MHertz

I don’t understand the need for this either. I see a lot of players who choose to represent themselves as all-powerful gods, demons, fates, dragons, etc, and it puzzles me greatly. Who is the audience for that? Am I supposed to be impressed or awed by someone who has the imagination of a child on a playground (“I have Everything-Proof Shields, so there! Nyah!”)? Weakness is so much more powerful an RP tool than strength. Weakness invites others to contribute. Strength closes off any other contributions besides your own. I play the Willows on Everlasting, and people seem to enjoy engaging in the backstory and offering to help with things the characters “need.” People are here to be heroes, mostly; what’s the point of playing a hero who can’t be helped by other heroes?

Or, the people are complaining they don't have enough Inf because they can't afford auction prices set by people with far too much money to burn. The question of whether there is too much cash is secondary, however. The question really is "can we think of fun things to spend it on?"

I'm aware what Enhancements do. What I'm asking is, "Around which of the many redundant resources is the game meant to be balanced? What is the design intent?" We have DOs and SOs and IOs, plus set IOs. Is there some hypothetical baseline level of projected income, and where does that income derive from? Is the projected income meant to fall short of getting fully slotted with SOs? (In my experience, it always does at the beginning, unless I load up my alts with cash from my mains. It takes a while to become self-sufficient.) Do the devs consider SOs as trash to be sold, or as baseline equipment to balance around? My suspicion is that there is no coherent design intent any longer. TOs were abandoned. A bunch more stuff was added. Everybody is expected to just dump cash onto lowbies and that's how the game is played now.

At the moment, yes. Also, it would require new infrastructure to deal with stuff like spawn points, hospitals being required in those SGs, warnings for players entering combat-enabled bases, change to AFK policy in SG bases, and so on.

First, agree to disagree. When someone has 30 billion sitting around, they might not be spending all of it, but it means it hurts them less when the cost of IOs goes up 2-3 million per. It hurts everyone else — at least it could, in theory. See below. Second, it depends on implementation. Giant monsters and zone invasions are already coded by the devs to be as non-griefy as possible in low-level zones. Spawn points are already chosen. All I'm saying is that, in any zone where this is already possible, a player could activate it. We're not talking about "point and click-summon a giant monster wherever you want." Third, I did specifically say that maps that aren't commonly used could have prices as low as 0. This would specifically be so people could make their RP-based stories and invite all their friends. Suppose the threshold is about 100 uses before the fee rises above 0 inf — that's plenty of opportunities to design your own bespoke RP story and invite your whole SG to play for free. Another potential way to use the AE system to remove money from the super-rich is this: allow the owner of the map to put Influence into it, like a piggy bank, so that everybody who completes that map gets a payout, or gets extra Influence per defeat, or whatever. This doesn't remove money from the system, but it does redistribute it. It would also be possible to set up some kind of scavenger hunt. A rich player says "I want to set up a 10m prize for the person who finds my glowie in Independence Port," or "for the first person to defeat 20 Carnies in PI" or "the first person who brings me X Invention Enhancement." You know, something to make the super-rich feel like they are super rich characters on the level of Batman or Tony Stark, paying others to do services. It's also sort of like the way Sherlock Holmes uses the Baker Street Irregulars. Or maybe an option to pay an extra fee — when you're defeated, you can ask to be airlifted to any hospital, not just the one from the last zone you were in. There's all kinds of ways that extra influence can be leveraged for conveniences. The trouble with the existing methods is that they are all purchases — spend X and have a new power forever. A true money sink should be "spend X, get this benefit that only happens once." If that were the extent of it, I wouldn't care either. But when large amounts of cash get hoarded, and there is an auction house for rare items, it creates a need for everyone to be equally rich in order to compete for those items. It drives players into min-games they don't enjoy, or grind out XP just for the cash, in order to keep up. I don't have any figures to say whether this is actually happening, so I don't know whether this is a solution in search of a problem. It could be that there is no issue, which I would be fine with. But it would still be fun to have new things to spend money on.

