The Drawing Board: Enhancements

[Lich]

Howdy folks. This is part 1 of a series of very high level reworks and revamps and refreshes to the game's core ideas.

 

Caveat: These ideas are big picture, the biggest possible picture available. Therefore, I have no real expectation that these are picked up and implemented by the Homecoming Team. This is a thought experiment, not a list of demands. With that in mind, please try to keep an open mind. These threads will be full of radical ideas and I'd love for you to go down the rabbit hole about them with me.

 

Other (future) Drawing Board Threads:

• Power Pools

Other Current Drawing Board Threads:

• Incarnate System

 

With that out of the way, on with the show!

 

Enhancements

The Enhancement system is, in a word, fantastic. The idea that rather than acquiring gear which boosts you directly, you acquire enhancements which boost your power and sometimes indirectly boost you - its genius. But that doesn't mean the system isn't in dire need of a Drawing Board overhaul!

 

Part 1: The Clean-Out:

Any good Drawing Board idea starts with the clean out. This is where we get rid of things we no longer need. So, here's what's on the cutting room floor:

1. Dual-Origin Enhancements
2. Training-Origin Enhancements
3. Generic IO Enhancements (such as Invention: Damage and all that)

The reasoning here is that with the following changes, these enhancement types will become redundant - and we hate redundancy. So let's get 'em out of here!

 

Part 2: The Name Game:

This section is similarly brief, but similarly important. Its where we clean up what things are named in this new flow. Names are important, they set expectations, they compare and contrast. The goal with these changes is to clean up some of the name cruft that's been building up.

• Single-Origin Enhancements are now just called Origin Enhancements.
• Invention-Origin Enhancements (the set bonus ones, since generic IOs no longer exist) are now called Invention Enhancements.

 

Part 3: The Big Changes:

Here's where we start making moves that significantly change the flow of the system. Don't worry, I'll explain my reasonings later, but for right now, we've just got to get them up here so things later on can make sense:

1. Origin Enhancements no longer deprecate when you level past them.
   • This means that a level 10 +Damage Origin Enhancement will still give you its Damage bonus even at level 50, although obviously that bonus is much lower in magnitude than a level 50 +Damage Origin Enhancement.
2. All Enhancements no longer have their base bonuses stop working when Exemplared below their minimum level. Instead, they automatically lower their values as if they were enhancements of the level you are Exemplared to.
   • For example, a level 50 +Damage Origin Enhancement would behave like a level 10 +Damage enhancement if you were playing in level 10 content.
   • If a power is disabled due to exemplaring, its set bonuses and global procs also stop working.
   • Note that the Set Bonuses of an Invention set do indeed stop working when below level 10 even if the power remains available.
     • Terminology Clarification: base bonuses = what enhancements directly modify, compare to set bonuses which are their bonus set effects. Base bonuses do include procs and added global benefits, as long as they are part of the top part of the enhancement.
3. All Enhancements now follow the same numerical scale across levels.
   • This means that a level 15 Origin Enhancement that increases damage matches numerically to an Attuned Enhancement's Damage value at that level.
   • Note that these values are lower when an Invention Enhancement has its base values split between two or more attributes. For example, a +Damage +Accuracy Invention Enhancement would grant half as much +Damage and +Accuracy as a single Origin Enhancement would grant to either of those stats.
   • These values are lowered less for D-Sync or Hami-O or other "Special" enhancements, ensuring that they remain a more numerically attractive but much rarer choice than Origin Enhancements or Invention Enhancements.
4. All Invention Enhancements are now Attuned Enhancements with a standardized level range. All of them.
   • This means that all Invention Enhancements have a minimum level of 10 and will level up with you from there until 50.
   • Fun fact: this changed coupled with the removal of generic IOs in Part 1 means that the entire AH category for "crafted enhancements" can now be removed.
5. All Invention Enhancements now have their set bonuses normalized to moderate tier values.
   • In some cases where this would mean that two sets exist in the exact same space (Example: the two Leaping sets, one of which is currently a strictly worse version of the other) those bonuses are instead changed to benefit something else. 
6. All Invention Enhancements now have a Superior version that can be obtained via an Enhancement Catalyst.
   • This Superior version is purple in rarity and has increased base and set bonus values. They act just like Purples do right now and have similar magnitudes for their attributes.
   • Existing Purples then become Superior versions of new and back-filled non-Superior Versions. This means that it's now possible to find a recipe for Apocalypse: Damage, craft that attuned enhancement with its normal, non-superior values, then catalyze it to get the current Apocalypse: Damage that you are familiar with in the game right now.
7. All Invention Enhancements are now Unique.
   • This means that no two identical Invention Enhancements can be placed in your slots across all of your powers. And just like the ATO vs Superior ATO enhancements, this uniqueness is shared across regular vs superior versions. 
   • Now, using my fantastical mind powers, I know exactly what you're thinking - what about Luck of the Gambler's Global Recharge bonus? And to that I would like to first gently remind you that the purpose of these theorycrafting threads is to provide a meaningful set of significant changes. Things can be different without being worse. It's likely - probable, even - that the superior-ized versions of your enhancements' base values and set bonuses will more than make up for the loss of global recharge. And if they don't, that's okay too, since the goal here is for things to be different. Right now a huge chunk of powers design and build design hinges on that proc - its why all of the power pools people take are full of defense powers they don't use. And that's something that I think should change, and I think making it unique like the rest of the global procs in the game is a very good way of doing that. But enough about this - onwards, to Part 4...

