New Archetypes - the things we do not have

[Natti]

Just a shout out for a couple of new archetype concepts...

 

Melee Support - currently none of the support lines (Defender/Corrupter/Controller/Mastermind) can be paired with Melee Damage.  Yet the Battle Cleric, the in the fight healer, buffer, debuffer all resonate throughout stories from mythical to futuristic.   Perhaps some kind of pairing with melee attacks and support.

 

Secondary Control - for those Controllers / Dominators their choices remain limited to primary roles.  Consider reversing the Controller into Support over Control, and the Dominator into Assualt over Control.

 

Thank you for your time.

 

Natti 

[ImpousVileTerror]

Support / Melee's a popular suggestion, for good reason.

Here's a thread that had some nice thoughts on the matter:  https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/15350-a-minimalist-take-on-a-supportmelee-at/

[Zepp]

I've actually put together a list of Archetype proposals, if you are interested in looking into those.

[MTeague]

7 hours ago, Natti said:

Secondary Control - for those Controllers / Dominators their choices remain limited to primary roles.  Consider reversing the Controller into Support over Control, and the Dominator into Assualt over Control.

I would support the concept of NEW archtypes that are Support/Control or that are Assault/Control.

I would NOT support changing the EXISTING archtypes and flipping their primary/secondary trees.  flipping the existing AT's is a hard no from me.

[Alchemystic]

I made one a few months ago that focused on making a new stealth archetype like stalker, but focused entirely on range.

 

The end result was something of a combination of Blaster/Corruptor, and had a single target focus and stealth capabilities.

 

 

[Zepp]

@Tyrannical I added Deadeye to the compilation list. Sorry, my workload has been insane since the rona hit.

[killigraphy]

I agree OP, a Monk (essentially) class would be great. I just need it not to look like MA  and or KM, because woooo, they look turrible.

[FrauleinMental]

On 6/15/2020 at 1:44 AM, Natti said:

Secondary Control - for those Controllers / Dominators their choices remain limited to primary roles.  Consider reversing the Controller into Support over Control, and the Dominator into Assualt over Control.

New AT, fine.  As Defender is to Corruptor, Controller is to...Supporter?

 

Existing ATs, absolutely not.  If you're calling it a Controller, it's primary should be Control.  While the current meta seems to be "damage is king," some of us still love our CC.

[Tha-Antmann]

I entirely agree, and would play a melee support. This should actually be two archetypes, imo. Corruptor/Defender situation, wherein one is damage primary, where the other is support primary, but both are quite clearly support either way. Cleric/Shaman/Paladin etc. there are countless examples, as they are a staple of gaming.

[Bopper]

Not sure if/when a Support Melee AT will be added, but you can create a Support Melee character. It might be a bit inefficient, but you could make it work conceptually.

 

I would go with a Rad/Time/Electricty Corruptor

 

Radiation Blast will give you 2 PBAoEs in Irradiate and Atomic Blast.

Fighting Pool (grab Boxing, Kick, Cross Punch)...you won't need to use Kick, but Boxing and Cross Punch can be your main melee attacks.

 

Electricity Mastery offers Thunderstrike as a 3rd PBAoE.

 

So your melee attacks are covered. Then, you throw in Time which is full of AoEs (Time's Juncture, Temporal Mending, Farsight, Chronoshift). You can make Distortion Field a PBAoE by using a macro, and overall you'll be a S/L resist capped, high defense, in your face masher.

 

Edit: You can also take Power Sink as an AoE, and put the disorient proc in to stack with Thunderstrike's Stun. Makes for some nice control if/when needed.

Edited June 19, 2020 by Bopper

[Replacement]

1 hour ago, Bopper said:

Not sure if/when a Support Melee AT will be added, but you can create a Support Melee character. It might be a bit inefficient, but you could make it work conceptually.

 

I would go with a Rad/Time/Electricty Corruptor

 

Radiation Blast will give you 2 PBAoEs in Irradiate and Atomic Blast.

Fighting Pool (grab Boxing, Kick, Cross Punch)...you won't need to use Kick, but Boxing and Cross Punch can be your main melee attacks.

 

Electricity Mastery offers Thunderstrike as a 3rd PBAoE.

 

So your melee attacks are covered. Then, you throw in Time which is full of AoEs (Time's Juncture, Temporal Mending, Farsight, Chronoshift). You can make Distortion Field a PBAoE by using a macro, and overall you'll be a S/L resist capped, high defense, in your face masher.