There’s no question in my mind that there’s a lot of cash floating around in the game, at least with certain players for whom that is a goal (or an unintended side effect of long-lived characters and nothing to spend the money on). Should there be some system that gives such players something to spend their money on? Or something to slow down the acquisition of cash at the top levels? What would be fun? What would players accept? For fun things, how about: Pay 25m, trigger a giant monster spawn in that zone. Pay 50m, trigger an enemy invasion of your SG base. Pay 100m, trigger a zone invasion. Pay 10m for additional costume slots. For slowing down cash: AE costs money. The price can scale based on how popular (or how well-used) the map is, starting at 0 inf and going up to, say, 1M per activation of that map. Enhancement Conversion costs cash, not tokens. Using university resources (invention tables) costs tuition, maybe after level 20. Of course, I’m sure people say there’s no problem at all with users hoarding tens of billions of influence, but you know, this is just a starting point for the discussion.

This is a complex issue. I’ll try to lay out my thoughts in pieces. Yes, you can earn a lot of influence in this game by making use of drops, playing the market, selling judiciously, and doing your homework on the cash-income front. You can also get free influence in costume contests, should you be lucky enough to win. The question is whether the game should be balanced around the idea that all players could and should participate in these activities in order to get by. As it stands, even on 1 xp rates, you don’t really start to break even on buying SOs until level 35 or so, but until then it can be a struggle … unless you do the above and get lucky now and then with the RNG. I have always been opposed to the idea of loot and auction houses in this game, going all the way back to the invention system on Live, because I don’t want to be forced to slog through the markets to make a fortune just so I can afford to have an average build. Most games with this feature create a wealth imbalance where rare items cost tremendous amounts of cash. This also reflects that games like this have nothing for the super-rich to spend money on. The loot and cash-driven system doesn’t benefit or encourage my playstyle. I acknowledge that some people really do like it, but it’s not for me. I do it to the minimum necessary. However, the above question about balance assumes one will be buying Enhancements as they go. If you skip all the way to 50, there are several side effects. A) since you are not equipping every 5 levels, you save money; B) you may reduce demand on the market for IOs and recipes if you would normally buy them as you go; and C) you may slightly increase supply of IOs if you sell your farmed drops on the market. The number of drops you get contributes to cash flow, but you do not get enough drops — or enough of the right ones — to be self-sufficient. All too often, you end up with drops like Stun or Fear that you can’t use, even when they are compatible with your Origin; or you get the same IO in the set you’re building and you have to use a totally different system to hope to convert it into the one you’re still missing. So one way to alleviate the excess cash — or the need for cash in the first place — is addressing the drop rate and the vast amount of stuff you get that has no purpose to you. You’d also have to look at game difficulty. At what level does the equation 1 player = 3 +0 minions break down due to increased power from Enhancements? That is, at what level is a player required to have cash in order to keep up with enemy power levels? So the real question about influence and XP is “what kind of behavior is the game trying to incentivize?” Given that this is an MMO, it is unlikely that the solution will be “irrespective of playstyle choices or 2XP, you earn enough Influence on your own that you don’t need any other players.” Is the game trying to encourage the trading of SOs, or is that just an afterthought? Are SOs meant to be a source of cash or something we slot if and when we find them? Would it be easier to just ditch the SOs completely and give us the money? Or would that just push more people toward the invention system that not all players want to engage with? Are players expected to auction their recipes, or use them, or vendor them? Whatever we are trying to incentivize, that’s what new players should be pushed toward and that’s which systems should lead to the middle-road outcome. Right now it’s difficult to see what the intended system looks like. I would prefer a system where the baseline is earning enough Influence to afford SOs for your next level, so new players aren’t shocked by the struggle at level 15 and 20. If people wanted to to extra work to have extra benefits, so be it.

None of the above. Snow and ice. Trees without leaves. Ice surfaces to slide on. Snowmen. Ice crystals. Icicles. Buildings and signs with snow on them. Artwork exists for some of these things, but we can’t do ice bases for our cold-using characters or our Hoth Rebel Base cosplay.