 

Part 4: Why?

This section is fun because its where we talk about the reasons behind these changes. And for this set of Drawing Board ideas, the big reasons are twofold: Simplicity and Diversity.

 

Simplicity is a hugely important part of design and its something that City of Heroes does very well. The game is, by and large, easy to pick up and fun to learn. You find enhancements that increase the power of your powers, you find salvage and recipes to craft fun and unique enhancements, and later on you can find super rare enhancements that can really radically boost your powers to the next level. Where this simplicity is lost is in the current very strange and hard to explain rules around enhancements and exemplaring. There are pages and pages of guides about this topic, its an oft-repeated question in the Help channel, and its something that unless you know where to look is hard to answer in game. The fact is, right now, if you asked a random person playing a random piece of exemplared content the question "do you know which of your enhancements are working?" you'd probably get the answer "I don't know." That isn't to say this information is completely opaque and that no one knows anything, but compared to other rock-solid parts of the game, its certainly an outlier. You know for a fact which powers stop working as you exemplar down, they become unusable which is noticeable and easy to understand. You should ideally also know for a fact which aspects of those powers have stopped working as well.

 

Simplifying the leveling process going up or down is important because its a place where the game's complexity feels like an outlier. It doesn't really get us anywhere to keep SOs expiring every few levels. Nor does it feel fun to feel unusually weak in low or high level content without ever really understanding why. 

 

Diversity is the other major pillar of this revamp - specifically, providing means and incentive for players to diversify which enhancement sets they prioritize over others. Right now at level 50 a startlingly few amount of sets get used. Lotg, purples, ATOs, performance shifter and miracle procs... compared to the breadth and depth of the total number of IOs in the game, we've collapsed over time to a very shallow pool of available options. By elevating other Invention Enhancement sets to purple-power-level, we've opened the floodgates for a much broader suite of available options that players can feel good about choosing from. Furthermore, it doesn't feel good when comparing sets and realizing that a surprising selection of them are meant to be strictly worse versions of contemporary choices. Ideally each recipe you find, each enhancement you craft - someone should want them. And that is indeed an impossible goal to reach, as there will always be winners and losers, but its an ideal for a reason.

 

The currently biggest outlier in the build meta is the aforementioned Luck of the Gambler proc. Its prevalent in nearly all optimized builds and for good reason - it's strong AND easy to fit in the corners of your power pools. And that is not, in and of itself, a problem per se. It does, however, create other problems by virtue of its existence, the biggest one in my opinion being that Lotg's proc causes players to pick powers they don't use to house it. And I know I'm guilty of this myself, my builds dutifully find 5 spaces so I can slot them just like a lot of other people do, but that doesn't mean that things shouldn't change so that players don't feel obligated to do that. I'd rather see a City of Heroes where players pick powers they feel excited about using, instead of one where they feel obligated to pick powers they don't use so that their existing rotation can be just that much better. 

 

Finally, what I like most about this entire Drawing Board overhaul is that walking a hypothetical character through their leveling process gets much easier and much more fun. Starting out and grabbing early Origin Enhancements to give you that edge in low level content, then finding early recipes that you can craft some starting Invention enhancements that you know remain strong as you level, and then finally finishing your build at level 50 when you can start using Catalysts to bring those Invention Enhancements to the next level. There's no part of this new flow where your character would lose power - unlike now where you can level past your SOs and not realize until you figure things out mid-combat. And since leveling enhancements are all on the same numerical track, you don't feel punished for leveling with exclusively SOs as you mess around with your combat rotation, experimenting with what abilities feel best to use. 

 

Part 5: Finishing Touches

By way of a conclusion I'd like to reiterate that this thread (and the others I have cooking up) are more about the theory than the feasibility or realism. I am offering them more as a hypothetical discussion topic instead of a serious suggestion that I genuinely expect to be implemented. Although I certainly prefer this streamlined system, you may not, and that's totally okay.

