So imagine our Devs decided to go for CoH 2...

[Snarky]

5 minutes ago, aethereal said:

 

I just...  really didn't.  I'm not totally sure why you think I did!  If someone put me in charge of CoH2, I think that one of my biggest concerns would be that my ideas would make it too complex, too hard to understand and manipulate the mechanics of.  I think that there are some areas of CoH as it stands that are persistently misunderstood that I don't think are very complex.

 

(The accuracy vs to-hit thing is the exception, I do think that should be simplified.  I think it's potentially super complex as it stands, and that we actually end up with kind of dumb mechanics here precisely because it's so complex that we have to limit the number of moving pieces in order to keep it from having weird results.)

 

But, like, I genuinely don't know why you think it's more complicated to activate three toggles that, combined, give you let's say 13% defense-all, instead of having one toggle and then two auto-powers that modify the toggle to have 13% defense-all.  It seems straightforwardly the case that those are basically the same, just one of them involves less unnecessary button-pushing.  And it seems clearly the case to me as well that if you have one toggle that gives you +8% defense-all, and then a non-perma clicky that gives you another +12% defense-all, that using that clicky is more complicated than the toggle-on-and-forget 13% defense-all of three toggles.

Without beating the horse to death, feeding it to villagers and then beating them to death...

 

You just specifically advocated for simplifying the toggles....while insisting you are not advocating to simplify that area.

 

You know what forget it.  Horse, villagers.  Then I'm going to find some cannibals, feed them the villagers, and, well you get the drift.  Okay, maybe you don't.

[FupDup]

There is a difference between tactical/strategic complexity and just pushing more buttons for the sake of pushing more buttons. That is what aethereal is trying to say. 

 

Another analogy would be difficulty in games. Increasing enemy health and damage does make the game harder, but at a certain point it can become a sort of "artificial difficulty" that is just a chore rather than a true exciting challenge. Or, in this game, stuff like Paragon Protectors popping Moment of Glory and being nigh unkillable for like 5 minutes. It's not difficult. I can go make a sandwich or something and not be in any danger while I wait it out. It's just tedious. 

 

As for aethereal's specifics, one part of me does agree that some of our toggles do feel artificially spread out across multiple powers just for the sake of filling up the "required" 9 power slots. However, if we did consolidate some, then we would have to figure out other thematically-appropriate things to fill in those gaps with. And we'd have to reevaluate set bonuses  since we wouldn't be able to stack as many defense or resist sets on an armored toon. So while the suggestion appears simple, in practice it's like pulling bars out of a jenga tower. 

[Snarky]

2 minutes ago, FupDup said:

There is a difference between tactical/strategic complexity and just pushing more buttons for the sake of pushing more buttons. That is what aethereal is trying to say. 

 

if you want to ignore the end cost of the toggles, the layering of the armor coming in as you level and a number of other factors.  

 

Which are NOT COMPLICATED

 

because there is no call to SIMPLIFY, obviously...

 

[FupDup]

1 minute ago, Snarky said:

if you want to ignore the end cost of the toggles, the layering of the armor coming in as you level and a number of other factors.  

 

Which are NOT COMPLICATED

 

because there is no call to SIMPLIFY, obviously...

 

The end costs would likely be combined together in addition to the armor effects. 

[Snarky]

5 minutes ago, FupDup said:

The end costs would likely be combined together in addition to the armor effects. 

so much simpler.  i see it now.

[Communistpenguin]

Hmmm...

 

More variety in where content comes from. Right now its almost like 100% talk to a contact get a mission. Maybe have it so some missions and story arcs start as a "drop" You could complicate this further by adding utility powers that make finding them easier, aka detective skills. You could add more reason to take these by making them also make finding objectives easier. For example, lets say I take "Super Senses." One aspect of this power is that it increases my odds for Mission clues to drop when I fight mobs outside of missions. These clues are crafted together to reveal a mission or story arc. Lets say i defeat a bunch of gang members, and it reveals enough clues that I put together to start a story arc to combat the flow of drugs in the city. But my "Super senses" power ALSO helps revel the location of mobs on a map, or glowies or whatever, Not every power has to be, or should be about defeating Mobs. 

 

Maybe also, when you level up, you chose between getting a new ability, or modifying a current one? Not sure, but this would especially make sense in defenses. Instead of having like 4 defense toggles, you have 1 or 2 that you continually improve the abilities. 

 

Mobs that do more than just stand around. Make runners summon other mobs, so being sloppy about how you fight can cause it to escalate quickly. 

[Techwright]

On 3/23/2023 at 11:20 AM, Sir Myshkin said:

For some reason I'm struggling to see this. A vampire... truck driver.

 

Apparently you've never been near Batesville, IN, USA.  The Batesville Casket Company has trucks out on the adjacent interstate all the time.  It might just be the perfect job for @Snarky.

