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A New Model for Enhancements

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Cutter
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A New Model for Enhancements

The post-Hallowe'en sugar buzz and a boring Friday afternoon afternoon at work triggered a thought process on the nature of enhancements (or boosts, or whatever they'll be called) that I wanted to share. Be gentle :)

The idea is that enhancements drop not as pre-defined items, but rather as "blank slates" that allow the player to choose what aspects of a power to enhance. In addition to that customizability, they would grow with the character, levelling up and evolving as the toon does.

For the sake of some amount of simplicity, I'm thinking that the basic attributes would be limited to @10-12 different aspects, folding together some of CoX's diverse types:
- Accuracy
- Damage
- End Redux
- Recharge Redux
- Range
- Mez Duration
- Buff / Debuff
- Damage Resist
- Defense
- Movement (*speed / distance)
- End Mod

At set tiers of play, enhancements would be coded to provide a boost to 1, 2 or 3 attributes (boost percentages would vary). Once a character hits a new tier, they would unlock an "enhancement respec" that would give the player a one-time opportunity to change the nature of all of their current slotted enhancements (limited by the power they are slotted in - some powers might only have one or two attributes). This respec would be optional, and the player would be allowed to choose to leave some enhancements at a "lower" AE level if they wanted to. Any new or unused enhancements would automatically be specced to that tier.

My first take on the progression looks something like this (numbers might be way off, I don't know - and yes I did deliberately choose to have some of the splits total more than 100%; not sure if that is the correct approach, but I wanted to start out roughly mirroring the way some of CoX's IOs worked):

1-20: SAE - Single Attribute Enhancement
Choose 1 attribute
Scale: None (always 100%)

20-35: DAE - Double Attribute Enhancement
Choose any 2 attributes
Scale: 90/10 | 75/35 | 60/60

35-50: TAE - Triple Attribute Enhancement
Choose any 3 attributes
Scale: 75/20/5 | 60/30/20 | 40/40/40

Some powers of course might not have two or three different attributes to enhance, but even those with only one dimension wouldn't necessarily lose anything as they would always get 100%.

The biggest pro I see to this is character customization. It also addresses the issue of unusable drops. And let's not forget characters dinging mid-mission and suddenly finding all their enhancements have turned red (I'm sure many of us experienced this either directly or indirectly - nothing worse than having to delay a TF because the team leader needs to spend 20 minutes shopping for new enhancements).

I recognize there are cons to the system:
- enhancement drops rapidly lose their appeal and necessity as a character levels... To counter this I would suggest that a new enhancement drop would enable the player to respec a single existing slotted enhancement.
- no cost to upgrade outleveled enhancements = over-cashed toons... Obviously (in my mind) the "new tier" global enhancement respec would be at no cost, but perhaps using a new drop to respec an existing slot would have a cost associated with it (scaling by level).
- no unusable drops -> no selling -> no secondary source of cash... I don't see a reason why players couldn't still sell their blank enhancements to a store. Or even choose to directly convert one into cash right from their inventory. (This point and the previous one are somewhat inter-related as well... if I'm not making cash from selling, but also not spending cash to upgrade, there is less net difference.)
- no set bonuses... True, but also no niche sets and no crappy third- and fourth-tier sets that never get used. Less dev time spent on this means more dev time spent on content!
- what about the Market?... What If?(tm) the Market, and any associated Salvage/Loot drops, was geared towards non-power-related items? Recipes for wings and other costume parts perhaps? Or what if there were recipes for "set bonuses" (e.g. if you have 3 Damage SAEs slotted, gain X benefit)? Honestly this is the biggest question mark in my opinion, and the one most in need of insight.
- more choice = more confusion... I know the IO system caused its share of mental gymnastics as players meticulously mathed the optimal configurations and set bonii; this can't be any worse :)

There you have it. I'm sure I've overlooked things, but I think as a base there is plenty of support to jump off from. Thoughts?

