Suggestion: Remove limit of 4 Pool Power sets.

[JumpingSpider]

As the title says, remove the 4 pool limit.  Not asking for Epics to be more than 1

 

[Rathulfr]

Is it Tuesday already?

 

[EmmySky]

I thought Monday was nerf regen day.....

[Redlynne]

/jranger

[Blackfeather]

I'm going to have to ask for reasoning on this one. I'm unconvinced.

[SwitchFade]

I'm going to have to say

 

No vote.

[Six-Six]

I have toons that don't pick Epics. And toons that are just forced to pick from the 3rd pool. I, too, say nay.

Rather, I would move to have more power pools in the third column. Make it a harder decision to choose. 😃

 

[merrypessimist]

Doesn't the number of pools fall into the "things so core to the code that if we change them everything catches fire" class?

[Sif]

I'm curious for arguments on both side of this, why it should/shouldn't change (beyond "dev time" and "because that's the way its been"). I've always been under the impression that the reason that the limit was put into place was to help prevent newbs from unintentionally gimping themselves by ignoring their primary & secondary.

6 minutes ago, merrypessimist said:

Doesn't the number of pools fall into the "things so core to the code that if we change them everything catches fire" class?

From spending a bunch of time going through the game's power info, I kind of doubt that the engine actually cares about that sort of thing. Powers are a lot more flexible than most people realize.

Edited March 24, 2020 by Sif

[Outrider_01]

And which power set are you going to play? That let's you have enough room.

 

Back in the day

-fitness (now free)

-travel power of choice

-hasten from speed, usually

-utility, usually an optional

 

Now

-leadership, maneuver usually and tactics/assault if there room

-fighting, 3 tightening the build 

-hasten

-leaping, CJ

 

Unless you are picking 4/4 from your primary/secondary (which is impossible in most combo) you won't have room for anthing else in +5 power pools. 

 

Made a dark/ice dominator, trying to cap Defense to all damage types minus psi, 8/9 dark and 4/9 secondary with your standard power pools for Defense/hasten and 2-3 epic, only got to 40-41 in 6 types with a P2W +5 Defense buff.  Was very tight build, basically a contoller with 4 blasts.  There would be no more room for power picks and there is not a lot of great stuff any way for utility.  Everything else is kinda situational or optional unless you build for defence.  Gonna try 3 positioning types, but there is less real IO bonuses 

[Jacke]

I too really really want to see this.  Even just getting 5 Power Pool picks would help immensely.

 

1 hour ago, Sif said:

I'm curious for arguments on both side of this, why it should/shouldn't change (beyond "dev time" and "because that's the way its been"). I've always been under the impression that the reason that the limit was put into place was to help prevent newbs from unintentionally gimping themselves by ignoring their primary & secondary.

 

There's no way a system with even a moderate amount of complexity can be designed to prevent poor choices from screwing things up.  You just have to have the knowledge and experience to avoid them.  And I don't think aiding newbs was the reason.  I think database limitations was the reason.

 

1 hour ago, merrypessimist said:

Doesn't the number of pools fall into the "things so core to the code that if we change them everything catches fire" class?

 

[ Sif again in the quote ]

Quote

From spending a bunch of time going through the game's power info, I kind of doubt that the engine actually cares about that sort of thing. Powers are a lot more flexible than most people realize.

 

I think it's not so much the powers info but more the way the character builds are stored in the database--and what the code assumes are the properties of character builds (rather than being thorough and looking it up every time...)--that makes changes to build limits hard and require a lot of effort .  Can't find the reference, but apparently back on Live a dev (Castle?) was thinking of giving players a few more enhancement slots, I think it was changing from 2 to 3 slots at a time before level 31.  And the effort required to do the change and program a tool that would transition a characters build from the old to new version without error was massive.  This what was done with making Fitness an inherent Pool and so they had a good example.

 

So no matter how much we would like things like more Power Pools, more Slots, even more Power picks, etc., it requires a lot of resources to do it right and correctly, on top of whether to do so from a design perspective.

 

Best guest, we will likely not see such changes soon.  There may be a breakthrough on changes to the back end of the character database that makes things different, but until we hear about it, well, we can only dream of this.

