Blackfeather

Oh! Almost forgot to ping @EmperorSteele about this new proposal too - I recall you wishing to add damage to Controllers, so I'd definitely be interested in hearing your thoughts on the addition to Overwhelming Overpower I made above. Got any ideas for alternative effects, etc.? Is it too powerful? Something else entirely?

For sure! Overwhelming Overpower ought to be impactful regardless of where it lands, per @Steampunkette's mention of it potentially being wasted against a minion or a lieutenant, who don't usually need it. So having some other effect on them makes sense I think...and defeat is the strongest mez. 🙂 Or any other secondary effect that might work nicely, but not sure of what they could be.

That definitely might be interesting too! I don't know much in the way of formulas for something like that, but I figured that, like a certain thread has said (*waves to @Troo*), defeat is the strongest mez there is...so a high enough magnitude of any status effect via Overwhelming Overpower could potentially become deadly for weaker enemies. A Dominate rips through a feeble mind, a Char leaves an enemy completely choked out, a Mesmerize leaves a guy brain dead...etc.

Oh! Oh! I just had another thought, one that was inspired in part by @CrudeVileTerror's suggestion about a "resolve" mechanic to help get rid of the whole "waste" of super high Overpowers. What if an Overwhelming Overpower ended up instantly defeating lieutenants and below? Not sure about the logistics of it all, but I'm thinking in instances where a Mag 50 control and above potentially occurs on minions, where it'd be "wasted", maybe it'd make sense to consider them defeated anyhow (maybe extend to the Mag 7 Overpower for just minions?). This is probably totally overpowered because I just thought about this...but it might be interesting. With the current probability tables, it's going to be more likely that weaker enemies will be downed by the damage of a status effect inducing power than them being instantly defeated, but in the rare-ish occasions that it occurs...well. Instant defeat sounds pretty satisfying, I think! As a bonus, it even gives Sleeps the rare chance to take down enemies properly in groups - pinging @CaptainLupis since they mentioned about how conditional the status effect was. Oh! Maybe @Sovera might be interested in this suggestion as well too, since this basically gives the Controller the chance to instantly defeat weaker mobs in their own, lockdown-ish way. Similarly, I think @BitCook and @Uun mentioned that they had qualms with how quickly things were defeated for controls to have an impact in the late-game. Would love to hear everyone's thoughts on this!

Also, given @capricorpse's experience with Dominator's, I'd definitely be interested in hearing your thoughts on this proposal for Controllers! I wanted to give the archetype a way of locking down larger targets, similar but different to the Dominator's Domination inherent. However, I definitely didn't want this proposal to overshadow the other Control archetype. Would love to hear what you think about Overwhelming Overpower - is it too powerful in comparison to what Dominators have, in a similar ballpark, or something else entirely?

Well, all I can really say to that is...my condolences for relying too heavily on the slash command. It's kind of clear that the dev team's not interested in making something that's a drop-in replacement for the /enter_base_from_passcode command for those use cases you stated.

I'm not here to say whether or not these updates are a net positive or negative for others - clearly people are quite opinionated on that (personally for me though, as someone who avoided using this command? Total win, zero drawbacks). All I've said is it's clear that the devs aren't interested in creating a drop-in replacement power for the /enter_base_from_passcode command, hence the route they went in the first place. I'm afraid that whether or not it's a problem doesn't really matter. Also, something to keep in mind: the devs have left similar things in the past that lingered for some time, and still got rid of them in the end. The duration of something in-game clearly isn't justification enough for them to keep it there. For instance, look at Jimmy's post on the whole disabling of double influence while disabling XP gain. You'll notice a similar echo about how they should have nipped this at the bud, similar to his post about this slash command. In both instances, he's said the team ought to have addressed the problem early, and expressed regret that they did not. It's how it is - the team makes mistakes. I'm going to have to ask for direct citation for that, because the closest statement I can see about this is: There have been no promises from the devs that they'd create a power that'd be at the level of /enter_base_from_passcode. There have been acknowledgements about its uses for hopping between bases, and that the current base teleporter powers have a long recharge and interrupt time. And of course, they made it very clear that the slash command wasn't going to last in its existing form. For the people who decided to use that slash command at least - for me? It's only been made more convenient. It's already been justified by the devs, and a long time back at that - take a read through the linked post and the thread at large. As said, clearly, both from the patch notes here, and official statements there, they're not interested in making anything close to what the /enter_base_from_passcode command was like.