 

Edit: You can also take Power Sink as an AoE, and put the disorient proc in to stack with Thunderstrike's Stun. Makes for some nice control if/when needed.

That's a good build, but the problem is it's just a build. It's not a set of options designed and endorsed for the play style. When folks ask for a support/melee combo, we typically do so coming from a place of already having the fiction we want fulfilled. That's much larger than a radioactive time traveler with electricity powers. 

 

It also sucks to wait until your 40s to fulfill your fiction. 

 

Meanwhile, I think Manipulation/Support would be easier to build and balance... But then we would need Medieval Manipulation to make the Time Gladiator.

[MoisesG]

Back in the days of Vanguard - Sage of Heroes, there was a light fighter/healer class called the Disciple. They only used light armor and fought using bare hands, knucklers or claws. The cool thing was that when they fought and performed certain combos (a la Street Justice) they would trigger melee range heals as they fought.

They had a choice of following 1 of 3 different schools (like the forms from Staff Fighting) and depending on that choice it determined the secondary effect of your combos.

One was heals, another was armor/resistance buffs and the other was debuffs.

You had to select a School to follow and were locked into it.

 

It was such a fun class to play.

I wonder if something like that can be done.

[Bill Z Bubba]

I was pondering last night why they didn't go with assault/armor instead of range/armor for the Sentinel. I would have enjoyed that.

[Zeraphia]

Hear me out here, I've been thinking about pets/control as an AT. While it will clearly not be as great/functional as possibly the typical pets/support, I think it would add some bit of variety and interest into a new flavor. For example, say I wanted a character that summons the undead and truly manipulates the living through their powers, in this case, if the technology and AT existed, I could roll a Necro/Dark Control *whatever AT is named.* I think that controls could possibly add to the survivability of the pets directly by turning the enemies into statutes for them to hit on and lay waste to, whilst still having the damage yourself via your pets to solo well.

 

 I know, it won't be a "meta" combination, but I think it would introduce a variety of fun thematic character concepts!

 

Also: excluding VEATs/HEATs, control and pets are the least duplicated primary/secondaries, only two archetypes have the default control sets, and only one archetype has actual henchmen pets.

Edited June 20, 2020 by Zeraphia

[Steampunkette]

Secondary Control cannot function.

 

Control is a form of absolute mitigation. When someone is controlled there's a binary on whether they're "Held" or not. Or stunned or whatever else. Debuffs to speed, HP, Regen, Etc aren't controls. They're debuffs.

 

Because Control is binary and NPCs have specific set threshholds you cannot reduce the Magnitudes of Control powers like you can with Debuffs. Which is why Corruptor Debuffs are less effective than Defender debuffs, but still -effective-. It's also why Tankers do less damage than Scrappers with the same powers. The magnitudes of damage are reduced. This can be done because their power effects are relative rather than absolute.

 

You could reduce the -duration- of the controls... But due to the core function of control being magnitude stacking for bosses and other powerful NPCs, doing so renders a Support/Control character largely defenseless against an EB/AV unless they're a Phantom Army control user.

 

Control sets as we have them, today, cannot function as a Secondary. This is why we have Manipulation sets.

 

Manipulation sets combine some low-tier control powers (Web Grenades and the like) with a few melee attacks. Why? 'Cause the Web Grenade is never going to stop an EB or AV that you wind up fighting. So those powers in the Manipulation set become nearly useless (barring control stacking from teammates). Blasters get -some- control with limited use on low end enemies (Minions, some Lieutenants) and additional high direct damage (with longer cooldowns, on average, making blappers reliant on hasten and recharge reduction) for when enemies get in their face.

 

In short: For Secondary Control to be effective enough to have any use outside of teaming with people who have controls, it would need to be as strong as Primary Control. A Support/Control character would have Support like a Defender and Control like a Controller. Two Primary Powersets, essentially.

 

Tangentially: This is why there is no Manipulation Primary archetype.

Edited June 20, 2020 by Steampunkette

[Patti]

So what you're really saying is it ahsosuzld be petsermind/manipulation rather than /control?

[Replacement]

I prefer manipulation primary/summon secondary.

I imagine a setup where your pets contribute something to you.  So slightly modified pets to give them more Support options. Imagine if every set gave you a pet early on that gives you a fitting mez protection buff. Instead of relying on toggles, you would need to manage your troops and keep them alive so they prop you up.

