Armour Set T9s. A Discussion Of Their Design

[Nanolathe]

-== Armour Set T9s - A Discussion Of Their Design ==-
-- And How To Fix Them Within Their Current Intended Function --

- The Godlings- 

 

        

 

Some preamble. I need to justify where my intentions lay and give you my thought process before I just jump right into my proposal without context. For those that are interested I have my original thought in this spoiler bar. It was in a different thread before, but I include it here for the sake of completeness. Please read it if you haven’t seen it before.

 

Spoiler

Many Armour T9s are designed in a way that is not in line with their use. When you have a powerful 'click' power you are under constant pressure to hold off from using it until absolutely necessary. However, CoH gives the player very little information before a fight is started as to whether using the T9 is worthwhile, or better saved for a different fight. Consequently the T9 is not popped until either it is blindingly obvious that the fight calls for it (AVs, GMs, etc) or not used until it's too late. The average Armour T9 is not a "reset fight" button, and is rarely worth clicking as a panic button.

 

If the idea of a T9 is a "prepare for a tough fight" power, then the only way the player will ever use it is if they feel they completely understand the odds against them, and feel that the T9 is able to swing the fight in their favour. However, it doesn't last long and (sometimes) has a period of weakness after the power expires. Meaning the player has to understand not only the strength of the combatants, but the likely time period in which the fight will occur and judge if they can win in time before the debuff kicks in. This is compounded by the possibilities of harder encounters further into the mission, and the long cooldown of most of these powers is a deterrent towards misjudging the use and being flippant with when you activate it. A player, unless they have back-to-front, upside-down knowledge of a mission, the enemy and the troubling spots ahead of when they need to be used is not given enough information to make these calls with any degree of accuracy. Experience is the only way to know these things, and once you have experience you don't need the T9 anymore; you've already learnt other methods for success that will be more effective, and dealing with the backlash of the power expiring will slow down your progress more than the T9 will speed it up.

 

If the idea is for the T9 to be a "panic button" then many of these T9 powers are equally ill suited to their roll as they are not actually powerful enough to turn an imminent failure into a salvageable situation. Most don't heal you or give you a sudden burst of endurance to fire off your headliner attacks. Most don't give you enough time to regain the upper hand if you were already outmatched. Most won't let you finish the fight any quicker in your favour and you've still got that debuff coming down on you... and that's only going to make the situation worse! They're fundamentally unsuited to being a panic button, since unless you're experienced in how the fight is changing moment-to-moment, you're not going to see the suckerpunch coming. A major issue is that the Brute, Tanker, Stalker and Scrapper all get access to what is essentially the SAME power, that is supposed to compliment their vastly different play styles. Each Archetype is going to want something different from a "Oh God, Help!" power. Again, the only time this could be used properly is if you're prescient by about 10 seconds. And the only time that could happen, you're so experienced with the game that you'll avoid the situation before the T9 is necessary.

 

There's one of two fixes needed. But first you have to decide which of the two situations the T9 is going to cater for.

 

Is its purpose success through superior planning, or snatching victory from the jaws of defeat?

 

Additionally I’m going to call this a workshoppable idea, rather than a straight-up suggestion of what I think must be done. I don’t mean to be overly pedantic but there’s a crucial difference between the two. I am very open to additional ideas being added, or significant problems with the idea being reworked. I am not going to put hard and fast numbers into this proposal. That isn’t my style, partly because I’m not equipped to run every single number I might suggest through every conceivable in-game situation (I have but one life and this is better done with real data from real players, play-testing) but second, because I see an unhealthy number of suggestions being torn down that have solid foundations, but have put too much of their essence placed on certain percentages they feel are necessary. To me they’re a loose thread just begging to be unravelled, and tend to be hyper-fixated on, rather than people actually discussing the broader topic at hand. I’d rather save my time and energy to talk about the overarching concept, rather than the minutiae of its precise implementation.

 

I’m going to split T9 Armour powers into two different types and see if this thought experiment makes any sense to everyone else. All the Armour T9 powers are trying to do one thing of course; keep you alive - but, there’s (broadly) two ways they can go about doing this in my opinion: Pre-Fight Prep, and Panic Mode. I will cover Pre-Fight Prep powers below because those are the ones that generate the most ire from the majority of players I see talking about them. It is a universal truth it seems that these kinds of powers - Unstoppable, Elude, Power Surge and so on - are terrible for a multitude of reasons. But "The Crash" is front-and-centre in a lot of these discussions. More on this later. I will address Panic Mode powers in a separate Part 2 post because there's so much needed to be unpacked, and is only tangently related to Pre-Fight Prep powers that it would only confuse things if it were here. There is a third type of power too, with a much lesser representation, but I'll get to them in either the next thread as an addendum, or as their own thread entirely. But I want to focus on just one of the types in this post today.