 

Well, hopefully that was a fun read! I certainly had fun writing this up and noodling on the details. And if you have any feedback at all on this kind of overhaul or have additional questions or suggestions, feel free to let me know down below. And with that, it's time for me to get back to playing! Happy New Year, Paragon City!

Edited January 7, 2023 by Lich

[Rudra]

10 minutes ago, Lich said:

Generic IO Enhancements (such as Invention: Damage and all that)

Nope. There are powers that don't fall into any enhancement set category and so can only be slotted with the generic IOs or SOs. And I vastly prefer the IOs.

 

11 minutes ago, Lich said:

All Enhancements now follow the same numerical scale across levels.

• This means that a level 15 Origin Enhancement that increases damage matches numerically to an Attuned Enhancement's Damage value at that level.

Mob scaling would need to be adjusted to compensate.

 

13 minutes ago, Lich said:

All Invention Enhancements are now Attuned Enhancements with a minimum level of 10. All of them.

• This means that all Invention Enhancements have a minimum level of 10 and will level up with you from there.
• Fun fact: this changed coupled with the removal of generic IOs in Part 1 means that the entire AH category for "crafted enhancements" can now be removed.

Even the "must be level 50 to slot" purples? I'm not a fan of that. Other than those? Yeah, I'd be fine with it.

 

14 minutes ago, Lich said:

All Invention Enhancements now have their set bonuses normalized to moderate tier values.

• In some cases where this would mean that two sets exist in the exact same space (Example: the two Leaping sets, one of which is currently a strictly worse version of the other) those bonuses are instead changed to benefit something else. 

This would kill the benefits of the purple sets.

 

15 minutes ago, Lich said:

All Invention Enhancements are now Unique.

• This means that no two identical Invention Enhancements can be placed in your slots across all of your powers. And just like the ATO vs Superior ATO enhancements, this uniqueness is shared across regular vs superior versions. 
• Now, using my fantastical mind powers, I know exactly what you're thinking - what about Luck of the Gambler's Global Recharge bonus? And to that I would like to first gently remind you that the purpose of these theorycrafting threads is to provide a meaningful set of significant changes. Things can be different without being worse. It's likely - probable, even - that the superior-ized versions of your enhancements' base values and set bonuses will more than make up for the loss of global recharge. And if they don't, that's okay too, since the goal here is for things to be different. Right now a huge chunk of powers design and build design hinges on that proc - its why all of the power pools people take are full of defense powers they don't use. And that's something that I think should change, and I think making it unique like the rest of the global procs in the game is a very good way of doing that. But enough about this - onwards, to Part 4...

I don't much care if LotG global recharge becomes unique, though you will likely hear a lot of angry comments from others. The part of this I'm not a fan of is that you would no longer be able to boost your defenses and resists as well. No more stacking Mako's Bite bonuses for instance. And for players that prefer to solo on squishy characters, that would be a pretty hefty handicap in late game.

 

17 minutes ago, Lich said:

And for this set of Drawing Board ideas, the big reasons are twofold: Simplicity and Diversity.

I see the simplicity part of this thread. It feels more like you are stripping out the diversity part to me though.

 

In general, I think you have some interesting ideas in this thread. Many of which I actually like. A few of which I most definitely do not.

[Lich]

Just now, Rudra said:

Nope. There are powers that don't fall into any enhancement set category and so can only be slotted with the generic IOs or SOs. And I vastly prefer the IOs.

 

Mob scaling would need to be adjusted to compensate.

 

Even the "must be level 50 to slot" purples? I'm not a fan of that. Other than those? Yeah, I'd be fine with it.

 

This would kill the benefits of the purple sets.

 

I don't much care if LotG global recharge becomes unique, though you will likely hear a lot of angry comments from others. The part of this I'm not a fan of is that you would no longer be able to boost your defenses and resists as well. No more stacking Mako's Bite bonuses for instance. And for players that prefer to solo on squishy characters, that would be a pretty hefty handicap in late game.

 

I see the simplicity part of this thread. It feels more like you are stripping out the diversity part to me though.

 

In general, I think you have some interesting ideas in this thread. Many of which I actually like. A few of which I most definitely do not.

 

In order:

 

1: since all enhancement generic values would be normalized and SOs would stop falling off, there would be no difference between an IO and a SO in this situation. They are on the cutting room floor because they would become identical to the appropriate SO for your origin.

 

2: probably! Always a safe bet, frankly 🙂

 

3: Purples in this overhaul are the "superior" version of their backfilled non-superior version - check out Part 3's point 6's 2nd bullet point for where that lies in the writeup.

 

4: The Purple sets would still be significantly better because their numbers are higher. See Superior ATOs vs regular ATOs.

