so, everyone's heard of the mad scientist who got in over his head. the magic book that caused a zombie horde by mistake. tho potion that blew someone up.
.......
overpowered powers. they have a cost.
a big one.
1. want a zombie army for 45 seconds?
be like a guy as strong as a whole team?
well it will only have a 15 percent chance of working, else you die on the spot.
2. want to be untouchable damage wise for 30 seconds?
it only has a 50 percent chance of working, and there is no way for you to tell if it does work. only usable once every real 24 hours.
3. go godzilla size. crush the zone.
it costs vast amounts from a ingame npc vendor. has only 5 percent chance of working, else you do a on-and -off farting emote, with sounds, for 5 minutes.
if it works any character can go crazy at 25 feet tall with epic monster stats for 3-5 minutes. or just stand around in a busy area looking awesome, and getting famous. remember it would cost VAST amounts, and still be a gamble. keeping the economy level, and making sure people have something to work toward. money will always be worth something then!
the only way to add more than what most mmos have done already is to allow the overpowered to happen, and allow the costs to also be huge. more variety is good, and might be funny... for some of us.....
What a man thinks of himself, that is what determines, or rather indicates, his fate. - Henry David Thoreau
This is an interesting idea, but I think the principals of game design and how players perceive such things might be an issue. Power-ups that are inconsistent just end up being irritating and frustrating for the player. Random chance that the dude you're about to kill suddenly turning into a 25ft giant monster with 10x your HP just feels like you got robbed.
Random joke items are good and fun. Random power-ups are bad and frustrating.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
I like the idea of [i]"ultimate power at a price."[/i] It's what so many super-powered individuals are based around. Superman is as strong as he would ever need to be, but kryptonite can put him down. Lex Luthor is nothing without his gadgets. Asura can be burned alive if he gets too angry. Pretty much every single villain who strikes a deal with the devil gets screwed in one way or another. Simply put, OP'ness is completely reasonable for a super-powered MMO so long as it comes with a hefty price.
However, I feel that OP powers should be handled differently. Sure, a percent-chance gamble is perfect. Super-weapons can be unreliable, and easily sabotaged. Buying high-yield powers really makes people think about their wallets more than their power. A percent chance of dying really throws up a few flags. However, I think we should use debuffs more than anything. Take, for example, the Tier 9 powers that you could achieve in City of Heroes. If it was a ranged Tier 9 power, then chances are it let you nuke everyone in the vicinity at the cost of losing all your endurance and maybe also most of your HP. (ex. Nova and Dreadful Wail) If it was a defensive Tier 9 power, then it usually either made you hulk out for several minutes before making you as weak as a baby, (ex. Power Surge and One with the Shield) or it gave you epic at tanking while sucking at everything else. (ex. Hibernate and Granite Armor) My point is, let's make people sacrifice their stats before and/or after unleashing such absurd powers.
I suggested a similar fix regarding how some theoretical class/spec combos were broken or too OP. By raising or lowering their HP values similar to how CoX did it for various archetypes, then one could balance out their power by making them one-hit-wonders or (for underpowered combos) compromise for their lack of punch by turning them into living HP juggernauts. A whole lot of this [i]"sacrifice something for another"[/i] can really be compared to Soul Sacrifice, where by ripping out one of your appendages you could obtain access to devastating powers. It made people carefully consider their decision, and balanced out any attempts to nuke everything in the vicinity using overpowered moves.
Should we focus on that for OP powers like CoX, Soul Sacrifice, and I did?
<==========)===O|TtDd|O===(==========>
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/toon-profiles-nnekonnin-llabanttselel-aalbusuumbra-aagimundr-sstaalsol-and-doctor]My original character profiles![/url]
[img]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/26.jpg[/img]
options are always cool. or so at least i think so. knowing exactly how each fight will go in pvp no matter what is rather boring. and being the last one alive in a pvp group vs group fight, where you are certainly done for, would be a good example of having nothing left to lose.
What a man thinks of himself, that is what determines, or rather indicates, his fate. - Henry David Thoreau
I always though COH pretty much nailed this with the level 32 powers, long cool down but a really "super" affect:
Unstoppable, Elude, Strength of Will, moment of glory, Stone armor, Inferno, Nova etc etc
oh and the incarnate powers as well...
as a long time player of that game, i found them.... weak in pvp. they made no real difference. they added, and took away. but they added a modest boost for a severe tradeoff on a timer.
how about those same drawbacks and WORSE, for real advantages? not just topping out a tiny bit beyond what was normal? a gamechanger. not a game spice.
i see legends in games about super powerful mages who lost control of their powers and destroyed a city. undead everywhere. so, i can never do such a thing? at that level? or even a little while?
risk. being banned from the game for 12-24 hours as a power-tradeoff if a power fails, instant death, causing a zombie army to appear and probably take down my whole team, RISK.
make people's mouths drop when they see a thing. even years into a game. make shocking things happen even if a power fails.
What a man thinks of himself, that is what determines, or rather indicates, his fate. - Henry David Thoreau
This is one of those ideas that can work great in comics, novels, movies, single player games and other scripted media but tends to fall very, very flat in MMOs.
In MMOs, anything one player does that can affect another player requires some level of consent. The rikti invasions were something of an exception to that rule, but to trigger them required more than 'push button, cause chaos'.[color=red]*[/color] Besides, if one character is powerful enough to effectively shut down a zone with some kind of invasion, it stands to reason that another character would be powerful enough to free a zone just as quickly.