 

So, with that said; What are Pre-Fight Prep Armour Powers?

  

 

Pre-Fight Prep powers are just what you think they are. You'd use them before, or just as a fight begins. They increase your capabilities to  M A X I M U M  levels… or at least that’s what I’ve always assumed they do / are supposed to do. Often these T9 Armour powers are easily identified with the significant increase to defences or resistances, sometimes mez protection, and often some increases to your sustainability; some moderate increase in regen and/or recovery, for instance. With zero exceptions these powers layer over any toggled defences and will put you near or above the caps for your Archetype when enhanced for at least the more common damage types. As previously stated these powers are almost never used because either;

 

• You’re already hitting some of the caps through canny IO slotting and the side benefits of the power aren’t worth it to you.
• The cooldowns are long and you’re not sure if it’s worth popping the power on this group, or holding back for the next. As humans we tend towards the latter. It’s just how our brains work.
• You’ve overextended and have forgotten that this power even existed. Maybe you should have used it 40 seconds ago, but hindsight is 20:20 don’tcha know? Regardless, you’re probably going to die anyway. Previous experience has told you that if you’re the first to go down, your T9 wouldn’t have helped, and if you’re last to go down then surviving for another 20 or so seconds by yourself wouldn’t really have been worth it either.

 

These are the problems that the T9 Armour powers are up against. Unlike a lot of people who think the game should only cater towards SO quality builds I think there is reason to expect your capstone armour power to be both useful and complementary to any player’s build; be that SOs, HamiOs or IOs with all the set bonuses. They don’t have to be catered specifically for IOs - I'm not suggesting that - but they at least shouldn’t be nearly invalidated by IO usage.

 

I’m going to come right out and say now that I think the cottage rule against changing something “too much” is applied far too liberally on these issues. Some of these powers may need significant work to make them fit into the current game of CoX we find ourselves playing. That said however, I actually think the T9 Pre-fight Prep powers on the whole, don’t need excessive tinkering to make them work, and work well. The design goal they are trying to achieve isn’t an incorrect path to pursue, so I think they can retain their essence in pretty much their totality with just a few little tweaks to re-contextualise how they are used, not what they’re trying to do. 

 

This may sound radical to some, but the T9 powers need to feel powerful right out of the gate - Pre-Enhancement. The T9 powers need to feel impactful within general play and the T9 powers need to be more usable on a whim. Not without consequences for misuse, naturally; but they need to be easily experimented with while you’re levelling past lvl 38 (32 for Tankers) or someone's bad first experience with them is going to sour the whole deal.

 

A T9 Pre-Fight Prep power is something you want to use to make the fight go more smoothly. However you are confronted with a hard limit of 60 seconds to get the job done for most, and often you’re worse off once the power’s buffs expire. If you’re not finished the power has now become a liability, and you're possibly even more likely to fail with the “crash” coming into effect than you would have been just ignoring the power and doing things more slowly. But that’s less fun in this game about whiz-bang-whollop! Or, at least it is for the Archetypes that use these Armour sets. How do we fix this?

 

Most will advocate for just removing the crash and nothing else. This is a mistake. Flawed thinking. The "Down" is a necessary tool to teach the player about the ebb and flow of combat ant to provide some kind of contrast between the "High" of your T9s effects, and the aftermath. If everything is just a steamroller with no breaks, that’s not particularly fun. Contrast is necessary. But, having only the control of when to start your crazy buffs, and knowing that there’s a really nasty surprise waiting for you in 60 seconds regardless of how this next fight pans out isn’t very appealing. By using a T9 power your goal is to have greater control over the situation you’re about to engage in. Losing the control of when you suddenly stop being a superhero isn’t what you pick a power for. Let alone your capstone power.

 

 

  

 

So how do you keep the crash without it being obnoxious. How do you keep the power, keep the player control, and keep the ebb and flow of being  S U P E R  powered versus your normal power level? You give the exact timing of when the crash is going to affect the player into the hands of that player. After setting out the groundwork, here is my proposal:

 

Make the Pre-Fight Prep T9s… toggles. No, I’m serious. Make Them Toggles. Toggles, so that the player has control over when they can start them up and when they can wind them down. Give the player control over when they want to slug it out for just a few more seconds or when they want to back off on the gas pedal because they’re tapped.

