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NPC/Player Power Parity

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Voldine
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NPC/Player Power Parity

Okay, I recently reminded myself of one thing that never failed to rub players the wrong way in CoH. Power Parity.

Specifically the fact that NPCs had powers and power values baked into the NPC entity code rather than referencing the power code that players used. In some cases this is necessary, in others it was freaking annoying.

I will highlight the prime offender from Ye Olde Game: Regen-set Paragon Protectors and 'Moment' of Glory. As we all remember; the player version of this power had a duration of a whole fifteen seconds. The version used by PPs with Regen was based on the original version of the power, and lasted close to a minute.

A minute of annoyance every time you ran into one and didn't either kill it before it popped the power or didn't have a hero that could deal psionic damage.

I therefore /suggest/ that our developers only 'bake in' powers on Archvillain-class NPCs and force the rank and file mobs to refer to the same database of powers that players use as a point of balance so that we do not ever run into a case where an enemy is loathed because they use an older, and better, version of a power that players no longer have access to.

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I'd agree with that, and also

I'd agree with that, and also add Tsoo Sorcerers and their teleporting brethren (Sky Raiders) who could bamf willy-nilly without regard to line of sight. If the players can't do it with their version of the power, the mobs shouldn't either.

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I agree with this sentiment,

I agree with this sentiment, as far as it goes. That is to say, if a NPC uses a power from an AT or power pool available to players it should behave in the manner that the power is supposed to behave, i.e. the way the players know and expect it to behave. As Voldine wrote, a NPC's Moment of Glory should not mysteriously last three or four times as long as a player's Moment of Glory.

I have no problem with NPC factions having access to their own powers or power pools. They may well have some technique that allows them to teleport in ways no one else can match, or to make themselves invulnerable in ways and for durations that leave players green with envy. However, if that is the case, these powers should be distinctive enough that players can see that this particular NPC did not just use Moment of Glory/Invincibility/etc.

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That never bothered me.

That never bothered me. Always felt most were annoyed by the lack of xp they'd get for the kill, if they couldn't beat the MoG timer. Though, yes, there were many a player who thought "If enemy isn't dead in 5 seconds or less, it was annoying"

I think what it will really come down to, is how the system will work.

Also, could you imagine the complaints from the player base (not me) if that Fire Armored Minion had 95% Fire Resist, and the Fire Blasting Hero/Villain couldn't beat them in a timely matter? :p

CoH had plenty of players, whole lot in fact, who ignored content they couldn't steamroll, or enemies that resisted their damage type to much.

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

That never bothered me. Always felt most were annoyed by the lack of xp they'd get for the kill, if they couldn't beat the MoG timer. Though, yes, there were many a player who thought "If enemy isn't dead in 5 seconds or less, it was annoying"
I think what it will really come down to, is how the system will work.
Also, could you imagine the complaints from the player base (not me) if that Fire Armored Minion had 95% Fire Resist, and the Fire Blasting Hero/Villain couldn't beat them in a timely matter? :p
CoH had plenty of players, whole lot in fact, who ignored content they couldn't steamroll, or enemies that resisted their damage type to much.

Don't have to imagine the fire damage scenario, in his very early days, Infernal had more than that, fire blaster went aim/BU/snipe, 4 damage.They changed it fairly fast.

PP MoG was awkward for a couple of reasons, the XP theft and the fact that some tauntless tanks had difficulty retaining aggro on them due to being unable to hit them, so squishies died.

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Personally, I think the best

Personally, I think the best solution to this problem is to just make all Foe NPCs use the Character Creation System the same as Players use, but have the Foe NPCs "driven" by the AI system. That then means that Foe NPCs have "builds" just like Players do, complete with Slotting and Enhancements and all the rest of it. Want to make a Foe NPC? Grab the equivalent of Mids' for City of Titans and make up your NPC.

You'd be able to do things like set rules for Pets/Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses/Elite Bosses/Arch Villains/Giant Monsters that define how such Foe NPCs get "built" in ways that aren't exactly the same as PCs ... things like "Minions only get no more than one Global Enhancement Slot, regardless of their Level" kinds of rule exceptions. That would then let you do something like specify that Pets never get Global Enhancements, Minions get no more than 1 Global Enhancement, Lieutenants get no more than 2, Bosses get no more than 3, Elite Bosses get no more than 4, Arch Villains get no more than 5, and Giant Monsters get 6. Stir in a couple of other differences from the norm of how characters get built, such as limiting the maximum number of Enhancement Slots that any one Power can be given ... and you'll have a NPC Build System that simply makes use of the exact same game code as is used for PCs, but with a few differences of what is "allowed" to be built, as opposed to what goes "into" those builds (ie. non-standard Powers that Players have no access to).


