upgrades have been bought by the player when summoned.

Exactly what I was thinking.

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In SWTOR, you have companions

In SWTOR, you have companions, which is a small crew of say 5 people that you pick up along the way of Story Arc progression. Each crew fits in a different role; Healer, DPS, or Tank and each have to be made loyal to you by conversations and gifts. Now I dont wanna do that, but I DO like the idea of the pets helping cover the other 2 legs of the holy trinity of MMO.

So for each Sub-Class, would the pet number and types change? I know this will require a butt-load of more coding, but since we'll be waiting for them (le sigh) anyways, maybe it qualifies as a Maybe/Possibly for later down the line.

The Engineers could still be 6 pets as we remember them from the old days, but the Taskmasters and Ringleaders will have different needs than the Engineer. The Engineer character fills the role of healer/support. So he basicly buffs/debuffs/shields/heals the pets while they play combo Tank/DPS. This we know from years of testing on CoX.

With These other 2 sub-classes you are much more active in the fights, and you have much less support powers. Taskmasters for instance will be up front in the fight, due to the mix of ranged and melee that comes in the traditional Assault sets, which btw was the Dominator Secondary, if you didnt know. So they would need more support/ healer pets to keep them buffed and running through the fight.

Whereas Ringleaders using the old Blaster Secondary of Manipulation powers will need heals, yes but they will also need the attack pets to kill what they lock down.

Maybe:
Engineer - Traditional 6 pets (Mostly DPS/Tank)
Taskmasters - 2 pets (one heals/buffs, one Debuffs/mez
Ringleaders - 4 pets (3 minion DPS/ one tank)

Yeah, that sounds like a Jedi. Massacre a whole room full of people, then stand around apologizing for it. - Swtor NPC

syntaxerror37
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Gauntlet wrote:
Gauntlet wrote:

In SWTOR, you have companions, which is a small crew of say 5 people that you pick up along the way of Story Arc progression. Each crew fits in a different role; Healer, DPS, or Tank and each have to be made loyal to you by conversations and gifts. Now I dont wanna do that, but I DO like the idea of the pets helping cover the other 2 legs of the holy trinity of MMO.
So for each Sub-Class, would the pet number and types change? I know this will require a butt-load of more coding, but since we'll be waiting for them (le sigh) anyways, maybe it qualifies as a Maybe/Possibly for later down the line.
The Engineers could still be 6 pets as we remember them from the old days, but the Taskmasters and Ringleaders will have different needs than the Engineer. The Engineer character fills the role of healer/support. So he basicly buffs/debuffs/shields/heals the pets while they play combo Tank/DPS. This we know from years of testing on CoX.
With These other 2 sub-classes you are much more active in the fights, and you have much less support powers. Taskmasters for instance will be up front in the fight, due to the mix of ranged and melee that comes in the traditional Assault sets, which btw was the Dominator Secondary, if you didnt know. So they would need more support/ healer pets to keep them buffed and running through the fight.
Whereas Ringleaders using the old Blaster Secondary of Manipulation powers will need heals, yes but they will also need the attack pets to kill what they lock down.
Maybe:
Engineer - Traditional 6 pets (Mostly DPS/Tank)
Taskmasters - 2 pets (one heals/buffs, one Debuffs/mez
Ringleaders - 4 pets (3 minion DPS/ one tank)

I don't know how I would feel about each classification having different amounts of pets. At the very least they should have access to the same tiers of pets even if the number of pets within a tier is reduced (or increased). Now, the base values of a pet set, such as damage, buffs/debuffs, heals, etc., could be ballanced for each classification.

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Ther should be an option to

Ther should be an option to Limit the Size or height that a Pet is show on your screen. I really really got Frustrated with Demon Sumonong pets later in the game, from other MM. Too Frikking Tall and always in my way! :/

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syntaxerror37 wrote:
syntaxerror37 wrote:

Another method is "upgrade" powers could be passive. Summoned minions would have whatever passive upgrades have been bought by the player when summoned.
So playing with this idea, we could have three upgrade powers; Offense, Defense, and Utility. Just purchasing the power would add to the pets abilities. Further enhancing the powers would buff the pets further. For example, Offense would add attacks to the minions. Boosting say the damage would increase the damage of all the pets. Since there are going to be (eventually) 3 different Operator classifications this would allow the pets to be further tuned to fit the play style and needs/wants of each classification.
Outside of upgrades, I was wondering how minions should scale with the Operator's level. Getting more HP and base damage would be a no brainier, but what else should increase as they level independent of upgrades? Would some of their inherent powers increase, like say additional base resistance or defense? Just something else to think about.

Oooh I like this! Slot the upgrade Powers for Acc and they hit better. Slot for damage to do more damage. Slot for recharge to get THEIR Powers to cycle faster!