..cutter

Comicsluvr
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At first blush I like the

At first blush I like the idea. As for no selling...why not? If my Ranger already has all the Boosts I want, with maybe a couple stored for the next time I ding, then why can't I sell the rest? I can Vendor them for a fixed price or throw them on the Market. Now they might not be worth a fortune but they can still be sold.

Despite the technical difficulties, some version of this appeals to me.

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

Redlynne
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Quote:
Quote:

- Accuracy
- Damage
- End Redux
- Recharge Redux
- Range
- Mez Duration
- Buff / Debuff
- Damage Resist
- Defense
- Movement (*speed / distance)
- End Mod

Counter-proposal for those same purposes (and alphabetized because I'm finicky that way):

  • Accuracy
  • Buff and Debuff (use same Enhancement) (note: Endurance Modification falls into this category, as does Heal, Movement and Slow)
  • Charge Reduction and Interrupt Time Reduction (same enhancement) (note: leaving "room" for use of a Charge game mechanic in a Tap/Hold key click UI scheme should one ever be included)
  • Damage
  • Endurance Reduction
  • Mez Duration
  • Range
  • Protection (includes Damage Resistance and Defense)
  • Recharge Reduction

That gives you NINE types of Enhancements, not the 20 odd that City of Heroes had which just cluttered up everything tremendously.

One of the things that City of Heroes did was it put its enhancements onto "Schedules" which determined the strength of the various Enhancements. I'd actually prefer it if that sort of "Scheduling" were actually handled by the "Powers" end of things, rather than putting it onto the Enhancements themselves, in the form of a Multiplier assigned to each Power's Effects, defining how "strongly" a particular Enhancement modifies that aspect of a Power. That way, you could something like having a Power that adds Defense AND Resistance, and because there's only one Enhancement Type that covers both of those things, as a Powers Designer you'd get to "tweak" how strongly an Enhancement of the Protection Type "works" when slotted into the Power for both of those aspects. So you could, for example have a high base Resistance value (let's say, 50%), but assign a low Enhancement multiplier (let's say x0.4). So if you slotted "+100% worth" of Enhancements into that Power, you'd get 50*(1+(100*0.4))=50*1.4=70% Resistance out of it. That then lets you set up the Power to have a high "base" value but not turn into a "runaway" situation once you start enhancing it because "how much" any amount of Enhancement is worth is micro-controlled from within the Power itself.

At the same time, you could defined the Defense effect for the exact same Power as having a low base value (let's say, 10% for easy math), and then assign a high Enhancement Multiplier to it (let's say, x2.0). So if you slotted "+100% worth" of Enhancements into that Power, you'd get 10*(1+(100*2))=10*3=30% Defense. That way, you can define a Power as having a "worthless" starting value, but if Enhanced it can be worked up into "useful" levels that favor being Enhanced.

Doing this sort of "micro-targeting" of Enhancement Multipliers within the POWERS as opposed to controlling for this on the values assigned to the ENHANCEMENTS then makes it much easier for the Devs later on down the line to "tweak" certain aspects of the Game Balance to take care of edge cases caused by unforseen combinations that can result in "broken" Powers without having to resort to wholesale NERFS of entire categories of Enhancement (such as shifting the value of a "Schedule" of Enhancements up or down to compensate). It also gives the Devs a better handle on controlling the inevitable Min/Max phenomenons that are sure to crop up, and avoids some of the more convoluted ways of needing to code Power Effects such that they are only oartially affected by an Enhancement, like some of City of Heroes had to do with its Powers spreadsheets.


