Oedipus_Tex
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Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Some of these thought exercises have had some practical benefit, but not in an easy to describe way.
I hear you on that. They have a lot benefit for me too. I always enjoy talking/hearing about the subject. I have no plans to enter/re-enter the video game development world anytime soon, but I do have a turn based game I started a while back that's been sitting in the dust bin while I play other games. That game blended a number of lessons learned from CoX, Final Fantasy Tactics, to name the major contributors.
I created it more for fun than because I ever planned to release it (main issue I ran into came when I was unable to find a source of 2D sprites that fit the needs of the game and my very limited budget), but it forced me to confront a number of questions. Specifically, in this case, the game started as a question like "What happens when you take a 2-powerset swimlane power system, give the player a team of 6 characters to work with, and put them in a turn based RPG?"
Unfortunately the game will probably never be finished, so we may never know.
But one thing I was working on right before setting that project aside for a while was whether and how to bring Equipment into the game. What I decided in the end was that I didn't want standard wearable equipment, and it was too much work to make players slot powers individually. So I developed an item system similar to what Diablo 1 and 2 use, where items drop with properties, and instead of slotting the items into your head/chest/feet/etc, you slot them directly into powers, like the Rune systems some games use.
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Quote:Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
I think you're glossing over the importance of playstyle. We have so many choices nowadays that the only reason anyone has a level 1 anything is because they like to play that.
My characters usually only spend around 5 to 10 minutes around level 1. But that's really not the point. Level speed has very little do with whether XP earned under one build is directly transferable to another.
The point is more that if you want a level 50 anything, you must pass through level 1 first; that is the distance that has to be traveled. If you can hit level 50 and be a short step away from whatever you want that is also level 50, you have Diablo 3 with 1 class instead of 5.
ADDENDUM: It may be fair to say that MOST MMOs suffer from the above problem to some extent. Even WoW has the "Why should I roll 2 Priests?" issue (even down to encouraging people to level as one subclass because its easiest and then switch to another). CoX really doesn't have a "Why should I roll two Controllers?" issue that is comparable. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
Except with DFB that is exactly what is the easiest thing to do now. I can level any character to 50, no matter how impossible the build is to level, no matter how little I know about that archetype/power setup, because it is easy easy easy. THen, when the character gets it's uber powers at 38 and you can I/O it to godhood it is ready for the I-trials without me struggling to get it through regular content.
I don't think it's the same thing. Even if it is easy to level up, there is still a time investment involved. You still need to spend time as your new character. A classless, skill based system where you can respec at any time is functionally equivalent to a system where XP can be gifted just as easily as Influence/Gold can.
Part of the tradeoff in City of Hero's double-swimlane system is that to have a character of any sort, you must invest at least some time as that combo. To have a level 50 Ice/Rad Controller you must first have a level 1 Ice/Rad Controller, and every level in between. While it may be possible to solve some issues with events like DFB, that's at least an attempt to solve the issue for the character using what was available to the combo.
In a worst case scenario in an open skill system, the system warps the game so that there ARE no level 1 Ice/Rad Controllers, or for that matter few Controllers of any level below level 40 or so. It just doesn't make sense to make one if you could build something unController to zip through that type of build's main problem areas and then switch back. In a worse-than-worst case scenario, everyone plays only one or two combos at all (whatever delivers XP fastest) and only bothers with any special specification when they max out their XP. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
In other words, rather like if City of Heroes had no primary or secondary powersets, it only had a large number of power pools, and every power effect including damage and buffing were encapsulated into invention procs and globals with a cost tied to leveling XP.
I think anyone who thinks that's impossible doesn't understand the nature of the solution, and anyone who thinks that's easy doesn't understand the nature of the problem.
I would put it at one step away from impossible, if not actually impossible, when you start looking at the framework surrounding long-term MMO play.
