Thought experiment (status effects)

[Luminara]

Buffs and debuffs have a fixed duration and variable strength.  Take Flash Arrow, slot it with -ToHit enhancements, the -ToHit value increases, but the duration remains consistent.  Slot Weave with Defense enhancements, the strength of the Defense buff increases, but the interval between and duration of each tick remains consistent.

 

Status effects have a fixed strength and variable duration.  Take any standard control, slot it for its control effect, the duration increases, but the magnitude remains consistent.

 

What if status effects functioned the way buffs/debuffs do?  What if every status effect started at a base magnitude and slotting increased that magnitude, but the duration remained fixed?  Archetype modifiers would still apply, so controllers and dominators would remain the premiere archetypes for imposing status effects.  What do you believe would be the positive results of such a thing?  The negatives?

[DoctorDitko]

I think I like the idea, but of course the numbers will matter.

Controllers might be more welcome on teams, but might find it tougher to solo.

I'd say it's worth dropping in the suggestion box to see if the Devs are interested.

[Luminara]

3 hours ago, DoctorDitko said:

I'd say it's worth dropping in the suggestion box to see if the Devs are interested.

 

It's too much of a difference from current game play, not something they'd implement.  I just felt like putting it out for others to ponder, maybe spark some interesting discussion.

[Black Zot]

The difference is, debuffs can be (and usually are) partially resisted.  Mez is all or nothing; you either have enough magnitude to have an effect or you don't.  Duration (ALSO resistable and commonly done so) vs recharge is what determines whether you can stack enough mag to matter against anything above Lt, and removing the ability to enhance duration would basically render most controls worthless.

 

Control-heavy sets and any content (ex - Hamidon) that relied on them would be rendered unplayable.

[Yomo Kimyata]

There are plenty of procs that can add mag to a mez effect, and some of them can even be useful!  I'd love to see more of this in future sets.

[Blackfeather]

2 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

There are plenty of procs that can add mag to a mez effect, and some of them can even be useful!  I'd love to see more of this in future sets.

 

A +Chance to Overpower for Controllers could be pretty neat. Maybe even within the archetype itself, scaling based on the amount of status effects/magnitude/damage already applied on an enemy, even if they aren't yet locked down?

Edited September 12, 2022 by Blackfeather

[Six-Six]

What if you could enhance both at your discretion, BUT you can only enhance 1 aspect of the power... either stronger effect or longer. Once the system senses that you've added +3 Mag Hold, then your power automatically reverts to base duration. Similarly, If you've got anything that extends the duration of your buffs/status effects, then you're stuck at base mag. I know that sounds complicated to implement (like how to treat global duration extensions), but it makes sense in my noodle.

... OR... 
1) if it's from an object or a tool (i.e. Flash Arrow, Smoke Grenade, Seeker Drones, even Robot Henchmen's powers) then magnitude is set but the duration is enhanceable. I think of it as a standard object anybody can get and you can only tinker with it so much... like upgrading your phone's battery... a better (stronger) battery just means it lasts longer, not that it give more power. 

2) if it's from an inherent power (i.e. Dark's -to hit range of powers, melee's Stun/hold Punches) then magnitude and duration not only increases a little bit as you level (with maybe a certain cap or ceiling???), but should also be both enhanceable. It's a skill you hone so it's only natural that you get better at it.

[EmperorSteele]

I feel like adding Mag would have to cause the entire mez system to be revamped. I mean, if it were trivial to achieve 6+ mag hold with a single cast, then all the bosses in the game would be at... well, ANYONE with a hold's mercy in just one hit. The procs don't count, because A) the "game is not balanced around IOs", B) they only have a CHANCE to go off, and C) when they DO go off, their added mag is only 8 seconds anyway.

Right now, with the exception of maybe wanting to solo-hold an AV (and, by design, those should be hard to hold), there's not much reason for a control character to want to enhance the magnitude on their mezzes. Non-control characters being able to do so would put Controllers and Dominators out of a job. So, yeah, things would have to change on both sides (power and foe stats) for this to be balanced.

[biostem]

14 hours ago, Luminara said:

What if status effects functioned the way buffs/debuffs do?  What if every status effect started at a base magnitude and slotting increased that magnitude, but the duration remained fixed?  Archetype modifiers would still apply, so controllers and dominators would remain the premiere archetypes for imposing status effects.  What do you believe would be the positive results of such a thing?  The negatives?

It would change the meta - the name of the game would be more on recharge to maintain the higher mag you could get.  Powers that granted only 1 or 2 mag effects would become more useful as they could be improved to affect bosses.  I think Dominators would lose out a bit, here, as controllers would be able to achieve the higher level mag effects without stacking, which was kind of the doms' thing while domination was running.  All those mez effects strewn about the APPs/PPPs for other ATs would become a lot more useful, as they could hold bosses with a single application.  Synergies like time wall granting the delayed effect, which in turn gives time stop an extra mag of hold, would become less important, since you could just slot time stop directly for said extra magnitude.  Would domination double the magnitude before or after this bonus?