Edited March 24, 2020 by Jacke

[Sif]

4 minutes ago, Jacke said:

There's no way a system with even a moderate amount of complexity can be designed to prevent poor choices from screwing things up.  You just have to have the knowledge and experience to avoid them.

Remember the history of City of Heroes: Archetypes weren't originally a thing. The game was originally going to be freeform, but found lots of people would end up in highly gimped builds. So, they changed to the Archetype system. Just because you can't prevent all poor choices doesn't mean you can't limit them (if only via removing the choice).

9 minutes ago, Jacke said:

I think it's not so much the powers info but more the way the character builds are stored in the database--and what the code assumes is the properties of character builds (rather than being thorough and looking it up every time...)--that makes changes to build limits hard and require a lot of effort .

The DB certainly doesn't care, from the PoV of the DB you've just got a list of powers associated with your character with various attributes (including the powerset name and power category). A character could have an arbitrary combination of powers, including every single Blaster primary power (SexyJay back on live, as an example). "Pool Powers" isn't some fundamental aspect of the game. In fact, from the PoV of the DB, your list of powers can look quite different than what you might assume. For a tame example, Dual Pistols doesn't have 9 powers, but 12! Another one: all your temp powers are just more powers. Additionally, there could actually be an archvillain with a power that grants anyone hit with it, say, Aid Self permanently from the medicine pool via one of its own powers (powers that grant powers are actually pretty common, it's just they typically grant ones that aren't persistent and expire after a short bit, and hidden from your Powers window).

34 minutes ago, Jacke said:

So no matter how much we would like things like more Power Pools, more Slots, even more Power picks, etc., it requires a lot of resources to do it right and correctly, on top of whether to do so from a design perspective.

You don't know that, you're just making assumptions based upon... something else being said to be hard. It might be hard, but it might also be a single line of code change (because, quite frankly, nothing in the server/engine probably cares about the 4 power pool limit except the selection screen). I think there should be less jrangering based upon purely speculated difficulties of a suggestion.

[krj12]

If it doesn't take much coding, I'd have no problem with this.  I have a few characters where I'd like to swap out one less useful power pool choice for flight, for example.

 

[Haijinx]

Never saw this suggestion before ...

[Ukase]

My thoughts: yes please! 

My reasoning: 
Hasten/CJ/Fight/leadership/Sorcery

When you're a blaster, aside from a break free, or end-game Clarion, there's no status protection, unless you get Rune of Protection from the Sorcery pool. But, if you get that - you're prevented from getting all of the others. 

This limitation is the only frustrating thing about playing a blaster for me. 

[Rathulfr]

2 hours ago, Haijinx said:

Never saw this suggestion before ...

[Sif]

9 hours ago, Outrider_01 said:

And which power set are you going to play? That let's you have enough room.

So the argument is it won't benefit min/maxed end-game builds (where the game is already too easy), so it shouldn't be done? Not everyone is as dead-set on a specific combo of pools as you suggest. The beauty of this game has been the acceptance of concept over microoptimization, allowing a much wider range of possible viable builds than is common in other games.

[Call Me Awesome]

Frankly I've only run into this limit once since 2004 and that was back before Fitness became inherent and we had to blow 3 power choices for Hurdle/Health/Stamina on every character.

 

It's a rare character that will find room for all 4 pools and an APP; if you're butting up against that limit you may want to rethink your build, likely there's some changes you'll want to make.

 

At a guess I'd say this limit is likely pretty deep in the game code and probably not easy to change.  I day it's not worth the trouble for such a marginal benefit.

[Jacke]

10 hours ago, Sif said:

Remember the history of City of Heroes: Archetypes weren't originally a thing. The game was originally going to be freeform, but found lots of people would end up in highly gimped builds. So, they changed to the Archetype system. Just because you can't prevent all poor choices doesn't mean you can't limit them (if only via removing the choice).

 

Indeed.  As well, the original design also had a problem with Tank Mages, characters with well crafted selection of powers that combined to make them both massively durable and massively destructive.  Archetypes reduced both problems.

 

Funnily enough, when Cryptic Studios went on to design the system for Champions Online, they went free-form.  But some very powerful powers were very easy to get, with little or no prerequisites.  Tank mages were back.  And later for free-to-play players, archetypes were a requirement.