For example: What is the value of having multiple characters if any character can pick anything and respecs are available (the equivalent of jumping from Empathy Defender to Fire Brute)? Do you just not allow respeccing at all to preserve the system? Can you only respec at huge cost? Do you have to slowly migrate skills over because a full respec would be too powerful? How do players who are new to the game manage their progression if respecs are very limited and they will be stuck with what they pick? If you do allow them to respec, how do you manage the fact that no matter what you do some builds will be better at leveling than others, so players will be pushed into building a fast-leveling character and then switching their build to what they actually want?
This isn't an impossible situation to solve, but it is very, very difficult. One thing I think some people (though not you, I suspect) overlook is that by limiting us to specific powers, CoX prevents the optimal strategy from being directing yourself into an aberrant temporary build, leveling it up, and then using it as your vehicle to access any character you want at any time by respeccing. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Aurora_Girl
When you're given a car, you don't choose it. Everything in it, whether you want it or not, is more than you had before.
I personally think you are reading more into what s/he wrote than is actually there.
Currently on the internet there are hundreds of free games available. Choosing to play those games would give a player "more than s/he had before." However, many of them choose not to play. And for many of those people, there are things about those games they think could be done better. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Personally, I find it incredibly poor taste to comment on something you haven't read, irrespective of circumstances.
I don't want to wade into this myself, but I agree with you. IMO it is bad form tp join a thread just to say you didn't actually read the post but don't need to because you dislike the poster.
Also, like you, I have been guilty of lashing at people based on previous conflicts. It's an easy thing to do. So, even in calling out some of the bad behavior in this thread I don't want to put permanent labels on people.
For the record, I do have a few people on ignore. I try to use it as a warning tool FOR ME though, to stop me from responding reflexively with snark. I think a few of the people on my list know about because I told them I thought we should disengage. But IMO once the decision to end communication is made, continuing to lob insults at them (especially without actually reading what they have to say) escalates the situation. While I have no illusions about eventually being friendly with every single poster on the forums, I do generally believe in maintaining some level of civility. I also often suspect the people I clash most publicly with are some of the same people I would get along with best in real life.
Also, I thought what the OP wrote was fine. It's no different than writing a review of an expansion pack. "Expansion pack could have been better." Players do not stick with a game based on level of effort of the developers, they decide based on whether they like the game. I know our developers work very hard. I know developers for most video games work hard. This does not translate into an obligation to like most video games. -
As much as I agree, I still have to disagree that Dr. Q is better.
In fact, Dr. Q is not a Task Force at all. It is a witches curse that was placed on a developer when he reneged his promise to provide her with his first born child. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Gangrel_EU
I think that emphasizes more than anything else the difference in cultures. Americans (it appears) do not experience failure until their late teens (rejection letters from Universities/Colleges)... up until that point in time they are always given a success. When you then apply this to games, it means that you cannot let the player "fail" (especially when you are going for the US market) for solo stuff... because then the player will be more inclined to "stop playing".
However, other cultures are *more willing* to help out (i have noticed that with EU players, if you are stuck they are more inclined to not help due to lack of time, and not due to a risk of "failure"...
What EU Dev's need to know about American online Gamers. EU GDC 2012
I would like to point out that the talk was given by an American developer.
If the game has already established itself, then you have to keep the *exisiting* players (which will decrease over time) and also get in newer players (to keep up the churn level to stay stable)... and due to how the *playing* population has changed over the years, it makes it harder and harder... you have to start paying attention to these factors to keep the churn level up as your general playing population decreases.
If you think about it, would CoX would have stayed alive if they had stayed Subscription only and made 1-50 still take 200+ hours?
Eventually, the game would have dropped to such a low level that it wouldn't be possible to stay alive.
Making it faster to level meant that you could try out many different alts in a *sensible* amount of time.
Changes to how debt worked meant that levelling was faster.
The game *has* evolved drastically (especially in the past couple of years), it is faster, failure is almost impossible (and yet people still complain about how hard something can bewhen they dont use inspirations to help out... and they *DO* drop like candy... so use them liberally).
Interesting article. There are some good points, but IMO the author of that article is painting with far too broad a brush.
