Why does electricity sap endurance?

[Rumors]

Bear in mind this isn't me complaining or asking for a change here.  Rather, I'm more curious behind the thematic reasons of why electricity had "endurance drain" chosen as its theme.  It always felt a little weird to me that was what it got when most games that I've encountered tend to have electric theme itself with arcing or convulsions in some form or another, such as chain lightning, paralysis, etc.  Meanwhile, for a couple of other examples, Fire tends to have damage over time and Ice has slows, which are both common and make expected thematic sense.  But our zippy zappys are more stamina leeches rather than zippy zaps as far as effect goes.

 

I doubt anyone here can do anything but speculate, but yeah, I've always wondered why does lightning leech endurance instead of doing more traditional zappy stuff?

[Marshal_General]

The body has a small electrical current running through it so maybe they though it would be pulled to the stronger current from the attack leaving you with less energy.

[Hew]

If you have ever been jolted by a significant current source, it would make sense. Having, among other things, stuck a fork in a light socket when I was a kid and subsequently unable to let go... yeah.

 

[Replacement]

Tbh, I think it probably mostly had to do with "well our endurance bar is blue, and so is our electricity."

 

Being out of endurance is an inability to act, or hold yourself together (toggles), so I would also view it as building up to a stunning effect.

[Gwyrddu]

The thinking probably wasn't "We have electrical powers now, what should the effect be?" but rather "We want a power to be able to drain endurance, what power set should we put it on?"

You could have arguably made the case for cold, but cold likely already has a slowing theme to it. In either case, wherever you put it you'd have to suspend your disbelief a little since endurance is an abstract concept.

[Luminara]

2 hours ago, Marshal_General said:

The body has a small electrical current running through it so maybe they though it would be pulled to the stronger current from the attack leaving you with less energy.

 

1 hour ago, Hew said:

If you have ever been jolted by a significant current source, it would make sense. Having, among other things, stuck a fork in a light socket when I was a kid and subsequently unable to let go... yeah.

 

 

Concurrently, the flow of electricity through the body results in muscle contractions which can't be relaxed until the electricity is removed.  Having one's musculature subjected to such leads to general weariness, amongst other things.  This is why taser devices are widely used as a less than lethal means of subduing people.  Not only is the subject briefly incapacitated by the jolts of electricity, but they're also far weaker after regaining control of their limbs, making it easier to subdue and restrain them.

 

This feeling of weakness translates into endurance loss in Co*.

[arcane]

I just wanna say that having electrical currents run through your brain is, factually, tiring.

 

But then again, perhaps being in the middle of an atomic blast would be too.

[Grouchybeast]

2 hours ago, Replacement said:

Tbh, I think it probably mostly had to do with "well our endurance bar is blue, and so is our electricity."

 

I also suspect that this is the actual answer.  Blue power obviously saps blue stat!

[UltraAlt]

4 hours ago, Rumors said:

I doubt anyone here can do anything but speculate, but yeah, I've always wondered why does lightning leech endurance instead of doing more traditional zappy stuff?

 

I can see why Stun or Disorient would make more sense as the set FX, but what other power set would you give the END Drain to?

 

They came up with the END drain concept during initial game development.

I suspect that the concept was just too good to chuck out the window and ended up landing on the electrical powers.

 

Might want to ask Jack or someone that worked on the game during the original development stage.

[KauaiJim]

As others have stated, electric shock causes nerves to trigger muscles.  Between the using up of ATP and buildup of things like lactate your muscles become tired.  Additionally, nerves are very susceptible to electric shock and have their own side effects.  From the internet:

 

A shock can affect the nervous system

Nerves are tissue that offers very little resistance to the passage of an electric current. When nerves are affected by an electric shock, the consequences include pain, tingling, numbness, weakness or difficulty moving a limb. These effects may clear up with time or be permanent.  Electric injury can also affect the central nervous system. When a shock occurs, the victim may be dazed or may experience amnesia, seizure or respiratory arrest.

 

So, it's a combination of the effects on both your nervous system and your muscles that results in you feeling (quite literally) 'zapped'.

 

Just ask any triathlete or marathon runner if getting struck by lightening will help them or hurt them.  

 

Also - Because they needed to give electricity it's own unique gimmick and endurance was just begging for it's chance to be more important as a gameplay mechanism...

[oedipus_tex]

I think it my have come from the idea that Electricity "powers things." The Electric sets both drain endurance and also tend to give it back in powers like Power Sink. I think it's a really nice thematic fit personally.