 

I think a free-form system is possible, but it would need a really good design to prevent trivial Tank Mages and good player support and guidance to make gimped builds less likely (likely including something like CO's Powerhouse, a place in the normal game environment where a player can tinker with a build and test it).

 

Quote

You don't know that, you're just making assumptions based upon... something else being said to be hard. It might be hard, but it might also be a single line of code change (because, quite frankly, nothing in the server/engine probably cares about the 4 power pool limit except the selection screen). I think there should be less jrangering based upon purely speculated difficulties of a suggestion.

 

I know databases.  I know how code can and should access databases.  I can't remember where I heard it from, but during Live, a developer mentioned that the code makes assumptions about the nature of the build in the database.  This certainly made it a major effort to add more slots to characters, at least on the order of magnitude of what had to be done to change Fitness from a Power Pool to an Inherent Pool.

 

The selection of powers could just be a list with complete flexibility, allowing a small change to expand the number of Power Pool picks.  Or there could be this cruftiness to the nature of the character build records and the code that manipulates them.  Which would make changing it on the back end much more complex.

 

Until we have a comment from someone who's seen the implementation of both the database and the code, with an appreciation for it overall, we don't know how easy or hard it would be.

Edited March 24, 2020 by Jacke

[Jacke]

5 hours ago, Ukase said:

My thoughts: yes please! 

My reasoning: 
Hasten/CJ/Fight/leadership/Sorcery

When you're a blaster, aside from a break free, or end-game Clarion, there's no status protection, unless you get Rune of Protection from the Sorcery pool. But, if you get that - you're prevented from getting all of the others. 

This limitation is the only frustrating thing about playing a blaster for me. 

 

Agreed.  At least the Blaster can still use the first two Primary powers and the first Secondary power while mezzed.  There's also the Blaster AT Origin Enhancement Set Defiant Barrage Recharge/+Status special enhancement.  Put it in your Tier 1 Primary Power.  It stacks to build up status protection.

 

Defenders, Corruptors, Controllers, Masterminds, and Dominators out of Domination depend on Ruin, Clarion, or a teammate with a power like Clear Mind.  When you don't have any of those things....

 

1 hour ago, Sif said:

The beauty of this game has been the acceptance of concept over microoptimization, allowing a much wider range of possible viable builds than is common in other games.

 

While a certain amount of optimization is nice, I'd like to have the wider range of possible viable builds that have 5 or more Power Pools.  Primarily just so I can try out a power pick or two from other pools, to explore something I've never experienced before.  Or just to have Recall Friend on more toons to help out teammates.

Edited March 24, 2020 by Jacke

[Sif]

1 minute ago, Jacke said:

Until we have a comment from someone who's seen the implementation of both the database and the code, with an appreciation for it overall, we don't know how easy or hard it would be.

The code is available, fyi. I wasn't speaking hypotheticals.

 

I'm not claiming it's easy (because I've not tried to make the change), but the assertions of why it'd be hard sound pretty bogus and, themselves, would fall into the Standard Code Rant territory.

[WindDemon21]

21 hours ago, JumpingSpider said:

As the title says, remove the 4 pool limit.  Not asking for Epics to be more than 1

 

I fullheartedly approve of this. Annoying when you can't get that one power that you actually find a build for that can fit a 5th pool power but can't because of a pointless limit.

[JumpingSpider]

4 hours ago, WindDemon21 said:

I fullheartedly approve of this. Annoying when you can't get that one power that you actually find a build for that can fit a 5th pool power but can't because of a pointless limit.

Sometime you just want to give your Tanker/Brute Fly. :)

 

[WindDemon21]

Or stealth or recall friend. Too many builds basically require cj, hasten, fighting, and leadership.  And by the time you get to the late 40s and want to pick a fun power that you dont slot you cant pick up hover or fly etc. We need at least one more 5th power pool.

[srmalloy]

Without removing the limit on the number of power pools, you can extend the flexibility by allowing any of the regular power pools (barring mutually exclusive pools) to be picked as an ancillary pool. This would let someone who didn't want any of the ancillary pools to pick up an additional regular pool in its place.