Branching Power Picks

[Neogumbercules]

Because of the cottage "rule" which I despise on some level, certain powersets are kind of stuck in a rut when it comes to their value compared to similar powersets available within the AT being used. For example, Assault Rifle is just straight up a worse version (or prototype, really) of Archery. IMO Archery is a set that exists because it allowed the developers to take an AR like powerset (crashless nukes), modernize it, and allow for an additional theme for roleplay reasons.

 

There are a handful of older powersets, the original launch sets, that have not aged well mechanically with this game. I'm still amazed that after all these years Assault Rifle is still very close to it's original design. In some ways I can understand why they chose not to change/remove/alter powers. People are attached to their characters, moreso in this game than in a lot of other MMOs, and the powers people choose are deeply rooted in their character's concept/costume, etc. This is the basis of the cottage rule. As a person that hasn't really ever developed that level of attachment and is more interested in the game mechanics I find it to be a huge detriment to design. Still, the devs have buffed underperforming powersets in the past without fundamentally changing things (the blaster sustain buffs are a great example of this) but some powersets, like Assault Rifle, still lag behind.

 

Archery stands above Assault Rifle because it has access to a T3 single target attack, Aim (huge advantage with the Gaussian's proc, and no, I refuse to accept that we balance around the idea that IOs don't exist anymore) some exotic damage typing, and a crashless nuke that activates faster, hits more targets in a much larger area, and does more damage to each target most of the time and can be used with more safety because of that faster activation. It's clear that Archery is just a "better" AR.  Now every blast set has a crashless nuke so AR looks even worse now that it did back when Archery came out.

 

Back to the original idea, I think it would be valuable to allow branching power picks within powersets. For example, at the level that an AR character would normally unlock Beanbag, allow a second, mutually exclusive option to pick another power, like a T3 single target attack. When we get to Ignite, allow another pick of, let's say, Aim.

 

I'm not sure this is even mechanically possible within the power system.

 

This isn't really a suggestion but more of a suggestion and a question to anyone else out there, what powersets would really benefit from this kind of system, or just a modernization in general?

[Caulderone]

Master Brawler in Sentinel's SR is the only example of this.  Apparently, implementing it was a massive hack job and Captain Powerhouse has said they have no intention of doing it again.

 

 

[Neogumbercules]

2 hours ago, Caulderone said:

Master Brawler in Sentinel's SR is the only example of this.  Apparently, implementing it was a massive hack job and Captain Powerhouse has said they have no intention of doing it again.

 

 

That's too bad. I think we really need to stop treating cottage rule so religiously now, more than ever.

[Caulderone]

1 minute ago, Neogumbercules said:

That's too bad. I think we really need to stop treating cottage rule so religiously now, more than ever.

I don't think that has anything to do with cottage rule.  A prior post I can't find talked about how hard it was to kludge it in, the code was horrible, and doing it was prone to breaking things.

[Neogumbercules]

3 minutes ago, Caulderone said:

I don't think that has anything to do with cottage rule.  A prior post I can't find talked about how hard it was to kludge it in, the code was horrible, and doing it was prone to breaking things.

Yeah what I mean is that if implementing more flexible systems is out of the question, we're forced to make some decisions regarding the powers themselves. Like for example how many people will be upset if we, say, make some changes to Munitions Mastery that involve some new/different mechanics. Then we ask, is it worth it?

 

There are some examples in the older powesets where it seems like the original devs intended players to make certain complimentary picks. Going back to AR, perhaps they assumed most people would go /Dev, therefore, AR/ didn't need Aim. We can clearly see how that was a problem now.

[Caulderone]

Oh, yeah.  I'm not a big fan of the cottage rule, either.  Some sets need some hard changes.

 

There are a lot of fans of sticking to the cottage rule, though.

[Neogumbercules]

3 minutes ago, Caulderone said:

There are a lot of fans of sticking to the cottage rule, though.

I know a lot of people don't see it this way, and I'm not going to outright discount their opinions, but my opinion about the cottage rule is it's consistently been the biggest detriment to this game's evolution. Like let's make Beanbag a T3 attack instead and call it armor piercing shot. Cottage rule violation, we changed the function of the power. Ok lets add T3 damage to beanbag... can't do that either now it's OP because it's a T3 attack with a strong mezz component. All the cottage rule does is make sure that bad powers and somtimes bad powersets just stay bad because it'd be way too much work to justify the time investment to figure out how to bring up a set like AR without violating the cottage rule, but also without making the set OP in some way.

