I've got my flame suit on. :P
I'm going to list a few things that I didn't agree with, mostly, being added in City of Heroes and hope they don't make a show in CoT, at least not in the same manner as they were in CoH. I wonder what will happen here.
Enhancement Set Bonuses:
While I didn't mind getting a bonus for an enhancement set (I actually liked the idea quite a bit), what I did not like was that you KEPT the bonuses even after REMOVING the set, and equipping another. Some info-boxes on characters, I saw a wall of text of all the bonuses they had from enhancement sets when you checked. What it should have been was: you got the bonus for a set ONLY if it is equipped. I was kicked few times from raids/TF's upon joining after they saw that my BS/Regen scrapper had no set bonuses. I also saw a couple of SG/VG's had requirements to have a "minimum" amount of set bonuses or certain set bonuses to even be considered (along with having the usual variations of LvXX Yarchetype requirements). It was akin to having a certain "gear score" in WoW.
Power Proliferation:
This made CoH feel, for lack of a better word, "generic" in the end. What I loved about CoH when I first joined (which was shortly after CoV came out), was that each class felt unique with their powers. Towards the end a lot just felt, "same-y". That and I think I was the ONLY one running around with an Emp/Dark Defender when I took my Defender out for kicks.
Mission Architect:
The way it got implemented, it felt like this just robbed from CoH as a whole. PL'ing became insanely easy compared to before; and the spam, oh for the love of Valkyrie, the spam... Giving a player made mission much xp/inf as a standard mission was a mistake in my opinion. If the dev's like it, then it being "upgraded" by them to full xp/inf is something I'd understand.
Requirements for Epic Archetypes:
I have to honestly wonder what type of drugs, and how many truck loads of it, they were doing when they: 1) Lowered the lvl requirement to 20, 2) Made it "purchasable" (this one I know why actually, money). I have a solid feeling that more than a few here actually went through the "proper way" of obtaining their Epic's. That feeling I had when my BS/Regen Scrapper hit Lv50, I remember it oh so well, followed by, "YES!!! Now I can make a PB! WHOO!!!". I had the very same feeling when my MM/FF hit Lv50. Only in this case, "Awww, Mittens. I don't know which to go with first...". I ended up creating both, but couldn't decide which one to use first. After taking my BS/Regen Scrapper to Cimerora for the TF, I chose to use Widow first. We had a Fortunata in our TF, and she was WRECKING face. Jump into a cluster, AOE, everything died, jump out. She didn't have any set bonuses mind you, so it really affected my choice. heh
Sidekick:
Can someone please explain the real reason why they changed this??? I did not like it one bit myself and much preferred it pre-I16.
So I am curious how City of Titans will go about doing things. I must admit, that I am honestly worried in regards to what I've listed above.
Also, for nostalgia sake:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qcjoOdVHR8
[b]Enhancement Set Bonuses:[/b]
Didn't realize it kept the bonuses (or bonus descriptions) after removing the set - never noticed it myself. Maybe this was a bug they never got around to fixing?
[b]Power Proliferation:[/b]
Going to disagree here - I thought that the Power Proliferation in CoH was well overdue and made tons of sense, considering many classes already shared power types. Ice Blast worked really well with my Storm Defender.
In CoT, the way powers are handled is going to be a little different. Animations are going to be separated from the power effects themselves. This should lead to a lot of variation, even though some classes will be sharing sets.
[b]Mission Architect[/b]
I do agree with you here. I loved running player-made content (the good stuff that is) and regret not creating with it myself. That said I think it could have used a few adjustments to make it slightly less attractive to power levellers. Maybe if the rewards were adjusted (less xp/inf, different kinds of drops, etc.).
[b]Requirements for Epic ATs[/b]
I'm kind of ambivalent about this one. Don't have any strong feelings either way.
[b]Sidekick[/b]
What specifically didn't you like? I thought the changes made it easier for characters to team up.