Actually, I'm not sure it is even that helpful to have a category like "American gamers." It's my impression that American and non-American players of COX have more in common with each other than they do with players of WoW, Call of Duty, or Farmville from their native country. No one ever seems to confuse Romantic Comedy fans with Horror buffs, but that level of obliviousness is common among video game investors. (I'm convinced part of the reason a recent Blizzard product failed was that the creators were trying to market it both to me and to my sixty year old aunt who plays Bedazzled on Facebook).
The statement about not being able to handle failure due to lack of experience until adulthood is simply odd. Actually, I'm not sure what "traditionally failure is used as inducement to succeed" means in an RPG context. If it means that in most RPGs the character dies constantly until it finally manages to win, then I have to disagree. The lethality of computer RPGs has certainly been dialed down in recent years, but as I pointed out earlier in this thread, it started out sky high. "Saving Throw versus Death" and "Save versus Petrification" meant basically that. The standard penalty on an old school Diku MUD was losing 25% of the XP to your next level, and if you lost so much that you fell below your current level, the entire server was notified of your humiliation with a global message.
As to your final point about inspirations, I think you are being too literal. Failure does not have to mean you actually die. It can mean you don't perform up to a certain expectation. Yes, the interface claims that fighting at +0x1 is standard. But very few people consider that an actual standard to live by. For one thing, for a lot people it's really boring. -
The gorilla MMO does do a number of things well, I think. What I will give them credit for is realizing early on that they were essentially building a virtual theme park. The zone design emphasizes previews of what's to come--you are constantly walking through one area and seeing huge representations of the next thing you will encounter. It's actually laid out similarly to how an amusement park places its thrill rides, where you see reveals of the ride as you approach it.
(Side note: Did you know that roller coasters are actually specifically engineered to create the "roaring" sounds that are associated with them? It is very possible to design roller coasters that are "quiet" (with the exception of the riders) but most rides are fitted with hollow rails and washers or sound makers in the wheels to make it louder. When a major park invests in a roller coaster, the ride is designed not just for the riders, but to enhance the atmosphere of the park itself, and give guests a sense of thrills even if they are too afraid to actually ride themselves.
The gorilla MMO is similarly self-aware. It implements many situations where lower level players have an opportunity to witness an area far beyond their current skill, or observe the activities of much higher level players. There is also often a "center piece" for each zone that frames the area or showcases where a big raid/dungeon might exist.) -
I personally think the best long-term fix for Super Strength is a completely new set, in the vein of Martial Arts splitting off into Street Justice. IMO for such an iconic concept, the set really shows its age, and even with the alternate animations I'm not sure how much can be done for it. Call it whatever you want--even "Super Strength 2" would work for me. But more likely "Mighty Punch" or something would be better.
As to what to do with the existing set... well thats a good question. The "Rage" power in it doesn't do much for me conceptually though. -
Rambling ahead.
In my non-expert opinion, the earliest MMOs are basically just graphical re-implementations of text-based Diku MUDs. "World of.." improved on that model somewhat, although not in extreme ways. MUDs themselves were based off of a barely concealed version of the Second Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons ruleset, which is where a number of abstractions came from:- There are 6 stats (Strength, Constitution, Wisdom, etc), each stat builds to 18. Charisma is sometimes left out because seemingly no one could figure out what to do with the stat during that period of gaming history.
- Default classes are Rogue, Warrior, Cleric, Mage
- Spell names are near-direct lifts (although "Cure Light Wounds" was changed to "Cure Light", etc)
- The Cleric is the "D&D Cleric" who uses a mace (no bladed weapons) and heavy armor (an element not generally copied by most of the MMOs to follow)
"Cooldowns" on powers were not something widely used in MUDs and are invention of MMOs, although the basic concept existed in video games for some time before that in various forms. The main reason they are absent from text game is its hard to see what powers are available without an actual button.
There have been a few other major shifts. One thing we all tend to take for granted now is widespread knowledge about how players behave in a typical PVP environment. This really wasn't well known into the early 90s. From what I remember of the mid 90s, it was largely assumed that players could be placed in an open PVP environment and be expected to police themselves with little intervention from GameMasters. Now that we know differently from first hand experience, the fundamental design of MMOs (even PVP heavy ones) has radically changed.