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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

That never bothered me. Always felt most were annoyed by the lack of xp they'd get for the kill, if they couldn't beat the MoG timer. Though, yes, there were many a player who thought "If enemy isn't dead in 5 seconds or less, it was annoying"
I think what it will really come down to, is how the system will work.
Also, could you imagine the complaints from the player base (not me) if that Fire Armored Minion had 95% Fire Resist, and the Fire Blasting Hero/Villain couldn't beat them in a timely matter? :p
CoH had plenty of players, whole lot in fact, who ignored content they couldn't steamroll, or enemies that resisted their damage type to much.

Personally, I enjoy a decent challenge. I just don't like it when The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard is the primary reason for said challenging conditions. Unique powers for enemies are fine, but don't just give an enemy a flat-out better in every way version of a power that players get.

I actually liked facing Stone Armor Outcasts, and believe that there should have been at least one user of this power set in level-capped content. I would prefer grinding down and debuffing a granite armor enemy over, say, stupidly high health pool Nazi statesman.

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One thing that always annoyed

One thing that always annoyed me was the powers that had player-specific benefits "baked in," like the x2 crit condition on scrapper katanas and other melee powersets. Then the tsoo would use these baked in benefits and randomly crit on a player. It wouldn't have bothered me if there hadn't been dev posts saying this shouldn't be happening, which meant this sort of baking bonuses was genuinely a bug.

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Voldine wrote:
Voldine wrote:

Brand X wrote:
That never bothered me. Always felt most were annoyed by the lack of xp they'd get for the kill, if they couldn't beat the MoG timer. Though, yes, there were many a player who thought "If enemy isn't dead in 5 seconds or less, it was annoying"
I think what it will really come down to, is how the system will work.
Also, could you imagine the complaints from the player base (not me) if that Fire Armored Minion had 95% Fire Resist, and the Fire Blasting Hero/Villain couldn't beat them in a timely matter? :p
CoH had plenty of players, whole lot in fact, who ignored content they couldn't steamroll, or enemies that resisted their damage type to much.

Personally, I enjoy a decent challenge. I just don't like it when The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard is the primary reason for said challenging conditions. Unique powers for enemies are fine, but don't just give an enemy a flat-out better in every way version of a power that players get.
I actually liked facing Stone Armor Outcasts, and believe that there should have been at least one user of this power set in level-capped content. I would prefer grinding down and debuffing a granite armor enemy over, say, stupidly high health pool Nazi statesman.

Seeing as how players had that power too, ad it got changed later on, I wouldn't call it cheating.

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But it is cheating in the

But it is cheating in the sense that it is the same power being used, but the NPC one doesn't use the same rules.

It would be like giving a 4th edition wizard access to 3rd edition spell lists as an NPC while forcing your players to stick to the the normal rules. Well, normal for as horrible as 4e is anyways.

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Enemies can do programmed

Enemies can do programmed behavior that players simply have issues doing. For instance devs could create a metamorph character who can disguise themselves as a hero in your team .. Or The create a clone character in the game yo have to fight..

Sure these are powers players would love clone powers too but its easier to do for an NPC. And Bears, Wolves, Dinosaurs etc that don't use human animations are much easier to animate for specific attacks.

I think people just need to get used to the fact that enemies and AI do things the player can't for good reason

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JayBezz wrote:
JayBezz wrote:

Enemies can do programmed behavior that players simply have issues doing. For instance devs could create a metamorph character who can disguise themselves as a hero in your team .. Or The create a clone character in the game yo have to fight..
Sure these are powers players would love clone powers too but its easier to do for an NPC. And Bears, Wolves, Dinosaurs etc that don't use human animations are much easier to animate for specific attacks.
I think people just need to get used to the fact that enemies and AI do things the player can't for good reason

But this isn't about animations or AI advantage due to instant application of computed decisions versus human reaction time. This is purely about making sure that any balance changes to powers that drastically change an important variable like duration is properly applied to all characters that use said power.

The classic example given was old versus new Moment of Glory and how NPCs never used the corrected version that players used after one of the many regen nerfs.

A theoretical example would be giving a minion NPC a version of, say, quills that does a base damage value of 108 damage per tick while the maximum enhanced value for players (no set bonuses included) is 26.83 per tick. The NPC version here is blatantly better.

Let's give an NPC mastermind 12 minions, 8 leuts, and 4 bosses at once despite the fact that PC masterminds only get 3, 2, and 1 respectively. Its okay because its an NPC, right? You know, despite the fact that it uses the exact same power set a PC would use.