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Cutter
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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Quote:
- Accuracy
- Damage
- End Redux
- Recharge Redux
- Range
- Mez Duration
- Buff / Debuff
- Damage Resist
- Defense
- Movement (*speed / distance)
- End Mod
Counter-proposal for those same purposes (and alphabetized because I'm finicky that way):
Accuracy
Buff and Debuff (use same Enhancement) (note: Endurance Modification falls into this category, as does Heal, Movement and Slow)
Charge Reduction and Interrupt Time Reduction (same enhancement) (note: leaving "room" for use of a Charge game mechanic in a Tap/Hold key click UI scheme should one ever be included)
Damage
Endurance Reduction
Mez Duration
Range
Protection (includes Damage Resistance and Defense)
Recharge Reduction
That gives you NINE types of Enhancements, not the 20 odd that City of Heroes had which just cluttered up everything tremendously.

I like the idea of folding more things into the Buff/Debuff category. And I actually originally thought to have a Protection option that covered both Res / Def! I just wasn't sure how it would work. But your next suggestion covers that very well...

Quote:

One of the things that City of Heroes did was it put its enhancements onto "Schedules" which determined the strength of the various Enhancements. I'd actually prefer it if that sort of "Scheduling" were actually handled by the "Powers" end of things, rather than putting it onto the Enhancements themselves, in the form of a Multiplier assigned to each Power's Effects, defining how "strongly" a particular Enhancement modifies that aspect of a Power. That way, you could something like having a Power that adds Defense AND Resistance, and because there's only one Enhancement Type that covers both of those things, as a Powers Designer you'd get to "tweak" how strongly an Enhancement of the Protection Type "works" when slotted into the Power for both of those aspects. So you could, for example have a high base Resistance value (let's say, 50%), but assign a low Enhancement multiplier (let's say x0.4). So if you slotted "+100% worth" of Enhancements into that Power, you'd get 50*(1+(100*0.4))=50*1.4=70% Resistance out of it. That then lets you set up the Power to have a high "base" value but not turn into a "runaway" situation once you start enhancing it because "how much" any amount of Enhancement is worth is micro-controlled from within the Power itself.
At the same time, you could defined the Defense effect for the exact same Power as having a low base value (let's say, 10% for easy math), and then assign a high Enhancement Multiplier to it (let's say, x2.0). So if you slotted "+100% worth" of Enhancements into that Power, you'd get 10*(1+(100*2))=10*3=30% Defense. That way, you can define a Power as having a "worthless" starting value, but if Enhanced it can be worked up into "useful" levels that favor being Enhanced.
Doing this sort of "micro-targeting" of Enhancement Multipliers within the POWERS as opposed to controlling for this on the values assigned to the ENHANCEMENTS then makes it much easier for the Devs later on down the line to "tweak" certain aspects of the Game Balance to take care of edge cases caused by unforseen combinations that can result in "broken" Powers without having to resort to wholesale NERFS of entire categories of Enhancement (such as shifting the value of a "Schedule" of Enhancements up or down to compensate). It also gives the Devs a better handle on controlling the inevitable Min/Max phenomenons that are sure to crop up, and avoids some of the more convoluted ways of needing to code Power Effects such that they are only oartially affected by an Enhancement, like some of City of Heroes had to do with its Powers spreadsheets.

This is a phenomenal refinement of the system.

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Well, it's something you

Well, it's something you could NEVER DO with the City of Heroes game, because implementing it would simply be TOO MASSIVE a chore to accomplish, and it would upset too many people to make the necessary changes ... so why do it? But with a NEW game system, where you DON'T HAVE a legacy database of powers that would need to be retrofitted in order to accomplish this kind of thing ... for THAT it makes "Boot To The Head" sense to do it this way.

Besides, I still believe that Damage Enhancements ought to give less of a "boost" to Area Effect than they should to Single Target, and this system allows you to do that by design, and even tweak individual Powers with greater specificity than you ever could do under the City of Heroes system using their Schedule A, B, C, D method.

Similarly, you could have Powers that ought to be "more strongly affected" by Enhancements than others (I'm thinking like Range on Snipes and the like) even within a single powerset, and this (proposed) system lets you do that.


