According to one of their top guys in an interview, he said their three biggest mistakes were regen for scrappers, mastermind class, and I don't remember the third. Can't find it online anymore.
It's interesting those two map to popularity and fun play.
I regularly played regen secondary because I wanted to keep up fighting at high speed, and not just be a front-loaded big dps until endurance ran out.
If anything, that is the flaw, running out of endurance too fast, not too much endurance. I would design future games to make running out a non-issue, or at least take much longer.
Regen scrappers weren't broken. Everyone else was.
Having said that, perhaps he referenced their insane hp regen with all toggles on. This I could agree with.
It seemed correct -- they would last about as long before dying. But that didn't account for leaping away for a bit to heal back up quickly. This was a distinct advantage, and being squishy in alpha strikes of AVs (i.e. one shotted) was too situational a downside as a trade off.
As for Masterminds, their power was quantity. There is no quality quite like quantity. In any game like this, even 1-hp minions serve as good speed bumps against AVs, or diversions agsainst an attacking group.
Imagine my hypothetical beekeeper mastermind with 100 independent bees (forget efficienty) of 1 hp each. That's half a million hp damage they absorb getting popped one at a time, damage the players are not taking.
They could be weak as anything, doing 1 hp damage each tick, amounting to a 100 hp dot in total, very weak indeed. But that isn't their real power, or use, is it?
That's a tougher nut to crack. Champions seems to have gone the other way, and made NPC ai be like player ai, ignore the pets, go for the mastermind, end of story.
So in Champions, you put up your block power and wait for your wimpy legions to chew things down. Having fun now. Even "easier" but a lot more boring there.
I just don't want to see power sets based on quantity to vanish from this Earth.
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.
quick thought on this....
just have a damage threshold? MM Minions go in to attack and do 10pts....baddies attacks those minions, but as soon as a player does more damage than the minion the baddies changes target and will not target the minion again unless X amount of time has passed where a PC has done NO damage to the baddie.
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This has more to do with design for threat mechanics and AI behavioral routines.
A most basic premise is the more damage one character does the greater threat it poses compared to another character doing damage to the same target.
The more pieces you add to he threat mechanics the more complex it becomes but can lead to interesting game play elements.
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Well, I am looking more for general thoughts on these as "Big Mistakes" -- when they were, for me anyway, the most fun parts of the game.
As a corporate strategy, looking for most-played combos, then smashing them on the head, repeat with new flavor of the month, just leaves the company with an ever-growing population of angry paying customers.
Rather, whenever possible, boost other classes to make them more attracive.
As for the ai issue, that touches on the larger ai issue -- anything significantly better than "attack most hated", where that is a number based on your damage + taunt + heals, makes for unhappy players who get wasted.
What if AI played like players do? Kill blasters and healers first, then scrappers, then mop up utility and tanks at your leisure? Tanks are like islands in the Pacific during WWII -- just sail around them if not strategic, which they never are.
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.
I never saw the running out of endurance as a flaw. I saw it as a "Learn to build"
I did understand the need to buff and nerf. It's an up and down and it sucks. Here's hoping CoT is a bit better with it.
Frankly I'd like to see the weaker abilities have no endurance cost at all
that way when you're low on endurance you don't have to quit completely
Another thing I'd like to see is do away with automatic regeneration of both health and endurance.
It just seems weird that you can "rest" by running around
and if everyone has regeneration it kind of makes the power less valuable.
Instead, I'd prefer if you have to actually sit down and rest to regain health and endurance.
Unless you have a recovery power.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
While I don't know if I'd say everyone able to regen while running around made Regeneration any less valuable in CoH, I also don't see it as a terrible idea. However, they would then likely want to make it so anyone can grab a hold of self-heals/regens.
What I liked about CoH was I could mix defense/regen/click heals...I felt like the combo of X-23 & Spider-Girl that I wanted to be!
I don't remember such a list.
