One free travel power at character creation?

[Robotech_Master]

15 hours ago, Jeuraud said:

Your opinion does not jive with the opinion of the genera. Sups who is over 80 years old started with Supper Speed and Super Jump, and many of these such as Dash, Angel, and A-Train, are about their travel power.  If you add Gadgets to the Travel Powers then Batman, and Spiderman could also be added to the list. If you add Parkour(Ninja Run) to the Travel Powers then you can add Captain America, and Beast to the list.

 

To say that getting a Travel Power at the start is cheesy is to say that Comics and their Heroes/Villians are cheesy.

You're absolutely right! Clearly, City of Heroes sucks, because it's being a superhero game, rather than a superhero comic book. So you should give up on City of Heroes, because it's clearly not what you want. Go back to your superhero comic books, you'll be much happier.

[Haijinx]

I think using comic book characters is a bad example.

 

Since many have different power levels based on author, power creep, retconned origins, different interpretations in different media, etc.

 

Spiderman in comics for example supposedly can lift 25 tons these days.  30 years ago it was 10, before that he was 40 times human strength, he was often pictured lifting a motorcycle ... etc.

 

In the comics he invents his webs, later his costume makes them, later he has to get rid of that evil costume.   In some movies he can just shot web, in others he can't.  

 

Its probably worse the older the character is.  Using the ones from back in 1963 like Spiderman, Iron man, and so on ... have more changes than more recent heroes. 

 

[Vanden]

2 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Spiderman in comics for example supposedly can lift 25 tons these days.  30 years ago it was 10, before that he was 40 times human strength, he was often pictured lifting a motorcycle ... etc.

That’s just exercise, man! 😝

[PaxArcana]

59 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Its probably worse the older the character is.

Epic Rap Battles of History's "Goku vs Superman" bit is hilarious for referencing this.  Goku's opening lines:

Hoooow many times are they gonna rewrite your story?
Your poooowers have been boring since the nineteen-f__king forties!

 

... and, oh good lords, his LAST line at the very end of it .... I am slain.

 

I hate DB, but I have to give the win to Goku on that one.  HAVE to.
 

 

[Andrewvm]

9 hours ago, Haijinx said:

I think using comic book characters is a bad example.

Isnt this game the whole point of giving us a taste of playing superhero? They come from the comics remember 😉

 

Now I agree that since it is a game there are balance issues to be taken into account. One of them probably being not to gimp yourself at level 1: take a travelpower and a non combat power and you have to brawl your way to level 2 etc.

 

What this discussion made me realise is that the travel powers are severely underdeveloped. There are quite a few superheroes that have a travel power as a fully fledged combat set. I'll leave superman out of it because...

 

Teleport:   Nightcrawler (uses his TP offensively along with melee), Blink (Tp's foes into pieces)

 

Flight: Cannonball (does exactly what the name says and flies into foes)

 

Superspeed: Flash (does everything with speed),

 

Superleap: ehm.... ok i'm stumped

 

 

If anything i'd be interested to see how to fully fledge out the travel powers into powersets...  (next to just pool powers)

[Haijinx]

2 minutes ago, Andrewvm said:

Isnt this game the whole point of giving us a taste of playing superhero? They come from the comics remember 😉

 

I mainly meant older established ones that ran on a long time.  I should have been more clear.  

 

Certain comics series ran shorter / didn't have 20 different authors changing everything / had more internal consistency. 

 

I guess The Watchmen would work there.  Or Justice Machine.  The Elementals.  Wild Cards.  The new Ms. Marvel.  And so forth. 

 

Characters like Spider-Man has had dozens of authors and a lot of different series and media.    His interpretations are all over the map.   Sometimes his danger sense works one way, other times another, later some author who should die in a fire decides to take it away from him ... etc.  Other stupid things like sprouting spider arms, having his body taken over by Doctor Octopus .. and on and on.  

 

I suppose if you did have a Travel based Powerset instead of pools then of course the first power could be a travel power.  That is a bit different, since then any sort of worry about Power Creep is baked into the balance of the set in question.  Your Super Speed set wont have a Self Rez, it might have a Ninja Run scale built in Teir 1 movement power with built in defense.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Haijinx]

22 minutes ago, Andrewvm said:

 

Superleap: ehm.... ok i'm stumped

 

 

The Toad maybe? 

 

[tidge]

Because it was mentioned: IIRC MM pets don't block doorways. There are a few pseudopets (FFG from Traps) which can still block doorways, and can act as curbs (Acid Mortar, again Traps).

 

I've often wanted a 'better' free travel power, but this desire has always been motivated by either being greedy about wanting another Pool or a slot for another power. If the P2W choice doesn't fit my character concept (including costume) I simply don't take/use the P2W power and go for the travel Pool instead. The Travel Pools offer a variety of single-effect IOs which take a lot of the sting out of 'having to take a power for the concept's (not even counting the powers which take Def IOs).

 

I apologize to all the Roleplayers who feel like their concept is crippled by not having a non-P2W travel power at level 1. Count me among those who don't take this complaint seriously.  Perhaps my imagination is limited, but I think the RP potential at level 4 is nearly identical to what it would be at levels 1 or 2. Eventually even a non-combat RP toon is going to have to get experience in some way other than finding exploration badges!

 

If I were to make a 'greedy' request to blatantly serve my own interest, it would be: can the requirement to have TWO OTHER powers in a Travel Pool before selecting the higher tiers be reduced to only ONE OTHER power in the pool. For example, even though I find the first 3 powers in the Flight pool to be useful it hurts my own concept to sacrifice other power choices to take extra powers just to get Group Flight (don't judge me, my pets want to Fly!)

[ninja surprise]

I think it would be great if the travel pools were available at level 1.

Tons of characters I don't care about the 1st power in the Secondary set and I'd much rather grab the travel power at that point.

[Steampunkette]

5 minutes ago, ninja surprise said:

I think it would be great if the travel pools were available at level 1.

Tons of characters I don't care about the 1st power in the Secondary set and I'd much rather grab the travel power at that point.

Getting the first power in your secondary is literally hard-coded into the game. It was one of the biggest stumbling blocks in developing the Arachnos Soldier/Widow ATs.

[Snakebit]

I was under the impression that you can get a travel power at level 4. I was also under the impression that there is no practical difference between level 4 and level zero.

 

If you want a travel power pick one in your build or pay for one from P2W.

 

/jranger

[srmalloy]

On 9/23/2019 at 7:24 AM, Lazarillo said:

I got no beef with Afterburner either, for the reasons mentioned above, though I'd argue Mystic Flight needs...something.  Granting a teleport power sounds nice, but given the combined Endurance costs of flying and then teleporting (and the fact that no Enhancements can benefit the teleport side), it's pretty lacking.

Combined with the fact that the trainers will, at certain levels, announce that you're getting an automatic slot in Translocation, but since it doesn't appear in your powers, while the power may actually be receiving the slots, they're inaccessible, and that the temporary power bar that pops up and would be a good place to put 'powexec_location' macros for Translocation but can't have anything slotted in it, it makes it somewhat underwhelming

 

Edited September 25, 2019 by srmalloy

[MunkiLord]

8 hours ago, Haijinx said:

Other stupid things like sprouting spider arms, having his body taken over by Doctor Octopus .. and on and on.  

At risk of derailment, Superior Spider-Man was awesome. Amazing even. It dragged a little during vol 3 or 4(I forget, been a few years), but I loved it.

[TheAdjustor]

12 hours ago, Haijinx said:

The Toad maybe? 

 

How bout the Leaper

[ninja surprise]

23 hours ago, Steampunkette said:

Getting the first power in your secondary is literally hard-coded into the game. It was one of the biggest stumbling blocks in developing the Arachnos Soldier/Widow ATs.

Yeesh, this games' power sets have a lot of baked-in Bad Decisions™.

[Steampunkette]

17 minutes ago, ninja surprise said:

Yeesh, this games' power sets have a lot of baked-in Bad Decisions™.

No doubt. But they were a new company struggling to get the game built and out the door so they could start making money. Decisions that seemed like no-brainers at the time turned out to have complex reasons that weren't considered when the decision was made.

 

The mistakes they made, in the long run, however, still lead to a pretty great game, for all it's foibles. 

[MetaVileTerror]

That's why my philosophy is to lean in to the foibles.  Hard.  They're what set this game apart from the hundreds of nearly identical MMOs that were chasing w.o.w's design principles.  City of Heroes functions best, in my opinion, when its non-traditional elements are given the opportunity to shine.  I really believe future develop will benefit greatly from re-examining assumptions based on what kind of game this even is as an "MMO," and making choices which continue to set City of Heroes on its own course.

[Steampunkette]

Posted in wrong thread...somehow.

Edited September 26, 2019 by Steampunkette

[Haijinx]

12 hours ago, MetaVileTerror said:

That's why my philosophy is to lean in to the foibles.  Hard.  They're what set this game apart from the hundreds of nearly identical MMOs that were chasing w.o.w's design principles.  City of Heroes functions best, in my opinion, when its non-traditional elements are given the opportunity to shine.  I really believe future develop will benefit greatly from re-examining assumptions based on what kind of game this even is as an "MMO," and making choices which continue to set City of Heroes on its own course.

Coh predated WOW by about 6 months.

 

So I am not sure they followed WOW design principles per se. 

 

But both games followed similar principles from games of the time period.

 

Although Im sure there was some interest in what WOW was doing in development, etc.

 

[MetaVileTerror]

Sorry if I was unclear, but I was saying that City of Heroes is on a level above all the cookie cutters who were chasing w.o.w standards.

[PaxArcana]

14 minutes ago, MetaVileTerror said:

Sorry if I was unclear, but I was saying that City of Heroes is on a level above all the cookie cutters who were chasing w.o.w standards.

.... by accident.  Emmert worshipped at the altar of the Holy Trinity.  The proof is in the intended roles of the Heroic ATs.  Tanking (Tankers), Crowd Control (Controllers), Buffs and Debuffs (Defenders), and DPS (Blasters and Scrappers).

[MetaVileTerror]

Yup.  Never said it wasn't originally an accident.  Just that the game is at its best when it leans in to the foibles and embraces them.

[Rathulfr]

1 hour ago, PaxArcana said:

.... by accident.  Emmert worshipped at the altar of the Holy Trinity.  The proof is in the intended roles of the Heroic ATs.  Tanking (Tankers), Crowd Control (Controllers), Buffs and Debuffs (Defenders), and DPS (Blasters and Scrappers).

 

That's not the way I remember it: quite the opposite, in fact.  Jack was a big fan of the Champions PNP RPG, which had freeform character creation with trade offs, rather than strict roles/classes. There used to be development videos where Jack specifically discussed this.

 

It was during alpha testing (well before WoW) that players complained about character creation being confusing.  You have to remember that at the time, Everquest was the 900 pound gorilla, not WoW.  And it was EQ that popularized "The Holy Trinity" of tank/heals/DPS.  EQ also had CC and buff/debuff classes.  Cryptic stole these ideas from EQ, to become the "archetype" (AT) model that gave us the original play-style roles packaged as primary and secondary power sets.

 

Edited September 27, 2019 by Rathulfr

[Haijinx]

ironically the first big MMO was freeform (Ultima) 

[Doc_Scorpion]

2 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

ironically the first big MMO was freeform (Ultima) 

In theory.  In practice, while it certainly wasn't Trinity based, most folks tended to fall into the same basic templates for a given general type of character.  You only had so many points to allocate among different skills and generally your main class (and it's supporting skills) ate most of those points.  (That is, you had great freedom within what could be narrow limits.)  There were extra points left over for any number of interesting side skills, but they generally had little actual effect on the performance of the main class your template was designed for.