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Less complicated (Fewer

Less complicated (Fewer categories)
More controlled (Coded into the power rather than the enhancement)

In all reality, the second part will make the enhancement system more complex than the one in CoH, but undeniably more elegant in final effect.

The original Lady of Ysgard. -Virtue

Redlynne
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We make every pretense of

We make every pretense of competency around here. ^_~


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We do? Errr... I mean "we do!

We do? Errr... I mean "we do!" :)

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But seriously, I think there

But seriously, I think there is a lot of potential with this system. Anything that allows for simpler decision making, more player control and better dev-side power management is a contender in my books.

/casts Summon Dev Attention

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I think it should be a little

I think it should be a little different. The base 110% and 120% should be tied to the number of attributes. With the progression system the devs would only have to make the mobs over 50 only 0.1% Cumulative tougher per level If the base of powers and hitpoints do not increase. Or an Exponential 0.31% Increase if base hit points and powers do Increase past level 50.

Single Attribute Enhancement
Alpha Class
Choose 1 attribute
Scale 100%
Level Bonus
01-20 +4.000% /Level
21-50 +0.670% /Level
51+ +0.100% /Level

DAE - Double Attribute Enhancement
Beta Class
Scale: 95/15
Choose any 2 attributes
Level Bonus 1 Bonus 2
01-20 +3.800% +0.600%
21-50 +0.633% +0.100%
51+ +0.095% +0.015%

Delta Class
Scale: 75/35
Choose any 2 attributes
Level Bonus 1 Bonus 2
01-20 +3.000% +1.400%
21-50 +0.500% +0.233%
51+ +0.075% +0.035%

Gamma Class
Scale: 55/55
Choose any 2 attributes
Level Bonus 1 Bonus 2
01-20 +2.200% +2.200%
21-50 +0.367% +0.367%
51+ +0.055% +0.055%

TAE - Triple Attribute Enhancement
Ra Class
Scale: 80/25/15
Choose any 3 attributes
Level Bonus 1 Bonus 2 Bonus 3
01-20 +3.200% +1.000% +0.600%
21-50 +0.533% +0.167% +0.100%
51+ +0.080% +0.025% +0.015%

Mu Class
Scale: 65/35/20
Choose any 3 attributes
Level Bonus 1 Bonus 2 Bonus 3
01-20 +2.600% +1.400% +0.800%
21-50 +0.433% +0.233% +0.133%
51+ +0.065% +0.035% +0.020%

Pi Class
Scale: 40/40/40
Choose any 3 attributes
Level Bonus 1 Bonus 2 Bonus 3
01-20 +1.600% +1.600% +1.600%
21-50 +0.267% +0.267% +0.257%
51+ +0.040% +0.040% +0.040%

no matter what i try i cant seem to get the right format so the charts a little off.

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Redlynne and I were

Redlynne and I were discussing enhancements and their relative effectiveness in general over breakfast yesterday. Trying to remember the high points of my rant here, bear with the rough edges...

A month after I first joined CoH during Issue 2, I finally found the posts describing the relative effectiveness and math behind the various enhancements and how powers' chances were calculated. I was floored because there was no diminishing-returns system built into it; it seemed like that would lead to people loading up with all of one enhancement type, and sure enough, people said my sniper was gimped because I slotted 1 Acc, 3 Dmg, 1 Range, 1 EndRed, and 1 Recharge, while they were all slotting 6 Dmg. (Meanwhile, I was picking off things from farther away and thus doing a better job of pulling and aggro management, but that's another story.)

Fast forward to, what was it, Issue 5's Enhancement Dysfunction. Initially I thought, wow, they're finally putting in some diminishing returns system like there always should have been. I was annoyed to see that it was being implemented as just a nerf (I even made a counter-proposal that, instead of nerfing those who overspecialized, would buff those who diversified).