 

@Steampunkette I think you're drawing a correlation between secondary set and the strength it's "allowed" to have. First off, I don't think that correlation is very strongly followed (brute 90% resist cap, Dominator melee and ranged multipliers, blaster melee multipliers).

 

Second, I disagree that lowering durations (or increasing recharges!) Isn't viable.  If your other set is pets, then minion HP is essentially another layer of control that you're spiking with occasional controls.  

 

For these reasons and more, I absolutely think Manipulation can work as a primary and control as a secondary. 

 

Covering as much new ground as possible with as few new ATs as possible, my votes would be:

* Melee/support with some sort of identity-based gimmick.

* Manipulation/Pets as a commander type. Manipulation is a bag of tricks almost as diverse as Support sets, creating strong opportunities to decide how you'll lead on the battlefield.

[Patti]

I like support/melee personally.  Already have three melee-forwatd archetypes.  An aoe pacify instead of taunt, which gives a small Power Boost bonus to make heals/buffs/debuffs stronger for a few seconds. 

[gameboy1234]

1 hour ago, Steampunkette said:

You could reduce the -duration- of the controls... But due to the core function of control being magnitude stacking for bosses and other powerful NPCs, doing so renders a Support/Control character largely defenseless against an EB/AV unless they're a Phantom Army control user.

 

Control sets as we have them, today, cannot function as a Secondary. This is why we have Manipulation sets.

 

Besides the duration of controls, I think you could also manipulate the AoE radius and the % chance to apply a control.  I tried Poison live and the tiny AoEs really suck.  For making a set less powerful, tiny AoE works well.  And if an AoE power has something like 30% chance of Mag 1 hold, followed by 30% chance of Mag 1 hold, followed by 30% chance of Mag 1 hold, that would make it both powerful in larger groups as well as unreliable enough to not rival the control primaries.  Toss in a bit of increased recharge and increased endurance (let me tell you, while "good" Traps is pretty painful too) and I think it would be decent.

 

I personally think Phantom Army is way overpowered.  A "manipulation" set that reduces its power would be pretty cool and still pretty viable for its users, I think.

 

Overall, I think a "control" secondary is a fine idea, regardless what it's called, and something that the devs could certainly look into.  I trust them to do the right thing when it comes to balance.

 

---

 

I wonder what kind of control secondaries people might like?  I think a psi melee with mental manipulation might be cool.  The secondary could be a mix of manipulation for defense and ways to baffle and confuse the enemy.

 

We don't have any wind control sets (we do have storm).  Wind control might make sense as a "soft" control secondary.  Water might make sense for a soft control too.  Maybe another "devices" type secondary, just with more control powers and a little less toe bombing.

[Patti]

Oh yeah!  Something else to say.   Any new archetypes that aren't epics should probably be designed to have least impact on the dev time by maintaining as much of the sets as possible.  Sentinel is probably already too far over that line considering how many poweres got changed by the end of it all.   Another reason for support/melee.  Give them a betterversionofvigilance and the archetype works straight out of the gate without changing much of anything other than taunt.

[Steampunkette]

  

1 hour ago, Replacement said:

I prefer manipulation primary/summon secondary.

I imagine a setup where your pets contribute something to you.  So slightly modified pets to give them more Support options. Imagine if every set gave you a pet early on that gives you a fitting mez protection buff. Instead of relying on toggles, you would need to manage your troops and keep them alive so they prop you up.

 

@Steampunkette I think you're drawing a correlation between secondary set and the strength it's "allowed" to have. First off, I don't think that correlation is very strongly followed (brute 90% resist cap, Dominator melee and ranged multipliers, blaster melee multipliers).

 

Second, I disagree that lowering durations (or increasing recharges!) Isn't viable.  If your other set is pets, then minion HP is essentially another layer of control that you're spiking with occasional controls.  

 

For these reasons and more, I absolutely think Manipulation can work as a primary and control as a secondary. 

 

Covering as much new ground as possible with as few new ATs as possible, my votes would be:

* Melee/support with some sort of identity-based gimmick.

* Manipulation/Pets as a commander type. Manipulation is a bag of tricks almost as diverse as Support sets, creating strong opportunities to decide how you'll lead on the battlefield.