For another example of a major shift, consider that into the late 90s, there were still serious debates about whether permadeath was a good idea. The text-game Gemstone III (now GSIV) kept a permadeath possibility until the mid 2000s (with ways to circumvent it), removing it finally because it was found to mainly penalize new players heaviest, possibly driving them away. But during the period when the game was free to play on AOL, the perma death feature was hailed for making death feel like a serious issue, and for creating drama and intrigue (will a Cleric save the character's soul or not?)
I still wonder how the MMO landscape would have changed had Simutronics finished and found widespread success with Hero's Journey, their planned graphical game that was intended to be the spiritual successor to GSIV. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Oathbound
I honestly can't agree with that in the slightest.
The AoE damage it deals is so trivial that it's a completely negligible contribution to your total damage output... but a serious detriment to the control ability of some sets. IMO.
An upside is that it will at least trigger damage and incarnate procs, in theory. -
BTW RE: Growth/Shrink, here's how I'd consider approaching that:
The grow/shrink ability itself is a single power. Picking it gives you access to two toggles, one for Shrinking and one for Growing. Each time you click one you advance one stage up or down in scale, up to 2 sizes smaller or 2 sizes larger. I'll break those down by scale here:
Miniscule (invisible, maiintain x.35 character model so we can still target you though)
Small (x.35 character model)
Normal
Tall (X1.25 character model)
Huge (x2.5 character model)
As Growth increases, you gain an increasing chance to proc radial AoE damage, 7ft radius, from any single target attack. Your Max HP also increase.
As Shrink increases, your Stealth goes up, and your resistance to Endurance Drain, Regen debuff, and defense debuff increases.
Every time you shift in size, you expend Endurance but gain some HP. However, you can only gain HP by shifting to a particular size once every 30 seconds. [Technically: shifting places a temporary flag on you to prevent healing for switching to that size again] To keep your Health up, you will need to shift sizes every so often. You will also need to strategize a "direction" of the shift, so you don't get caught at one end of the spectrum and forced to shift several times for your next heal.
Some environments will naturally limit your ability to be Huge, but that's no different than some environments naturally limiting some other sets (e.g. Traps and flying). If you need to move through a door, for example, you will want to shift down first. -
Two others I'm somewhat suprised we haven't seen for Masterminds: generic Cops and generic Robbers.
Thugs is great, but really specific. Same with Ninjas (and that Oni just... ugh).
Plants as a Mastermind set might work. -
Aid Other is rarely wasted on most Dominators because most have pets and not a lot of good ways to directly support them. It is also useful for keeping Lore pets from signing off early.
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Despite lower buff/debuff numbers than Defenders, I generally consider Controllers to be more support-y.
If we're talking about which support combo is most likely to facilitate stability in the majority of PUG situations, I'd be tempted to go with Plant/Thermal or Earth/Thermal Controller. If we're more talking about which character can shore up an already reasonably decent team into taking down the ITF and so on, maybe some variety of /Cold.
Although almost any Controller that is well played will add considerable safety to the team. I'd just personally stay away from Gravity Control as a team support member.
[PS Time Manipulation is great but I consider it much better for the caster than for the average team. A lot of the safety comes from Farsight. It will certainly make the Time player extremely durable, but I would personally prefer more reliable shielding that doesn't require as much positioning.]
Quote:They are. The power that isn't in Thermal's case is Forge. Managing Forge can be a bit of a chore or it can be a challenge, depending on your out look. But I was always pretty lazy with it and just cast it between other powers when I had spare moment rather than driving myself to make sure to keep it up on 3 or 4 people at once. Unlike Empathy Defenders, forgetting to cast Forge won't usually dramatically change someone's survivability.Originally Posted by Mashuguna
I don't suppose those armors are AoE now, are they? -
Quote:I'd love to see that too, but I prefer an Armor set for melees to a mastermind to really mix things up in terms of the game. That way all the clone would have different attacks depending on your primary and it would appear on 4 different ATs instead of 1. I'd be less interested in just supporting them on a MM with a secondary set since so many MM sets basically do that, just with different looking pets.Originally Posted by Xzero45
Honestly I'd love to see a mastermind set modeled after clones or duplication, like Multiple Man.