Then I saw the "curve" they were using and blew my top. It was shaped like a cliff, and not a proper logarithmic decay curve like it should have been, creating a huge artificial boundary of "three SOs" (nerfing further enhancements by 90% or more, effectively discarding them) which looked like the devs just saying "this is how you'll play: you will use no more than three of something, neener neener." They can talk all they want about how they "saved the game" with ED, but I saw a third of my (RP, non-munchkin) SG quit because nothing worked right any more. And no, therewasn't a huge influx of new blood to replace them.

Having a sharp cliff like that simply shut down all kinds of possibilities, especially ones involving powers that only took one kind of enhancement, either literally or realistically. For example, some scrapper sets had passive defense or resist powers that could only take the relevant type of enhancement. Another example was how Red and I built characters which used Hover for travel, 6-slotting it with +Fly, getting a final speed around that of baseline Flight without the to-hit penalties, suppression, sloppy movement, etc. The metaphor I used was that while everyone else was swooping around like fighter planes, we were running attack helicopters. Tradeoffs! Just like you want in character design. Destroyed by the sloppy implementation of ED, because with a more graceful degradation, it would still make sense.

Anyway, that leads into what Red and I were talking about.

Red was pushing the "enhancement effectiveness on a given power" scale factor noted a few posts back. My point was that, instead of just having straight multipliers here, that this is where you'd implement diminishing returns: there would be a curve for each given power&enhancement combination. Curves would be shared, and there would probably only be a few of them, in the same way there were only a few Schedules under the old system. So some powers, for example, could deal a large amount of base damage but have a shallower enhancement curve (e.g. 21, 33(+12), 42(+9), 49(+7), 54(+5), and 59(+5) percent total bonus to base; basically the total bonus follows a log(1 + N_enh) * 10% curve) while other powers could have lower base damage with a steeper enhancement curve (e.g. 30, 48(+18), 60(+12), 70(+10), 78(+8), and 85(+7) percent total bonus to base; log(1 + N_enh) * 10%). I'm just tossing out examples here; workable curves are going to be different. Note that in both these cases, 6 slots gives you just under 50% better than 3 slots, and 1 slot still makes a big difference.

Cutter's model of enhancements being able to enhance multiple facets (ala IOs) to different levels fits right in with this as well.

Implementation-wise, this would simply be rolled into the many-to-many mappings between powers and enhancements. How much of a performance penalty depends on whether this is done in the database or the server application code.

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

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You do logarithmic maths over

You do logarithmic maths over breakfast?

We can never be friends!

/Keep up the good work.

- - - - -
Hail Beard!

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Darth Fez wrote:
Darth Fez wrote:

You do logarithmic maths over breakfast?
We can never be friends!
/Keep up the good work.

I'm a Mad Engineer. There is no "off" switch!

But yeah, I figure that since logarithmic curves (and exponential decay curves like A*e^(-kx)) keep showing up in nature, a scaling system based on such would feel the most "natural" to players, even if it pisses off some of the munchkins by not allowing 200% bonuses to things.

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

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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

even if it pisses off some of the munchkins by not allowing 200% bonuses to things.

It's easier to Game Balance a system that doesn't let the Maximum achieve too much separation from the Minimum ... because if you do allow too much separation, then you've got a game of HAVES vs HAVE NOTS, where the HAVE NOTS wind up gimped so that the HAVES don't get too overpowered and run away with everything.


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
even if it pisses off some of the munchkins by not allowing 200% bonuses to things.
It's easier to Game Balance a system that doesn't let the Maximum achieve too much separation from the Minimum ... because if you do allow too much separation, then you've got a game of HAVES vs HAVE NOTS, where the HAVE NOTS wind up gimped so that the HAVES don't get too overpowered and run away with everything.

Very true. The challenge is to give players enough control over enhancing their characters that they feel properly invested while not going out of control with too much. This may be easier here since we're aiming for high levels of character customization of appearance- the "investment" can be done in the look, not the performance, to a degree.