 

I need to explain exactly why I think this is a preferable system, and what I hope to achieve with this change. So here’s why: The T9 Armour powers are sometimes referred to as “God Mode”. Now, going in, nothing in an armour set is ever going to live up to that moniker; it can’t. Not just for gameplay and balance reasons (and more besides), but mostly because that kind of expectation of anything is doomed to disappointment. So, I’m not going to try to make “God Mode”. These powers need to be more: Hero [Plus]. They need to be an expression of the player’s wish to push it to the limit. My goal here is to give players the ability to use these powers as they seem to have always been intended to be used, going beyond your normal capacity and saying “No. Guys, I’ve got this”. 

 

By changing these powers to toggles there exists a much finer granularity between Power On and Power Off. I want the “crash” to be something that the player has much greater control over, become something self-inflicted, rather than a delayed effect dolled out from upon high, and always at the worst possible time. I feel that this is at the absolute core of why the majority of these T9 powers are so reviled. They hurt you without you, the player, knowing exactly when it’s going to happen and the circumstances you’ll be in when it does happen. Removing this suckerpunch is the ultimate goal of the proposal. You need to be in control the whole time you’re using your limit break. 

 

I am firmly of the opinion that there needs to be a cost for increased power. But this proposal would mean changing that cost into a variable one, and solely in the hands of the player to manage or exploit as they see fit. 

 

How would this work in detail?

 

  

 

The player’s new T9 would be a toggle with a pretty normal Endurance cost. It grants the full bonuses currently experienced by a typical a T9 armour power: Substantial Defence/Resists, boosted secondary effects, regen, recovery… the whole 9 yards. And then, after 60 seconds of being amazing, the player is given a choice. This isn’t a “Timed Toggle”, like the Hybrid Slot Incarnate powers. You are in full control of when this toggle is turned off. It obeys all the normal player-affecting armour toggle rules. Your power is never just taken away. You have to choose when you turn it off, or you choose to let it drain you dry. 

 

Because after 60 seconds the cost of the toggle changes. After the initial 60 seconds these new T9 toggles have a much steeper endurance cost introduced to their sustained upkeep, and I mean unenhanceable, non-reducible 6-8% of your max endurance per second steep, or thereabouts. Perhaps steeper, perhaps less so. I want to stress that the exact numbers for their usable uptime and the endurance cost spike afterwards isn’t important. I will not go to bat for these exact numbers. Numbers can be changed. Please don't @me about these numbers, alright? I'm using some baseline numbers that help conceptualise the idea, ok? What is important is that the player is confronted with a wall that they just can’t overcome… but it’s not immediate. It is in the middle distance. You can see it coming, or rather, you can see it steadily happening in real time. You don’t “crash”. You don’t have to turn this power off juuuuust yet if you don’t want to. You’ve probably still got enough in the metaphorical tank that is your Endurance bar, thanks to the power’s increased recovery buff, to hold on for a few seconds more. Time to retreat and regroup if that’s necessary while still keeping your defences up, or maybe just enough time to lay out that final boss or two before you stop. The endurance drain becomes painful, but you can make the drain stop. All you need to do... is give up the power… and you’ll be ok again. 

 

There would be zero lingering effects from these toggles. By turning them off, you are returned to exactly the same capability as before you turned them on. No -Recovery, no -Endurance, no -Damage, no -Health. You turn it off, and the power is just off, like any other power. Of course, when you turn off the juice the power has to go on cooldown. It behaves just like every other toggle after all. The Devs can set this recharge to something significant, but not unfair. (Let’s stay away from greater than 4 minute cooldowns, ok Unstoppable?) You can’t ever get enough recharge in these new toggle powers to ever make them permanent anyway, so keeping them semi-frequent on their uptime would be preferable - you want these powers to be used after all, not remain in a totally skippable state, or worse... forgotten in the power trays. Any lack of endurance you end up with, something that would normally have been referred to as a crash, you have inflicted upon yourself by keeping the toggle on for far too long. "The Crash" is now a consequence of the player's action or inaction, rather than something inflicted upon them from an outside source.

 

After the first stage of the power where everything stops being all sunshine and rainbows, I’m imagining a “critical hit” style notification on your hud that tells you you’re now on borrowed time and your endurance is about to flow a lot less freely in about 10 seconds. Or not, if that’s too intrusive (and I can absolutely understand those that would say it is). Maybe something more on the player character FX side of things that would let the player know in short order that they’re running on fumes now. At the very least the change in situation needs to be immediately and noticeably visible, that’s what’s important.

