Focused Feedback: Role Diversity Bonus

[Cyclone Jack]

2 hours ago, Wravis said:

I tried skimming through 10 pages and didn't see a response, so sorry in advance if I missed it but:

Is there a reason Arachnos Widow is not support? One half of the Arachnos Widow specializations is melee support with no control whatsoever. I pick Night Widow Training and I am melee and support. I don't get a single power that has a control effect.

Dispari brought this up in the first comment and there was no direct response, just "VEATS count for three roles".

It's the wrong role 1/2 the time. They should never count towards control, because even Fortunatas offer support. Every Widow offers support.

Apparently because of arbitrary reasons.  H/VEATs must fill three roles, and basic AT must be limited/shoehorned to fit one role.  Because this will help teach new players about how diverse the ATs are...somehow?

 

[PancakeGnome]

5 hours ago, Reiska said:

Unfortunately, as some others have noted, there isn't much to actually test on Brainstorm about this change beyond the sheer fact of whether it awards correctly or not - the psychological effects of it on the playerbase at large are not ever going to be testable in a beta environment because it's simply not a useful sample.

Scenario 1) The feature becomes one in demand and people actively try to achieve it.... causing the way City of Heroes groups form to become more toxic and arbitrarily exclusionary (despite the game not requiring this sort of "optimal group makeup" in reality). 

Scenario 2) The feature is ignored, and was added for no reason. 

The people arguing it's fine are basically arguing that it will be "no big deal Scenario 2", where it will just largely be ignored and won't effect how people make groups. It's very weird that the argument FOR adding a feature is "don't worry, it won't be used much and people won't care about it".

Devs should add stuff that people want to engage with.... not random things that they hope people DON'T engage with.....

[Arcadio]

11 minutes ago, PancakeGnome said:

Scenario 1) The feature becomes one in demand and people actively try to achieve it.... causing the way City of Heroes groups form to become more toxic and arbitrarily exclusionary (despite the game not requiring this sort of "optimal group makeup" in reality). 

Scenario 2) The feature is ignored, and was added for no reason. 

The people arguing it's fine are basically arguing that it will be "no big deal Scenario 2", where it will just largely be ignored and won't effect how people make groups. It's very weird that the argument FOR adding a feature is "don't worry, it won't be used much and people won't care about it".

Devs should add stuff that people want to engage with.... not random things that they hope people DON'T engage with.....

That's a false dichotomy. What I predict (and I'm assuming most people who like the bonus) is that most people don't care, and those that do are going to spend more time playing AT roles that are less likely to be naturally filled. 

 

I have no idea where people are getting this idea that TF leaders are going to become toxic. I've played this game a good bit, and I've played some games with seriously toxic player bases. Maybe I'm descensitized, but the Homecoming playerbase is so very far from toxic in my experience. 

[Wispur]

As someone who plays Kheldians almost exclusively, I kinda don't have a horse in this race.
I benefit just fine from it's currently proposed implementation, lol.
But even so, here are my thoughts on this - 
----------------------------------------------------
In it's current form, this bonus runs contradictory to the playstyles defined at character creation.
Which then leads to it running contradictory to the stated goal of helping new players understand the game better.

For example, in the character creation window - 

When I click "Melee Damage" as my playstyle, Brutes are listed.
When I click "Support" as my playstyle, Corruptors are listed.

It's not unreasonable for a new player to assume that they will be treated as the role/playstyle they chose.

So, at the very least, the Playstyles in Character Creation should match the Roles for this bonus to minimize new player confusion.
Preferably adding *more* Roles to the appropriate AT's ingame to properly reflect the Playstyles available to them.
(Brutes counting as both Tanks and Melee, Corruptors counting as both Ranged and Support, etc)
----------------------------------------------------
**And on that note, it seems us Kheldians need to be listed under a few more Playstyles in the Character Creation screen. 😄 **
** I definitely spend at least much time (if not more) in Melee as I do Blasting on my Peacebringers **

[PancakeGnome]

20 minutes ago, Arcadio said:

That's a false dichotomy. What I predict (and I'm assuming most people who like the bonus) is that most people don't care

That....is scenario 2.... "most people won't care so it's no big deal". 

[Coyotedancer]

I like the *idea* of a small bonus for having an interesting team composition... I'm just not sold on the specific team composition this is supposedly pushing. City just isn't a game that's built that way and that's one of its real strengths. It's one of the things that makes it very different from "Joe Average: the MMO".

 

I think we need to lean into its diversity and adaptability rather than trying to teach newbies that it's something it isn't and never has been.