 

 

5 hours ago, Luminara said:

Better mission design.  Running from one portal to another in PI is stupid.  Having a mission with one objective, and the entire mission taking 92 seconds, is stupid.

 

While I'd agree about the mission design, the idea of leaving one portal and going to another makes a bit of sense from a role-playing standpoint.  Presumably these things need precision tuning.  I could see loading the second portal in the building and having it on standby to move a team as quickly as possible to another dimension while they're still filing out of the former portal.  But yeah, having them leapfrog around the complex is not good game design. 

[LegionAlpha]

On 3/23/2023 at 8:52 AM, d4verman said:

Isn't City of Titans supposed to be CoH 2 in a way? 

That is if it ever gets released. 

 

From what I have learned from my time on this planet, suppose and rarely coincide.  From what we have been told over what? 12 years now from them, Soon(tm) is relative. And anyone brings it up the comment is deleted.  

[LegionAlpha]

Side note: If there was a sequel to the game, I would hope for powersets released every other issue depending on story. 

 

Oh, make that a thing. More stories.  

[El D]

1 hour ago, LegionAlpha said:

Side note: If there was a sequel to the game, I would hope for powersets released every other issue depending on story. 

 

Oh, make that a thing. More stories.  

 

Totally agree on the stories.

 

More specifically, stories that focus on exploring the setting, organizations, and the other characters - how they all interact and their motivations - to build investment in the player's own narrative, rather than the focus CoH was taking of 'You're becoming the most powerful and competent superpowered being on Primal Earth - just like literally every other Incarnate!' The SSAs were pretty guilty of this too, to the direct detriment of many signature characters. Statesman is an all too fitting example... A story that prompts the player to think about how their character relates to the guy whose face is on the game box, contextualizing what that character means within the setting and what they symbolize, would be a lot more interesting than one where the guy on the box gets jobbed and every player character in the game is catapulted to the exact same 'You succeeded where he failed - you're the best!' spot to show how much better they are.

 

Early CoH stories with Modern CoH mechanics? Yes, more please.

Edited March 25, 2023 by El D

[Wavicle]

Great gameplay somewhere in the range of FFXIV or Elden Ring.

More in depth storylines that run through the whole game.

More cutscenes (but skippable) and VOICE ACTING.

[High_Beam]

On 3/23/2023 at 12:11 PM, Astralock said:

Funnily enough, Ship of Heroes (another CoH spiritual successor), just launched its Steam page here.  It's coming at the end of this year.

Thanks for the link.  I had heard about it.  It looks terrible however; the graphics and movement.  I hope that's all pre-beta imagery.

[aethereal]

14 hours ago, Snarky said:

if you want to ignore the end cost of the toggles, the layering of the armor coming in as you level and a number of other factors.  

What are these "number of other factors"?

 

And nothing about making some powers be autos or "things that add to another toggle" would defeat a layering of armor coming in as you level.

 

Endurance management is an interesting one, and something that feeds into my thoughts here:

 

So, first of all, if we wanted something that was "just like CoH1, but with less dumb button pressing," you could easily make a hypothetical CoH2 to allow effects to "join" toggles that were fully separately enhanced.  In CoH1, we can't really do that (an effect can "join" a toggle, but its enhancements won't affect the power that joins the toggle, and it won't change the endurance cost of the toggle) because the system was never set up for that, but it would be trivial if you were making a new game planning for it from the start to make it so that, say, my "weave" power could join a generic defensive toggle and add both defense and endurance cost that was controlled by enhancement on the weave power.

 

That'd make this a pretty much pure QoL change -- less button pressing, same dynamics.

 

But that's not actually entirely what I want to argue for.  I think that some toggles really should be made auto powers, and some should be made non-perma clicks.

 

I assert that clicks are obviously way more complex than toggles: you not only still have to manage the endurance cost and the benefit of the power, you also have to manage the recharge and timing, which toggles don't require.  Anyone going to argue otherwise?

 

So, auto powers.  It is of course true that with an auto power, you don't have an endurance management concern.  And you could imagine a scenario where right now, we're agonizing about the deets of endurance management, and going to auto powers considerably simplifies character building.  But I don't think that scenario has anything to do with modern CoH.

 

Does anyone say, "Oh man I'd like to take Combat Jumping but I just can't afford the endurance cost?"  I mean, come on, no, obviously.  Nobody says that about Weave, much less Combat Jumping.  Endurance management has become plenty generous in CoH that, outside of small handful of uncommonly-used toggles, everyone can just walk around with 7+ toggles on.  (And those uncommon expensive toggles, I'd say should definitely stay toggles).