Regen for Scrappers was dealt with quite effectively, as was Invulnerability for Tanks. Those who loved immortality called it a "nerf", but the reality is both classes became more playable after they were adjusted. "Impossible to lose" is not a quality I consider "playable" because it completely removes the necessity for tactical considerations. Can you imagine a chess game where both players cannot lose?
The problem with Masterminds was solved with the introduction of Body Guard functionality where the pets shared a portion of the Mastermind's damage if they were in Defensive mode. This prevented an Alpha strike from immediately taking out the Mastermind while still forcing the player to think tactically and adjust to changing conditions in a fight with either an NPC or another player. Personally, I thought this solution was quite ingenuous.
The third problem was Enhancement degradation. It was too rapid and could badly impair the playability of a character when soloing through the mid-levels. This was fixed with the introduction of the IO system while leaving the DO/SO system in place. I was somewhat surprised they left the old system in place, but over time I learned to appreciate it, especially the SO Enhancements which could fill in gaps in IO coverage when rare salvage was hard to come by or too expensive to purchase in the Auction House.
I suspect the interview you're looking for is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYBzs5P3eBs
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The other problem with Masterminds being that the AI was just plain dumb and was extra load on the server to boot. As a dev said once, "There was a big problem with large fights and masterminds because the server would get overloaded and start forcing the pets to "pass" their actions, and just stand there, in order to keep up."
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Going to have to disagree with Regen being dealt with effectively, but that may be because it didn't do as well as other secondaries did with IOs. There was a reason we saw lots of Katana/BS Regeners (Parry). :p
Regen wasn't really a mistake for scrappers. It was the alternate take on durability for a class designed to be a 1 on 1 damage dealer. It took the concept of just healing really quickly rather than over loading the character with durability and defence. Arguably, Willpower was an adjustment to the baseline Regen formula that could be seen as 'broken' but I liked to think of Willpower as a permanently active super state, and if one were to surpass that, they were done for.
As for Masterminds, they also had a formula that would have worked fine; cut off the head and the body dies. The problem became that, through some fine tuning, a character could be basically invulnerable due to the Bodyguard system.
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I used willpower for Paladin.
He was supposed to have regeneration, according to his backstory, but tanks couldn't have Regeneration, and willpower did pretty much the same stuff.
I didn't want to make him a scrapper because at the time I made him, the only scrapper primary that fought with it's fists was dark melee and that's just not him.
An earlier prototype Paladin was a regeneration, martial arts Scrapper but in those days all martial arts attacks were kicks and scrappers were always harder to solo than tanks.
which was a real shame since I soon learned that scrappers were never welcome on teams.
What I really hated was having to work the system to get what I wanted, and still coming up short (he didn't have nunchucks)
I longed for a freeform system with no classes where I just picked the Abilities I want.
Dreams.
We all have them.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
All I can say as a long time player is that if I made a list of "Big Mistakes" made in CoH, neither of those would even be considered for the list.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
As far as I'm concerned, CoH only made ONE mistake.
Shutting down.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
This^^
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Making Assassin Strike one of your 9 skills, but then making it unusable after coming out of stealth (original AS anyways). Not all skills are going be winners, but let's not try and give them all complete duds either.
I have heard (second hand admittedly) that the CoH devs considered giving blasters build up in the secondary power sets was a mistake. I don't know for sure if that is one of the "three big mistakes" or not.
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Not to dismiss the OP but I think the source of the article was either less than sincere or heavily medicated.
As others up-thread have said, any list of Big Mistakes for CoX would have Scrapper Regen and Masterminds either not on it or so far down as to not rate concern IMHO.
Masterminds were among the most popular ATs played Redside and many Heroes created them after Going Rogue.