I am certain that you believe that, Replacement. But on the Live Forums I pushed for a "Reverse Dominator" back before I got into an understanding of Control and Defense powersets both being straight mitigation sets.

 

Castle (Floyd Grubb) expressed to me the reasoning behind keeping Control a primary powerset. That it could never truly work as a secondary. Originally, Blasters were meant to be Ranged/Control, but either it was significantly weak when the controls were tuned down or OP when the controls were tuned up. The Manipulation powerset sprang out of that desire.

 

It's also why you see no one else with Manipulation powersets. It's just -such- a niche powerset type built to key into an incredibly specific design philosophy.

 

As to Blaster melee multipliers: I literally just explained it. They have strong melee damage and limited melee attack power availability so they can handle bosses, EBs, and AVs with some high damage melee since their control powers will not function on them without significant stacking from allies.

 

For Brutes it has to do with them being able to function as gameplay Tanks since the Mastermind Tanking concept went largely underutilized by the playerbase through testing and was ultimately found to be largely flawed by the relatively low damage a Mastermind put out, himself, for aggro-draw and Bodyguard damage spread.

 

And Dominators? It has to do with the way they gained domination. It used to be Domination gave them a flat bonus to damage, but that got pulled and placed into their baseline damage as a balancing metric once people started routinely permadomming so that newer dominator players, or players who didn't focus on global recharge, wouldn't be completely left in the dust.

 

As to correlation: No. I'm talking about a flat understanding of gameplay mechanics. Because while Brutes have a 90% resistance cap, they're not going to achieve it outside of Tier 9 abilities, serious team-buffing, or a shitload of IOs.

 

6 minutes ago, gameboy1234 said:

 

Besides the duration of controls, I think you could also manipulate the AoE radius and the % chance to apply a control.  I tried Poison live and the tiny AoEs really suck.  For making a set less powerful, tiny AoE works well.  And if an AoE power has something like 30% chance of Mag 1 hold, followed by 30% chance of Mag 1 hold, followed by 30% chance of Mag 1 hold, that would make it both powerful in larger groups as well as unreliable enough to not rival the control primaries.  Toss in a bit of increased recharge and increased endurance (let me tell you, while "good" Traps is pretty painful too) and I think it would be decent.

 

I personally think Phantom Army is way overpowered.  A "manipulation" set that reduces its power would be pretty cool and still pretty viable for its users, I think.

 

Overall, I think a "control" secondary is a fine idea, regardless what it's called, and something that the devs could certainly look into.  I trust them to do the right thing when it comes to balance.

 

---

 

I wonder what kind of control secondaries people might like?  I think a psi melee with mental manipulation might be cool.  The secondary could be a mix of manipulation for defense and ways to baffle and confuse the enemy.

 

We don't have any wind control sets (we do have storm).  Wind control might make sense as a "soft" control secondary.  Water might make sense for a soft control too.  Maybe another "devices" type secondary, just with more control powers and a little less toe bombing.

RNG layered upon RNG is a good way to make people hate playing an archetype, unfortunately.

[Patti]

Yeah but castle had a lot of design philosophy problems as I remember.    Wasn't he adamantly against ANY form of knockback to knockdown?  I think his opi in on the game design should be held under scrutiny, not lauded.

[Zeraphia]

11 hours ago, Steampunkette said:

Secondary Control cannot function.

 

Control is a form of absolute mitigation. When someone is controlled there's a binary on whether they're "Held" or not. Or stunned or whatever else. Debuffs to speed, HP, Regen, Etc aren't controls. They're debuffs.

 

Because Control is binary and NPCs have specific set threshholds you cannot reduce the Magnitudes of Control powers like you can with Debuffs. Which is why Corruptor Debuffs are less effective than Defender debuffs, but still -effective-. It's also why Tankers do less damage than Scrappers with the same powers. The magnitudes of damage are reduced. This can be done because their power effects are relative rather than absolute.

 

You could reduce the -duration- of the controls... But due to the core function of control being magnitude stacking for bosses and other powerful NPCs, doing so renders a Support/Control character largely defenseless against an EB/AV unless they're a Phantom Army control user.

 

Control sets as we have them, today, cannot function as a Secondary. This is why we have Manipulation sets.