[Snarky]

The recoding on this would be a nightmare.  I would guess.  Part of Tanks resistance involves  reducing the time of the effect.   How would you address that?   And a million other questions…

Edited September 12, 2022 by Snarky

[Ukase]

I personally wouldn't care, but let's say if the more hold enhancements you slotted a hold with, the greater the mag of the hold. 
Wouldn't that be a case where an AT like a controller might get left out in the cold, if other ATs could just match their mag with IOs? 

It would be an interesting thing to experiment with, but it would need to be thought out from more angles than I can ponder at the moment. 

[iBot]

Interesting though I have a sneaky (snarky?) feeling that the answer lies somewhere in the realm of the current system is by design and mostly has to do with balance issues.  Those two stats (magnitude and duration) are set up in such a way that makes it easier for the devs to control just how much of an effect the players can apply.  One thing that has always bothered me about this type of game in general (not just CoX) is that the devs seem to like to give us power but then go out of their way to make sure we can't be unstoppable.  I call it "The Superman Problem".  Create a character that cannot be defeated which causes all sorts of story line issues and zero tension then invent a method to remove power from the character to introduce some danger.

 

To answer the OP: this can of worms would touch so many other things that I doubt very much anyone could avoid all the alligators in that swamp.  Not that they shouldn't try.  I'm all for giving players as many control levers to mess with when it comes to their characters as possible.  But man oh man would the player base go bonkers.

[Shred Monkey]

I'm not sure your suggestion is the complete answer, but I like where it's going.  I think status effects in this game are too binary.  You're held, or you're not... and you stay that way for a really long time because all the durations are pretty long with no way out except an inspiration you may or may not have.   I don't like it, primarily because status effects are too easy to defeat with status protection while simultaneously being too easy to be permanently locked down without status protection.

 

One way to add a more gradient application of status effects is to borrow from turn based games a system of saving throws.  For example, to be held you have to fail a saving die roll by rolling less then the magnitude of the spell.  Furthermore, you get a chance to break free once per round (or once per second) with another saving roll.  You stay held until the spell runs out or you roll a die higher then the magnitude of the spell.   Protections against status effects are added to your saving roll, while stronger spells have higher saving rolls required.

 

With this method you are tweaking your % chance of being held as well as the likelyhood of escaping early with the same attribute.

 

All that said, I want to point out I'm just responding to the thought experiment proposed by the OP.  I like the game as it is because it is a system I can abuse well to my own advantage.

 

Edited September 12, 2022 by Shred Monkey

[Sir Myshkin]

Gonna piggy-back on what Shred said a bit in the regards of looking at the reverse of the status ailments problem. We have Protection and we have Resistance in this game, but status resistance in this game is worth the same as a box of crayons in a furnace. Currently resistance just alters the duration of a status ailment, but the variance from say 50% to 150% is so benign and it's laughable.

 

As Shred pointed out in a classic D&D/Pathfinder kind of sense if you have rolls/saves against effects and innate protections and resistances then there should be options to completely avoid getting hit by an effect, and then incredible scaling resistances if an effect lands. It has always been my prospective that status protection should have acted like a defense mechanism that gets a "to-hit" roll, and then a duration check against resistance that scales more appropriately (as in if someone has 100% Resistance, 0% duration, true immunity).

 

A more balanced status system like this would truly change combat and create a greater value for protective powers and give more thought to how melee characters behave in the game. I also do not believe that altering the function of this system would require a game-breaking upheaval because it would be using the existing mechanics and simply altering their function tags. Yes that would entail time on that end of course, but not nearly the same as presenting an entirely new premise.

[Luminara]

55 minutes ago, Ukase said:

Wouldn't that be a case where an AT like a controller might get left out in the cold, if other ATs could just match their mag with IOs?

Just the opposite, since archetype modifiers would still be in force.  Controllers and dominators, since they have inherently higher Ranged/Melee control modifiers, would have the highest base magnitudes and would benefit the most from slotting, and be the only archetypes capable of attaining mag 4.  Everyone else would have to be satisfied with mag 3, unless they went completely bananas with enhancements (slotting 6 control enhancements in complete disregard of ED), or used more than 3 enhancements and coupled that with an Alpha which improved the control's magnitude... and if they did that, they'd have to sacrifice other things they value, like damage.