 

5: You are correct that making things unique means you can't use the same set repeatedly to aim for a juicy set bonus. However, as a lot of the set bonuses would need to change (since they would otherwise be identical sets) it's entirely feasible for a mix of different IO sets to provide totally comparable bonuses. The benefit here is that rather than Makos being the way to go, you'd aim for a mix of Makos plus others - it helps pull spiky IO prices towards the norm and increases demand for other sets. Remember, all of the set bonus values are being boosted if they're on the lower-tier track, so it wouldn't be hard to find a mix of different sets that give you what you're looking for.

 

6: fair! this sorta stuff is very subjective. 

 

I appreciate the feedback! 🙂

[Akisan]

A lot to unpack here:

 

First, well, Origin & Invention Enhancements... don't really roll of the tongue.  I'd probably name them Singles and Sets, and along with that Singles don't just have to provide stuff like +Damage, but could be like the LotG +rech or Steadfast's +Def. They just don't have any other enhancements that they're in a "set" with (and could even be unique!).

 

1 hour ago, Lich said:

• All Enhancements no longer have their base bonuses stop working when Exemplared below their minimum level. Instead, they automatically lower their values as if they were enhancements of the level you are Exemplared to.
  • For example, a level 50 +Damage Origin Enhancement would behave like a level 10 +Damage enhancement if you were playing in level 10 content.
  • If a power is disabled due to exemplaring, its set bonuses and global procs also stop working.
  • Note that the Set Bonuses of an Invention set do indeed stop working when below level 10 even if the power remains available.
    • Terminology Clarification: base bonuses = what enhancements directly modify, compare to set bonuses which are their bonus set effects. Base bonuses do include procs and added global benefits, as long as they are part of the top part of the enhancement.

 

This... already sort of happens.  When you Exemplar, all of your enhancements' primary values take a % hit in effectiveness, based on how far you've Exemplared (no matter what type of enhancement, SO, IO, HO, etc).  It's set up this way so you're not too much more powerful than the characters you're teaming with, who have fewer enhancement slots (and usually less powerful enhancements to put in those slots).  You can, however, completely lose set bonuses - at more than 3 levels below the IO's value, it no longer counts for set bonuses.  Attuned IOs are special, in that they act in the way you describe (and keep their set bonus all the way down to 3 levels below the set's minimum level).  Having enhancements simply scale their level to match your current level would be a decent buff to Exemplared characters.

 

1 hour ago, Lich said:

All Enhancements now follow the same numerical scale across levels.

• This means that a level 15 Origin Enhancement that increases damage matches numerically to an Attuned Enhancement's Damage value at that level.
• Note that these values are lower when an Invention Enhancement has its base values split between two or more attributes. For example, a +Damage +Accuracy Invention Enhancement would grant half as much +Damage and +Accuracy as a single Origin Enhancement would grant to either of those stats.
• These values are lowered less for D-Sync or Hami-O or other "Special" enhancements, ensuring that they remain a more numerically attractive but much rarer choice than Origin Enhancements or Invention Enhancements.

 

This is... an interesting combined nerf and buff.  Assuming similar values, this would globally reduce IO's numerical effectiveness (dual and triple- IOs grant more than half or one/third values, e.g. Posi's Acc/Dam grants +26.5% to both, instead of +21.2%), but would significantly raise SO's effectiveness at the high end (adjusted from +33% to +42.4% at level 50).

 

As for the other proposed IO changes (4-7):

    Opening Sets to expanded ranges is neat - but some sets would likely also need to be extended to 50 as well (like Steadfast, which tops at 30). This, along with normalizing set bonuses, would require a rebalance.  Some sets top out early, or aren't available early, because their set bonuses are more powerful than other sets in the same category (several of the melee damage sets not only top out at 40, but are only 4-sets.  They do provide bonuses that level 50 sets don't provide though).  Also, normalizing set bonuses removes some of the consideration for *which* sets players go for - for sets that provide Aoe and Ranged defense, do they go for the one with more Aoe, or more Ranged defense.

    Superior versions of all the sets (and the non-superior versions of the current superiors) are definitely a fun thought - but we'd have to be very careful with this set-up, especially paired with (7), all IOs are Unique.  With all IOs unique anyways, then players *should* purple out their entire build (and would likely be *much* more powerful after doing so). And speaking of (7) - it looks good on paper, but would go a long way to killing build diversity.  There's only so many sets in the game, so a scrapper with 5 six-socketed melee attacks would be either frankenslotting or using 5 of the 8 available six-sets (and most builds would probably be using the same 5, or at least 4 of them).  This, and normalizing the enhancements' set bonuses, would likely make the 5-limit for set bonuses (if kept) entirely unavoidable for most types of bonus (and entirely unreachable for others).  5x (normalized) ranged defense isn't getting anyone near the cap that wasn't there already.  Typically, you need several of each grade of ranged defense to build meaningful defenses on a squishy.  I'd compromise here: normal IOs aren't unique (unless they already were), but Superior IOs are - you can have 4 Hecatombs in a build, but only 1 may be superior.  Players would have to chose between stacking specific types of set bonus, or having better enhancement values (but much more restricted stacking of bonuses).