Group name: The Seeds of Willow Alignment: Neutral-ish Core Belief: Preserve lives, not uphold laws Restrictions: almost all female; similar body height and build Role playing: Yes, definitely! Recruitment: via consensus Time zones: Pacific to GMT Discord: private You may already have seen the Willows on Everlasting — the group of mostly-identical women with the similar names in Pocket D and in clubs. For those who don’t know, the Willows were created when the cremated ashes of a woman, Willow Longbough, were scattered in Perez Park, and her lingering spirit was imprinted on the seedlings there due to residual Circle of Thorns magic. The Willows are all tall, almost identical, and they share a mental connection to see and hear what their sisters do. It may not surprise you to learn that some of them are played by one person; but you may not know that it is possible to join the SG if you have an interest in the lore and want to participate in it. We have a Discord server where we keep track of story points and important people in those stories, and where you can take notes and read up on what others have done. We do not have an open recruitment policy; we want to find RPers who are a good fit with the existing players (to minimize drama) and are willing to work within the lore (and build it out here and there, too). if you have wondered about the Willows and think it might be fun to be one, PM me here or at @Hertz in game.

Least favorite maps: outdoor city maps with hostages.

I don’t even pay attention to them any more. I’ve tried entering with a number of my favorite character designs, but I don’t win, so I figure my tastes aren’t the same. Instead, I run character bio contests. Because everyone has a costume.

Give archery shots a 15% chance to apply Immobilization and 5% chance to apply a Hold. Apply +30% damage bonus for enemies within 10 feet. If there is an enemy on a line behind your target, give a 25% chance to hit the second target for 50% damage. +15% bonus for killing Boromir.

I would add a fourth: what metrics you plan to use to test whether you have reached your goal. This can depend on what your goal is; some things are harder to measure than others. A goal might be “solo giant monsters,” so you can time how long it takes. Or a goal might be “do this TF at +A/xB in C amount of time” which means your metric is built into the goal itself. Maybe your goal is “not stink up the joint so bad with this AT against Carnies” and that’s going to be a play/feel kind of thing, maybe defeats per mission or something — maybe you’ll build an AE map for consistent testing. You might also make a short list of things you don’t care so much about, or which you’re willing to give up; or you might prioritize which of 2 or 3 things is more important than the others. Your 40-story building needs to not fall down, not topple over in high wind, and should house 5,000 workers, but it doesn’t need all that earthquake proofing and the atrium in the lobby doesn’t have to be made of glass. In character build terms, maybe you don’t need a travel power in this build. Hey, just because I don’t do super-optimized builds for all my toons doesn’t mean I don’t know how.

If you take a set with armor, or have an armor power, sure. And as long as you’re not exemplar’s below the level when you took the power. A Mind Controller doesn’t get psionic protection at all until epic power pools, which always seems wrong to me.

Then use dummy names with generic themes (Greek letters, maybe). It’s the same mechanic and I’m not married to the idea of fixed, descriptive names. The part I find annoying is that the classic superhero trope of a hero being slightly more immune to her own damage type, or even to be recharged by it, isn’t really viable here (nor is the trope that their power actually is their weakness — fighting fire with an even hotter fire). My elec/elec blaster should have a small amount of resistance to electricity, and I would take a weakness elsewhere to represent that. Yes, I know, that’s what Charged Armor is for, but such things don’t exist for every theme or damage type, and thematic stuff like that shouldn’t take you 40 levels and a power slot.

Hey dere, dis is Stickbonker, da Mayor of Parakeet City. I been seein’ a lot by lookin’ around, an’ dere is some stuff dat is real populist, an’ other stuff dat we ain’t been doin’ enough of. Da popular stuff: Runnin’ around an’ jumpin’ on stuff in Hatless Park Wearin’ super cool costumes dat make you look like stuff Hangin’ out in dat Pockety place drinkin’ all dat imagilicious beer Da stuff we ain’t doin’ enough of: Stickbonkin’ Talkin’ about stickbonkin’ Playin’ dat mission I made dat has hot dogs in it Den dere’s all dat stuff we doin’ too much of: Not stickbonkin’ Waitin’ in line at City Hall for a stickbonkin’ permit because dem beercats keep pushin’ people around wif pencils an’ steppin’ on da small business guy Lookin’ for dat boot I lost in da sewer in Underpants Port Playin’ other guys dat ain’t really you for tax purposes We gotta get on dis list of stuff, everybody. Especially da one about da hot dogs.