[Silverado]

What are you lunatics babbling on about with this "cottage rule" madness? Wasn't that thrown right out the window with the Blaster Defiance, Stalker Assassination, Snipes, and Dark Melee changes? Both from HC devs and live devs?

Edited April 29, 2020 by Silverado

[DougGraves]

SoA have choices between two powers and sub powersets.  You can be an SoA base, with crab powers, or with bane powers.  And if you are a crab you can choose either soldier venom grenade or the crab venom grenade but you cannot have both.

 

IMO having power choice in a powerset would be a huge step to fixing the solo vs team divide in AT's and powersets.  Characters can have multiple builds.  Having power choice within a powerset would let you have solo and team builds.

 

Poison has a heal ally power which cannot be used on yourself.  If would be great if a solo build could have a heal self instead.

 

Force Field cannot use many of its powers solo.  There should be solo versions of those powers so you can have a solo build.

[Neogumbercules]

44 minutes ago, Silverado said:

What are you lunatics babbling on about with this "cottage rule" madness? Wasn't that thrown right out the window with the Blaster Defiance, Stalker Assassination, Snipes, and Dark Melee changes? Both from HC devs and live devs?

These things you've mentioned have stretched but not broken the cottage rule, per say. Blaster Cauterizing Aura for example, actually as a perfect example of how stupid the cottage rule can be sometimes, was a standard damage aura that is now a damage aura toggle that gives +recovery and a heal over time, and yet still deals the same damage as before. 

 

There were many lunatics who argued emphatically that the snipe changes shouldn't be implemented because of breaking the cottage rule even though it was an obvious massive improvement to every powerset with a snipe, and snipes were borderline useless beforehand. Yes some people would prefer powers remain broken and useless rather than change with the changing meta of the game, that's how deep their devotion to the cottage rule runs. That's why they still function similarly to before when out of combat. That in-combat/out of combat bullshit didn't need to happen, and yet the cottage rule had to make everything more complicated and argumentative than it needed to be. 

Edited April 29, 2020 by Neogumbercules

[iBot]

Just a thought:

 

Leave all existing powers alone other than fixing any bugs/not working as intended sorts of things.  Want to "improve" AR.  Fine.  Make a new improved power set called AR+ and make all the changes you want there.  The HC devs already shown that they can finish off powers that were intended to be released but weren't.  Why not copy and alter existing ones as well?  No need to even change the animations.  Just change the ordering of the powers or alter the types and secondary effects.  Granted I have no idea what the code looks like so can only speculate on what it would take but it seems to me that it would be an equitable solution for everyone.  Those that insist on the original can have it.  Those that would like something improved can have the new one.  Of course knowing humans this would invariably lead to the posts about which is better but that is a different concern.

[Neogumbercules]

2 minutes ago, iBot said:

Just a thought:

 

Leave all existing powers alone other than fixing any bugs/not working as intended sorts of things.  Want to "improve" AR.  Fine.  Make a new improved power set called AR+ and make all the changes you want there.  The HC devs already shown that they can finish off powers that were intended to be released but weren't.  Why not copy and alter existing ones as well?  No need to even change the animations.  Just change the ordering of the powers or alter the types and secondary effects.  Granted I have no idea what the code looks like so can only speculate on what it would take but it seems to me that it would be an equitable solution for everyone.  Those that insist on the original can have it.  Those that would like something improved can have the new one.  Of course knowing humans this would invariably lead to the posts about which is better but that is a different concern.

I mean you're kinda getting at the root of the problem, where a lot of power sets are just copies of existing sets but better. Archery is a better version of assault rifle. 

 

Actually your solution is perfect for cottage rule purists (of which I'm convinced few actually remain). It would be more in line with the cottage rule to release a powerset called "Assault-ier Rifle" that's just Assault Rifle with Aim, a T3 blast, and a better nuke than it would be to actually change Assault Rifle to be more competitive with it's peers in 2020. Such is the lunacy of the cottage rule. 