 

And that was the inspiration for the theorycrafting of mag-variable holds.  Right now, we're playing a game in which any archetype can perma-mez bosses without sacrificing anything.  My Ice/Stone/Earth brute has that option as part of her attack chain (Freezing Touch (slotted with Hecatomb) and Fossilize (slotted with Apocalypse)).  There's no trade-off.  I believe it could have been done better, that variable magnitude would have resulted in more developer control over control and more real build choices having to be made for characters who crossed over into the threshold of controller/dominator "territory".

 

But I'm also convinced that there's a reason Cryptic did it the way they did.  At lower levels, controllers (doms didn't exist at that time) would have had to sacrifice damage entirely in order to use their controls effectively, and that would have impinged on the carved in stone design philosophy of all characters being capable of soloing reasonably well.  So even if they were considering this approach, they never would've used it as it was just too detrimental to controllers, at that time.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, iBot said:

To answer the OP: this can of worms would touch so many other things that I doubt very much anyone could avoid all the alligators in that swamp.  Not that they shouldn't try.

 

55 minutes ago, Shred Monkey said:

I'm not sure your suggestion is the complete answer, but I like where it's going.

 

I need to reiterate, this isn't a suggestion, it's not a proposal, it's never going to be part of the game.  This is just something to think and talk about.  It's far too radical a change.  This will never cross a developer desk, I just felt that it was an interesting twist to the existing mechanics which we could examine and speculate about in a "what might have been" way.

[Sir Myshkin]

4 minutes ago, Luminara said:

But I'm also convinced that there's a reason Cryptic did it the way they did.  At lower levels, controllers (doms didn't exist at that time) would have had to sacrifice damage entirely in order to use their controls effectively, and that would have impinged on the carved in stone design philosophy of all characters being capable of soloing reasonably well.  So even if they were considering this approach, they never would've used it as it was just too detrimental to controllers, at that time.

 

This posed an interesting thought in my mind about the ideology of necessitating damage to complete combat in this game. While maybe not necessarily something they could have managed back then, the potential to code a design work around this following idea could be done: Slot for control or damage, and for every power that is completely slotted for control your core pet's strength is increased to compensate. It definitely becomes an "eggs in one basket" scenario though.

 

Then I thought about the ideology of the game being built on arresting/capturing and physical combat is not always a key component of those circumstances in a "real world" (comic) scenario. It would be interesting if [Time Spent Mez] could be an included attribute to defeating an enemy target.

 

 

[Blackfeather]

54 minutes ago, Sir Myshkin said:

This posed an interesting thought in my mind about the ideology of necessitating damage to complete combat in this game. While maybe not necessarily something they could have managed back then, the potential to code a design work around this following idea could be done: Slot for control or damage, and for every power that is completely slotted for control your core pet's strength is increased to compensate. It definitely becomes an "eggs in one basket" scenario though.

 

Then I thought about the ideology of the game being built on arresting/capturing and physical combat is not always a key component of those circumstances in a "real world" (comic) scenario. It would be interesting if [Time Spent Mez] could be an included attribute to defeating an enemy target.

 

Maybe like an inherent power that heroes can use to 'teleport' an enemy away from the battlefield that has a very long interrupt time?

[PeregrineFalcon]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

I need to reiterate, this isn't a suggestion, it's not a proposal, it's never going to be part of the game.  This is just something to think and talk about.  It's far too radical a change.  This will never cross a developer desk, I just felt that it was an interesting twist to the existing mechanics which we could examine and speculate about in a "what might have been" way.

Thank you for this thought experiment. It's interesting to think about and discuss.

 

I play a lot of MMOs and table top RPGs, and mez or controls are always a problem. I call it the "Boss Problem."

 

Players generally don't want to mez trash mobs or even "Lieutenants", they just kill them fast enough that they're not an issue, they want to mez the Boss. Whether it's called a Boss, an EB, a Veteran, a Champion, a GM, a BBEG or an Ancient Dragon. It's the boss monster that they want to mez, and of course developers (and DM's) don't want the players to be able to mez their boss monster.

 

So as a game designer, how do you make mezzes something that players actually want to use without making them game breaking?

 

To quote Private Grif: "I don't know man, but it keeps me up at night."

 

And at this point I don't think there's anything the Homecoming team can really do to fix it. Any rework of the Mez System, even a minor one, is likely to change so many things that the game that came out the other end probably wouldn't look a lot like City of Heroes anymore.

[Sir Myshkin]

On 9/12/2022 at 5:42 PM, Blackfeather said:

 

Maybe like an inherent power that heroes can use to 'teleport' an enemy away from the battlefield that has a very long interrupt time?

I get the sentiment but no, that’s a bit too on the nose of “goodbye”. I’m more looking at time spent being held/slept/immobile/etc being equivalent to damage (in concept). A minion has ~450 max HP, then maybe it has a Mez bar of 225 and every second it spends mezzed it counts as one “hp” off that pool until it depletes and then the minion is defeated no different than if it had been clobbered with a Katana.