 

I think this introduces some interesting changes to how the player can approach the game with the Pre-Fight T9s set up in this way. The change from an all-or-nothing click to a player controlled toggle, albeit one with a stern disincentivising addition rather than the precipitous cliff of the current ones, means that the player will always be in control of the price they’re willing to pay for serious amounts of power. These powers have much, much more interesting and varied slotting potential as well. As a toggle you’re no longer chasing recharge reduction and can focus on the defences more, or up the recovery bonus, or tinker with any other secondary effects the power has without feeling like you’re wasting your time.

 

But most importantly a Toggle power is viewed in such a different way than a click power. They are perceived as something you use in concert with other powers, rather than something that in isolation, has to be extremely powerful to justify itself. They're also something far less likely to be erroneously used as a "Oh God! Help me!" power. When panicking, you will rarely reach for a toggle and expect it to suddenly turn your fortunes upside-down. But the player, rightly or wrongly, often has the concept in their mind that a click power will, and that a click power should. It should give them a lot, and give it all to them immediately, rather than giving them something over a long period of time. So often the T9s are used incorrectly because they are formatted and presented to the player incorrectly. They're not like Build Up. This isn't a quick flash of extreme increases. Your T9 is a sustained drip-feed of moderate power that you will want to use early in a fight, not when you're half-way through and already having trouble. This style of power suits a Toggle far more than it suits a Click.

 

What I would like to see is players really pushing the limits of this system. Trying to break it. Trying to get their recovery to a point where they can sustain this new T9 power for far longer than is usually possible. I'd like to see teams that really enjoy the extra freedom +Recovery powers give them. Teams with Accelerated Metabolism or Recovery Aura given a new lease of life thanks to how they would now interact with an endurance heavy toggle. I want to see people overextend with these powers, not from just forgetting about the timing as is the case now, but rather because they want to just hang on a few more seconds. Risk it. Go for it. Fight.  W I N!  The powers would change from something that you would have to pre-calculate their usefulness, to something that is a management decision on a moment-to-moment basis. Put it on cooldown early when you don't need it. Keep it running when you do need it! "Just a few more seconds... I just need a few more seconds... I've got this!"

 

I know that this proposal isn’t an instant fix with no further work. I’m not suggesting it as such. Each power would still need revision and adjustment to function as intended within such a different design paradigm. However I do think that this is a fundamentally better way of dealing with some of the T9s that has some merit. At least enough to workshop it further within the context of each power set it would affect. 

Remember, this isn’t a call for ALL T9 armour sets to be handled this way. Some T9s aren't configured as a buff that is meant for sustained fighting. Ice’s Hibernate, Dark and Fire Armour’s Rez and Bio’s AoE based Absorb/Heal spring to mind as something wholly different. But Unstoppable, Elude, One with the Shield, and Power Surge? Those kinds of powers are more what this part of the proposal is covering. 

 

Thoughts? I mean… It wouldn’t make Unstoppable worse! Right?

 

I’ll talk more about the other side of the coin - the “Panic Mode” powers in Part Two.

 

---

 

*Some quick notes:
Stone Armour is an interesting (sort of) precedent for this kind of T9 power. Now I will be the first to say that Granite Armour isn’t a perfect role model. It has heavy trade offs in both manoeuvrability, recharge and damage for its limitless toggle. And it takes away all your other toggles bar Rooted. That’s perhaps a little much for what I’m trying to do here, and it’s not a good idea to make everything the same carbon copy. But I notice it doesn’t get the same kind of hate that a lot of the other powers in armour sets get. It isn’t a joke. And there are those that are even able to make the power work, despite the extreme shortcomings it presents at first blush. It’s a build defining decision for Stone Armour players: Am I focusing on Granite Armour or not? The buffs Granite gives you are essentially unprecedented, but they do make the power worth investing in. The downsides are not insurmountable. So Yes, while keeping Granite armour in mind while workshopping this idea it is not the goal I am shooting for other T9s. My proposal is to still keep the uptime-downtime of our current T9s, but to give the player the ability to push themselves further than usual at a cost that slowly wears them down.

 

Meltdown from Radiation Armour is an interesting one. It doesn't have a noticeable crash and the entire set is designed to replenish your Endurance and Health at a rapid rate. It also gives you a noticable increase to your damage value, rather than putting all its eggs into the +resist. It almost feels like a kind of Build Up (and also has better overall uptime than build up too) rather than the traditional T9. This is much better design, and apart from the, perhaps excessive, 8 minute cooldown, is far less causing of distaste than Unstoppable. I have it here for completeness' sake, but this power in particular is in less need of a rework. I don't think it would hurt the power for it to change into a toggle, as discussed above however. And speaking of getting better offence from a T9...