[Lich]

1 hour ago, Akisan said:

This... already sort of happens.  When you Exemplar, all of your enhancements' primary values take a % hit in effectiveness, based on how far you've Exemplared (no matter what type of enhancement, SO, IO, HO, etc).  It's set up this way so you're not too much more powerful than the characters you're teaming with, who have fewer enhancement slots (and usually less powerful enhancements to put in those slots).  You can, however, completely lose set bonuses - at more than 3 levels below the IO's value, it no longer counts for set bonuses.  Attuned IOs are special, in that they act in the way you describe (and keep their set bonus all the way down to 3 levels below the set's minimum level).  Having enhancements simply scale their level to match your current level would be a decent buff to Exemplared characters.

 

It does something similar, yes, but in a way that requires players to reference a chart and do math. Not ideal! 

 

For Reference: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Exemplar_Effects_on_Enhancements

[Zect]

3 hours ago, Lich said:

All Invention Enhancements are now Unique.

 

Of all the problematic suggestions in your list, this is by far the most awful one of all. This is going to disproportionately benefit powersets/AT's that can slot sets from many different categories, and harm powersets/AT's that can slot a much narrower variety of sets and/or have a limited number sets available in their categories.

 

3 hours ago, Lich said:

Diversity is the other major pillar of this revamp - specifically, providing means and incentive for players to diversify which enhancement sets they prioritize over others. Right now at level 50 a startlingly few amount of sets get used. Lotg, purples, ATOs, performance shifter and miracle procs... compared to the breadth and depth of the total number of IOs in the game, we've collapsed over time to a very shallow pool of available options.

 

Your changes will result in a different meta, but not a more diverse one. Basically, your vision will force different sets to be present in a build, but you will have shrunk the overall size of the design space for making builds.

 

You make the same mistake that a lot of players do: assuming that just because something is less common means it is problematic. While there are duds in the IO system, many of the 1st-generation sets in particular, in general it's not an issue that some sets are only worth slotting in very niche cases, nor is it a big problem that 90% of builds contain 5x lotg's (which is really an issue with power pool balance, not the lotg itself) and a miracle. Lotg's and purples provide low-hanging recharge bonus fruit. They are a strong counterbalance to turtle builds for armor sets that dump everything into def and res - basically an attempt to reward not completely minmaxing for survivability. The same can be said of the res uniques and +3 def uniques - they are basically an enticement away from dumping every single slot into +rech. Miracles, or more accurately the ability to not slot a miracle proc on some very high recovery builds, allows such builds to convert excess end into slots. These are all different levers that a skilled build designer can tweak tailor a build to specific goals; your suggestions will not only result in a smaller number of levers, but a narrower range over which they can be pushed. I encourage you to modify a mids' database with your proposed changes and see how they pan out in reality and how builds are potentially affected.

Edited January 1, 2023 by Zect

[Lich]

10 minutes ago, Zect said:

 

Of all the problematic suggestions in your list, this is by far the most awful one of all. This is going to disproportionately benefit powersets/AT's that can slot sets from many different categories, and harm powersets/AT's that can slot a much narrower variety of sets and/or have a limited number sets available in their categories.

That's why part of this involves a lot of numbers work to make sure the unused sets are up to par. There are a LOT of sets that could change for the better to easily let even pretty narrow builds fill out defenses or offenses without stacking the same IO set 5x 🙂 

[Lich]

2 hours ago, Akisan said:

Opening Sets to expanded ranges is neat - but some sets would likely also need to be extended to 50 as well (like Steadfast, which tops at 30). This, along with normalizing set bonuses, would require a rebalance.  Some sets top out early, or aren't available early, because their set bonuses are more powerful than other sets in the same category (several of the melee damage sets not only top out at 40, but are only 4-sets.  They do provide bonuses that level 50 sets don't provide though).  Also, normalizing set bonuses removes some of the consideration for *which* sets players go for - for sets that provide Aoe and Ranged defense, do they go for the one with more Aoe, or more Ranged defense.

 

Forgot to reply to this earlier but you are correct - this was part of the original idea set but wasn't made clear in the OP. I've edited things to make it clearer that this is part of the plan, nice catch!

[Luminara]

3 hours ago, Lich said:

Origin Enhancements no longer deprecate when you level past them.