Bonuses:
I tested it out with a few characters and saw that the bonuses stuck. Fortunately I found out about it before I started slotting those IO's onto my BS/Regen Scrapper. If it was a bug, it was one they and/or we, didn't care about enough. I don't know how many people actually tried to report it or not and I didn't get a reply about it when I did. I only reported it once though, so I'm as much to blame for not pressing the issue. While I did run into some "elitist" in regards to it, fortunately there were still enough folks who had been around for ages. Even had a chance to lead the scrapper teams for a couple of hami-raids. Then I found out about the Titan powerset. heh
PP:
I will admit when I first heard of PP, I was excited. I created a Rad/Energy Blaster right away and dink around till Lv20. But I noticed that people gravitated more to certain AT's than other's. I saw a lot more Brutes than Tankers, more Corruptors than Blasters, more MM than Trollers, more Scrappers than Stalkers. The AT I saw the fewest was Defender. Pre-PP, I saw a lot more variety of AT's. If CoT does PP, I sure hope they do it in a manner that will still keep that variety of AT's, rather than a gravitation like I did in CoH.
Sidekick:
What I hated about it was the auto-sk/exemp, and having the leave the party entirely in order to break it. Pre-I16, one could drop the exempt if things hit the fan and save what has turned out to be a LONG mission.
Set Bonuses:
Pretty sure that was a bug in CoH. I have not seen MWM even hinting at this, and yes I think it is an asinine thing to do purposefully. From the little I have seen about them they will be implemented as a layer on top of the "normal" enhancement system.
Power Proliferation:
Having every AT be able to draw power from any source (as far as applicable) is only a good thing since I can't see any reason to have such limits from a lore/reality standpoint. Considering the separation between aesthetics and mechanics then there will be even less reason to implement such limitations. The really bad thing about not doing power proliferation is that it would effectively force people to play ATs they don't want to play because they have the powerset they really do want to use. Just because they picked a specific AT does not mean that they'll play as that "AT".
I think the main reason people gravitated away from the more support oriented ATs was not because of power proliferation but rather more due to them not bringing that much to the group compared to the more offensive ATs. I mean when tankers could run at +3x8 difficulty while solo then adding a defender is less of an "increase" in execution time than adding a blaster, so if people feel that a major part of their AT is not needed then of course they'll switch to one that they'll feel is more useful.
The answer to this is not to artificially restrict what AT can get what "power" but rather taking a look at the difficulty curve and making it so that no one can run at +3x8 solo, and thus making the more support oriented sets not loose in their usefulness.
Mission Architect:
Meh, a few tweaks in rewards payout is all that is needed. The issues you have with it is to be more likely due to your server and the time after its implementation (was away for a long time after its implementation) but when I got back most "power leveling" was done through random groups doing standard missions. Architect was used more for drop grinding since you could re-run the same one over and over.
Epic ATs:
Don't know what to say here since not sure what would make an AT "epic" for CoT. Once that is solved we can discuss more on how to unlock them, though pretty sure that just getting a toon to max level wouldn't that good of a choice.
Sidekick:
Honestly, the only thing I had against the pre-I16 system was the distance limitation. Exclude that I wouldn't have anything against a pre-I16 system.
[b]Enhancement Set Bonuses:[/b]
I loved the Invention System, and I wish they had released it when they had intended (per Posi), which was around GDN and ED, which would have eased the butt-pain. I didn't have the same set bonus bug that you're referencing and I kitted out [i]a lot[/i] of characters with purple IOs and other high-end IOs and their set bonuses, particularly when I swapped all my IOs from my Elec/Shield scrapper to my Elec/Shield brute and then back again for performance comparison. When I removed a set, it was gone and stayed gone. I did know about the Kheldian forms set bonus issue, though.
[b]Power Proliferation:[/b]
Options, man, options. I'm all about options. The more options for players, the better, in my opinion.
[b]Mission Architect:[/b]
I like the idea of players being able to make their own stories, but I do recall the abuses (and the spam). Considering, thematically, that it was a virtual experience, I think they should have just removed the XP from the system (or at the very least dramatically reduce the XP) and boo-yah, PLing problem solved. One of the tertiary benefits to MA, in my mind, was that it showed players why certain powersets weren't allowed to be paired up with others, as to how OP they could be.