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As a fervent system analysis

As a fervent system analysis junkie, I think that smooth curves make the most sense. Having breakpoints and discontinuities lead to very specific behavior, as has been noted before. I think something that addresses level and plus based curvature all at once makes the most sense. Asymptotic curves give diminishing returns without ever giving you a best place to stop.

Not to mention, it serves my itch to do optimization of the resulting functions, muhahahaha... ahem.

Know thy users, for they are not you.
"Preliminary optimization is the root of all evil." -Knuth
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a.k.a. Mr Sigma, Mr. Stochastic, Balancing Act, The Oncoming Storm

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Shouldn't there be systematic

Shouldn't there be systematic ability to create the awesomely powered characters that some people want? I mean by this not that there should be one build to rule them all, but the ability to build them all to be amazing, with proper enhancement, some power symmetry and/or out of the box thinking.

Personally I like excelling as much as I like looking awesome, I just don't think that the interest in building statistically amazing characters should be curbed or discouraged.

Set bonuses can give an opportunity for this, and/or having some 'universal' enhancements and procs, similar to some of the incarnate powers were working.

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Why no create a whole

Why no create a whole different system? It's a spiritual successor. Not a clone.

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seeing that CoT is doing

seeing that CoT is doing powers differently instead of enhancements what if the boost system did multi tasks ie; accuracy,damage or acc,end reduction acc,range acc,debuff or defense, damage resistance or recharge,mezz damage,mezz and so on thuis way slots could be better managed and they would offer a different form of making powers work differently then just single slots for single enhancements

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

Why no create a whole different system? It's a spiritual successor. Not a clone.

A valid question, but consider that every bridge ever built is a clone of all the bridges built before, since they use the same fundamental principles (an oversimplification, but certainly this holds true in the last 10 years).

This is a little more fine-grained but - in my opinion - much the same. Why discard a system that worked and provided a core aspect of what made CoH fun? I hope that if they do, then it's because the devs have found an evolution of the concept that is just better[i]. Until we discover that to be true, it doesn't hurt to consider possibilities within the framework of what we know.

I think it is worth plumbing the depths of creativity and fostering exploratory thought... and it's fun.

In that spirit, I feel that putting the impact of enhancements within the powers themselves has promise. I never much liked the classification system for enhancements; it felt like a round peg in a square hole, as in, it fit but not really.

One thing though, End Redux and End Mod should be the same IO; honestly they're just inverse aspects of the same function, and they should be dropped under buffs/debuffs.

Enhance Name: Enhance A
Enhancement Category: Buff
Enhancement Value: 60
Enhancement Type: Range/Damage
*Enhancement Level: 10

Enhance Name: Enhance B
Enhancement Category: Debuff
Enhancement Value: 60
Enhancement Type: Endurance
*Enhancement Level: 10

* Optional in the implementation proposed in the OP

[i]Power selection
Name: Blast 1
Range: 100
Damage: 100
Endurance Cost: 50
Category: Energy
Effect: Blast
Type: Range
Targets: 1
Slots: Range/Damage/Endurance
Modifiers: 0.6/0.8/0.2

So Blast 1 would look like this slotted with Enhance A: 20/30

Range: 100+(20*0.6) = 112
Damage: 100+(30*0.8) = 124
Enhance Cost: 50

and like this when slotted with Enhance B: 10
Range: 100
Damage: 100
Endurance Cost: 50-(10*0.2) = 48

Similarly, with
Power selection
Name: Endurance Drain 1
Range: 100
Damage: 20
Endurance Cost: 5
Category: Dark
Effect: Drain
Type: AoE
Targets: 3
Slots: Range/Damage/Endurance
Modifiers: 0.6/0.8/0.2

Slotted with Enhance B: 5
Range: 100
Damage: 20*0.2*no_targets_hit = X End Drained
Endurance Cost: 5-(5*0.2) = 3

I came up with this really quickly, and it would need some work in the maths department; I haven't used anything more than basics functions since I left school...many years ago now. I'm just trying to illustrate one possible approach.