 

It was also an Issue 1 Defender set, and I think there may have been a rule at the time that all of these sets have a debuff/control element:

• Energy: Knockback
• Dark: ToHit
• Electric: Endurance
• Radiation: Defense
• Psi: -Recharge
• Ice: -Recharge/Slow

 

Weirdly, Defenders don't actually do more endurance drain than everyone else with Electric Blast. I think is a missed opportunity. Same with knockback chance in Energy Blast. I'd kill for Defender version of Energy Blast with 25% higher chance to KB in each power, and an Electric Blast with higher chance to drain enemies in the nuke and stronger drains overall, but that is not how the OG team interpreted it. 

Edited June 16, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[Rumors]

3 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

 

I can see why Stun or Disorient would make more sense as the set FX, but what other power set would you give the END Drain to?

 

Well, I mean, technically end drain could be applied to almost anything.  Being set on fire is pretty exhausting after you're done waving your arms, screaming in pain, and stopping to drop and roll, for example.  Or more boring, heat exhaustion effects.  But really, I dunno what would be the "end drain" element of the game if not electricity.  Might've ended up like other effects, such as -Regen, which isn't really tied to an element as far as I can recall.

 

 

1 hour ago, oedipus_tex said:

I think it my have come from the idea that Electricity "powers things." The Electric sets both drain endurance and also tend to give it back in powers like Power Sink. I think it's a really nice thematic fit personally.

 

It was also an Issue 1 Defender set, and I think there may have been a rule at the time that all of these sets have a debuff/control element:

• Energy: Knockback
• Dark: ToHit
• Electric: Endurance
• Radiation: Defense
• Psi: -Recharge
• Ice: -Recharge/Slow

 

Weirdly, Defenders don't actually do more endurance drain than everyone else with Electric Blast. I think is a missed opportunity. Same with knockback chance in Energy Blast. I'd kill for Defender version of Energy Blast with 25% higher chance to KB in each power, and an Electric Blast with higher chance to drain enemies in the nuke and stronger drains overall, but that is not how the OG team interpreted it. 

 

 

The Defender explanation is probably along the real reason for it.  Or it having a debuff anyway.  A "chance to hold/stun/sleep" on every power might have stepped on Controller's toes too much at the time while a "chance to arc from nearby victims to other foes" probably woulda been more Blastery.  But never noticed that Defenders are the same at sapping as everyone else though.  That is certainly strange.

 

Defender Energy should knock targets back farther!

[Solarverse]

I don't know, I think if Black Lightening zapped my ass with any given attack, it would take the fight out of me, lol.

[wjrasmussen]

16 hours ago, Rumors said:

Bear in mind this isn't me complaining or asking for a change here.  Rather, I'm more curious behind the thematic reasons of why electricity had "endurance drain" chosen as its theme.  It always felt a little weird to me that was what it got when most games that I've encountered tend to have electric theme itself with arcing or convulsions in some form or another, such as chain lightning, paralysis, etc.  Meanwhile, for a couple of other examples, Fire tends to have damage over time and Ice has slows, which are both common and make expected thematic sense.  But our zippy zappys are more stamina leeches rather than zippy zaps as far as effect goes.

 

I doubt anyone here can do anything but speculate, but yeah, I've always wondered why does lightning leech endurance instead of doing more traditional zappy stuff?

Would you prefer to be held for 60 seconds? 

 

These kinds of posts are annoying.  Sure, you "don't want changes" and only seek to understand.  It is what it is, work it out in your head or just accept it.

[Xenosone]

Because adding endurance to targets would be wierd especially since most mobs ignore end altogether and do whatever they want(especially stunned).

[SeraphimKensai]

Way back in the day when the game was first being developed Matt Miller was listening to Modest Mouse on his Zune quite a bit, and he realized the batteries drained while using it, so he plugged it in and it charged back up. He told the rest of the team about this and they said during lunch one day at the office, I think it was a Taco Tuesday, what if Electric blasts charged up characters endurance. Then the others were like well what if they drained the bad guys endurance and charged up the electrical hero some. 

 

And that is pretty much how it happened as far as I can remember. My memory is a bit hazy, and I wasn't there, but I asked Jack one time after I beat him in a pvp match with my old Spines/Regen scrapper that cost us losing Instant Healing as a toggle. Sorry about that btw.

Edited June 17, 2021 by SeraphimKensai

[Naraka]

I always thought the actual trope of a power was a combination of damage types and effects so when making sets, you want to aim for something unique so...

 

Energy = energy/smashing w/ stun and/or KB

Radiation = energy and sometimes toxic w/ -def (defense penetration)

Electric = pure energy w/ END drain/-recovery and sleep

Sound = Energy/smashing w/ -res (and does it still have an accuracy penalty?)