[b]Requirements for Epic ATs:[/b]
This didn't bother me at all as I think some things should be worked towards. Were they truly 'epic'? Not really, at least not to me. I dumped a lot of time and inf into my human-only Peacebringer, and even by the end, he was 'meh' to me compared to my other kitted-out characters. My Bane Spider, on the other hand... he was a joy to play once I was actually allowed to specialize into Bane. Nuts to that whole 'control rod inserted into my spine' business. Yes, he was super fun but I would never say he was [i]epic[/i].
[b]Sidekick:[/b]
I also loved the concept and partial implementation of the Sidekick System. It allowed me to play with my friends the vast majority of the time, no matter what level characters we were all on. As for the implementation; if they had reduced the max level difference of those that could be sidekicked, I think that would have also reduced the amount of PL abuse. If the sidekick was one effective level down from the mentor, such as with SSK, I think that did the trick. Overall, I generally approve of anything that allows for more potential teaming.
From your posts, Vol, it seems your misgivings are mostly based on implementation.
Missing Worlds Media and City of Titans have the benefit of being able to learn form City of Hero's implementation--good, bad, and ugly.
While this doesn't mean that you have absolutely nothing to worry about--because, you know, no game is perfect for everyone--I think there is very little chance that major implementation mistakes from City of Heroes will be repeated by Missing Worlds Media.
Your specific preferences may not be perfectly reflected, but it should be quite good overall.
PS- How's that for a flame! Take that, buddy! (JK, of course :P)
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I'll bet money that the Mission Creator will still cause more than its share of headaches. I think the old game devs (who were some very sharp cookies imo) at one point just threw up their hands and said "Well this didn't turn out like we expected" and walked away. Lots of potential pitfalls there; even if you solve the pling problem. Let's face it, there is a reason why most of us don't make a living at creative writing or designing MMO quests. Making and finding a few gold nuggets amid tons of other rock is a tough task.Take into consideration that your definition of "good" can be far different from mine and rating systems can (will) be both inflated and griefed. That's just one other problem that frankly I've thought about a lot but didn't arrive at any great solutions.
I like the powers experimentation aspect which was mentioned, and as always YMMV, but my expectations are low.... as much a game distraction as it is a game feature. I'd love to proven wrong however.
If I were to say what one regret I had with CoH, it would be that I didn't play as often as I could have. At first, it was limitations in both budget and hardware that kept me from keeping CoH active. But when I finally solved both, I kept CoH active till they cut the subscription. Every now and again, I would pop on and dink around a bit, which is what (to me) justified the sub payment, even if I didn't log on in 2+ months.
In the end, all we can do is sit back and wait. It's true, CoT has CoH to learn from, and that gives it an advantage that CoH didn't have. Let us hope that CoT's version of Rogue Isles (if they go that route), is a touch more populated than CoH's was. heh
Now a question: What faction do you last recall going against when this track played?
https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//5/59/Mission2_loop.ogg
For me it was the Freakshow. :)
Volron, welcome to the boards. I highly recommend reading our updates as they touch on many ofmour unique concepts such as aesthetic decoupling, our tri-axis alignment, deep character customization (part of aesthetic decoupling), some of our combat mechanics, player agency in the game, and more.
While we do have the advantsge of hindsight being 2020, we are also forging ahead in making CoT its own game, not a rehash of coh. Which means we can endeavor to avoid or fix issues from the old game, but we'll probabaly end up with issues all our own.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
After watching some of the videos the team has put up on YouTube, I feel confident about City of Titans. :D When they ran around after placing some buildings in The Builder video, I had some flashbacks to City of Heroes. :)
Enhancement Set Bonuses: Yeah definitely a bug. Having IOd several characters I can assure you that they most certainly did NOT keep the bonuses of any sets I removed from them. A full IOd build created a massive wall of set bonuses all on its own, even with only the equipped sets applying.
Powerset Proliferation: Can't agree there. My favorite character would never have been playable without it. (Time/Fire defender) Frankly having set themes locked to specific archetypes never made sense to me in the first place.
Mission Architect: Yeah I agree with you here. It was a fun system, but man was it rife with abuse.