 

In a hypothetical CoH2, I'd like to get back to the point where we managed our toggles more actively!  I think it's a more interesting game if we might say, "I'm going to turn off this toggle right now," or where our toggles were suppressed, or toggled off antagonistically, or where some are mutually exclusive with each other.  In today's CoH, that's...  a big cliff.  A scrapper with his seven to ten toggles turned on might have 90% mitigation.  If you toggle everything off, or suppress it, he suddenly takes 10x the damage that he was taking, and dies instantly.

 

I think that if we take a bunch of the effect of those toggles and move them to auto powers, then it opens up design space to then be more aggressive about requiring him to manage the remainder.  If someone gets mezzed and it suppressed his toggles and he takes 2x the damage he was taking before, that's survivable, an interesting tactical challenge.  If he takes 10x the damage he was taking before, he probably just faceplants (and then goes back to the hospital or gets rezzed where it's safe and spends 20 second clicking 10 toggles).  The result of toggles being so effective and so omnipresent is that we have to be deferential of them.  By moving some of the durability that most characters get through their toggles to auto powers or clicks, we allow ourselves the chance to be much more aggressive at making people actually manage the rest of the toggles (including increasing their endurance cost significantly so that there's either a strategic decision to invest heavily in endurance reduction, or else a tactical decision to turn off the toggle when it's not needed).

[Snarky]

1 minute ago, aethereal said:

What are these "number of other factors"?

 

And nothing about making some powers be autos or "things that add to another toggle" would defeat a layering of armor coming in as you level.

 

never said it would defeat anything.  it would. (oh gawd here we go again) simplify it.  Lets not get all complicated in this back and forth.  You are stating your changes to Toggles would not simplify them.  I am saying you are incorrect.  That is the whole Zimtschnecken.

 

Number of other factors.  These mostly deal with character building.  Very complicated, you might not be interested.  But the number of powers you have of a certain type many times defines the build due to the enhancers you can slap on.  As you streamline you are going to kill some builds without a second thought to the work the players have put in.  I could go on.  You will no doubt ask me to go on.

 

Look.  Again.  You have stated multiple times you are not for simplifying toggles and a few other areas of the game.  Yet you are obviously advocating doing so.  

 

This was fun last night.  Now you are starting to be like that 10 pd Yorkie that wants to bite ankles.  Step off.

[aethereal]

19 minutes ago, Snarky said:

never said it would defeat anything.  it would. (oh gawd here we go again) simplify it.  Lets not get all complicated in this back and forth.  You are stating your changes to Toggles would not simplify them.  I am saying you are incorrect.  That is the whole Zimtschnecken.

 

I take it you didn't actually ready my post? Should I have simplified it for you?  Lots of words can be hard, I know.

 

I'll knock it down to one sentence:  Fewer toggles, more clicks, the toggles that remain are harder choices that have to be more actively managed -- this is more complexity in both build and game than a bunch of low-cost toggles.

Edited March 25, 2023 by aethereal

[Snarky]

19 hours ago, aethereal said:

3.  End the City of Toggles.  This game has way too many toggles.  Make a focused effort to say that all-in, most characters should have at most two toggles from pools and, if they have a toggle-heavy powerset, two toggles from their powerset.  Convert lots of powers that currently are toggles to being auto-powers, or to adding an effect to another toggle, or just rethink whether this power needs to be an always-on bonus to begin with.  This should be aided by a decreasing-returns curve with defense/resistance, in which we aren't chasing every last 2% defense obsessively.

nice that you are revising your Toggle ideas.

 

But your original idea (quoted here in case you forgot) was a simplification of the powerset

Edited March 25, 2023 by Snarky

[Snarky]

19 hours ago, aethereal said:

2.  Revamp how mezz protection works.  We currently have a situation where armored classes are mooooostly immune to mez and unarmored classes are horribly screwed over by it, we should move both towards the center a little, making mez less problematic for the unarmored classes, but less ignoreable for the armored classes (this probably looks something like armored classes mostly get mez resistance, not protection, so they still get mezzed but for short periods of time, plus everyone gets a period of invulnerability or nigh-invulnerability after they get mezzed, like in PvP, so that large mobs don't lock you down).

 

you are also arguing that this is not a call to simplify Mez rules.  

[Snarky]

19 hours ago, aethereal said:

The basic sins of current CoH on a mechanical level are the way defense and recharge work.  They distort everything in the game.  Too much stuff is built on top of them to really rework them in CoH as it stands, it would just be too disruptive.  But if you're starting from the beginning, you should definitely change how they work.

 

but here is the "tell" you are sprinting away from.  you are against the way people build toons.  when you are a good builder you can take an intricate knowledge and squueze more performance.  you want to do away with that.

 

Like, just take every NASCAR vehicle and give them the same motor.  Not simplifying.  Actually making it more complicated. RIGHT?

[Go0gleplex]

Boomtown is partially revitalized, a private hero group (or is it) moves into the Hollows and begins driving the gangs out of Cherry Hills and Red River, Sky Way City and Faultline's construction advances with more buildings up, terrain recovered, etc., Perez Park is finally cleaned up (I mean, it's pretty useless as a zone currently really) or the Shivans make a break thru from Galaxy City into it thru the war wall, An aquarium/amusement park zone has been repaired and re-opened north of Kallisti by Boomtown and is now a Carnie turf war with the Family butting in, with the Lords of Death defeated and Kings being a massive Urban Renewal success (really, decide if its offices, slums/burbs, or industrial...the current mix makes no sense from city planning standpoint...especially with the PPD HQ right in the middle of it all. really?!!?) the Skulls presence is reduced as the King Pin (Praetorian Syndicate Survivor) rises. A new gang (Skorpions-backed by Professor Echo) appear and lay siege to Crey (a tech war in the truest sense) over left over Rikti salvage around Paragon. 

There really should be an airport zone given Paragon being a major city...and between Perez, The Heights in the Hollows, the islands and fringe areas in Talos, Fringe areas in Founders...that's a lot of waste space. Perez makes sense. The hollows, given the size of the park there...roads or trails should be established to reach the lookouts and such. The islands should have docks if not actually designated as nature preserves, especially if someone spent the $$ to put a police call box out there. And who in their right mind is going to allow Devouring Earth there and around Terra Volta to remain when they are isolated and no chance of being reinforced? We call that a turkey shoot party where I'm from. lol 

Edited March 25, 2023 by Go0gleplex
a few extra thoughts

[Troo]

 

 

..fascinating

 

 

[Snarky]

49 minutes ago, Go0gleplex said:

Boomtown is partially revitalized, a private hero group (or is it) moves into the Hollows and begins driving the gangs out of Cherry Hills and Red River, Sky Way City and Faultline's construction advances with more buildings up, terrain recovered, etc., Perez Park is finally cleaned up (I mean, it's pretty useless as a zone currently really) or the Shivans make a break thru from Galaxy City into it thru the war wall, An aquarium/amusement park zone has been repaired and re-opened north of Kallisti by Boomtown and is now a Carnie turf war with the Family butting in, with the Lords of Death defeated and Kings being a massive Urban Renewal success (really, decide if its offices, slums/burbs, or industrial...the current mix makes no sense from city planning standpoint) the Skulls presence is reduced as the King Pin (Praetorian Syndicate Survivor) rises. A new gang (Skorpions-backed by Professor Echo) appear and lay siege to Crey (a tech war in the truest sense) over left over Rikti salvage around Paragon. 

There really should be an airport zone given Paragon being a major city...and between Perez, The Heights in the Hollows, the islands and fringe areas in Talos, Fringe areas in Founders...that's a lot of waste space. Perez makes sense. The hollows, given the size of the park there...roads or trails should be established to reach the lookouts and such. The islands should have docks if not actually designated as nature preserves. 

Love it.  But no airport.  Who in their right mind will fly in and out of the madhouse of Paragon? We teleport into the air and shoot at each other and blow sky vehicles out of the air for badges. Great thought….but what airline? Even Allegiant and Spirit would avoid the place…probably 

[Go0gleplex]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

Love it.  But no airport.  Who in their right mind will fly in and out of the madhouse of Paragon? We teleport into the air and shoot at each other and blow sky vehicles out of the air for badges. Great thought….but what airline? Even Allegiant and Spirit would avoid the place…probably 

Even if it's Air National Guard...Crey & Family private jets...Longbow heli-base...PPD air patrol...Kaiju chasers!...Rescue ops and Coast Guard....

[LegionAlpha]

14 hours ago, High_Beam said:

Thanks for the link.  I had heard about it.  It looks terrible however; the graphics and movement.  I hope that's all pre-beta imagery.

That is what I was thinking. Gameplay looks like something out of the TV show "Reboot" back in the 90's. 

[High_Beam]

9 hours ago, LegionAlpha said:

That is what I was thinking. Gameplay looks like something out of the TV show "Reboot" back in the 90's. 

Alphanumeric!  Although I did appreciate Dot Matrix and the Enzo/AndrAIa period was good story work.

[tidge]

I am not right, but my memories of PVP having an effect on my lead character (a teleporting Invulnerability/Energy Melee Tanker) that I struggled to level from launch day... It actually played like a Tanker in PVP (he couldn't be killed, his single-target Stuns were an actual threat to enemy squishies, even if he could only drop an enemy once in a blue moon), and then at some point PVP Stuns became the thing to cry about in PVP, such that I felt the PVE balance of the Energy Melee set was hurt just to satisfy a particular playstyle of PVPers. I don't think that anyone who complained realized (or cared) that the sort of build I was playing in PVP was incredibly substandard in PVE.

 

Holding off entire teams of redside PvPers with a single character was a thing of beauty. Pretty much the only semi-reliable threat to that character in PVP was Endurance loss.