• This means that a level 10 +Damage Origin Enhancement will still give you its Damage bonus even at level 50, although obviously that bonus is much lower in magnitude than a level 50 +Damage Origin Enhancement.

 

So you've basically just deleted SOs and renamed IOs, in an unnecessarily convoluted way.

 

4 hours ago, Lich said:

All Enhancements no longer have their base bonuses stop working when Exemplared below their minimum level. Instead, they automatically lower their values as if they were enhancements of the level you are Exemplared to.

 

The exemplar system already does that.  A reduction in enhancement strength is applied when a character is exemplared.  The lower the level exemplared to, the greater the reduction.  The total reduction does go slightly below what a native level enhancement would provide at the exemplared level, but that's intentional, a balance measure to account for the greater number of slots available to the exemplared character.  The basic enhancement boosts themselves, such as Damage, or Accuracy, or Endurance Reduction, are never completely disabled.  Only set bonuses are shut off when a exemplared below a power's availability.  Even though the power itself might not be usable, slotted enhancements will still provide boosts to that power.

 

So this entire subsection is unnecessary.

 

I'm not going to go any further.  You're proposing a complete redesign of the enhancement system without a corresponding rebalance of the game to account for it.  That's not going to happen.  The game is, still, balanced around SOs, because SOs provide the baseline for development expectations.  That 33.3% that a +0 SO provides is key to creating a playable experience.  Trying to redesign critters around 19.2% at this level and 36.7% at that level, fiddling with their HP and powers and creating new critters and powers to fill gaps, would be a massive amount of work.  It takes our boys and girls on the HC team several months to create a few missions with a handful of new critters or revamped old critters.  Redoing the entire game around a new enhancement system would take them years, and they wouldn't be fixing bugs or working on new content in that period.

 

Unless you're volunteering to spend the next several years doing all of the balance work to make this functional, in which case, go for it.  Some of us will still be here in 2035, when you're finished.

 

Oh, hang on, I do see one more thing that I want to address...

 

4 hours ago, Lich said:

All Invention Enhancements are now Unique.

 

Nope.  Diversity comes from choice, not restriction.  I choose to pursue certain set bonuses, like +Movement, because I want to.  Take away the ability to make that choice and you don't encourage me to diversify my slotting, you take away a reason to play.  I play Co* because it offers me the option to create my characters my way, and set bonuses play a big part of that.  Start locking me out of choices and I'm not going to try to find different sets, I'll find a different game.

[Lich]

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

So you've basically just deleted SOs and renamed IOs, in an unnecessarily convoluted way.

 

 

The exemplar system already does that.  A reduction in enhancement strength is applied when a character is exemplared.  The lower the level exemplared to, the greater the reduction.  The total reduction does go slightly below what a native level enhancement would provide at the exemplared level, but that's intentional, a balance measure to account for the greater number of slots available to the exemplared character.  The basic enhancement boosts themselves, such as Damage, or Accuracy, or Endurance Reduction, are never completely disabled.  Only set bonuses are shut off when a exemplared below a power's availability.  Even though the power itself might not be usable, slotted enhancements will still provide boosts to that power.

 

So this entire subsection is unnecessary.

 

I'm not going to go any further.  You're proposing a complete redesign of the enhancement system without a corresponding rebalance of the game to account for it.  That's not going to happen.  The game is, still, balanced around SOs, because SOs provide the baseline for development expectations.  That 33.3% that a +0 SO provides is key to creating a playable experience.  Trying to redesign critters around 19.2% at this level and 36.7% at that level, fiddling with their HP and powers and creating new critters and powers to fill gaps, would be a massive amount of work.  It takes our boys and girls on the HC team several months to create a few missions with a handful of new critters or revamped old critters.  Redoing the entire game around a new enhancement system would take them years, and they wouldn't be fixing bugs or working on new content in that period.

 

Unless you're volunteering to spend the next several years doing all of the balance work to make this functional, in which case, go for it.  Some of us will still be here in 2035, when you're finished.

 

Oh, hang on, I do see one more thing that I want to address...

 

 

Nope.  Diversity comes from choice, not restriction.  I choose to pursue certain set bonuses, like +Movement, because I want to.  Take away the ability to make that choice and you don't encourage me to diversify my slotting, you take away a reason to play.  I play Co* because it offers me the option to create my characters my way, and set bonuses play a big part of that.  Start locking me out of choices and I'm not going to try to find different sets, I'll find a different game.

 

Ah, as a reminder, this is a theorycrafting series for big overhauls and not a serious set of expectations for the game. So if you're getting stressed about change, I get it! Change is scary! So don't feel worried as if any of this is happening because it's just for fun 🙂

 

As far as feedback responses go, let's get into it! Thanks in advance for reading! 