 

Increased Offensive Capability is something that’s brought up a lot when it comes to the T9s and is something that I think is both essential, and yet, needs to be very carefully handled. Increasing the T9s possible offensive buffs, be that in the form of +Damage, +Endurance or +Recharge or a plethora of other possible ideas will almost certainly need to be considered to give these powers a more general performance increase, and make them enticing to players that have already hit the Defence or Resistance caps. I would personally like to see some added offence put onto the T9s in question here, but each should really follow the flavour of the set, rather than something generalised. I’m thinking that Super Reflexes’ increased offence should be very different from Shield Defence’s, and so on. If there’s interest in the idea then I’ll be happy to share more detailed thoughts on each individual powerset, but it’s beyond the scope of this initial post. It's long enough already. 

 

Lastly, the Scrapper - Stalker / Brute - Tanker  divide may be brought up here due to the changes that happened to Hibernate and Icy Bastion from Ice Armour. Because Hibernate is the original power I feel like it, specifically can be talked about in greater detail in part two of this topic. The split is either something these kinds of powers (T9 Armours) could embrace and continue to diversify along the same lines (or at least parallel ones), or something to be abandoned entirely. For the moment, I am aware of the Ice Armour set being somewhat unique in how it handles T9s, but essentially it has divided them between Pre-Fight Prep and Panic Mode, which is actually somewhat convenient for me and this discussion. We can talk about Icy Bastion here, and talk about Hibernate later. Let's keep like-minded powers together for ease of discussion. In my opinion, not all Tanker/Brute powers need to be Panic Mode variations and not all Stalker/Scrapper powers need to be Pre-Fight Prep powers. This does not even have to be the only way the four Archetypes can be divided into two groups.
 

[marcussmythe]

What I wanted to say, but better said than I could manage.  Fantastic idea.

[Nanolathe]

27 minutes ago, marcussmythe said:

What I wanted to say, but better said than I could manage.  Fantastic idea.

Thanks Marcussmythe, The intent was not to steal your thunder but to try and really nail down the problem that most seem to have with the T9s specifically, and try to expand on a specific solution to the point where some good discussion can happen. I have no doubts that I've missed something. I'm sure someone will point that something out to me in due time. This is something that's been on the back burner for a long time, and your post finally made me sit down and develop it into something presentable!

 

So partial kudos go to you for making me do this. 

[Zeraphia]

I really love your overall post! 100% agree actually 🙂 

 

Although, one sort of off-topic thought occurs to me: if this were to theoretically happen, I'd honestly want Bio's T9 to change (it's not terrible and it is one of the better ones right now). Regen/Recovery for Bio doesnt really turn it into the "god mode" for tanking in hard situations that other sets do. There are ways to get around it, but IMO, it could really benefit from an "oh ****" button like the one you're describing more than the currently aoe heal one. Bio sounds "overpowered" and it is for something like Scrappers, but for Tankers, it just isn't cutting it with the heals/absorbs against really hard energy damage/difficult foe fights like other sets do (not without lots of inspiration popping, defensive adaptation, and/or party buffs you can't rely on always getting) - think LR/end fight against Freedom Phalanx/Incarnate trials. 

Edited May 20, 2020 by Zeraphia

[Galaxy Brain]

This is an amazing proposal @Nanolathe! I think the switch to a toggle with very harsh costs is a great compromise, and is infinitely better than what we have now... but my only concern is that this is essentially the same as crashless. 60 seconds with the toggle on -> shut it off. There is no penalty aside from waiting for it to recharge, and you get 100% full benefit of having the T9 values.

 

Lets look at Unstoppable for a sec. Scrapper/Brute/Stalker it gives 52.5% res to all but Psy and on Tankers it gives 70%, a good heaping helping of Mez Protection to all but the most exotic of effects, and 100% recovery rate all for 180 sec. With simply taking the other resist powers in the set, we're looking at: 

 

 

Near capped res to all for Scrapper/Stalker, and 86.3% res for S/L on a Brute.

 

 

And Capped res to all on a Tanker.

 

I know you didn't want to get into numbers, but this is more to just highlight something. As-is if you turn them into toggles with 60sec of 100% value, it would be broken if you could just turn it off. Unstoppable alone would let Invuln have essentially capped resists to all but Psychic on demand without slotting, and definitely capped res with it. (Checking, 3 slotting with SO's in the basic powers will 100% let Scrappers and Stalkers max resists to all, and Brutes can cap S/L and have room to go with the rest).

 

With no real drawbacks, that seems broken.