(For the Stalker version, the Hide ability could be the ability to lose yourself in the crowd, essentially.) -
Some possibilities are below. Some already partially exist or can kind of be mocked up with existing sets, others not so much. I tried to provide a reference character for some of these, but I may have gotten some wrong since I haven't really read comics in 20+ years.
Power stealing [Rogue, Parasite]
Energy conversion via impact [Strong Guy]
Self duplication [Jamie Maddrox]
Speed as a direct melee set [Quicksilver]
Undefined mystical blast or control [Dr. Strange]
Supernatural/Holy/Divine/Cosmic/Astral/Celestial/Skyward blast [Clerics in many RPGs]
Spirit/Mediumship/Soul control
Light blast that is not Energy Blast
Swarm blast (bees, etc)
Astral armor [various otherworldly beings not completely covered by "Invulnerability"]
Intangible armor
Force field armor
Metaknowledge [Deadpool]
Luck Manipulation [Longshot, Domino possibly]
Disintegration blast
Gravity blast
Atomic control
Molecular armor [Apocalypse, possibly]
Reality control/warping [Mr. Mxyzptlk]
Scythe [Reaper]
Liquification [Hydro man]
Mimicry [Mystique]
Draining touch/Withering grasp (which I view as a melee set with "touches" instead of punches) [Rogue, possibly] -
Even though I don't agree with the poster, I sort of get where s/he is coming from.
For example, Ice Control is one of my favorite sets for reasons that are too long to explain here without going into a wild tangent. The short of it is: "It's virtually unique among playstyles in MMOs." But I also recognize the set needs some buffs to compete within the context of this game.
If those buffs turn out to preserve the nature of the set, that will be great. But if they, say, turn the slowing cone, Shiver, into a hard mezz in the manner of Seeds of Confusion I will be disappointed. Not because I got buffed, but because the playstyle will move away from what drew me to the set in the first place.
I'm not sure that is the case here or this is the best way to go about rallying against it, but I can at least sort of understand the POV. It's related to the reason a lot of Blasters didn't want mezz protection put in Build Up or Aim. -
Corruptor.
[EDIT: Unless you are Sonic Attack. Then maybe Defender.] -
Unsolicited comment from peanut gallery: Part of the trouble with Kinetics is it gets better the further away you get from taking it on a Defender. But I see this as a "Defender" problem primarily and not entirely a fault of the set.
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I see a lot of potential for various combinations, but especially for Dark Blast. Dark Blast is a cone-based set with a PBAoE nuke. It has traditionally been a very "ranged" set but the nuke change is probably going to push it to close range more frequently. The -Range debuff combined with an immobilize means enemies won't be able to chase you down after you hit them.
I do wish the -Range was in the knockback power, though. -
Thanks, Tater Todd, for making me aware of this video segment from the recent community talk.
A few months ago we had a contest to build a Ice/TA Controller. The winner wasn't announced. In last week's talk, this happened at around the 2472s mark:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=AcfQcVios6I#t=27 42s
So, speculate.
[EDIT: Fixed link] -
Incarnate powers that grant the ability to craft a more effective version of IOs or another tradeable item, perhaps?
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RE: Facing cones, again I think we need to see it. In terms of geometry its possible to fit more enemies in a "facing" cone than an enemy-centered one, because you don't need a target in dead center. You will also never have the target die on you, or have it get knocked back/run away/teleported resulting in you spinning around and shooting in the wrong direction.
I wish Dominators had gotten that teleport-attack, but whatever.
I have to add I'm a little disappointed with the "developers hate Dominators" vibe going around lately though. That POV doesn't seem to be backed by the actual evidence.