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Non-typical Defensive Power Concept

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Sand_Trout
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Non-typical Defensive Power Concept

Hey, I just had the wild hare of an idea for a defensive power-set that focused around shifting damage dealt to Stamina/Mana/Whatever instead of simply mitigating (resistance, dodging, w/e) or regenerating HP damage.

Conceptually, this could be reflected in the character constantly actively dodging incoming blows or a shield generator that runs off the same power supply as the character's offensive abilities.

My general idea is that this power-set would include stamina-boosting powers along the way to keep them offensively viable (and not boring), but because their defense and offense are interdependent, the player would be required to manage their abilities more consciously than the typical "toggle on and forget" of most CoX defensive sets. Additionally, such a power-set necessarily allow a certain increase in flexibility of the player, where if they need to tank, they can tone-down the stamina-heavy powers, but if someone else is taking the heat, their increased stamina-regen lets them really cut loose as a heavy-hitter. Therefore, offense/defense flexibility at the cost of additional complexity, and possibly being slightly weaker than a typical version of the archetype when attempting to balance the two.

As a rough idea of the power-set using the CoX 9-power format (I'm not especially attached to the details):

Tier 1 - Active Defense: Toggle. While active, damage and healing received is applied to Stamina instead of HP.
Tier 2 - Fittness: Passive. Stamina recovery increased.
Tier 3 - Efficiency (Kinetic): Passive. Smashing and Lethal Damage applied to Stamina due to Active Defense is decreased.
Tier 4 - Leverage: Single-target Active. Draw stamina from target enemy to regenerate your own stamina. Target is also slowed.
Tier 5 - Efficiency (Environmental): Passive. Fire, Cold, and Electrical damage applied to Stamina due to Active Defense is decreased.
Tier 6 - Grounded: Passive. You are highly resistant to abilities that deal direct damage to Stamina.
Tier 7 - Bodyguard: Targeted Toggle. Half of the damage dealt to target ally is applied to your own stamina as if through Active Defense.
Tier 8 - Non-Newtonian: PBAoE Active. Draw stamina from surrounding enemies to regenerate your own stamina. Targets are also slowed.
Tier 9 - Second Wind: Active. Instantly revive with 1 HP and full stamina.

Obviously, these are just stand-in abilities with no numbers attached to generate ideas.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Tannim222
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We uhhhmmm, can do that...the

We uhhhmmm, can do that...the future holds many possibilities. And that is all I will say about that.


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Fireheart
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Dun-dun-DUN!

Dun-dun-DUN!

Be Well!
Fireheart

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So ... basically a 3 shell

So ... basically a 3 shell game of where the damage goes ...

I think the key point here is that the entire scheme, mathematically speaking, is to shift incoming damage from a resource that matters (Health) to one that doesn't (in this example, "Stamina") and then allow additional recovery (above and beyond the nominal) to counteract the incoming damage. This is basically a case of Regeneration through an additional pool resource beyond the ordinary pools (Health, Endurance) that everyone else has, and then working out a way to shuffle resources back and forth in and out of the extra pool, creating a Management Overhead task for the Player.

I would point out that Warlocks in World of Warcraft (especially back in the Vanilla days) did something quite similar.

In World of Warcraft (vanilla), Warlocks functioned on a sort of "blood magic" basis, where they could drain their own Health and convert it into Mana, which functionally gave them a bigger mana pool (provided they didn't Lifetap themselves to death). This simple transfer from one pool to another made Health a sort of "fungible" resource that could (given time) be either Health OR Mana, depending on what was more important to the Player at that time. You'd basically just "sacrifice" a portion of your own life/Health in return for power/Mana to do stuff.

Needless to say, not everyone could wrap their heads around how this could be advantageous relative to caster classes that didn't do this. Well, the answer to that was that Warlocks also had Drain spells (Drain Life, Siphon Life, Drain Mana) which would allow them to STEAL resources from the opponents that they faced. Some (but not all) opponents had Mana, and you could Drain Mana from them directly and come out ahead, but the rate of positive return was relatively low (you needed to channel for the entire duration in order to gain more than the spell cost to use). But what about those opponents who didn't have any Mana? You can't Drain Mana from something that has no Mana in it! In that case, you could Drain Life, because EVERYTHING (even Undead) have a green Life bar. Damage dealt by Drain Life/Siphon Life showed up in the Warlock's Life bar as healing, meaning you'd be gaining Health from these spells. Now, since you couldn't surpass your own maximum Health, what do you do to prevent "wasting" excessive Drain returns? Exactly! You Lifetap to shift some of your Health from your Life bar to your Mana bar and keep right on draining!