 

Tossing this out there, but what if they were just incredibly expensive at all times? Instead of say, a 60 sec delay before it turns into a ~ 15sec timer (7%ish a sec drain), why not just have it cost a decent amount of end/sec out the gate? That way you can strive to build around it similar to how Stone handles Granite, and gives some amount of cost to stacking up such huge defenses. Not every T9 is Unstoppable levels of mitigation, but layered on the main set we'd see similar power levels. So, maybe even reduce the "extreme" values a bit, allow them to be used as long as you can maintain them with extreme costs, and I think they have a worthy trade off.

 

 

[Replacement]

@Nanolathe I like the idea.  One bone I want to pick, though (@Galaxy Brain as well, here): I have a strong disagreement with extolling basically any virtue of Granite Armor.  Granite Armor is a shining example of what goes wrong when your t9 is a toggle that can totally supplant the rest of your set.  GB's numbers for Unstoppable are a good example, here: even without the "mutual exclusive" part, if you can hit your caps with just the t9, you will feel like the rest of your set is skip-able trash.

 

The goal needs to be that t9s are good, but that they will never make it OK to "do a Stone" and try to skip as many of your Armor picks as possible. 

 

I guess what I'm really saying here is "the elevated end cost needs to continue to scale up until literally no build in the entire game can keep it running."

 

25 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I know you didn't want to get into numbers, but this is more to just highlight something. As-is if you turn them into toggles with 60sec of 100% value, it would be broken if you could just turn it off. Unstoppable alone would let Invuln have essentially capped resists to all but Psychic on demand without slotting, and definitely capped res with it. (Checking, 3 slotting with SO's in the basic powers will 100% let Scrappers and Stalkers max resists to all, and Brutes can cap S/L and have room to go with the rest).

 

With no real drawbacks, that seems broken.

 

Tossing this out there, but what if they were just incredibly expensive at all times? Instead of say, a 60 sec delay before it turns into a ~ 15sec timer (7%ish a sec drain), why not just have it cost a decent amount of end/sec out the gate? That way you can strive to build around it similar to how Stone handles Granite, and gives some amount of cost to stacking up such huge defenses. Not every T9 is Unstoppable levels of mitigation, but layered on the main set we'd see similar power levels. So, maybe even reduce the "extreme" values a bit, allow them to be used as long as you can maintain them with extreme costs, and I think they have a worthy trade off.

I think the best way to read the proposal is to understand that no two powers will end up with the same thresholds.  If we felt the need to keep Invuln numbers where they were then their increased end cost could come out the gate, or on a 15 second delay instead of 60, etc.  Some powers might need tiered cost, where they see a bump every 15 seconds, and so on.  

For Unstoppable in particular, since it normally has a health crash, I could see it starting to gain self damage/tick after a certain amount of time as you strain yourself apart.

[Snowdaze]

This suggestion for a variable end cost toggle is an elegant choice, which I could definitely get behind mind that the new def/res values reflect that this is now effectively a "temporary armor." It stirs a memory in me that something else used to be a toggle that had a climbing end cost, I want to say it was Phase Shift before they just gave it a 30 second gut off, but it might have been something else that had it.

 

I don't quiet agree that there needs to be an upper cap that could be overcome with enough speed boosts or accelerate metabolisms. As I think at that point you will see this more often then one would like. I think the cost should just keep rising until nothing in the world is going to stop you from loosing everything. That way the end out come is inevitable, no matter how many buffs or blue insps you pop.

 

But all in all I love the concept, plenty of heroic precedent of this kind of digging deeper and giving even more at the cost of knowing the longer they go the riskier it becomes and the knowledge of a longer burnout. Almight is a great example of this. There are soooo many examples of this last ditch every ounce of willpower given that, it's practically a trope in Dragon Ball!

 

Love the Idea definitely worth looking into from a developmental side.

Edited May 20, 2020 by Snowdaze

[Snowdaze]

4 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

Terrible idea.

 

An unstoppable with ~3min recharge, and no crash, would mean every invun tanker is running 90% resists to everything, including psy damage, ALL THE TIME (By cycling it with Melee hybrid, barrier, and using the tanker ATO..)

 

This is on top of being at the incarnate defense cap.

 

That is INSANELY unbalanced.

No one said anything about filling the psi hole... I think any inherent weaknesses in a set still should be for the most part observed.

[Galaxy Brain]

5 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

Terrible idea.

 

An unstoppable with ~3min recharge, and no crash, would mean every invun tanker is running 90% resists to everything, including psy damage, ALL THE TIME (By cycling it with Melee hybrid, barrier, and using the tanker ATO..)

