Suggestion: IO for turning Rage into a toggle

[sutasafaia]

So I've been on the discord a lot lately, especially in the Feedback section, and there seems to be a ton of requests for single IO's that change how characters play. This is an interesting idea to me. One of the most requested ones was an IO that would turn all of a characters knockbacks into knockdowns. This ended up giving me an idea as well, why not have an IO that lets you turn Rage into a toggle?

 

This would have several purposes.

1: It could allow SS to be ported to Scrappers (although I feel this may have to be a direct change to Rage on scrappers, rather than an IO, since double (or even triple) stacking Rage on scrappers is the big reason they don't have SS). We do know that power sets can be changed based on archtype so this could be possible?

2: It would allow you to have more reliability for Rage at the cost of strength. Double stacking Rage is powerful but keeping track can be a pain. I know you can set it to auto-fire but that would mean keeping track of Hasten, so one way or the other you're monitoring your timing. Giving players ease of use but sacrificing power seems like an interesting game play choice to me.

3: It would allow you to avoid the crash, again at the cost of strength. I like the idea of giving players a choice between safety/reliability vs more damage/accuracy.

 

Just thought I would throw it out there.

[JusticeBowler]

/signed

 

I like this solution for a lot of the powers that without them, I'm gimped, but they need to be balanced against abuse. Turn them into toggles. (I'm looking at you Phantom Army!)

 

But this goes to conflicts between play styles. "How the game is supposed to be played" vs how folks actually try to force the sets to work. I don't know that the current team has all that different a philosophy on this.

[sutasafaia]

Honestly, at this point, I think the whole idea of how the game is "supposed" to be played is already out the window. i25 has made many changes, the p2w vendor is a thing that allows for all sorts of shenanigans, including customizing your own XP scale, disabling certain drops, etc. The merit vendor also has ways to get, I'm fairly sure, any set you want in the entire game. I am all for creating some convenience IO's that give people ease of play but at the same time force them to choose between said ease of play at the cost of some power, and not being able to double stack Rage is a definite drawback even if it lets you avoid the crash.

[Rylas]

Not that I know diddly about programming or coding, let alone, for this specific game, but I would imagine that to be a nightmare to accomplish. You're talking about changing a lot of things based on an IO being slotted in a power. From how it activates to how it functions.

 

Also, I'm just not a fan of the idea. It doesn't seem all that necessary. If double Rage is something you find to be difficult to manage, and you're ok with a power trade off, then why not just keep it to single Rage? I'm all for playing how you prefer to play, but making big changes in the game so you can do it when other options already exist seems like overkill.

 

But toggled Rage for scrappers so they can get it proliferated would be worth taking a look at. It seems like a lot of people have been asking for SS Scrappers, so why not?

[sutasafaia]

I have no idea how difficult it would be to pull off either, certainly harder than the suggested KB to KD changes that people seem to want to see happen. It may never work or happen, who knows? That's the fun of suggestion forum, toss a few darts and see if you hit a bulls eye. I really do want to someday see SS Scrappers though and this was the only way I could think of doing it without screwing over the tanks/brutes that do stack it.

[Sniktch]

Mechanically unfeasible - the way the KB to KD IOs work is to actually reduce the power's knockback magnitude by 99%, which means that unless it's a mag 100, it's always less than 1 but more than 0, thus knockdown but not knockback.  The only difference between KB and KD is magnitude - the only difference between knock-UP and knockDOWN is the vector.  This is why KO Blow sends enemies ragdoll flopping, but Air Superiority flapjack-flips them - Air Sup is a mag .67 KU, and KO Blow is a Mag 2 KU.  An IO that changes a click with a fixed cost, fixed duration, and ending crash to a toggle with a per-second cost, no max duration, and no cost is beyond the engine's capabilities AFAIK.

[HelenCarnate]

An easier fix from a programming standpoint would be to have the 2nd rage overwrite the 1st rage. So instead of double stacking you would keep on going until it eventually crashed.

[sutasafaia]

Making Rage simply overwrite instead of stack is certainly an option, it would be another way to avoid a crash while also preventing double stacking. Honestly I would be 100% fine with that as the mechanic instead of using it as a toggle.