 

Overall, having the secondary effect be a hard control like Stun or hold is something to avoid in a blast set. So I'd say, it was mainly coming up with themes of damage types+secondary effects while not overpowering a set in favor of other sets.

 

I like to imagine, when creating new sets, that is part of the process that goes into thinking of themes. Like the "holy light" set having energy and ally healing, could use also some energy paired with lethal for variety.

Edited June 17, 2021 by Naraka

[Sir Myshkin]

13 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Modest Mouse

 

... I was super prepared to respond with a lyrical reference to one of their songs relevant to your post but I got rather distracted. See, their new album since six years ago comes out next week.

I'm kinda freaking out over here.

[Eldyem]

On 6/17/2021 at 3:08 AM, wjrasmussen said:

Would you prefer to be held for 60 seconds? 

 

These kinds of posts are annoying.  Sure, you "don't want changes" and only seek to understand.  It is what it is, work it out in your head or just accept it.

Why does it need to be 60 seconds? Being honest, a .5 second or so hold back when mez dropped toggles seems very in-theme with a paralysis/jolt/whatever electricity side effect. Annoying and awful to play against, but that's a different discussion. Random clockwork already sleep my low level characters nonstop.

[Rumors]

On 6/17/2021 at 2:08 AM, wjrasmussen said:

Would you prefer to be held for 60 seconds? 

 

These kinds of posts are annoying.  Sure, you "don't want changes" and only seek to understand.  It is what it is, work it out in your head or just accept it.

 

No, since I understand even a micro-mez on every blast/melee attack could be a bit overpowered.  If I were to sit down and choose a theme for it back at launch, I probably would have gone with a (chance to) arc to enemies near the target with diminished damage.  And probably replaced one or more of the AoEs, like Ball Lightning or Thunderstrike, with some sort of chain lightning effect like Jolting Chain.

 

But, this far along?  No, far too late.  Stripping end drain for a different effect would jack with too many people's characters, especially all the people building their Electric Blast/Melee/Affinity/whatever as sappers.  So it is what it is these days. 

Edited June 19, 2021 by Rumors

[saltyorange]

I would assume it's just because they wanted to put an endurance debuff as an effect and electricity has the theme of power, energy. In it's positive form it gives energy and so it makes sense for it's negative to take it. Personally I like electric in games to have an arc effect because I think it's cool and it's kind of like an AoE but different enough to justify it as it's own thing. Way to late to try to change something like that for this game I think though.

Edited June 19, 2021 by saltyorange

[Hew]

10 hours ago, Rumors said:

I probably would have gone with a (chance to) arc to enemies near the target with diminished damage. 

They have this in martial secondary for doms, with the ricocheting shuriken that does exactly this (but not in an arc, in a chain-ish manner) 

[oedipus_tex]

The chaining powers thing as it currently exists is kind of a pain in the butt to code IMO and I can see why they didn't go whole hog with it. The Blast sets have three distinct varieties, Blaster (needs Defiance coded in each blast), Defender (vanilla), and Corruptor (needs Scourge coded in each blast) and coding all the appropriate pseudo-pets probably seemed like a big chore.

[Marshal_General]

1 hour ago, oedipus_tex said:

The chaining powers thing as it currently exists is kind of a pain in the butt to code IMO and I can see why they didn't go whole hog with it. The Blast sets have three distinct varieties, Blaster (needs Defiance coded in each blast), Defender (vanilla), and Corruptor (needs Scourge coded in each blast) and coding all the appropriate pseudo-pets probably seemed like a big chore.

That would depend on how defender's damage buff for team size is coded.

[oedipus_tex]

7 hours ago, Marshal_General said:

That would depend on how defender's damage buff for team size is coded.

 

 

The Defender damage buff for team size is actually coded as a global Damage bonus and not into each individual power. The portion of it that affects your damage is Inherent.Inherent.Vigilance. It basically works by providing you with Scale 0.3 +Damage and then taking away some based on team size. Defender versions of Blast sets tend to be the easier version of the power to read and usually is what I prefer to look at when figuring out how a power works.

 

Defiance and Scourge on the other hand are coded power for power (as are Domination, Containment, and Critical Hit etc). So if you design a Blast power that is available to Defender, Blaster, and Corruptor that uses psuedopets, you usually need to code two different versions. One that Scourges and one that doesn't. Defiance can be handled outside the pet.

 

FWIW I wouldn't be surprised if a future Homecoming project is to make Blaster Defiance a global proc system or even based on the Rage meter (like Brutes) which from a code maintenance perspective is a lot cleaner than the current implementation. Scourge may or may not be a bit trickier to pull off as a global proc, mainly because the damage type of the Scourge currently needs to match the damage type of the power that triggered it.