 

This is on top of being at the incarnate defense cap.

 

That is INSANELY unbalanced.

assuming the values are adjusted, what do you think of the concept though?

[Nanolathe]

What did I tell you about @'ing me with the numbers @Galaxy Brain?! What did I say?!

 

But in all seriousness, the reason these powers are "allowed" to be so nutso is that they have a 1000s cooldown and Crashes. The frankly silly power level of these individual powers is compensating for an arbitrarily long lockout in the first place. And those powers also have downsides so heinous that people just can't really justify them. I will agree that, at those levels, just having one power bring you to the hardcaps by itself is not ideal. As I mentioned, I see these powers becoming more Hero [Plus], additional layered defences, rather than God Mode by themselves. Having such a warped power level skews them too far, and the insane recharge and crash is then the justification for them being over powered.

 

Unfortunately, being "Overpowered" has backfired on these powers massively, because now they're a joke. I think I can see what the original idea for these powers was. But it's a power that's trying to be so powerful that it's invalidating all that comes before it, rather than being a compliment to your other powers. Without giving the player some degree of control over how they're going to be affected by using them, the crash is just too heavy a price to pay, especially in late game content where only being "super" for 3 minutes isn't enough, and then waiting for 16.66 minutes for it to come back online is just too much.

 

They've been pushed to the extreme, and failed because of it. They're a leech on the powerset. They often don't make you substantially better than just running all your normal toggles with IOs. Your normal toggles don't have crashes either. 

@Replacement, I did say interesting and set defining. I am positive that I also did not say it was good, nor that it was the goal I was trying for with this system. As above I said, I want this system to redefine T9s to Hero [Plus] and a complimentary part of the powerset. The main reason I shyed away from mentioning precise numbers that would need nerfing is because that's not the point I was driving at. 

 

Trying to talk about an idea relating to changing T9s for the better and also (in a roundabout way) nerfing them in the same sentence would have been completely insane of me, given what the community currently thinks about them.

 

---

 

Yes, a slowly incrementing cost would probably be the logical place to take these powers given the thematics and the overall "feel" I want the powers to have. This is exactly where I thought the conversation would go, so I'm glad about that. I wanted to propose the minimum possible change first that would keep the old, while introducing the new.

 

Got to do these things slowly, or someone will over react.

Edited May 20, 2020 by Nanolathe

[Galaxy Brain]

I dont think anyone would mind the values being nerfed if were in exchange for the MASSIVE buff that is mitigating the crashes

[Snowdaze]

10 minutes ago, Nanolathe said:

I want this system to redefine T9s to Hero [Plus].

Plus ultra?

[Nanolathe]

One step at a time.

😛

[Menelruin]

Awesome idea, I love it!  One other possible suggestion though, to hybridize solutions and address concerns?  What if the endurance cost is just gradually building up the whole time?  So it starts out manageable, then at 60 seconds it starts to ramp up more.  This would be more of a "soft landing" than a crash, but still involve a cost for using them for brief stretches.

[Darkneblade]

I think if they become toggle, it should behave similarly to energy aura t9. More enemies around you more bonus up to halved original value. (First target grant largest bonus) That way it will not be overpowered against single targets or in pvp.

Edited May 20, 2020 by Darkneblade

[Snowdaze]

1 minute ago, Menelruin said:

Awesome idea, I love it!  One other possible suggestion though, to hybridize solutions and address concerns?  What if the endurance cost is just gradually building up the whole time?  So it starts out manageable, then at 60 seconds it starts to ramp up more.  This would be more of a "soft landing" than a crash, but still involve a cost for using them for brief stretches.

I would also be ok if it just started from the onset, at .01 end/sec and started a slow exponential curve culminating at some point where it's beyond incapable of sustainment.

[Menelruin]

1 minute ago, Snowdaze said:

I would also be ok if it just started from the onset, at .01 end/sec and started a slow exponential curve culminating at some point where it's beyond incapable of sustainment.

Right, and for those powers that BOOST Recovery, they probably completely offset it at first....then gradually just lessen the blow, until eventually they can keep up.

[Nanolathe]

A sliding scale might be more complicated (and perhaps not possible in the engine?) but I do think a slow "step" increase every 5, 10, 15, etc, seconds would produce something very similar and almost indistinguishable for the end user experience. These pseudo-curves can be tweaked, powerset by powerset, based on just how long the desired average length of the power could be active for.

 

Another thought. What if the power became not just more costly, but also more powerful over time? This further incentives players to try to keep it on for as long as possible. It should still start out at a very reasonable level, but over time it gets better and better, but more and more unmanageable. I think there could be some more fun limit-pushing gameplay.

