Remove Cap on Power Pools

[Incursion]

8 minutes ago, AerialAssault said:

Provisionally, I would say no. My personal belief is that it would be a step on the road towards further power creep. People already feel that the game is too easy, to me, the response wouldn't be to make things easier, and I sincerely believe that it would make things easier. Nobody here has been lamenting that they can't fit another pool in when they've picked Presence, Medicine, Concealment and Teleportation. 

 

That being said, I would not be opposed to testing it out. That's what testing is for. If it turns out good then I wouldn't be upset about that. And even if it weren't to go ahead, I imagine there would be valuable lessons learned along the way.

That’s a fair point of view, at least you show willingness to try. I guess it could be a power creep for certain builds, but nothing earth shattering. For min/maxers or those close to it, They’re already chosen what they don’t need out of their primary and secondary, so any more choices they make thereafter would require very careful consideration as you still need to step into some of these pools with useless picks to get what you want. 
 

i understand the balance reasons but it really sucks to literally waste pix on stuff you may not even put in your power tray because you don’t have the slots for it or just don’t like it. 
 

fighting pool is the biggest offender. Both tier 1 options are attacks instead of being 1 attack and 1 of something else like most of the others. People just want tough/weave and boxing and kick often just sit by the wayside as they have plenty of better options in their primary/secondaries. 
 

i think we are overthinking here In terms of this causing balance issues, but at the same time I don’t want to break anything so it would be amazing to have a test environment to actually try it. Not some closed dev crap that cryptic used to do In order to justify Jacks ego. There were some very heated and frustrating topics in the old days. Threads miles deep.  Anyway I’m droning. Back to real life. 

[Vanden]

19 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

ALL of my characters take Tough/Weave/CJ/Hasten.

Most take fly so that I can use hover/afterburner as LotG mules and fly is my preferred mode of travel.

Those that take leadership either drop CJ or end up finding other places for LotGs and go superjump.

 

Yea, I miss out on a lot of interesting concepts because of this rigidity.

 

Especially when there's plenty of primary/secondary powers I'd be happy to be rid of in the place of more power pool choices.

This is my problem with the suggestion of removing the pool limit. It's not going to result in more diverse builds, just more builds that take Fighting, Leaping, Leadership, Speed.

[Alchemystic]

Only compromise I can see truly working out here is that if we maintain the standard limitation of 4 "standard" pools to choose from, and only one origin pool can be taken as usual, but the latter no longer contributes to your total.

 

Origin pools are different enough in structure to the standard power pools that I feel there's at least some justification to moving them outside the standard limitations, and they don't exactly fill a niche like normal pool powers do, but I'm adamantly against having more than one origin pool accessible since they have a lot of overlap.

 

Edited March 19, 2021 by Tyrannical

[Bill Z Bubba]

13 minutes ago, Vanden said:

This is my problem with the suggestion of removing the pool limit. It's not going to result in more diverse builds, just more builds that take Fighting, Leaping, Leadership, Speed.

 

Why doesn't the reverse count? Meaning, if it allows me to take provoke instead of some other throw-away power that I don't even bother sticking an enhancement in, why would that be bad?

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, Tyrannical said:

Only compromise I can see truly working out here is that if we maintain the standard limitation of 4 "standard" pools to choose from, and only one origin pool can be taken as usual, but the latter no longer contributes to your total.

 

I like compromise but unfortunately I don't care for the offerings of the newer pools beyond sorcery and even then it's only to get rune of protection which I've pretty much given up on and instead go down the cheat code path with defense amplifiers for mez protection.

[arcane]

16 minutes ago, Tyrannical said:

Only compromise I can see truly working out here is that if we maintain the standard limitation of 4 "standard" pools to choose from, and only one origin pool can be taken as usual, but the latter no longer contributes to your total.

 

Origin pools are different enough in structure to the standard power pools that I feel there's at least some justification to moving them outside the standard limitations, and they don't exactly fill a niche like normal pool powers do, but I'm adamantly against having more than one origin pool accessible since they have a lot of overlap.

 

Reasonable compromise if we really have to give ground on this one IMO.

[arcane]

22 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Why doesn't the reverse count? Meaning, if it allows me to take provoke instead of some other throw-away power that I don't even bother sticking an enhancement in, why would that be bad?

Your language is strange. No one is disallowing you from taking Provoke under the current system but you.