And as if that wasn't enough, one of the possible build strategies had at the very end of it a spell called Dark Pact that allowed you to Drain your Pet(!) of Mana. This essentially gave a Warlock an "extra resource bar" to steal Mana from. It meant that there were now essentially THREE (and a half) places a Warlock could get Mana from without resorting to consumables (Potions, etc.) ... the Warlock's own Life bar (via Lifetap) ... an opponent's Mana bar ... their Pet's Mana bar. The extra "half" place to get Mana from was an opponent's Life bar, drained into the Warlock's Life bar and then Lifetap it into the Warlock's own Mana bar.

The whole thing turned into something of a Shell Game where you could get Mana from multiple places to fuel your use of spells, and because you were tapping a wider range of resources each with their own recovery rules it was entirely possible to play in a decidedly "vampiric" mode in which What's Mine Is Mine and What's Yours Is Mine Too that had the net effect of allowing the Warlock to defeat their enemies with resources STOLEN from those enemies they fought. All you had to do was manage the shell game of moving the resources around such that they would spill over into each other advantageously.

What you're describing Sand_Trout sounds like an effort to build something like that as a protective scheme, where you shift around where the damage "goes" in order to dilute the efficacy/efficiency of the damage being inflicted by making it pour into alternative resource pools, rather than into the place that can cause your PC to faceplant ... their Health. In that respect, this idea plays as a sort of "Ablative Armor" kind of thing, where first you have to "crack" the outer shell before getting to the parts you're trying to inflict damage on inside.


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Sand_Trout
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Quote:
Quote:

What you're describing Sand_Trout sounds like an effort to build something like that as a protective scheme, where you shift around where the damage "goes" in order to dilute the efficacy/efficiency of the damage being inflicted by making it pour into alternative resource pools, rather than into the place that can cause your PC to faceplant ... their Health. In that respect, this idea plays as a sort of "Ablative Armor" kind of thing, where first you have to "crack" the outer shell before getting to the parts you're trying to inflict damage on inside.

This is an accurate representation of what I have in mind.

The convoluted scheme you described with WoW Warlocks is why I'm describing only the defensive scheme, and not the obvious corollary of HP to Stamina. While potentially interesting, too much of a shell-game just multiplies the design complexity excessively IMO.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Tannim222
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We are already testing out

We are already testing out how players will manage this. Chrck out Barrier Generation in the Support Sets.


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Deelon
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This is actually a cool

This is actually a cool concept! I like the idea of having a “shell” defense like this. Something that would maybe take the initial burst damage of hopping into a mob but not sustain it as well over time as your stamina regen utility powers go on cool down. One thing that may be a bit overpowered is that external healing also applies to your stamina, maybe a very small portion if anything (my memory sucks but I believe CoH stamina didn’t scale with level like health did). Otherwise you’d be “healed” by both +health effects and +endurance/recovery effects from your team. I’m sure it could be balanced somehow though!

Brand X
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I like it. Doesn't fit a

I like it. Doesn't fit a concept I have (I need a Regeneration/Super Reflexes hybrid the like of Stalker WP) it does however sound like an interesting defense set to try out.

Sand_Trout
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Quote:
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Otherwise you’d be “healed” by both +health effects and +endurance/recovery effects from your team. I’m sure it could be balanced somehow though!

Yeah, it's atypical enough that the specifics of the balance are going to be a bit weird. Another alternative is that instead of heals going to stamina, external stamina boosts are enhanced, or just depend on the effects of existing stamina boost powers and not mess with their mechanics with regards to the powerset.

As I said, I'm not specially attached to any of the specifics. :)

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Tannim222
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Yeah healing won’t go to

Yeah healing won’t go to Power. Healing will only affect health. Recovery affects Power. It requires too many constions prioritize application of the healing / recovery effects to affect the appropelriate meter intended by the caster.

What happens when there are instances of something bypassing the shell and someone wants to heal the character, not make them hold up their shell better?

There would be rules required for healing when “shell powers are up”, “down”, not in use, locked out, etc...


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ThunderCAP
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I like it too.

I like it too.

Basically it's a "mana shield" kind of power-set, which usually was a "mage" thing on fantasy mmorpgs (mages get the mana regeneration usually and warriors get the health regeneration) but here you want to apply that to a tank, which imho is interesting and doable (it's always a matter of balancing things out as best as you can).

Interesting because it's tank that will need a different kind of healing, making powers that regenerate the stamina/mana of teammates occasionally more useful (anybody that has a power that recovers stamina becomes a "healer" with such a tank in the team).

Beeker
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Diablo II sorcerers had a

Diablo II sorcerers had a scheme like this with damage to mana skills and massive mana pools instead of life. Mana regen was proportional to your pool size ifbI recall correctly. Fun build to play.