Let's give an NPC dominator a snipe that hits four targets. Its just an npc, no reason to care about balance.

Let's give an NPC a version of personal force field that they can attack through while keeping the player version only able to affect self. Its just an NPC, nobody will complain about it being unfair that they have an invincibility toggle that no PC has while still able to attack.

All I ask for here is true balance in powers shared between players and NPCs. If a power is unique to the NPC and not just a 'numbers filed off' clone of a player power, go nuts.

The original Lady of Ysgard. -Virtue

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Voldine wrote:
Voldine wrote:

Let's give an NPC a version of personal force field that they can attack through while keeping the player version only able to affect self. Its just an NPC, nobody will complain about it being unfair that they have an invincibility toggle that no PC has while still able to attack.

Carnival of Shadows Illusionists and Master Illusionists that would Phase (so you couldn't hit them: UNAFFECTED!) and that wouldn't do anything to prevent them from continuing to attack you THROUGH PHASE (which no Player Character was allowed to do). So they'd Phase out, and contiue hitting you with Mez Attacks while you couldn't affect them.

Bogus.


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Voldine wrote:
Let's give an NPC a version of personal force field that they can attack through while keeping the player version only able to affect self. Its just an NPC, nobody will complain about it being unfair that they have an invincibility toggle that no PC has while still able to attack.
Carnival of Shadows Illusionists and Master Illusionists that would Phase (so you couldn't hit them: UNAFFECTED!) and that wouldn't do anything to prevent them from continuing to attack you THROUGH PHASE (which no Player Character was allowed to do). So they'd Phase out, and contiue hitting you with Mez Attacks while you couldn't affect them.
Bogus.

I never said that we didn't have something similar previously, was just giving examples of Really Bad Ideas.

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That one was the one that

That one was the one that really irritated the crap out of me.

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Voldine wrote:
Let's give an NPC a version of personal force field that they can attack through while keeping the player version only able to affect self. Its just an NPC, nobody will complain about it being unfair that they have an invincibility toggle that no PC has while still able to attack.
Carnival of Shadows Illusionists and Master Illusionists that would Phase (so you couldn't hit them: UNAFFECTED!) and that wouldn't do anything to prevent them from continuing to attack you THROUGH PHASE (which no Player Character was allowed to do). So they'd Phase out, and contiue hitting you with Mez Attacks while you couldn't affect them.
Bogus.

And let's not forget that they had zero recharge on their Phase shift, so even if they phased back to normal for regular attacks, 2 seconds later, they could phase back out again, instead of waiting 30 seconds like players.

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To quote Gangrel: "shrugs."

To quote Gangrel: "shrugs." :-)

While I respect the opinions posted above, I for one don't mind if NPCs have powers that work differently from mine, or even entire powers/power sets to which I don't have access. I always figured one reason was to make up for the advantage the human intelligence of the player will always have over NPC AI. And yes, I hated what Illusionists could do also, but that hate was on my character's behalf because they were such a challenge, not as a player against the devs because I felt they allowed the Carnies to cheat.

Then again, I'm also one of those folks who think NPCs should have some unique costume parts, especially signature characters.

Spurn all ye kindle.

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Me personally I don't mind if

Me personally I don't mind if NPCs get unique powers, but it can be WTF when they give the npc a power set that by definition players have access to but is watered down with reason given "balance" yet the NPC get the unwatered down version (MoG prime example). Then having phase and cant attack and later a cool down period because it would have been unfair advantage yet allow the NPOC to have phase every 5 secs and still can attack while phased (Carnival). Or summoning too much pets would be OP and cause memory slow downs then turn around and allow NPC to summon twice or more the number of pets than the player.

I think power sets and powers that are given to the players, should follow the same rules npc and PC alike.

Now unique powers that is say a trademark for that particular mob that may or may not be tied to their background, sure, have at it. But really, it's annoying that the NPCs get a good version of a power and players get watered down version. Especially by definition the player hero is supposed to be a full fledged powerful hero.

That is kind of why to me things like the MoG that got nerfed but the NPC kept original version, the NPC phase version vs player version, and the npc pet summoning vs player summing was a bit odd and annoying. Because it showed what the devs could actually do with those powers if they chose to. LR irionically with his mass of spider summoning kind of made sense at least. He was the head supreme commander of Arachnos and it made sense he had a bunch of bane spiders on call. And of course there was no player version. It was a trademark LR power. Which was cool.