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 minutes ago, arcane said:

Your language is strange. No one is disallowing you from taking Provoke under the current system but you.

 

It's not strange at all. It was a response to "if we allow this everyone will take fighting/cj/hasten/leadership," where I already always take fighting/cj/hasten/fly and sometimes drop fly for leadership. You're absolutely correct that no one is forcing me down that path but any other path leads to ... lesser builds.

[arcane]

16 minutes ago, Incursion said:

So as I’m reading the last few responses, it’s clear that this is more about perceived playstyles and a snub against what some call power gamers or min maxers in fear they will gain something and only use this too their advantage. 
 

that is the lamest excuse to turn down this suggestion because you still have to give to get as you are limited by the total number of picks and slot. I have characters that are both minimax, and pure concept. I don’t see any proof whatsoever that this will cause some great imbalance, and this should be about player choice in a Growing field of power selections than appeasing or denouncing a particular style of play. Opening the limit is what I’m referring to.

Some people think games and their challenges are actually made better by hard choices, not worse.

[Sakura Tenshi]

my personal thoughts would be to have origin pools either be a special pick that doesn't count towards the cap, simply make the 'mini tier-9' an exclusive pick across the power pools (so you can have sorcerery and force of will, but only have either Rune of Protection or Unleash potential), and or extend the pool cap to 5 or 6.

 

If I were really allowed to go nuts and the coding was possible, I'd suggest selecting a powerpool at character creation which becomes an 'inherent pool', and you automatically unlock the powers as you hit certain leveling points (like 6-10-14-18-22) and not count towards pool caps. As an aside possibility to this, perhaps the 'inherent pool' would be a slightly beefed up version of the normal pool (at least in certain areas) or just came with an extra open enhancement slot. Admittedly, a lot of people would just grab like speed or some other meta-viable power. I myself mostly wanted to easily have access to the full fighting pool to melee people on characters who aren't normally melee focused like sentinels.

[Incursion]

28 minutes ago, arcane said:

Some people think games and their challenges are actually made better by hard choices, not worse.

And these changes wouldn’t make it any more easy or hard for that matter.  Opening these pools does offer hard choices because you have to give up stuff in your primary or secondary/epic to take them....so yeah there’s that. Also, challenge is what you make of it, not what someone else is doing. Nobody is forcing you to change your picks.

Edited March 19, 2021 by Incursion

[arcane]

I am literally agonizing right now over a new alt that is weighing fun/variety options of sorcery/medicine versus defense/LotG options of fighting/leadership. But frankly I prefer to agonize than to just insist the devs bulldoze all my problems away.

[arcane]

Just now, Incursion said:

According to this logic on difficulty, am I correct to assume you guys were against all the 5th powers in the pools and tier 9 like powers In the new pools? Surely they are way overpowered compared to basically everything else in the pools 

Not really but you really need to know that the straw man off topic points aren’t exactly convincing.

[Alchemystic]

31 minutes ago, Incursion said:

this guy and his shade....tisk tisk, not get baited by you again.
 

so what are you skipping to do that fifth thing?  

 

Really now? you can't honestly call somebody's argument 'lame', or attack their character, and then expect people to treat you amicably. You're the instigator here (yet again).

 

Anyway, to continue my point since you missed it; lets say I picked all the best powers from 4 different pools, I would presumably be quite effective, yes? So, if I were to venture into a 5th or 6th pool, my effectiveness would surge, so much so that the current content of the game would no longer pose a challenge.

 

There are many people who already say that it is already too easy to become overpowered, what this proposes is not to open up more options for "interesting builds", all it does is make it even more easy to achieve that state of being overpowered.

 

Lets say I'm a little short of meeting defense softcap with Hover, Combat Jumping, Manuevers and Weave all slotted. I could then just go and pick up Stealth too, and there we have it, I don't have to play it clever, I can just hoard pool powers and achieve it easier and cheaper than before.

Edited March 19, 2021 by Tyrannical

[AerialAssault]

36 minutes ago, Incursion said:

How can you abuse the system? I’m not arguing for the 3 new pools to be a free for all, having a bigger or no cap on the original pools will do what exactly? What is this rampant abuse you speak of? Please show it if you can. 

 

It would be naïve to assume that there would not be a shift of power in some regard. A lot of 'high-end' builds are centred around a rotation of three or so powers (sometimes less) and taking the full allotment of power pools. What this means is that, in these builds, if there was no restriction on power pools, people would skip the rest of the powers in their primary/secondary to say, take Rune of Protection, thereby reducing the amount of influence needed to reach max performance and gaining a powerful mini-god-mode power in return.