Sidekicking: I think a large part of the change was to eliminate bridging (level 50 groups recruiting level [47 I think it was?] characters specifically to sidekick the twink and maximize their power leveling) particularly once we were given the ability to turn off XP gain (and thus remain at the perfect level for bridging forever).
I think one way you could do the Mission Architect is kind of like the way Neverwinter did it. Have it so the missions themselves don't give you a lot of loot or xp, but have a daily mission that gives a nice reward and xp that involved doing 3 or 4 of the Architect missions. For an Ach mission to qualify for this daily mission the average minimum completion time for all players who ran it would have to be great than, say, 10 minutes, calculated on a weekly basis. This would remove the PL aspect but still give a reward for completing them.
You could also implement a rating system which allowed players to rate the missions, and once a mission reached a certain threshold it would be added into a daily random queue. Now this queue could be implemented a couple of different ways:
1. Five missions would randomly be selected each day which players could play for either normal loot/XP or maybe normal XP and special loot.
or
2. 20 missions would be randomly selected each day, of which the player could choose to do 5 for either normal loot and XP or special loot and XP
To encourage mission development, badges and maybe special currency could be rewarded based on player rating and the number of players who played them. Hopefully this would allow the story tellers to develop elaborate missions without detracting from the rest of the game to much.
Leveling out content
There were definitely some opportunities for improvement in COH. I hated leveling out content. I can understand "transcendence", but I'd be in the middle of a story arch and suddenly the contact says something like, "I have a new contact for you" and will only point me to a new contact and won't finish the story arch. So frustrating. It should be possible for the system to list the new contacts, but still allow us to finish ALL the missions from a given contact. In other games such a contact may be marked a color to identify the low level relative to the avatar.
"THE TITANS ARE COMING! THE TITANS ARE COMING!"
There is something I thought about recently, and that was the claw attack animations in CoH. When I first started, my VERY first character was a Claw/SR Scrapper and I liked the attack animations, it fit with Claw. After a HUGE hiatus (overall a sizable hiatus from CoH) with her, I one day decided to take my Claw/SR Scrapper out for a spin and noticed that the attack animations were, wrong. It looked like I was throwing punches instead of clawing. I quickly switched to my Widow and noticed the same thing. Does anyone remember roughly when this happened? It was one of the things a HATED in CoH, that change. In fact, I think that was the only that I truly hated in CoH was that change. WHY BLIZ-...oh wait. :P
Wasn't this abused in CoH/V where what was clearly a ticket farm was up-rated so high that it was in the Hall of Fame?
The devs don't seem to be against the immersion-breaking that is caused by resetting a mission on purpose and never actually finishing it, so for that matter, I don't see whty we can;t just be allowed to do and redo any mission at any level if we want to.
Personally, I'd make the rule that the mission adjusts to your current level as much as possible first, then, if you're REALLY way higher level than it was designed for, maybe auto-exemp you down to the theoretical maximum or something. GW2 does that for outdoor event content. If you go to Kessex Hills and want to do anything there, you'll be exemped to a level the devs feel is appropriate for that event, or for that part of that zone. I wouldn't have anything against that either. Assuming there are regularly-occurring outdoor events in the first place.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The way Final Fantasy 14 does that with its event system is that you don't get level scaled in general in the open world, but when you enter an event area, if you're more than five levels above the event level a button appears onscreen asking if you'd like to scale your level to the event so you can take part. Until you do, you're not allowed to interact with the event NPCs and creatures.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
Did not notice the keeping of bonuses myself on any of my characters. I slotted some terrible IO sets before I could slot the awesome ones, so must have been a bug that I couldn't get :(
Power Proliferation was awesome! People didn't stop playing classes because of it. They stopped playing those classes because those classes had nothing to offer that the other classes did. Defender? Corrupter did more damage and had good enough buffs/debuffs. Stalkers? Scrappers or Brutes could do what they did and be more survivable (still played the Stalker myself tho, it's version of WP felt to fit my concept so much better).
Not just making all power sets available to those who should have been able to use them (melee sets to all melee ATs for example) was one of the worst ideas they had.