Spoiler alert: posts contain explanatory text.

I am on board with this. I’ve tried to figure out specific strengths and weaknesses but I too run into the problem of defining a category so it embraces everything. There’s at least four different kinds of undead I can think of — corporeal undead like zombies, skeletal undead, ethereal undead like ghosts and spirits, and superior undead like vampires and liches. They shouldn’t all have the same strengths and weaknesses. Not only that, but people will come up with concepts that defy categorization: a plant vampire alien in a suit of body armor; a mage with a cybernetic exoskeleton; a spirit possessing a stone statue, etc. However, it really depends on how the “body type” is implemented. If the type is merely a label for the buff/debuff set and is never referenced on the character sheet, then you could pick the “Robot” type without fear of the game thinking you are an actual robot. You could label the body types “Doc” and “Sleepy” and “Dopey” for all it matters; the label is just for players’ reference. On the other hand, if the game started to use the body type as an actual reference for what the player is made of — “Greetings, fellow robot!” says the Clockwork — then we would need to divorce the name of the buffs away from the type of buffs. I think it’s too late in the game’s lifespan to imagine they would start to modify the existing text and NPC behavior within all these prior missions.

I don’t think your logic tracks here. The poor design of and insufficient controls over AE content, and the inadequate discipline when it came to appeasing AE users with equal XP, does not invalidate the idea of any checks and balances of any kind in game design. AE was a monstrosity and it should never have been approved in its current state; it has become far more central to the game than it was likely ever intended to be (partly because in some ways it wallpapers over bad design decisions that predate it). In D&D terms, AE isn’t just getting XP from the Monster Summoning spell; it’s choosing which DM will run the encounter so the monster does not fight back effectively. Checks and balances are still one foundation of good game design.

I didn’t say that. You said that. I said the minimum graphics card that the system is designed for. Yes, there are events where lots of players gather — I specifically called out Trick or Treating in my post. MSR is another, as you observe. So is AE, when it is filled with custom enemies. People can avoid those specific things if their systems are not capable of running them smoothly. (Some do, I’m sure. I know I’ve teamed with people whose systems are so old that they zone in 1-2 minutes after everyone else. I’ve also noticed that large costume contests don’t even attempt to draw all the characters present — so there is a hard-coded limit of some number X beyond which no new player models are drawn.) For those highly-attended events, think how much worse they’ll be when duplicating MMs massively increase the number of complex models on screen. MSRs could become unplayably slow. I remember the days when people weren’t allowed to summon pets during Hamidon raids due to lag. We don’t want to do that to ourselves again. But if we are now saying ordinary door missions could potentially be more complex than some players’ systems can run, or that duplication MMs could bump against a hard-coded drawing limit, that’s a more sizable chunk of game content that could potentially be affected. Nobody wants to be in a mission with enemies or allies you cannot even target due to graphics limitations. So we tread with caution. That’s not to say this problem is insurmountable. Heck, it might not be a problem at all. I have no data on polygon counts, particle counts, draw limits, or graphics card specs to point to. I don’t know how many users would be flushed out of the game for having older gaming gear, if the devs decided to say “screw it” and raise the bar a little. That’s for the developers to figure out. I’m pointing to it because player models are a different animal from pet models, and it’s a thing we must at least remember when we propose drawing up to 24 more complex player models than a team of 8 can now produce.