 

Personally, I very rarely find myself needing more than four power pools. I've never struggled to create a competitive end-game character with the tools provided, and still have everything I want that fits my character theme. People have been building GM soloing characters since the earliest days of Live, so I'm not sure why this has become a talking point now.

 

[arcane]

Right, there are plenty of powersets and combos where the required investment in primary/secondary is low enough that a fifth, maybe sixth pool would just be a total no brainer and blanket buff. If there weren’t, Bill with his min/max style wouldn’t be interested in suggesting this.

 

The one I’m currently agonizing over couldn’t fit it all, but only because I’m insisting on an unusually high number of primary/secondary choices on that one (a non-power gamer move as that many click powers isn’t optimal). 

[Incursion]

26 minutes ago, arcane said:

Not really but you really need to know that the straw man off topic points aren’t exactly convincing.

Well you guys still haven’t offered one example of what would be so imbalanced so...

[Alchemystic]

6 minutes ago, Incursion said:

Well you guys still haven’t offered one example of what would be so imbalanced so...

 

I struggle to believe that there are 4 pages on this thread and there is no evidence being presented, I even made a post on this very same page providing my own.

 

So far, you've only been dismissive of other people's arguments and made attempts to twist logic to suit yourself, I don't think there's much anyone else can do to help you understand... because you simply choose not to.

 

 

Edited March 19, 2021 by Tyrannical

[PeregrineFalcon]

I am against removing the limit of 4 power pools per character. However, there's really no point in arguing with me or even in responding to my post. Here's why:

 

1) It's just my subjective opinion. And, because it is just my subjective opinion, no amount of arguing is going to make me change said opinion.

 

2) I'm not a developer and I don't know any of the developers. So my opinion means exactly jack nothing and will not affect the developer's decisions in the slightest.

[Monos King]

I've played on some other servers that removed pool limits. It's really not all that. If we remain in the current climate, where we're still uncertain how powerful we want pools to be, this would be fine. However, going through with this absolutely would limit our ability to actually improve the pools into being more effective. Right now, if you went and spent your power picks hoarding the "best" powers from the pools, you wouldn't have a build at all. Make the pools stronger like some want though...and this would likely become problematic. So, depends on how you want to move forward.

Edited March 20, 2021 by Monos King

[arcane]

12 minutes ago, Monos King said:

I've played on some other servers that removed pool limits.

Just want to point this out for Incursion. Perhaps consider playing on a server that already has that "anything goes" philosophy you're dying for instead of trying to force that same philosophy down our throats too. At least that way there's a place for everyone. Just food for thought.

[Incursion]

8 minutes ago, arcane said:

Just want to point this out for Incursion. Perhaps consider playing on a server that already has that "anything goes" philosophy you're dying for instead of trying to force that same philosophy down our throats too. At least that way there's a place for everyone. Just food for thought.

Why when I can express myself here to make positive changes? This isn’t the 2012 anymore, this game needs updates, this server has dedicated developers donating their time to make that a reality, while you encourage me to play on other servers to experience some changes that have been asked for since 2004. That is contrary to being a member of this community and offering suggestions and feedback. 
 

So, instead of showing me actual overpowered build outs that you guys claim will happen, you argue out of speculation and fear over improvements that may mean something to a significant amount of people. Obvious it’s a popular topic for a reason. 

Edited March 19, 2021 by Incursion

[arcane]

1 minute ago, Incursion said:

changes that have been asked for since 2004.

I wonder how such requests could go unaddressed for so many years if there are zero legitimate reasons not to give you what you want as you continue to claim every time we try to argue. Could it be that someone in the devs team disagrees with you too? I guess we'll see. Maybe the devs will see this thread and it'll be in the next beta patch.

[arcane]

I started writing a response at one point explaining how one of my characters could get extra power picks at no meaningful cost due to this change making a wider array of LotG mules available with fewer power slots invested, but I figured he'd just reject that as so minimal that it can't constitute power creep. Kinda done here.

[Incursion]

1 minute ago, Night said:

So by your words, you don't actually want to play on a server with limitless powers that's already available to you, you just want your suggestion validated 😕

I’m not advocating for limitless play. I’m arguing for opening more than 4 pools.