[macskull]

2 hours ago, Neogumbercules said:

I know a lot of people don't see it this way, and I'm not going to outright discount their opinions, but my opinion about the cottage rule is it's consistently been the biggest detriment to this game's evolution. Like let's make Beanbag a T3 attack instead and call it armor piercing shot. Cottage rule violation, we changed the function of the power. Ok lets add T3 damage to beanbag... can't do that either now it's OP because it's a T3 attack with a strong mezz component. All the cottage rule does is make sure that bad powers and somtimes bad powersets just stay bad because it'd be way too much work to justify the time investment to figure out how to bring up a set like AR without violating the cottage rule, but also without making the set OP in some way.

You picked a particularly bad example because there are already multiple ranged sets with T3 blasts that also mez (Beam, Dark on Blasters, Ice, Rad, and potentially Psi) and the situation you're describing (take a CC power with token damage and turn it into a powerful attack coupled with CC) is exactly what happened to Clobber, Freeze Ray, Taser, Toxic Web Grenade, and probably other powers I can't remember right now.

 

The "cottage rule" doesn't mean things can't be changed, but rather the core functionality of a power shouldn't be removed as part of a change, and in some cases it might be necessary to do even that if it's deemed a big enough deal (the most recent example I can think of is in the Presence pool where Challenge got replaced with Pacify, because why would a power pool need two taunt powers). One common suggestion I've seen recently is "replace melee AT Instant Healing with Sentinel Instant Regeneration!" but... those two powers are not at all alike. One's a click +regen power with a long cooldown and the other is a toggle "absorb over time" power. Is IH objectively worse than IR? Yeah, probably, but you can make IH better without outright changing what it does (make it a toggle again but with reduced +regen value, shorten its cooldown, add secondary effects to it, etc.).

Edited April 29, 2020 by macskull

[Neogumbercules]

34 minutes ago, macskull said:

You picked a particularly bad example because there are already multiple ranged sets with T3 blasts that also mez (Beam, Dark on Blasters, Ice, Rad, and potentially Psi) and the situation you're describing (take a CC power with token damage and turn it into a powerful attack coupled with CC) is exactly what happened to Clobber, Freeze Ray, Taser, Toxic Web Grenade, and probably other powers I can't remember right now.

 

The "cottage rule" doesn't mean things can't be changed, but rather the core functionality of a power shouldn't be removed as part of a change, and in some cases it might be necessary to do even that if it's deemed a big enough deal (the most recent example I can think of is in the Presence pool where Challenge got replaced with Pacify, because why would a power pool need two taunt powers). One common suggestion I've seen recently is "replace melee AT Instant Healing with Sentinel Instant Regeneration!" but... those two powers are not at all alike. One's a click +regen power with a long cooldown and the other is a toggle "absorb over time" power. Is IH objectively worse than IR? Yeah, probably, but you can make IH better without outright changing what it does (make it a toggle again but with reduced +regen value, shorten its cooldown, add secondary effects to it, etc.).

No doubt changing powers is within the confines of the rule, like how I was describing the blaster sustain powers. The issue is in some cases you can do something sensible like turning IH back into a toggle, or on the other hand you get something weird like a Blaster damage aura that gives +rec and healing over time, which is completely wild, considering how damage auras were originally conceived. Like hey I'm all for it, but to me it would have made more sense to move the old Blazing Aura's damage somewhere else in the set (maybe just increase the damage of Hot Feet and remove the fear from it) and created a new power at level 20 for the recovery and health. Instead we have a weird damage aura that heals and gives endurance. All because a more reasonable change couldn't be considered due to cottage rule restrictions. 

 

Sticking with AR, let's suppose we needed to add an Aim equivalent to AR. How would we do it? Look at the FOTM threads and see that only 1% of players (or whatever) haven taken Beanbag (or whatever) and remove it in favor of the vastly more useful Aim.

 

If course we wouldn't do that so AR doesn't get Aim and in return AR has Ignite basically, which is a largely terrible power in 99% of situations in this game. 

 

So from there you start looking at giving AR some big buffs but then you see that according to the damage formulas all the powers are "right" but the set still plays like shit in the context of actual gameplay, especially compared to the more popular sets like Fire/. 

 

From there you're back to looking at making wide scale balance changes (time and resource intensive task) for a set that is not widely played, or you're making cottage rule violations, or at least you're back to stretching the rule to Cauterizing Aura levels of weirdness.