Mission Architect was crap because players generally wouldn't take it seriously. Was a mistake to ever make it.
The Epic ATs never felt Epic and locking them behind a level requirement never made sense to me. However, I wasn't against the idea of it either. So...meh.
One of the worst ideas however, was their Epic Pools, which were kinda lame. :/ They really should have helped flesh out concepts more, which they never did really, because people where like "The powers suck!" They should have made those powers equal to other powers within sets, so people could replace an attack in attack chain with an Epic for some flashy stylized action!
Power Proliferation WAS awesome. And I always figured the new classes had more to do with adding more options for specific concept flavor than offering something new anyway. Kind of like Mastery is supposed to work in CoT.
They often mentioned that not offering all sets to all appropriate classes was more about working out the balance than a conceptual decision. They said they wished they'd been able to. As a matter of fact, they seemed to be working towards it one set at a time.
I played some awesome player-created arcs, so, while you're totally right that most players didn't do good things with it, I'd still rather have had AE than not.
Epic AT's were interesting, shiny maybe, but like you said, tepid when it came to overall power. I they did the level requirement thing because they thought you'd need to know the game better to play Epic AT's than for other more straight-forward classes. But evidently not as much as they thought since they lowered it later.
Hmmm... Epic Pools worked out really well for my characters, both in gameplay and concept. But maybe I just got lucky. I thought they were nicely balanced to keep you from being a total Tankmage. I mean, you COULD be a Tankmage, which was a good thing in a Superhero game and awesome, but you'd never come close to outdoing a class in their own specific bailiwick with epic AT's. For example, a Tank couldn't blast like a blaster with them, cause that'd be messed up. Or like a Defender, even.
Yet I still got a lot of mileage out of blasting on a tank with them. Empyrean could click Fiery Embrace and Buildup and for about ten glorious seconds blast almost like a blaster, but then it wore off and things had to recharge and while the blasters blasted on and it was back to melee for me. If I'd been able to sustain that? Just swap out my melee for full-on blasts? Who needs blasters? They're just squishy versions of me.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
That's just it. Lets take the Fire Mastery for melees. Generally it had 2 range powers in it. Not enough to replace a long range AT, however, the two range powers weren't good enough to replace a melee attack either. Which is what I always thought they should be able to do. Even with the Melee Sets with some range attacks in them, you weren't going to get a solid attack chain, decent DPS out of them.
However, being able to use that Fire Blast in place of the tier 3 (just for example) ability that was part of an optimal string of attacks, would have allowed players to have some options in how their strung together attacks looked.
One player could permanently replace that Tier 3, another could skip that Epic attacks entirely, and a third could have both and alternate their use, just to have a more varied string of attacks.
I think the only AT that really got much benefit from the APP/EPP Attacks was Controllers, cause they were the one class that generally lacked DPS abilities so the APP/EPP attacks weren't competing with powers you already had, they were filling in a gap in your pool of abilities. I do agree that IMO APP/EPP attacks could have just used standard damage/cost/recharge without having been an issue. I don't think "Tankmage" would have really been an issue, since 1 ranged single target attack and 1 ranged AoE attack do not an attack chain make.
That's not to say that they never had a place though. APP/EPP AoE attacks could be useful for sets that lacked much other AoE. CoH/V was very much a game that favored AoE dps over single target like 95% of the time (or more).
I feel like the IDEA behind APPs/EPPs was good, but a lot of times their implementation could have been better.
Considering that, from what I have read, the tertiaries in general will effectively replace the APPs/EPPs in terms of what they can bring to the character then I have a hard time imagining what we could place in CoTs APPs/EPPs to make them stand out.
I'd probably agree with this in general. By the time CoH shutdown my main level 50 Fire/Rad was using the Fire Mastery APP. Between the two ranged attacks that gave me added to all the other Incarnate, Veteran and other extra attack powers I had accumulated over the years the character was almost a "pocket-Blaster" in terms of ranged offensive capability. I wouldn't have called her a full-on Tankmage but she was certainly a "Tank-apprentice" who could easily solo MOBs at the far end of The Storm Palace.