 

Manipulation sets combine some low-tier control powers (Web Grenades and the like) with a few melee attacks. Why? 'Cause the Web Grenade is never going to stop an EB or AV that you wind up fighting. So those powers in the Manipulation set become nearly useless (barring control stacking from teammates). Blasters get -some- control with limited use on low end enemies (Minions, some Lieutenants) and additional high direct damage (with longer cooldowns, on average, making blappers reliant on hasten and recharge reduction) for when enemies get in their face.

 

In short: For Secondary Control to be effective enough to have any use outside of teaming with people who have controls, it would need to be as strong as Primary Control. A Support/Control character would have Support like a Defender and Control like a Controller. Two Primary Powersets, essentially.

 

Tangentially: This is why there is no Manipulation Primary archetype.

But there's gaping flaws with this logic... the first one is assuming controls are not viable as long as they're not primaries, and last time I checked, Fortunatas who have a lovely vivacious blend of Dominate, Confuse, a Confuse aura, and an AoE Hold absolutely do have these "secondary controls" and they honestly still work. Now are they as good as it as say Dominators? No, but does it help them survive? Absolutely. Just because one has to stack the magnitudes two times does not make them "less effective" it just means they have to go through two cast cycles of the same power or blend it with another control power. Also, comparing controls, debuffs, and damage are all extremely different aspects of powers and have very unique properties (thus I think this argument is really weak, because you're not comparing apples to apples, you're not even comparing apples to oranges, hell we're not even comparing food to food.) Also, many control sets (plant and not on Dominator) are not going to be holding AVs without a lot of power boosting and spamming while triangles are up (along with having an extremely IO'd out build with tons of recharge). 

 

Also your point about these "low-tier" control powers is extremely narrow-minded. Keeping an enemy in an immobilize ring is a huge amount of damage mitigation for ranged characters with squishier health because that means they cannot hit you with melee damage at all, and many "auras" that are extremely annoying to deal with (think Requiem's stun aura) are completely nullified by having this immobilize easily stack-able. Also, in many cases, if you look at the true DPA of these powers, many of them are actually better than your T1/T2 blast *by damage* and actually have better proc rates than those powers. No offense intended, but in all sincerity, that is what a lot of people who do not understand battlefield positioning do not understand, it's not always about having the enemy locked down unable to do anything as much as it is sometimes them just not running away from you. Don't have a Tank on a TinPex? Well that Blaster spamming Ring of Fire in its chain rotation takes care of that, and that goes for any AV that is running around like a chicken with its head cut off because there is no form of taunt on the team. Honestly, immobilizes are probably the best controls against an AV that a set can have, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that.

[Steampunkette]

On 6/20/2020 at 10:02 AM, Patti said:

Yeah but castle had a lot of design philosophy problems as I remember.    Wasn't he adamantly against ANY form of knockback to knockdown?  I think his opi in on the game design should be held under scrutiny, not lauded.

The man's a professional who has been designing games for 30 years. We might not -agree- with all his ideas, but that doesn't make them problems.

 

And KB to KD is a trainwreck. The single IO added sees people harassed for not using it, and endless threads using it as a wedge to try and open the door on more ways to kill knockback entirely. Including at least three users on these boards who are in favor of either completely removing KB as a mechanic or giving the Team Leader the ability to control all powers on a team to turn off KB.

 

15 hours ago, Zeraphia said:

But there's gaping flaws with this logic... the first one is assuming controls are not viable as long as they're not primaries, and last time I checked, Fortunatas who have a lovely vivacious blend of Dominate, Confuse, a Confuse aura, and an AoE Hold absolutely do have these "secondary controls" and they honestly still work. Now are they as good as it as say Dominators? No, but does it help them survive? Absolutely. Just because one has to stack the magnitudes two times does not make them "less effective" it just means they have to go through two cast cycles of the same power or blend it with another control power. Also, comparing controls, debuffs, and damage are all extremely different aspects of powers and have very unique properties (thus I think this argument is really weak, because you're not comparing apples to apples, you're not even comparing apples to oranges, hell we're not even comparing food to food.) Also, many control sets (plant and not on Dominator) are not going to be holding AVs without a lot of power boosting and spamming while triangles are up (along with having an extremely IO'd out build with tons of recharge). 