 

More flexibility to be creative with existing sets would be much better. Again that's just my opinion, I know some people would flip out if Beanbag got replaced with Aim or Ignite got replaced with Incendiary Missiles. 

[macskull]

1 hour ago, Neogumbercules said:

No doubt changing powers is within the confines of the rule, like how I was describing the blaster sustain powers. The issue is in some cases you can do something sensible like turning IH back into a toggle, or on the other hand you get something weird like a Blaster damage aura that gives +rec and healing over time, which is completely wild, considering how damage auras were originally conceived. Like hey I'm all for it, but to me it would have made more sense to move the old Blazing Aura's damage somewhere else in the set (maybe just increase the damage of Hot Feet and remove the fear from it) and created a new power at level 20 for the recovery and health. Instead we have a weird damage aura that heals and gives endurance. All because a more reasonable change couldn't be considered due to cottage rule restrictions. 

For the most part, the Blaster "sustain" powers aren't that weird. The only oddballs that come to mind are Elec and Dark because they were shoehorned into existing attacks instead of toggles or click powers (and the one from Dark is tied to a power that most people probably skipped - but hey, in that case there's suddenly important utility in an often-skipped power and you can't seriously argue that's a bad thing). The rest of the Blaster "sustain" powers are only weird if you think a damage aura can only deal damage and nothing else. The power got renamed and its new name and description thematically fit the function of the power. There's nothing weird there. If you start going around changing the base characteristics of powers or outright replacing them with new ones you end up with two problems right from the gate:

1. Players that had a use for the old power are now left to find an alternative which may or may not exist
2. Essentially forcing every player with that power to respec their character which might potentially include completely rebuilding them due to the loss of utility, set bonuses, etc.

There are plenty of examples of changes that completely overhauled the feel or functionality of a power without changing what the power did at its core. One of the biggest is Moment of Glory - old-style you had a whole bunch of defense and resistance but your HP dropped to a very low value and you couldn't be healed or regenerate, so you had to gamble on whether you'd actually survive its duration. The current version is a short-duration defense and resistance buff that doesn't affect your HP - the functionality and feel of the power changed drastically but its core did not - it still dramatically boosts your defense and resistance. Look at Energize from Elec and Energy Aura - used to be Conserve Power but the lack of a self-heal hurt those sets so a heal and +regen was added to the existing end discount. Core ability remains the same, power does extra things that make it better. Dominator Power Boost (all flavors) got changed to Power Up - it still does +special, albeit a little less than before, but it also provides a meaningful damage boost.

 

My point? It is possible to significantly change an existing power and give it more functionality without replacing it.

1 hour ago, Neogumbercules said:

Sticking with AR, let's suppose we needed to add an Aim equivalent to AR. How would we do it? Look at the FOTM threads and see that only 1% of players (or whatever) haven taken Beanbag (or whatever) and remove it in favor of the vastly more useful Aim.

 

If course we wouldn't do that so AR doesn't get Aim and in return AR has Ignite basically, which is a largely terrible power in 99% of situations in this game. 

 

So from there you start looking at giving AR some big buffs but then you see that according to the damage formulas all the powers are "right" but the set still plays like shit in the context of actual gameplay, especially compared to the more popular sets like Fire/. 

 

From there you're back to looking at making wide scale balance changes (time and resource intensive task) for a set that is not widely played, or you're making cottage rule violations, or at least you're back to stretching the rule to Cauterizing Aura levels of weirdness.

 

More flexibility to be creative with existing sets would be much better. Again that's just my opinion, I know some people would flip out if Beanbag got replaced with Aim or Ignite got replaced with Incendiary Missiles. 

Your premise is flawed from the start - AR doesn't need Aim, there are several other ranged damage sets that don't have it, and it's entirely within the realm of possibility to add an Aim-like effect to an already-existing power in the set. Look at the Devices secondary - no Build Up but Targeting Drone provides both a constant damage bonus and a larger damage bonus for the first attack when entering combat. Going back to AR, though, let's say we decide it doesn't really need an Aim-like effect added to an existing power. If our concern is really that AR lacks a tier 3 attack, the most obvious candidate is Beanbag. Raise its range to 80, give it tier 3-level damage, and adjust its recharge time and endurance cost accordingly. Boom, you've given AR a tier 3 attack without removing the core functionality of the existing power.