Clearly the APP/EPPs helped certain ATs more than others. Not sure if they are going to be able to "solve" that issue in CoT or even if it really needs to be "solved". I think certain AT/powerset combos will always get more benefit from extra powers than others depending of course on what those powers are.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
From my understanding the APPs/EPPs in CoH were intended to round out and/or compliment a characters powers but that task has been placed upon the tertiary sets in CoT so then the big question becomes what purpose the APPs/EPPs would fill in CoT if they were included.
Personally I can't think of one at least not for making them actual power pools but another thought entered my head, the ability to "elevate" a power in it's base power-level, that is making a tertiary power have it's base stats adjust as if it was secondary or even a primary if multiple "elevations". Though this does significantly increase the possibility of tank-mages so not sure how good an idea it would be in practice.
I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure CoT tertiaries are completely replacing the APPs/EPPs of CoH so I doubt we'll even have things called APPs/EPPs in CoT.
I think the main idea will be that tertiaries will generic in nature and not tied to specific ATs. This way players can choose to either play "with type" by choosing a tertiary that's close to their primary/secondary choices (i.e. having something like ice/ice/ice) or "against type" so that players could have a completely mix-matched set of powers (i.e. something like guns/reflex/magic).
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
True enough, but by time we're counting in IOs, Accolades, and Veteran, Temp and Incarnate abilities, it was simple enough to make some ATs/combinations into tank-mages anyhow (particularly VEATs).
My Time/Fire defender had* softcapped defense, almost hardcapped Smashing/lethal resists (something like 67/75%), self heals, perma-Hasten/Chrono Shift, End recovery powers, always on Mez Protection and could solo at +4/x8 with virtually no threat to self. And had the next Issue managed to go live before the shutdown I'd have been able to add a second crashless nuke to the fun.
I think I'd call him a Scrapper-Mage rather than a Tankmage though, cause he wasn't so great at holding aggro (Or rather I always seemed to pull more aggro than the aggro cap allowed), but hey, if you died Vigilance gave me a hefty end discount, so win win for me. =P
*I typed "has" at first, and having to go back and correct it to past tense made me sad. =(
One of the great things about CoH was you COULD have a Tankmage... but not 100%.
No matter how much defense and damage resistance, or even regen you had, none of that could replicate the bag-o-HP that Tanks had.
No matter how much you put into damage, recharge, endurance, etc, you just couldn't really get to the continuous, sustained ranged damage that Blasters could easily generate.
And while with the new CoV AT's, the spectrum from one class to another was smoothed out and blurred--blaster<->corruptor<->defender or tank<->brute<->scrapper for example--it was still there and you could only really be a pale shadow of your more "opposite" classes. A tank would only ever blast or heal ok at best. A controller could only ever be decently tough. Etc.
For example, Empyrean was a tank, but my main focus was making him able to blast (come on, Bastion!). And he could blast respectably for bout 10 or 20 seconds--and then he was a tank again for about 30 seconds till all the stuff he needed to blast recharged.
I guess what I mean is that in any class you could specialize, or you could try to be a jack of all trades, or anywhere in between, but, while you could just about do all things, you couldn't ever do all things even close to equally well, and I think that was kind of the best of both worlds. Tankmages with "balance" of a kind.
And I think this was a function of HAVING a class system at the core, no matter how free and loose the Devs and players played with it.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
A class-based system in a game like CoH almost by definition should mean that no one character should ever be able to perform all functions of every other class as equally well as that class itself can.
Sure as some of us have pointed out by the end of CoH's run it was ALMOST possible to create uber characters that could ALMOST function as 100% classical Tankmages. But just about any game will eventually allow enough "power creep" to let that happen - remember CoH had been around for over 8 full years and you pretty much had to take advantage of ALL the min/maxing opportunities to get your characters close to that maximal level of ability.
As long as CoT is balanced well it should take years worth of updates to get back to being close to that powerful again.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
As someone who had that as well, I don't know if I'd call it a scrapper mage. My scrapper could solo AVs, my Time/Dual Pistols and Dual Pistols/Time could never get the name damage needed :( Still, played like a nice Pistols/Reflex Low Damage Scrapper! :)