 

So as far as switching IOs and SOs it's completely different - players can buy SOs outright from NPC vendors and find them in drops outright. So it's completely different and drastically preferable to have players aim for new and improved Origin Enhancements instead of IOs which only come every 5 levels, can't be sold or bought to a store directly, and require salvage and influence to craft. 

 

As far as exemplaring goes, right now the system is confusing and clunky. Yes, I know exemplaring sorta works, sorta. But in order to figure out what happens numerically there's actually a chart - a whole chart! - that players have to reference to figure out what's happening. That's the sign of a system that needs improving. 

 

Restrictions breed creativity. Adding restrictions to the existing suite of sets and boosting those sets who need help would absolutely make things more diverse, not less. If more sets are viable and players are forced to diversify their sets then things will be much less cookie cutter. Imagine that new world! I think it'd be awesome.

 

As to your closing thoughts, the fun part of theorycrafting is that we can do these fun redesigns in our heads without expecting someone to toil away to prove some nebulous point. I don't have to do this work by hand to know that knowing exactly what your enhancements are doing is the better system. Like, come on, no one likes SOs falling off and having to re-up them. It isn't fun to have hundreds of recipes across their level bands that are not used or useful because they're intentionally set at lower values than their rarer counterparts. There's cruft here in this beautiful game, cruft I love tinkering with and crafting ways to design around. So there's no need to promise to quit over what's merely a fun discussion 🙂

 

Thanks for the feedback!

 

Edited January 2, 2023 by Lich

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, Lich said:

As far as exemplaring goes, right now the system is confusing and clunky. Yes, I know exemplaring sorta works, sorta. But in order to figure out what happens numerically there's actually a chart - a whole chart! - that players have to reference to figure out what's happening. That's the sign of a system that needs improving. 

Exemplaring isn't actually a clunky process from my point of view. It's actually rather simple. Character is reduced in combat level to set level but retains all powers up to +5 levels of the exemplar level while also retaining all enhancements and applicable set bonuses. While I have disagreements with the exemplar system, it is rather simple to understand. As far as enhancement bonuses (as opposed to set bonuses) goes while exemplared, the effectiveness is reduced to roughly the same point as enhancements of that level. No need to refer to a chart. If you're concerned about the specific bonuses provided, you can check SOs of that level. I think you may even be able to just check your slotted enhancements while exemplared to see their current bonus.

 

1 hour ago, Lich said:

Restrictions breed creativity. Adding restrictions to the existing suite of sets and boosting those sets who need help would absolutely make things more diverse, not less. If more sets are viable and players are forced to diversify their sets then things will be much less cookie cutter. Imagine that new world! I think it'd be awesome.

Yes, having a restriction forces a player to find a creative approach to dealing with that restriction to accomplish things (s)he may want. However, taking away current options will never be viewed as encouragement for creativity. It will always be viewed as a punishment of some variety. In this case, it would be viewed as a constraint to force players to build according to the preferences of the OP's author or the imposition of a set build style for characters.

 

(Edit: Especially since having more options rather than restrictions gives players more tools with which to be creative.)

Edited January 2, 2023 by Rudra

[golstat2003]

Yeah the exemplar system is one of the easiest systems in the game by far. There really is no thinking for players who understand how it works. Of all the things that exist in COH the sk and exemplar systems I'd say are the least clunky. Also I find your ideas would DECREASE build diversity. Drastically.

 

There isn't much in this I agree with. And removing SOs when the game DOES NOT require IOs, makes most of this dead on arrival.

 

Have fun theory crafting though. 🙂 

[Lich]

8 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

Yeah the exemplar system is one of the easiest systems in the game by far. There really is no thinking for players who understand how it works. Of all the things that exist in COH the sk and exemplar systems I'd say are the least clunky. Also I find your ideas would DECREASE build diversity. Drastically.

 

There isn't much in this I agree with. And removing SOs when the game DOES NOT require IOs, makes most of this dead on arrival.

 

Have fun theory crafting though. 🙂 

 

To clarify, Single Origins are not what's being removed - the generic IOs are. That being said, there are a lot of changes that I think would really improve them. Right now SOs do funky stuff that relates their level to your level so that you want to stay within the optimum range, and IOs just give an amount of stats that increases as the IO level increases. I want SOs to work like IOs do (except remain available from NPC stores, remain sellable to vendors, and remain purchaseable from NPCs without requiring crafting first) and to dump the level scaling part entirely. 

 

The reason SOs need a formula to exemplar down non-linearly is because their values are based on schedules (something not really explained to the player in-game adequately) and grant stats based on their level relative to yours. So no matter what level you and your SOs are, you're starting from the same numerical place as you approach 50 which is pretty strange from a game design perspective. Whereas IOs just have a flat amount that scales intuitively up or down based on their level. Having all Enhancements base their power on solely their level, and then scaling those values up or down based on your level is the cleaner and easier to explain method of handling this kind of numerical ephemeral mechanic, in my opinion.