In their defense, the Devs often had little to no resources to work with. During the days of 'the Fifteen' it was frankly a miracle they kept the operation afloat. When NCSoft injected funds into the project and formed Paragon Studios it was happy days for us all. However by then the damage had been done. Many players had left, never to return. Much of the code was so heavily patched that there were severe limitations on what the Devs could do. Many of the most often touted parts of the game simply never worked right. There were balance issues right up until the end, bad design decisions that they never had resources to fix and often just misplaced vision of purpose.
I am very sad that CoX had to go but the cycle of life says that everything dies. Often, in that death room is made for new, better life. I have high hopes that CoT will be everything CoX was and more.
You gotta have faith...
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Agreed.
And I think CoT's commitment to really paying attention to the lessons learned from CoH, and to building a proper foundation for a game that will be able to grow in unexpected ways, bodes VERY well for the project--though I understand the extra time that it is taking is frustrating to some.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I consider the handling of Praetoria as one of City of Heroes' biggest mistakes. It was good to start with, but there was so much to do with it, it became exhaustive.
I do a DnD Podcast, which can be listened to here.
Additionally, I write up my sessions of a Teen Heroes game here.
big mistakes? hmm...only one I can think of offhand would be not creating COH2. could have kept just about the same player base and possibly gained more from DC and CO with updated graphics and such. alas...dreams......CRUSHED! bums...
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Praetoria kind of intrigued me back when I first remember seeing it where it was a mirror verse were the villains were good and the heroes were bad.
I was highly disappointed though to learn that the Devouring Earth was the main enemy in the updated version though. I liked them as an enemy but I did not like them that much
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There was only ever ONE BIG MISTAKE......................... CLOSING DOWN!!!!!!
I have to disagree. I am EverQuest launch old school (and before). I am fine relegating slow recovery to the ash heap of history.
Even today characters in MMORPGs run out of whatever too quickly and then the long, slow slog in fights begins. Why have two play modes at all? A short-lived, high-DPS frontload, and the no end. slog?
Regen ran out, too; its just they regenerated end fast enough to mitigate a lot of the slog slowness. I want all classes to play this way -- when they run out, they regen much more quickly, allowing near full-speed attacking.
I guess this is a big downvote for "endurance-building" basic attacks. I don't like mosquito swats that fill a bar that allows normal play to resume...then you're out again and back to mosquitos.
Why? It is button-mashy. I want strategy, not button mashing.
Remember "You are held! Press any key fast fast fast to break free!!!1!!11!!!"? Same kind of thing as that.
Few games even try to implement the mythical thief backstab (or its equivalent in shooting games, the sniper rifle) in a way that reflects the theory behind its power: the attacker has time to carefully line up an attack and take the shot with victim unawares ( and unmoving, for that matter.)
So coders cheat and just make it a super-attack. I've played ancient Quake mods with a "sniper rifle", which was just a high damage supergun, usable in a mutual circle-strafe death spiral. :(
Either it's massively powerful, but rarely usable, or much weaker. I prefer the former, and from some vaguely roleplay-proper mechanic like stealth and behind the person, and most importantly, before a fight, and not during.
Trade-off: After backstab, you are relegated to a scrapper lite, calculate this based on typical AV fight duration so total DPS of backstab + fight is about equal to backstabb-less normal scrapper. If fight is shorter, thief has higher net dps, longer, lower net.
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.
So basically "Not like Champions Online". I'm good with that. :)
Hehe. Towards the end when CoH gave everyone the fitness pool power set for free, that was a step in the right direction.
Faster health and endurance regen, and swift and hurdle (enhanced basic run and jump) as a bonus!
I loved one-slotting swift and sprint and having a 37 mph run speed at level 50. That's comparable to mount speeds in many games...yet our "mount" speeds were much faster -- my flight, also one-slotted, was over 60 mph, and flight is the slowest travel power IIRC.
Flight, high-speed, high-jump base movement, this is godly compared to other games. And cheap, too. No equivalent of $40,000 and high level (25 e.g. in SW:TOR).
And [b]this[/b] gets shut down? /cry
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.