Assuming the technical issues of how pets are hard-coded into MM summons could be overcome, this could still create problems. As previously mentioned, Masterminds can summon lots of simultaneous pets. However, I think the above posts missed the point here, and that is that player models are far more complex than most MM pet models. They have more elaborate costume pieces, requiring more polygons; they can have body auras and path auras requiring more particles and light effects. A team of 8 MMs, each summoning 6 pets + themselves, could put 54 player models into a mission at once, which might be too much for the lowest-level graphics cards the system is built for. If you’re one of the players who avoids Trick or Treating because of poor frame rate, this would make it harder to play on certain teams. Yes, Illusion gets the same ability, but not all the time, and not with quite so many models at once.

That is correct. As a long-time GM for tabletop games and as a hobbyist game designer, unfettered player-led design leads to power creep and munchkin builds. Arguably the game already has that with power pools. That is why the features would be a bundle or pair of traits: something you get as a bonus, and something that hurts you as a weakness. There would be no option for “take a free bonus and skip the penalty.” In the same way, power pools grant abilities with a bonus and a cost (Endurance, recharge time). If combining them results in too easily reaching absurd and unintended levels of power, then don’t let them combine. If changing the body type during live play is too easily abused, make it a fixed part of character creation (like Origin or AT). My current thinking is that the penalty will reduce the player’s cap in that field (speed cap, resist cap for a damage type, stealth cap, etc) in addition to a flat –% penalty to the stat itself. Lowering the cap hurts archetypes who can easily reach the cap; applying the flat penalty hurts archetypes who cannot easily accrue enough of that stat to worry about the cap. The trick is to give a bonus that is worth the penalty and vice versa. Could somebody use the system to build the perfect farmer vs one specific damage type? Sure. But they can already do that.

Of course. Every game mechanic does. If it is done right, the penalty would be something that actually hurts a little, which would make your selection much less frivolous. What that might be could depend on your AT. A blaster might not care about the resist cap vs smashing as much as a brute; but a brute wouldn’t care about –5% resist vs smashing as much as a blaster. The blaster doesn’t get many opportunities to max that resist anyway, and the brute can easily overcompensate for that minimal penalty. It might have to give both as a true penalty for any AT.

As a temp power, it could be an Auto temp power that is exclusive with others of its type; or it could be like those powers where the first one is free, but additional ones cost money. If each power were balanced with benefits and weaknesses it would be harder to game by combining them. Then you could say “I have a fire weakness because I’m undead, but my fire resistance from being a dragon cancels that out, so now I just have the bits that remain.” The player would still have a bonus for being undead and a weakness from being a dragon to contend with.

One thing I’ve often wished for was a system in COH that allows players to choose a “type” for their character that comes with associated strengths and weaknesses. This would be analogous to the ill-named D&D “race” category, but with many more categories available. Each type would have some small associated bonuses, like +RES to some damage types but –RES to other types. After all, it makes some sense for some fire-using characters to resist Fire damage (eg, salamander, demon, fire elemental) but others not to (eg, a wizard who simply uses fire, a guy with a flamethrower). You could also throw in some additional small bonuses or penalties to other things (global speed, global recharge, global accuracy, etc) or possibly raising or lowering the caps on things (capping RES to Energy 2% lower, perhaps). Obviously these would be tricky to balance, because there would be a great many combinations and synergies with different archetypes and power sets, but I think they could still be fun. Some ideas: Demon (+RES fire and negative energy, –RES energy and psionic) Corporeal Undead (+RES cold and negative energy, –RES fire and lethal) Power Suit (+RES smashing and lethal, –RES energy and psionic) Avian (+DEF smashing, +FLY speed, –DEF fire, –RUN speed) Or something like that. You could have a ton of variations, like skeletal undead, angelic beings, ghosts and spirits, androids, elementals of various types, fae (or fey) with resistance to magic-based powers, aquatic beings, plants, animals, various aliens, lycanthropes, and all sorts of beings that give the players a good shot at finding something suitable. Unless you want to be a demon rocket monkey in a magic space suit, then you’re out of luck. Edit: Obviously this isn’t going to happen. It’s complicated, damage isn’t typed by Origin, it’s a lot of dev time, etc. It’s still fun to discuss.