Edited May 20, 2020 by Nanolathe

[Snowdaze]

3 minutes ago, Nanolathe said:

A sliding scale might be more complicated (and perhaps not possible in the engine?) but I do think a slow "step" increase every 5, 10, 15, etc, seconds would produce something very similar and almost indistinguishable for the end user experience. These pseudo-curves can be tweaked, powerset by powerset, based on just how long the desired average length of the power could be active for.

 

Another thought. What if the power became not just more costly, but also more powerful over time? This further incentives players to try to keep it on for as long as possible. It should still start out at a very reasonable level, but over time it gets better and better, but more and more unmanageable. I think there could be some more fun limit-pushing gameplay.

Like I said I think something USED to use a sliding scale if anyone can remember. I dont really see a point in it getting More powerful because odds are that might end up being a little more game breaking then intended.

[Replacement]

I'm thinking, separate from the toggle cost, a reapplying endurance DoT should work. Power entry will then include several entries of "on 30 second delay, apply additional stack." Then it sends a buff cancel on deactivation (which Blaster Reaction Time shows us a power execution can be tied to deactivation) to remove the debuff.

 

Btw, this is yet another situation where a reverse endurance discount could work well. Would add a burden to not just your t9, but all other toggles and actions.

[marcussmythe]

Depends on the power granted and the cost paid, and of course the power granted would  not scale to infinity (though the cost might!)

 

It would be interesting to go set by set looking at set themes and needs.  Some sets have offense, some lack it.  Ditto resist.  Ditto defense.  Ditto utility.  It would be interesting to find thematic ways for a set to temporarily gain that which it lacks (at some cost).

 

Shield probably doesnt need more offense, and buffs the team to boot- but how about resistance?  Any status holes?  
 

Similarly, does SR really need more DEF?  Is there some form of utility we can give?  Maybe a really crazy recharge buff?

 

Spitballing here.

[Snowdaze]

2 minutes ago, Replacement said:

I'm thinking, separate from the toggle cost, a reapplying endurance DoT should work. Power entry will then include several entries of "on 30 second delay, apply additional stack." Then it sends a buff cancel on deactivation (which Blaster Reaction Time shows us a power execution can be tied to deactivation) to remove the debuff.

 

Btw, this is yet another situation where a reverse endurance discount could work well. Would add a burden to not just your t9, but all other toggles and actions.

Good calls!

[America's Angel]

On 5/20/2020 at 5:05 PM, Galaxy Brain said:

assuming the values are adjusted, what do you think of the concept though?

I think high-level, "one size fits all" ideas aren't helpful when discussing such a diverse range of powersets.

 

Broad stroke solutions are always bad when it comes to power tweaks. Unfortunately, they can sound very persuasive to those who don't know better.

 

I also think it would add unnecessary powercreep to an end game already rife with it.

Edited May 10, 2021 by America's Angel

[Replacement]

17 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

I think high-level, "one size fits all" ideas are useless when discussing such a diverse range of powersets.

 

Broad stroke solutions are always bad when it comes to power tweaks. Unfortunately, they can sound very persuasive to those who don't know better.

 

I also think it would add unnecessary powercreep to an end game already rife with it.

Eh.

Blaster Sustains were very successful.

Giving Stalkers Assassin's Focus, and quick AS before that, was very successful.

The introduction of Inherents at all was successful.

 

These were all "broad strokes" answers to problems.

 

The Blaster Sustain example is actually the most relevant: the broad strokes was "add the ability for Blasters to keep up the pressure (Recovery) and improve their survival in skirmishes without allowing them to just become tanky bricks."

 

Each set has its own manifestation of what this means. +Regeneration and Absorb allow you to get back into the fight faster, but still see you crumpling under sustained fire. While most sets got +recovery, Energy Manipulation instead had its Endurance discount improved.  At the end of the day, Paragon Studios started with broad strokes, aka "design guidelines" and made compelling specifics.

Edited May 20, 2020 by Replacement
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[Galaxy Brain]

34 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

I think high-level, "one size fits all" ideas are useless when discussing such a diverse range of powersets.

 

Broad stroke solutions are always bad when it comes to power tweaks. Unfortunately, they can sound very persuasive to those who don't know better.

 

I also think it would add unnecessary powercreep to an end game already rife with it.

As Replacement said, broad strokes to like powers have been applied numerous times. All these armor T9s are basically the same type of power and would probably have the same fixed unless we dove super into unique perks per set.

 

Or would you rather they just stay as set mules rather than proper capstones?