 

I'm not going to argue about Ignite being bad - it really is, but a large portion of why is because its animation time is absolute garbage. Reduce the animation time and boom, you've automatically made Ignite more appealing. I do want to revisit the "Cauterizing Aura levels of weirdness" bit though - this is a superhero game. I can magically grow my arm on a 4-foot-high character to hit a target thirteen feet away with Knockout Blow, I can smack around bad guys with a railroad crossing sign, and I can shoot laser beams out of my eyes. Is it really that far-fetched to think that I could surround myself with flames and deal damage to nearby enemies and also heal myself at the same time?

Edited April 30, 2020 by macskull

[Vanden]

Most of the loudest voices I hear advocating for the end of the cottage rule either misunderstand it, or are suffering from a lack of imagination. For example, Serum in Mercenaries is absolutely terrible, but there's no need to violate the cottage rule to fix it. A short-term buff to a single pet is a perfectly fine idea for a power, the problem is it has atrocious uptime and when it is up it's underwhelming. You fix those problems and it could be a good power, no cottage rule violations needed. This is the case for the vast majority of powers that could use dev attention; you could count on one hand the number of powers where a cottage rule-violating fix would likely be necessary, and you wouldn't even need every finger.

 

That said, I do like the idea of more mutually-exclusive power options.

Edited April 30, 2020 by Vanden

[kiramon]

Aren’t all of the nukes now crash less? 
 

 

[Naraka]

It's all sunshine and lolipops to abolish the cottage rule to fix powers/powersets you don't like...until it comes after powers you like.

 

Oh, you like Hasten?  Yeah, it's problematic so we're changing it to a movement speed buff/slow resistance click. Chao.

[Naraka]

11 hours ago, Neogumbercules said:

Like let's make Beanbag a T3 attack instead and call it armor piercing shot. Cottage rule violation, we changed the function of the power. Ok lets add T3 damage to beanbag... can't do that either now it's OP because it's a T3 attack with a strong mezz component. 

This is a bad example.  Adding damage to a power isn't violating the cottage rule.  A blast with a decent mez is also not OP as some sets get that (looking at Cosmic Burst as an example).  At worst, making Beanbag have moderate or high damage with a slightly toned down disorient (9sec instead of 12) might mean it needs to be shifted to a different spot in the powerset but that is what would be called a "buff".  Those can happen to improve a set without drastically altering powers and superfluously changing power names.

[Blastit]

2 hours ago, Naraka said:

It's all sunshine and lolipops to abolish the cottage rule to fix powers/powersets you don't like...until it comes after powers you like.

 

Oh, you like Hasten?  Yeah, it's problematic so we're changing it to a movement speed buff/slow resistance click. Chao.

Even that would be on-theme for the name and set. The original "cottage rule" was to not make powers do something completely and wildly different. No turning a ranged stun into a healing PBAoE, for example.

[Naraka]

1 minute ago, Blastit said:

Even that would be on-theme for the name and set. The original "cottage rule" was to not make powers do something completely and wildly different. No turning a ranged stun into a healing PBAoE, for example.

It's about purpose, not theme.  You don't click Hasten to help you get from point A to point B, you use it to get your powers recharged faster.

[Peacemoon]

I quite like AR myself (helped a lot with the changes to snipe).

Usually you can do a lot with sets just by modernising some of their mechanics.

For AR, two things that I’ve noticed is that flamethrower takes a long time to do its full damage (7 seconds). This could easily be halved to make the damage more immediate.

 

Full Auto should really have a chance to hit on each tick rather than one critical accuracy check at the start. There is nothing more amusing and also annoying than missing with full auto and thereby missing EVERY SHOT. It’s like I’ve dropped my rifle and it unloads the full magazine into the sky!

Both of these changes could easily be done without really changing much of what we love about classic AR.

If I could go a bit further I’d give flamethrower bonus damage to anyone stood in ignite.. or the other way around!

[Grouchybeast]

10 hours ago, macskull said:

I do want to revisit the "Cauterizing Aura levels of weirdness" bit though - this is a superhero game. I can magically grow my arm on a 4-foot-high character to hit a target thirteen feet away with Knockout Blow, I can smack around bad guys with a railroad crossing sign, and I can shoot laser beams out of my eyes. Is it really that far-fetched to think that I could surround myself with flames and deal damage to nearby enemies and also heal myself at the same time?