While it may seem like fairly harmless fun and cool, viewed individually, one has to take into consideration that 20 or 30 (or more) people might get together to trigger such a power, each in a different zone. Even if some of them failed, imagine the impact it would have if a third of the game's zones became unplayable.
Thus my verdict is no, players can never (have powers that) do such a thing. At any level. Even for a little while.
[br]
[color=red]*[/color] Even then they, and other such events, annoyed me more often than not. "Hi. I'm here, in this zone, trying to play the game. Oh, look, the developers made or allowed something to happen that [i]prevents me from playing the game[/i]. That's [i]fantastic[/i]." So, yeah, unless I happened to want to be involved in that particular invasion/event, for the duration I may as well have been banned from the game.
- - - - -
[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
I agree with Darth Fez on this. The "Godzilla" power is especially game breaking in PVE because all you need to do is get like 20 people together each with that power and you can easily defeat any AV or whatever in any context, right? Hamidon raids would have ended up like "...and then THREE of our Godzilla's popped and we took down the Hami, what a joke. All I got was a Centriole though..." And then the harassment/annoyance potential of some of the other ones is too great.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
okay, i agree with fez (dont tell anyone...) but the risks mean that probably only 1 in 20 of those attempts will work. and each would have cost alot to try. like a lotto ticket.
making a zone a wasteland? nay. just perhaps zombies or demons or whatever popping up here and there for 150 feet ingame. for a limited time... 2-3 minutes?
risk must make it so people almost do it to see it happen, or in a pinch. if it is so easy, and can be abused to gain wealth, then the risk is not high enough. if i can kill contacts and screw over other people, then the contact should appear as a dead ghost and still hand out missions.
risk and cost. those are the keys.
ex.
power rangers/voltron? okay. but your WHOLE guild of 16 players must drive it inside. if it dies everyone dies. if one person leaves, it falls apart. and of course it could be just a big person avatar designed by the guild to have guild colors, etc. a mascot. of course there is a long timer, a big ingame money cost, and a mission to do to unlock it.
imagine mascot vs mascot fights! giant robot wars! via players, not npcs!
c'mon..... i know you want to fight a Cthulhu, with your whole team....... go robot godzilla! lol.
What a man thinks of himself, that is what determines, or rather indicates, his fate. - Henry David Thoreau
Sand Trout made another key point, in his post. Most players are unlikely to be thrilled by such high reward, high cost powers if they must obtain them as a part of their power set. After all, if it is a character's power it implies that it is a known factor and reliable rather than "a scientist who got in over his head." For this reason the powers available in CoH, as Venture pointed out, worked quite well. I believe that the choice is to make such powers available in most situations, but limit their power and grandeur, or allow their full power and grandeur and make them available only within certain missions / instances.
Perhaps the game will eventually have some mission arcs in which such a power, temporary or 'permanent', is available to characters. Some kind of alternate Earth setting (which may also be available in the mission builder), where all or most supers have such a power, is one possibility.
- - - - -
[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
As a mission-specific thing, like and objective, this stuff is fine, like the way the Abandoned Sewer Trial had those glowwies with the weapons in them that only worked on the Hydra. Of course, in that case I don't think you'd want ti to be unreliable, just hard to get, single-use, limited applicability.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
[img]http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/5/58496/1951954-cosmic_spiderman_vs_cosmic_carnage_5373.jpg[/img]
:)
i saw an commercial for this game: http://youtu.be/0gEDCsHR1nU?t=32s
at 1st i was excited to see one guy affecting so many foes...
... but the more i watched that, the more it felt Over The Top. It just didnt look right.
I hope CoT can find a a balance and can make AoE feel right.
I like the idea of total cosmic power with a high price tag however I will NOT be using a power that has a chance of not working. I think many players will feel the same way.
Temp powers from a mission can be very cool (in CO one mission you can do on Monster Island will make you 50 feet tall...for a while). Since they're locked to that mission they can be as OP as you want and can scratch that 'wanna be POWERFUL' itch.
The T9 powers came in two flavors, click and toggle. The toggles (like Granite) were very limiting but I think they go too far in changing the tone of the character. Say you took the (completely fictional) 'Body of Cars' powerset. The T9 is, of course, to become some sort of giant robot Autobot thing. Except that the graphics dictate that you HAVE to look exactly as they need you to look to make the skeleton match the game etc. No thanks.
Most of the really uber powers I remember from the comics were click powers. So...you build in a system where you get a scaled increased from Enhancements but with an INVERSE scale for recharge time and End cost. So double the power = double the end cost and recharge etc. However after you drop in the first enhancement that boosts the effect (more resistance) or damage then you are locked out of Recharge enhancers and End redux.
So the player can choose the flavor of his uberness. If he wants a bit of a boost (One With the Shield) but he can use it more often, ok. If he wants the OMGZOWIE 'get off my lawn!' blast then it'll work once every 2 real hours with no chance of a cooldown reduction from ANY source and the End cost will likely kill him.
I'm all about choices. I've been in several PnP RPGs where the most memorable moments were not the character death (we had some of those too) but the character sacrifice. They guy who KNEW he was gonna die and did it anyway. Would that mean as much in a game where you respawn? No...maybe lock out the respawn as well. But if your team is hurting on the last mission of the three-hour ITF and you just can't get it done I think I'd remember if someone said 'Ok...screw this.' and self-destructs on the bad guy KNOWING he's done for the night.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...