Actually, that does bring up another thought - entering supergroup bases on teams with mixed Blueside/Redside alignments can sometimes cause team members to be kicked off: that happens currently in game as is. Might a fix for that potentially in the works somewhere, @Jimmy?

Could you clarify what you're refuting from that quote of mine? I said there that it's clear that the devs aren't interested in creating a power that'd function as a drop-in replacement for using /enter_base_from_passcode as a way of instantly entering bases (and subsequently teleport to a different map zone) at any given time and place. The fact these powers are the way that they are is clear indication of that, as you've pointed out yourself.

For you, and for the way you wish to substitute your previous use of the /enter_base_from_passcode command? Absolutely. For my own needs, given that I generally avoided the command in the first place? It's a nice bonus to get around, or even RP with if I so desire. Well, that's the thing. I don't think the devs are interested in creating a power like that - that'd hew too close to outright replacing the slash command that they restricted in the first place. While I'm sure all of our voices are being heard on this matter, I'm personally preparing for when/if these changes roll out.

If you're hoping for anything close to what /enter_base_from_passcode provided, I don't think there's really going to be anything that will satisfy, I'm afraid: nothing the devs will make is going to be exactly the same as it. While I'm sure they'd be happy to accommodate (they could have flat out removed the command without anything else, for instance), I get the feeling that they're not looking for a one to one alternative that people can just swap out for. From my perspective, travel's been the opposite of hindered - like I said, I refrained from using the command once I found out that it was going away. As such, I'd be quite happy with these changes as they are, so long as there aren't any bugs with them.

It sounds like future discussions about Day Job charges might be up on the table one day. But in the meantime, I'm fine with how things are myself. Of course, I also made a personal decision to refrain from using the /enter_base_from_passcode command where I could, given that it was stated that it was going away, so as to not become reliant on it.

Oh, that's quite alright - thought it might have been interesting to hear your thoughts anyhow, and indeed it was! My original conception of this proposal was actually kind of system-changing myself, but the scope of it became kind of too hard for me to properly grasp, leading to the far narrower proposal that it is now...though even that's managed to prompt a lot of discussion, which I'm very happy about. Status effects against players can indeed be a little binary. Indeed, I believe @Bill Z Bubba mentioned this in one of their posts a while back. I'm not quite sure there's many changes that can be made that'd help resolve this, outside of changing the enemies themselves or something like that, however. As it is, on more fragile characters, I'll tend to try and prevent getting hit in the first place, either by defeating target enemies first (on my Blaster), or locking them down as soon as possible. Only qualm with that is against enemies that are more durable, or have innate protection against controls (e.g. The Lost Anathemas). Definitely understandable, that - I didn't want this change to be overly overpowering (despite its titled proposal). That being said, I actually envisioned Overwhelming Overpower as less of "power escalation" and more "providing status effects with a sliding scale of effectiveness". My reasoning here is that while debuffs/damage all smoothly scale against stronger enemies (i.e. they do less), they still have some effect. Magnitude makes the effectiveness of status effects not matter...up to a point, at which they tip the scales the other way. So basically, Overwhelming Overpower's an attempt to provide status effects with something that the other mechanics of combat already have out of the box: a smoother scale of effectiveness.