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

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Now, the base values of a pet

Now, the base values of a pet set, such as damage, buffs/debuffs, heals, etc., could be ballanced for each classification.

I could see a lil triangle with a floating dot in the middle. The point of the triangle could show offensive, defensive, and support and float between the three to show what the pets are most effective for that class/set?

Yeah, that sounds like a Jedi. Massacre a whole room full of people, then stand around apologizing for it. - Swtor NPC

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Did someone say you should be

Did someone say you should be able to put your pets in a mini version of the character creator? Because that would be beyond awesome.

//////************************************************************************\\\\\\

This summarizes my hopes and dreams for CoT. Check it out if you'd like.

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Jordan_yen wrote:
Jordan_yen wrote:

Did someone say you should be able to put your pets in a mini version of the character creator? Because that would be beyond awesome.

uMmmmm... is the pet a Biped? :)

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Jordan_yen wrote:
Jordan_yen wrote:

Did someone say you should be able to put your pets in a mini version of the character creator? Because that would be beyond awesome.

In a recent interview, I'm sure I heard that pets will also be fully customsable as well, so yes. I don't have time right now to find it...

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syntaxerror37
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Gauntlet wrote:
Gauntlet wrote:

Now, the base values of a pet set, such as damage, buffs/debuffs, heals, etc., could be ballanced for each classification.
I could see a lil triangle with a floating dot in the middle. The point of the triangle could show offensive, defensive, and support and float between the three to show what the pets are most effective for that class/set?

No, not like that, more under the hood. Think about tanks and scrappers. the power sets they had were (adjusting for the powers which were proliferated) the same, but the base values were different, scrappers had a higher base damage and tanks had higher base resistance/defense.

So a Engineer's pets would have more powerful attacks but less powerful buffs, debuffs, & heals when compared to a Taskmaster, all things being equal.

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Izzy wrote:
Izzy wrote:

Jordan_yen wrote:
Did someone say you should be able to put your pets in a mini version of the character creator? Because that would be beyond awesome.

uMmmmm... is the pet a Biped? :)

Yes! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmjp7aYY9VU

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So more of a adjustment to

So more of a adjustment to the numbers and to the combat rotations of the pets abilities ie: bots cast their bubbles and heals more often than firing missiles. This also means that pet abilities for those classes will need to be more effective on the player character and (maybe) teammates? The wife and i on swtor can chose different pets, say she goes with her tanker pet and i go with my healer pet and that pretty much keeps us going. By covering all 3 points on the Holy Trinity we are able to mow thru stuff.

I know in City things were setup so that for a really effective group you needed almost each of the 5 classes. Lacking one of them could really hurt your progress. The Incarnate system fixed alot of the Role stuff by helping cover the weaknesses in the classes. My MM bots/dark build didnt really suffer from those weaknesses, so everything i picked up from patron to ancillary to Incarnate was just icing for me. Bots were tough. I hope they stay that way.

Yeah, that sounds like a Jedi. Massacre a whole room full of people, then stand around apologizing for it. - Swtor NPC

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Gauntlet wrote:
Gauntlet wrote:

I know in City things were setup so that for a really effective group you needed almost each of the 5 classes. Lacking one of them could really hurt your progress.

Not in my experience. I was regularly on teams where we didn't have one or more of the 5 original archetypes and we had no difficulties. 3 controllers and a blaster; 5 scrappers, a defender and a controller; 8 defenders; 4 blasters and a tank; we rarely ran into any combination that wasn't workable.

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One of the joys of MM Mondays

One of the joys of MM Mondays was everybody showed up with whatever they wanted. We sometimes had theme nights (all Bots, all Zombies, all guns) but it was usually free for all. The only class we ever missed was Town Crier to announce we were coming lol.

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

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syntaxerror37 wrote:
syntaxerror37 wrote:

Another method is "upgrade" powers could be passive. Summoned minions would have whatever passive upgrades have been bought by the player when summoned.
So playing with this idea, we could have three upgrade powers; Offense, Defense, and Utility. Just purchasing the power would add to the pets abilities. Further enhancing the powers would buff the pets further. For example, Offense would add attacks to the minions. Boosting say the damage would increase the damage of all the pets. Since there are going to be (eventually) 3 different Operator classifications this would allow the pets to be further tuned to fit the play style and needs/wants of each classification.
Outside of upgrades, I was wondering how minions should scale with the Operator's level. Getting more HP and base damage would be a no brainier, but what else should increase as they level independent of upgrades? Would some of their inherent powers increase, like say additional base resistance or defense? Just something else to think about.

I like this idea. It always bothered me that They didn't make the Upgrade an Auto power (I suspect they wanted to keep the cooler upgrade animations).

Variety is always a good thing too.