I mean, Rise of the Phoenix is a thing.  "I exploded violently, injuring and stunning everyone around me.  Ah, yes, I feel so much better, now!"

[kiramon]

8 hours ago, Naraka said:

It's all sunshine and lolipops to abolish the cottage rule to fix powers/powersets you don't like...until it comes after powers you like.

 

Oh, you like Hasten?  Yeah, it's problematic so we're changing it to a movement speed buff/slow resistance click. Chao.

A fine change. 
 

hasten is silly and should be removed. Has been since 6 slotted recharge. 
Bake in its recharge into base recharge speed and call it a day. 

[Peacemoon]

1 hour ago, RialVestro said:

I don't think there would be an issue mechanically. It already exists in game for the Arachnos Archetypes. But I think adding Branching power picks to other power sets for other archetypes would take away from the uniqueness of the Arachnos if suddenly everyone can do it now.

 

And I disagree that Archery is a better Assault Rifle. I mean as far as game mechanics that might be true but that's not the only way to look at this.

 

While in the game Assault Rifle is an older power set and Archery was introduced much later in the game's development. In the real world Archery came first and Assault Rifles were invented much MUCH later in human history. It really doesn't make a lot of sense why archery characters like Green Arrow, Hawkeye, and Manticore even exist because with modern weapons a bow and arrow doesn't really have any practical use in a real combat situation. We give them some slack because it's fiction and they some how manage to make it look cool but realistically archery is more of a recreational sport now days. Sort of like how Boomerangs were originally designed to be used as weapons but now they're toys for children. And funny enough there's also a character called Captain Boomerang and of course Batman's "Baterangs" are based on the original concept of the boomerang being used as a weapon despite no real person in modern times ever actually such things as weapons anymore. Batman is even more silly since the shape of them resembling bats would actually make it so they can't actually function as a boomerang... Anyway, realistically it should be the other way around... Assault Rifle should easily be a more practical weapon to have around than a bow and arrow.

 

For character concept reasons they're not even comparable. If you want a character with a gun you're not going to look at the power sets and think to yourself "What would be a better GUN, this literal actual GUN or a bow and arrow?" It would be more accurate to say Beam Rifle is a better Assault Rifle since both in game and in the real world a futuristic sci-fi laser gun is going to be seen as a more advanced version of a gun that shoots bullets... and a bean bag for some reason...

 

And here is where I see the real issue... With the Beam Rifle and other energy weapons we've seen that exist in this fictional world... why are there even still more realistic weapons at all? I mean like no one uses archery for any practical purpose anymore in the real world I that if we ever got real life Beam Rifles/Phasers/Laser Pistols/Blasters whatever you want to call them depending on your Sci-Fi of choice, that regular guns that use bullets would become outdated in the same way and you'd only ever see people with those out of date weapons at recreational shooting ranges never in use by the police, military, or anyone else for any practical reasons because when other people have better more powerful weapons you're not going to want to go into battle with an inferior version.

 

It's hard to justify why a character would use an Assault Rifle when the much better Beam Rifle is sitting right over there. Back in the day before Beam Rifle existed I use to pick Assault Rifle for characters I wanted to have a gun only because it was the only gun available at the time. Now days the closest I get to using Assault Rifle is the version that comes with Mercs on a Mastermind.

If Beam Rifles are advanced tech they might also be much rarer and difficult to acquire. Also there is no evidence that an energy discharge from a rifle is anymore or less lethal than a spray of bullets.

I think you’re thinking too literally. Maybe the bows are enchanted, maybe the assault rifle has special bullets. Maybe the assault rifle isn’t just an assault rifle but some high powered super piece of tech kit designed by the best military weapon masters on the planet, which is much more effective than a simply Tommy Gun used by The Family.

Maybe it is just a standard bow or gun and the character is just so proficient the bullets can ricochet off the wall behind you and hit the weak spot at the back of the enemies neck.

Also we all play in a shared environment. Maybe that character would operate differently or exist in a different type of world if they had an entire comic or film based on them. Maybe they want a more realistic or dark and gritty vibe in that environment. Gothem City is one of my favourite locations just for the atmosphere. It’s a shame Rogue Isle has far too much Arachnos architecture Or else it could be really cool.
Just some thoughts!