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I'm fine with not being able

I'm fine with not being able to duplicate an NPC's powers. If a single villain is meant to be a match for a team of 8 then exaggerated powers should be part of that. Limiting it to only having mountains of hit points, or never exceeding the power of one player, means I won't get to feel heroic when my team gang-bashes some unfortunate hamstrung NPC.

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Agreed with Jag & Airhead.

Agreed with Jag & Airhead. Though, that's just for power effects, don't deny us awesome animations!

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Also, in the WTF category,

Also, in the WTF category, how Carnies could phase even when they were held.

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Cinnder wrote:
Cinnder wrote:

To quote Gangrel: "shrugs." :-)
While I respect the opinions posted above, I for one don't mind if NPCs have powers that work differently from mine, or even entire powers/power sets to which I don't have access. I always figured one reason was to make up for the advantage the human intelligence of the player will always have over NPC AI. And yes, I hated what Illusionists could do also, but that hate was on my character's behalf because they were such a challenge, not as a player against the devs because I felt they allowed the Carnies to cheat.
Then again, I'm also one of those folks who think NPCs should have some unique costume parts, especially signature characters.

I think the CoT team developing powers, costumes, etc, that can only be used on NPCs and not PCs is wasting development time. If a power or costume piece is interesting enough for an NPC to use, it's interesting enough that a PC might want to use it, too.

Just like PCs will be "unique" based on the total set of powers and options they choose, so will it be the same with NPCs. No need to reserve things for them.

If balance is a problem, then powers should be tunable for NPCs separately, just like powers will be tuned separately for different PC classes.

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Pleonast wrote:
Pleonast wrote:

If balance is a problem, then powers should be tunable for NPCs separately, just like powers will be tuned separately for different PC classes.

there was a suggestion that was posted on the old CoH forums about 5 or 6 years ago, I think. It was designed to assist in balancing the powers amongst themselves, and the ATs. Basically, you have a baseline "AT". Something with no AT bonuses* baked in. That way, you can balance the powers between the powers themselves. without having to deal with the complexity of having two ATs with the same power-sets but different AT bonuses futzing up the data gathered. Once the powers are "relatively" balanced. You can see where the ATs themselves need a little tweeking.

I would figure the same could be done here. In addition, you'd be able to add "NPC faction" bonuses to the "AT" bonuses to help balance the NPCs as well.

* What I mean by AT bonuses is actually the Inherants that all the ATs had baked into their code. Instead of there being 10 basic ATs in CoH, there would have been 11. Only one of them would have been for Dev testing purposes only. The baseline AT. Once a player chooses an AT, say a Tank, the baseline AT gets modified with the Tank Inherants (+DR, Gauntlent, +HPs, -Damage) to bring them in line with the way the Tanks were actually coded. This would allow the various ATs to be tweeked easier for balance purposes.

I'm sure the reason it was never adopted in CoH was because it would have meant re-writing about half of the code in the game to implement. Maybe, they can do something similar with CoT. I'm sure it would make for fewer headaches down the road, once the game is launched.

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I'm ok with enemies having

I'm ok with enemies having unique POWERS just not unique mechanics. I sincerely hope threat, heals, crowd control, DoTs, Spikes, environment traps, melee and ranged attacks are in villains. If a villain faction has a special attack.. I'm okay with it.. hell THAT is an unlock worth having.

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Never minded unique mechanics

Never minded unique mechanics or unique powers myself. I just hope, like CoH, we can build to be powerful enough to take on AV level threats (Legendary in CO terms). Soloing AVs is what made me feel like my character was an A-List Superhero and not Power Pack.

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

Never minded unique mechanics or unique powers myself. I just hope, like CoH, we can build to be powerful enough to take on AV level threats (Legendary in CO terms). Soloing AVs is what made me feel like my character was an A-List Superhero and not Power Pack.

You play CO and don't absolutely HATE Gravitar? Threat? means nothing. Crowd Control? Waste. Stealth? See Threat.

I love boss fights to have unique mechanics but they should never (my opinion) throw the player out with the bathwater.

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I'm going to throw a curve

I'm going to throw a curve ball into this discussion in that sometimes Powers that are of limited use to a PC can turn into an overwhelming advantage when given to NPCs who can stack it up real fast. For reference, I offer the Caltrops of Artemis Villain Group from City of Heroes, where the way they were able to spam Caltrops in numbers turned what normally functioned as a utility power of limited effectiveness into a very serious movement debuff and steep DoT stack that could actually be remarkably dangerous. Needless to say, whenever I had to fight against the Knives of Artemis I pretty much just turned Hover on and left it on for the entire mission, so as to be able to get out of the Caltrops spam ... and STAY OUT OF the Caltrops spam.


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