 

Also your point about these "low-tier" control powers is extremely narrow-minded. Keeping an enemy in an immobilize ring is a huge amount of damage mitigation for ranged characters with squishier health because that means they cannot hit you with melee damage at all, and many "auras" that are extremely annoying to deal with (think Requiem's stun aura) are completely nullified by having this immobilize easily stack-able. Also, in many cases, if you look at the true DPA of these powers, many of them are actually better than your T1/T2 blast *by damage* and actually have better proc rates than those powers. No offense intended, but in all sincerity, that is what a lot of people who do not understand battlefield positioning do not understand, it's not always about having the enemy locked down unable to do anything as much as it is sometimes them just not running away from you. Don't have a Tank on a TinPex? Well that Blaster spamming Ring of Fire in its chain rotation takes care of that, and that goes for any AV that is running around like a chicken with its head cut off because there is no form of taunt on the team. Honestly, immobilizes are probably the best controls against an AV that a set can have, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that.

A Fortunata gains -some- control powers to supplement their damage abilities. Similarly, a Wolf Spider gets some control powers to supplement their damage abilities. So do PBs and Warshades.

 

But those are not Control Powersets. There is a distinct difference between a Control Powerset (Which typically contains minimal damage output outside of a Pet or Pets) and having a Powerset which contains some Control Powers. A Control Powerset would need to be "Weakened" to be made into a Secondary Powerset, otherwise a person would simply have two "Primary" powersets. 

 

I also never said Control Powersets would be unviable as secondaries because control is somehow "Bad". I said that weakening a Control Powerset would render it largely useless due to the binary nature of control. In that a target is either controlled (and thus impaired) or uncontrolled (and thus not impaired) based on the number of magnitudes of control applied to them.

 

That's not a Logical Flaw, Zeraphia. That's a False Equivalence and a Strawman Argument.

 

I also wasn't "Comparing" Debuffs to Controls. I was using the differences between them to -define- them. In large part because these sorts of discussions about control powers almost invariably result in at least one person piping up "Well what if we added debuffs to controls so that even if you don't control an AV you're still helping out?" That's not control. That's debuff. There's a distinct difference.

 

That's not "Apples to Oranges", Zeraphia. That's a Strawman Argument.

 

As to "Low Tier" being "Narrow Minded" I literally meant low-tier in the sense of them being Tier 1 or Tier 2 powers. Ones you get at first or fourth level. Even if I held that very false belief, which I don't, most Manipulation sets get a hold, stun, or fear at a later point in their power progression. And certain sets (Like Ice) gain several. However, their magnitudes are low enough, or proccy enough, that they cannot reliably be used to control EBs and AVs, ensuring the Blaster relies on their Primary Powerset and the high melee damage output of their Manipulation Set's attacks before retreating. (Or blapping via Hasten and global IO buffs)

 

Instead of responding to that you've constructed a Strawman Argument and added an Ad Hominem attack to it.

 

I do not believe that you're reading my posts in good faith, here. With an intent to understand.

Edited June 21, 2020 by Steampunkette

[ImpousVileTerror]

And agreeing with old ideas doesn't mean they're not also problems.

 

While there's a definite gap for many players in understanding the complexities of interlocking systems, especially in a game of the scope of City of Heroes, we do have to acknowledge that Homecoming is an entirely different beast than Legacy.  There has been a fundamental shift in the purpose of the game, from a developmental project standpoint.  It is no longer for-profit, which absolutely changes the design philosophy which will best serve the game's new expressed purpose:  Welcoming everyone, while being familiar*.

Maybe Castle knew his stuff.  Maybe not-so-much.  In either case, the design decisions made back then were under a different paradigm.  Scrutinizing those decisions is a great idea, frankly.  I am very much in favour of scrutiny.

 

I think you were right back in https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/9193-current-dev-road-map-section-of-development-forum/

We as a community could certainly use a more open flow of information with what's going on behind the veil.  There is a potential problem with passionate people banging their fists against the table during an otherwise productive conversation (I've been guilty of that on occasion of the very topic of dev-community communication and workflow).  However, I think that more detailed communication is a great thing.  It will help get folks on to the same page if we can see the hard math and specific design principles that are being used.  It will allow us to address those principles and philosophies at a fundamental level, and propose solutions to the ones that trouble us.

 

Holding to the game's original design principles doesn't need to happen.  Frankly, it shouldn't happen.  It's a different game now.  It's time to embrace that, and the opportunities for new growth it offers.

 

 

 

* Paraphrased, and I'm not saying it's not a mission statement above reproach.  I think it's important to be critical of it and its execution.  Constructive criticism can lead to better outcomes.