Yup! Per my original post, I was inspired (ripped off) by saving throws in D&D - no enemies are truly immune to status effects there, even if it takes a high 'saving throw' to overcome those protections for stronger targets. That's why I decided to go the route I went, with lower chances of an Overwhelming Overpower that could affect stronger targets. That being said, definitely important to keep @CrudeVileTerror's mention of the Purple Patch in mind; if anything, I'm beginning to wonder if the duration of an Overpower is too short at the moment to be tangibly effective...but then, maybe no adjustment to that'd be needed if we manage to strike a nice balance for Overwhelming Overpower in the first place, I suppose. I've actually thought up something similar in my original post! If you check the +Chance to Overpower section, I wondered if there ought to be a mechanic to increase the likelihood of an Overpower occurring, one idea incorporating the use of stacking a variety of status effects on an enemy, even if they weren't affected by it (amongst other potential ways of handling it). Would definitely be interested in hearing your thoughts on that, especially since it does seem like the base numbers proposed were a bit low.

Oh! Similar to the PvP mechanics of having opponents be immune to the control that locked them down previously, but toned down a bit? I think @EmperorSteele mentioned something like that a little while back. That definitely might be interesting! While my original proposal might be a tad complex, I do think the lower chance to one-shot an AV does better scale than a flat +20 magnitude. For instance, given the whole Purple Triangles scenario I brought up before: 20% chance for +20 Mag Overpower, 2 Controllers, likelihood of 2+ Overpowers in that 50 second period = 92.85% (as seen here) 5% chance for 50+ Mag Overpower, 2 Controllers likelihood of 1+ Overpower in that 50 second period = 64% (19/20) ^ 20 = 36% chance of no Overpower given 20 attempts And then of course when more Controllers above that are added, I figure their cumulative magnitude would have been enough to exceed an AV's protection anyhow.

I'm personally inclined towards a number around or below 50% myself in terms of reliability...but the method I went about also made one-shots against AVs a possibility, while this proposal has a +20 magnitude, so all in all, it probably does similar-ish results, but I can't math it out unfortunately, hahah! Though that being said, it does bring up some things to think about: an unenhanced level 50 Hold on a Controller is 22.35 seconds - the duration of Overpower is half that, and that isn't even factoring in the Purple Patch. Perhaps the duration of Overpower ought to be looked at as well? Maybe bumping it up to 3/4 of the duration instead of half.

These day jobs'll be earned via logging out inside a supergroup, or near a supergroup portal - I believe Jimmy did mention that looking at Day Jobs would be on the radar, but not in this page. With the numbers there, given 24 hours logged out near a supergroup portal, you could get about 8 charges of supergroup teleportation (4 for each day job power, as said here). I do believe the maximum was indeed mentioned to be 30 charges. Hope this helps!

Oh, congratulations! Hopefully the feel of these improvements'll gel well. 🙂

These ones will probably be the closest to that, with their lower cooldowns.

Also, hello @Luminara! I noticed you talking about the binary nature of status effects over here, and it's definitely something that this proposal for Controllers wants to (at least in part) address. While Overwhelming Overpower isn't something overarching full revamp of the system in place (there are some parts of it I do like), it does tip the favour towards the Controller to some degree. As such, I'd definitely be interested in hearing your thoughts about it!

Actually, it might be a better idea to ping @Faultline for this, come to think of it. Charges per minutes/hours and so on - the wiki's empty on it for some reason.

The wiki doesn't have any Day Job formulas at the moment - do you have them off the top of your head, @Jimmy? I'd like to know them myself.

Quick question: a fair amount of powers have been shuffled about in quite a few powersets. As such, is the team thinking of awarding a free respec once this patch goes live to allow for players to rearrange their powers to their liking if they so wish?

I'm all for more money sinks being implemented for additional convenience...I believe Wentworth teleporter charges already work like that?

It looks like this question is coming less from a stance of actual scarcity and more the perception that because there's a cap, that there'll always be another time where one would want to use said charge, and thus avoids using it. While it's a valid concern, it needs testing to confirm if it's something that'll actually be a problem. So in other words, that question leads to another question: how likely is it that these 60 combined charges will run out before they're more than replenished, given one's amount of playtime? Well, we can probably run through some numbers. The amount of different maps that a player goes through in any given play session The amount of base teleportation charges earned via downtime So long as the latter is on average higher than the former, the player has effectively unlimited access to their base, wherever they want. This also doesn't account for their use of alternative transportation to supplement this, such as using Ouroboros to travel to Talos Island or Atlas Park, say.