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umbralwarrior wrote:
umbralwarrior wrote:

Jordan_yen wrote:
Did someone say you should be able to put your pets in a mini version of the character creator? Because that would be beyond awesome.

In a recent interview, I'm sure I heard that pets will also be fully customsable as well, so yes. I don't have time right now to find it...

It would be easier to code if pets are customizable from the start than it is to tack the system on later (CoH never could get it done!)

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I'm glad to heat that the

I'm glad to heat that the pets will be customised. One of the things that irritated me was playing a Hive Queen and being unable to even colour change my thugs, let alone do awesome things such as add antenna or (admittedly vestigial) to them.

As for the numbers involved per group, I actually liked using things like Gang Warfare, where I would have a literal army of weaker minions at my beck and call. They had no powers, they had nothing really that great, but they were of huge numbers and that's what made the difference, so I like the idea of having more or less minions dependent upon the powers of the minion. So one set is literally "Armed Mob", where they show no special powers but each rank of summon upgrade allows you to summon more and more until you have a literal field of minions, who are matched in power to someone summoning three Elementals (because of game balance).

Also, Minions need a tank magnet. One of the reasons you couldn't attack as the Mastermind itself was that people would agro on to the Mastermind rather than the minions and that ended up killing me more often than not. If the Mastermind has more "Attack" powers, as it were, then the Minions need an Agro-magnet to draw the assaults away from you...of course if you are on your own and you fire a rifle then they're going to land on you.

The other thing; choosing Minions and Attacks separately. If I want a mass of people such as "Mob", I might want my attacks to be a special power rather than the same weapons the mob uses. At the same time I may want to do things like throw Molotov cocktails and fire stolen pistols as I'm being followed by robot bodyguards I didn't make. I may want a rifle as a mob-boss (and then do it up like a Tommy gun) rather than a pair of pistols with a gang. Just a thought.

but yes, very much support what is being said above! MMs were great fun!

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DocSyonide wrote:
DocSyonide wrote:

I'm glad to hear that the pets will be customised.

We *hope* to provide customization to pets/henches.

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I played a Ninja/Trick Arrow

I played a Ninja/Trick Arrow Mastermind (slash masochist) in CoH, and I can say with confidence that the Upgrade Powers were pure resource wasters. They wasted slots that could have been used for other/better/more relevant powers, they wasted slots on needing enhancements, and they were just generally kludgy (especially in their Single Target formulation!). It would have been Far Superior™ to simply do a multi-click of the Summon Powers as the means to upgrading ... as in, click once to summon, click same power again to upgrade once, click same power again to upgrade a second time. No need for "extra" powers to do the job, creating speed bumps in progression. All this really meant was that the Summon powers and the Upgrade powers were "locked" into your build progression such that they ALWAYS took priority over ANY other consideration (unless if you were making gimped "petless" Mastermind).

The personal attacks for Masterminds ... were relatively pointless. Theoretically speaking, they had value ... but in actual gameplay that value was pretty meager indeed for the amount of investment required to make them even minimally useful (except as Invention Mules for set bonuses).

The inability to "direct traffic" in terms of "Go There AND STAY THERE While You Attack" was another serious flaw in how Masterminds "worked" in CoH. The fact that the act of issuing Commands to your pets didn't "interrupt" whatever action they were in the process of executing made them occasionally unresponsive. Having them "decide" to go running off in the stupidest direction(s) to "find" the edge of the map (and all the aggro in the world along the way) was another "pet" peeve. Group Fly and Group Teleport being gated behind a pool structure that almost mandated wasting slots to reach them (funny how there was never a Group Super Jump or Group Superspeed).

Probably my #1 complaint against Ninjas was ... they weren't. Ninjas that is. They weren't Ninjas. In order to make them "sneaky" you had to get Grant Invisibility, a Pool power. Their protection scheme was Defense based, and pegged at a level (a paltry 7%!) that made them fold like pre-creased origami paper even at Level 1, let alone at Level 50, turning them into One Shot Wonders (where you're left wondering why you ever wanted to be a Ninja Mastermind) because there simply wasn't ANY WAY, aside from Leadership and Bubbles to help them NOT DIE so quickly/easily when breathed upon.

Another thing that always bugged me about CoH was that fact that Masterminds had bottom rung Buff/Debuff potential ... particularly with powers like Leadership. I mean, you'd kind of expect a Mastermind to be something of a "natural leader" type who would provide the best mileage out of the Leadership pool, right? But no ... Masterminds were put on par with Blasters and Melee Types when it came to their multiplier for Buffs/Debuffs, when they ought to have been put on par with Defenders in *that* regard.


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Zombie Man wrote:
Zombie Man wrote:

We *hope* to provide customization to pets/henches.

You mean, it will be possible to Daydream ...??!!


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