Cheers

of Phoenix Rising
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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

Why no create a whole different system? It's a spiritual successor. Not a clone.

Because everyone on these boards is expecting one huge similarity between CoTi and CoH;

that gear will be 100% independent from appearance.

Therefore, it is highly likely that something related to CoH's Enhancement system will be used (although one planned difference has already been leaked, we will have Global slots as well as Power slots) or something completely different than other MMO be in CoTi.

I like the idea of using a modified version of CoH's Enhancement system, but I'm happy with whatever MWM comes up with as long as it is at least as flexible as the Enhancement system.

Lin Chiao Feng
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Col. Kernel wrote:
Col. Kernel wrote:

I like the idea of using a modified version of CoH's Enhancement system, but I'm happy with whatever MWM comes up with as long as it is at least as flexible as the Enhancement system.

/signed

Emphasis mine.

No other game gave me a character "LEGO set" like CoH. (I missed SWG, but I hear it was at least as good.)

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

Comicsluvr
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LeadWanderer wrote:
LeadWanderer wrote:

Shouldn't there be systematic ability to create the awesomely powered characters that some people want? I mean by this not that there should be one build to rule them all, but the ability to build them all to be amazing, with proper enhancement, some power symmetry and/or out of the box thinking.
Personally I like excelling as much as I like looking awesome, I just don't think that the interest in building statistically amazing characters should be curbed or discouraged.
Set bonuses can give an opportunity for this, and/or having some 'universal' enhancements and procs, similar to some of the incarnate powers were working.

I agree but the devil is in the details. The more variable you put into the game equation...the messier it gets.

As a Quality guy I like to see benchmarks for things. Let's say that a typical Ranger with common-available gear is able to take down 5 Minions (or their xp equivalent) in 1 minute. I see this as a good benchmark to start with but allowances have to be made.

1) The Ranger may have won but he may also have been on his last legs so was this the norm or was it the luck of the RNG? The Ranger should defeat foes fastest but at more risk to himself.

2) A Controller should be able to take out the same 5 Minions but safer because they'll be controlled and therefore not shooting back as much. Safer = more time but also less time spent healing up or dashing back from hospital.

3) A Brawler should be able to crush 5 Minions but take very little damage at all. However the NEXT mob has lots of ranged weapons he doesn't have so they take longer. It averages out in the end.

The crux of all of this is that there SHOULD be several ways to defeat the enemy and ALL of them should be roughly equally viable. I say roughly because, again, more variables means more complexity.

As for looks, all of these choices should look great doing what they do.

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

cybermitheral
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I love to tweak (ahem).

I love to tweak (ahem).
I loved to mess around in Mids working out build options with IO's to get what I wanted, trying different combinations and trying to avoid the RuleOf5.

Making my Tanks/Brutes highly survivable but also adding in damage or recharge or ...
Helping my friend make her first SS/SD Brute perma-rage plus soft-capped to all 3 positions.

The IO system added a LOT of customisation that I really liked. Only problem was the Sets that NO-ONE ever used apart from multi-aspect enhancements.

The Phoenix Rising Initiative Rules Lawyer

Lord Nightmare
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LeadWanderer wrote:
LeadWanderer wrote:

Shouldn't there be systematic ability to create the awesomely powered characters that some people want? I mean by this not that there should be one build to rule them all, but the ability to build them all to be amazing, with proper enhancement, some power symmetry and/or out of the box thinking.
Personally I like excelling as much as I like looking awesome, I just don't think that the interest in building statistically amazing characters should be curbed or discouraged.
Set bonuses can give an opportunity for this, and/or having some 'universal' enhancements and procs, similar to some of the incarnate powers were working.

I think it should be allowed, but those that want to have to work HARD to get that status. And probably have to pop an Inspiration (or whatever MWM cooks up that is similar to them) when it's called for.

Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...

Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain