The original purpose of Enhancements...

[Replacement]

...was to customize powers.

 

At least, that's how Emmert would talk in his blogs during development.

 

I remember being wow'd when reading about the idea that "every power is completely customizable, so you can choose if your character has abilities that are long-ranged, can be used frequently, or just hit really hard but are otherwise limited."

 

But once the game came out, it became apparent that it was a system for progression, not for customization. And then IOs ... Happened.

 

Understand, at this point in the development logs, there were no ATs, and Origin was more similar to an AT. People try to say CO is proof that going AT-less is just a bad idea, but I just think it's proof that the same people failed at the idea twice. I still think these are neat and attainable ideas.

 

... But I digress. I like to think about how it could have been different:

• Imagine if instead of grabbing a +30% damage mod, you were slotting your broadsword attacks with +30% damage as fire (and perhaps added particle fx) to sell your fantasy.
• Imagine if Blasts had a base range of like 20' and +range enhancements were huge, like +100% each (critical reader: ED would either be tuned differently or not needed in this universe). As a comics example, this is like Psylocke vs other telekinetics.
• Imagine more attacks having small aoes, and needing a separate Area+ enhancement
• Barely related, but imagine if armor powers were interesting enough on their own to actually justify more than 3 slots (sans IO benefits)

 

This ship has long-since sailed so this is in General and not Suggestions. And don't get me wrong, I'm happy with what we have and eternally grateful to Homecoming for reviving it.

 

But I'm curious if others would have liked this. What ways would you have totally wrecked enhancements to make the game different?

 

Please just don't say "remove ED" or, if you insist, add more to what you would do in its place. We already have enough material for an ED-less fan-fic universe.

[Redlynne]

7 minutes ago, Replacement said:

What ways would you have totally wrecked enhancements to make the game different?

Damage Enhancements slotted into Single Target damage powers would use Schedule A.

Damage Enhancements slotted into Cone and (PB)AoE damage powers would use Schedule B.

[DR_Mechano]

5 minutes ago, Replacement said:

...was to customize powers.

 

At least, that's how Emmert would talk in his blogs during development.

 

I remember being wow'd when reading about the idea that "every power is completely customizable, so you can choose if your character has abilities that are long-ranged, can be used frequently, or just hit really hard but are otherwise limited."

 

But once the game came out, it became apparent that it was a system for progression, not for customization. And then IOs ... Happened.

 

Understand, at this point in the development logs, there were no ATs, and Origin was more similar to an AT. People try to say CO is proof that going AT-less is just a bad idea, but I just think it's proof that the same people failed at the idea twice. I still think these are neat and attainable ideas.

 

... But I digress. I like to think about how it could have been different:

• Imagine if instead of grabbing a +30% damage mod, you were slotting your broadsword attacks with +30% damage as fire (and perhaps added particle fx) to sell your fantasy.
• Imagine if Blasts had a base range of like 20' and +range enhancements were huge, like +100% each (critical reader: ED would either be tuned differently or not needed in this universe). As a comics example, this is like Psylocke vs other telekinetics.
• Imagine more attacks having small aoes, and needing a separate Area+ enhancement
• Barely related, but imagine if armor powers were interesting enough on their own to actually justify more than 3 slots (sans IO benefits)

 

This ship has long-since sailed so this is in General and not Suggestions. And don't get me wrong, I'm happy with what we have and eternally grateful to Homecoming for reviving it.

 

But I'm curious if others would have liked this. What ways would you have totally wrecked enhancements to make the game different?

 

Please just don't say "remove ED" or, if you insist, add more to what you would do in its place. We already have enough material for an ED-less fan-fic universe.

I think it also comes to a problem with the way powers were coded basically meant they weren't modular. For example until recently all inherent powers were 'baked in' to the power itself, the Inherent was just a fancy little icon showing you that yes, your powers have a chance to crit/scourge/overpower/taunt etc. The recent Tanker/Brute changes have made it so that, from what I can tell, Gauntlet/punchvoke works like a global enhancement in that it is layered ontop of the powers instead of baked into them (I may be completely wrong about this however).

 

Say what you will about CO BUT there were a few awesome little modifiers they did. Gadgets got an orbital strike which was this big burst of AoE damage. However picking the 'anvil of Dawn' (a clear hammer of dawn reference from Gears of War) instead turned it into a stream of energy (like its reference) that tracked foes and dealt less damage on the initial burst but vastly more damage over time, making it a great single target nuking power.

[Replacement]

Just in case anyone is curious, my flawed memory of those design logs says the way Origin was supposed to work was to measure your character on 3 axes:

* Number of power selections

* Number of power pools (what we would now consider primary/secondary)

* Power strength, I think meaning number of enhancement slots

 

As an example, Magic would have fewest pools (probably only 1, but we'll never know), but have several power picks from that pool, and a lot of slots. This would be ideal for, say, eye of agamotto giving you several powerful abilities all tied to Time.

 

Meanwhile Tech would have lots of powers and no/very high limits on number of pools to choose from, but very few enhancements.

Cool, but I can see where this could fail in-game, making you feel like a toddler army.

 

Natural, iirc, was the opposite of tech.

 

Again, I have a good memory, but this was literally close to 20 years ago. I'd still love to find those posts.

[Queen Nefertiti]

When Champions online came out I was quite excited, because Champions is fully customisable. The selling point of the RPG is that you can make practically anything, with any effect, by spending points. You gained more points by having weaknesses, and reduced costs by having powers that have flaws.  You could have a massively overpowered blast, but it would only be that overpowered because you had made it terribly flawed, like obvious accessible focus, only works on green enemies, kills user etc. Sadly all we got was a watered down CoX clone that wasn't as much fun or as immediately engaging as the original.

[Frostbiter]

On the subject of CO, it's true that they have Freeform builds but 99% of them are cookie-cutter with usually 4-6 powers that everyone takes. Once you know how to use the template built into the game it ends up feeling more restrictive than the system we have. You can take a look on their build forums and see.

[Snarky]

CoX powers are more customizable than i have seen. My opinion as i am not a player of every video game

 

the “wall” that you hit in doing this is that you are in a videogame. In a storytelling environment you can have a fully functioning character that does jack squat for weeks of interesting gameplay storytelling then drops a nuke once.  Then goes back to being an interesting oddball who doesnt do much. This is not true in most gaming sessions clearing content.  Roleplay is a distant tenth or thirtieth behind functionality competence knowledge luck speed and a bunch of other crap

 

so you can take Archetype Squishy. Gimp or not take most of the good stuff for concept reasons. Drop armor i/o on until you run out of room. There. You made your dream.  Please do not bring it to a speed ITF. Or even a Posi if everyone is not aware and onboard that your character is a basket case

 

But (for a videogame) due to the sheer number of costumes archetypes powersets power choices and the i/o choices we have fully customizable toons.  For a videogame.  

[lemming]

2 hours ago, Queen Nefertiti said:

When Champions online came out I was quite excited, because Champions is fully customisable. The selling point of the RPG is that you can make practically anything, with any effect, by spending points. You gained more points by having weaknesses, and reduced costs by having powers that have flaws.  You could have a massively overpowered blast, but it would only be that overpowered because you had made it terribly flawed, like obvious accessible focus, only works on green enemies, kills user etc. Sadly all we got was a watered down CoX clone that wasn't as much fun or as immediately engaging as the original.

That's because the Champions bit used, was just the universe, nothing from the game mechanics since CO was originally supposed to be a Marvel game.

[Replacement]

I don't want to get too lost in the weeds of comparing to CO.  Like I said in the OP, CO's failures are only proof that CO failed at it.  Those guys stuck to some really bad base assumptions through multiple game designs, so it's not at all a surprise to me that they couldn't ever crack free-form. 

 

As @Snarky says, there's a pretty big difference with video games.  It's not like tabletops or fiction, where a character more focused on certain RP elements might still feel very powerful.  But I'm just not convinced it's mutually-exclusive.  This is why I like my +range example.  There's a huge difference, thematically and gameplay-wise, between a blaster practically in the melee, and the one who relies on staying far out at range.

 

Also, I kind of feel like Accuracy is a tax.  We obviously didn't feel that way back then... still in the grips of 3rd edition D&D, but accuracy as a stat definitely created a "this tall to ride" scenario with enhancements that really detracted from other interesting things they could've been using those mod slots for.

[Haijinx]

9 hours ago, lemming said:

That's because the Champions bit used, was just the universe, nothing from the game mechanics since CO was originally supposed to be a Marvel game.

They kept some of the names of the original Champions attributes,  you got them from equipping trinkets. 

 

Things like Passive Defense, etc. 

 

 

[Haijinx]

They probably should have put hard caps for all aspects of enhanced bonus.  That way there would have been some control over how powerful segments of a build could be.

[biostem]

On 1/16/2020 at 9:10 AM, Replacement said:

...was to customize powers.

 

At least, that's how Emmert would talk in his blogs during development.

 

I remember being wow'd when reading about the idea that "every power is completely customizable, so you can choose if your character has abilities that are long-ranged, can be used frequently, or just hit really hard but are otherwise limited."

 

But once the game came out, it became apparent that it was a system for progression, not for customization. And then IOs ... Happened.

 

Understand, at this point in the development logs, there were no ATs, and Origin was more similar to an AT. People try to say CO is proof that going AT-less is just a bad idea, but I just think it's proof that the same people failed at the idea twice. I still think these are neat and attainable ideas.

 

... But I digress. I like to think about how it could have been different:

• Imagine if instead of grabbing a +30% damage mod, you were slotting your broadsword attacks with +30% damage as fire (and perhaps added particle fx) to sell your fantasy.
• Imagine if Blasts had a base range of like 20' and +range enhancements were huge, like +100% each (critical reader: ED would either be tuned differently or not needed in this universe). As a comics example, this is like Psylocke vs other telekinetics.
• Imagine more attacks having small aoes, and needing a separate Area+ enhancement
• Barely related, but imagine if armor powers were interesting enough on their own to actually justify more than 3 slots (sans IO benefits)

 

This ship has long-since sailed so this is in General and not Suggestions. And don't get me wrong, I'm happy with what we have and eternally grateful to Homecoming for reviving it.

 

But I'm curious if others would have liked this. What ways would you have totally wrecked enhancements to make the game different?

 

Please just don't say "remove ED" or, if you insist, add more to what you would do in its place. We already have enough material for an ED-less fan-fic universe.

A lot of that was likely before facing the realization of what a relatively small studio could do in the time and financial restrictions made available to them.  As has been stated many times before, the game's code is kind of a mess, so making a broadsword power suddenly do fire damage is probably a lot more difficult than it seems like it should.  Heck, even Champions Online, which came out several years later, couldn't get quite that amount of customization down, (and that's not mentioning the balance nightmare that is freeform characters).  In a pen & paper game, the GM can tailor/limit what powers or enemies you face, to your specific group, but in a game with hundreds or thousands of people playing simultaneously, and having to provide content suitable to them all, it's much more difficult.