 

It makes more sense to me for higher level enhancements to give more of a bonus than lower level ones.

[nihilii]

I think smoothing out values across the board is more likely to kill diversity than to enhance it. The lesser the differences, the easier it is to zone in on the optimal choice and stick with it.

For example, if I understand your idea correctly, this would kill +5 purple IOs (as they'd have to be attuned to reach the same performance as a +0 purple). Which would remove a build option in slotting, for example, a single +5 Apoc Damage in a power and get +66% damage enhancement from this. This is something I like to do on dominator holds, maximising either procs or hold power while keeping decent damage.

 

It's interesting to me you name perf shifter and miracle as part of a shallow pool "we" feel forced to pick, when most of my builds don't include either proc. On the other hand, I will always have Kismet unique, but I've seen many players not even consider this one.

Purples and ATOs being generally good (but not always), rather than a detriment to diversity, actually enhances it because they are indeed uniques. So you have to consider where each of these options can be deployed to best effect.

The "make everything unique" part of your proposal matches that dynamic, but only up to a point: with normalized scales and bonuses across the board, comes greater interchangeability. It should become relatively easily to "solve" for the optimal build then, by looking at the set bonuses you want most and going down the list from the best fitting set.

 

Personally I'd love for the game to go in the opposite direction and introduce more cool uniques and sets. Which forces choice! Which IO is in, which IO is out? Do I want this new unique giving me a chance for a +20% damage buff lasting 30s, or do I want a perf shifter?

 

This is what the devs have been doing so far so I'm in luck... Although they have been, reasonably, relatively conservative with these introductions compared to the (indeed) awesomeness of LotG and the like. So we're perhaps not feeling the squeeze of opportunity cost just yet. I look at these new travel uniques and I think, this is nice, but is it *really* worth one of my slots...

I've had back-and-forths with Synapse's Shock compared to Power Transfer, and even Perf Shifter as a distant third, though. So there's proof-of-concept there.

[srmalloy]

22 hours ago, Lich said:

Fun fact: this changed coupled with the removal of generic IOs in Part 1 means that the entire AH category for "crafted enhancements" can now be removed.

As well as all enhancement boosters, since all of the purple sets that could be bought under "crafted enhancements" and boosted are now, for some idiotic reason, slapped with an attunement that prevents them from being boosted.

 

Also, with the removal of generic IOs, it's no longer possible in most cases to enhance a single-slot power for one aspect -- you can't just drop an Acc in a power and boost it, because sets don't have a naked Accuracy enhancement in them.

 

On the whole, your suggestion looks to strip a great deal of flexibility out of slotting characters; while having SOs available from level 2 means that TOs and DOs can be removed, and IO scaling should be looked at, overall, a major change like this needs to be broken up and examined in detail before consideration of whether any part of it should be implemented.

[Lich]

2 hours ago, nihilii said:

For example, if I understand your idea correctly, this would kill +5 purple IOs (as they'd have to be attuned to reach the same performance as a +0 purple). Which would remove a build option in slotting, for example, a single +5 Apoc Damage in a power and get +66% damage enhancement from this. This is something I like to do on dominator holds, maximising either procs or hold power while keeping decent damage.

 

Hmmm, this is certainly something I indeed have not accounted for in the new flow - boosting is quite starkly missing! Ack! Back to the drawing board!

 

As a first pass idea for how Boosting fits into this flow, I'm wondering if Boosters could become the non-invention version of Catalysts. Maybe they could exist as a way to help the special enhancements (and I suppose the base Origin enhancements) keep up to par with the new age of all-superiors. I have to wonder if removing the Combining mechanic entirely and just switching everything over to Boosters might be even easier - use a booster to bring a Hami-O up to +3, use a booster to bring an invention enhancement to its superior form, etc etc. I do like that single +Attribute enhancements get strong enough to build around, and I don't want to lose that.

[Lich]

2 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Also, with the removal of generic IOs, it's no longer possible in most cases to enhance a single-slot power for one aspect -- you can't just drop an Acc in a power and boost it, because sets don't have a naked Accuracy enhancement in them.

 

In my head players would just use Origin Enhancements for this purpose, as at level 50 they'd be identical in usage and values to current level 50 IOs (but with the added benefit of being much more in-flavor, requiring no crafting, able to be bought outright from NPCs and sold to vendors, etc etc).

[Aracknight]

While I like the idea of "generic" IO's getting, essentially, the attunement treatment, I disagree pretty heartily with the rest.