 

By all means encourage interesting teaming arrangements. But don't try to stuff this nifty square peg of a game into the standard round hole.

[Arcadio]

48 minutes ago, PancakeGnome said:

That....is scenario 2.... "most people won't care so it's no big deal". 

 

1 hour ago, PancakeGnome said:

Scenario 2) The feature is ignored, and was added for no reason. 

 

...

Devs should add stuff that people want to engage with.... not random things that they hope people DON'T engage with.....

 

The corollary to most people don't care is that some people do care. "Most" people aren't going to play Arsenal Assault since "most" people don't play dominators. Is any content added for dominators added for "no reason?" Why make changes to VEATS? Why make changes for anything other than Brutes/Scrappers/Blasters/Tanks?

 

The bonus is to give the "some" people an incentive to play ATs that are under utilized.

[PancakeGnome]

39 minutes ago, Arcadio said:

 

 

The corollary to most people don't care is that some people do care. "Most" people aren't going to play Arsenal Assault since "most" people don't play dominators. Is any content added for dominators added for "no reason?" Why make changes to VEATS? Why make changes for anything other than Brutes/Scrappers/Blasters/Tanks?

 

The bonus is to give the "some" people an incentive to play ATs that are under utilized.

Well... yea... that's why arsenal assault was kind of a strange choice for them to add to the game.... it's SOOOO niche. 

Usually when developing you want to hit the low hanging fruit first, the stuff the the most people will use / enjoy. So something like "web control" and "web assault" would have been an obvious choice for adding a power (since all of the animations are in the game already from all the aracnos stuff). It would have been WILDLY popular.... for the same effort....

But that is also a bit different than this situation. Since the "don't worry people won't want to use it anyway" crowd are trying to excuse the OBVIOUS downsides of trying to force a "holy trinity" mindset into CoH. The worse case scenario is people actually WANT to do the trinity bonus.... and those trying to make excuses are like "no no, it will never be that popular" as a way to ease peoples minds. 

With a niche powerset, if it became WILDLY popular, it wouldn't be a bad thing, everyone would be happy. That isn't the case with the bonus.... there is ONLY downsides the more people use it.....

[Andreah]

4 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

I like the *idea* of a small bonus for having an interesting team composition...

I understand the feeling. But I don't believe we can say a team is interesting just on the basis of the AT's that show up in it, except in a couple of peculiar instances that this system would miss.

 

Even if I went in to all the rest of this, I'd get to a hard stop on this part. I would want to at least see a proposed algorithm that would track how players on the team actually used their characters and tried to asses the role or roles they're playing. Are you taking the alpha strike? Are you taking aggro off others? Are you buffing friends, or debuffing enemies? Are you getting mezz effects on enemies? Are you moving spawns around? Are you using your damaging powers? In melee, or ranged? There are too many ways to doing interesting things that don't resolve by AT alone. I wouldn't even care if these were effective, were they even attempted? This would say a whole lot more about the "role diversity" of the team than this checklist by AT.

[Indystruck]

3 hours ago, PancakeGnome said:

Well... yea... that's why arsenal assault was kind of a strange choice for them to add to the game.... it's SOOOO niche. 

Usually when developing you want to hit the low hanging fruit first, the stuff the the most people will use / enjoy. So something like "web control" and "web assault" would have been an obvious choice for adding a power (since all of the animations are in the game already from all the aracnos stuff). It would have been WILDLY popular.... for the same effort....

 

I think you're wildly over-estimating how many different web animations are in the game.  Also wildly underselling how many people wanted gadget/weaponry related control sets since live.  Web'd mostly be related to maces.  Unfortunately I don't think it's enough to make two entire powersets enter the copyright infringement verse, but, that's unrelated to the topic at hand.

 

  

10 minutes ago, Andreah said:

Are you taking the alpha strike? Are you taking aggro off others? Are you buffing friends, or debuffing enemies? Are you getting mezz effects on enemies? Are you moving spawns around? Are you using your damaging powers? In melee, or ranged? There are too many ways to doing interesting things that don't resolve by AT alone. I wouldn't even care if these were effective, were they even attempted? This would say a whole lot more about the "role diversity" of the team than this checklist by AT.

 

I can use Dark Servant to absorb an alpha strike, this does not make it a tank. Scrappers can get Moonbeam, this does not make them a ranged damage archetype. So on and so forth.

Edited January 26 by Indystruck

[PancakeGnome]

13 minutes ago, Indystruck said:

 

I can use Dark Servant to absorb an alpha strike, this does not make it a tank. Scrappers can get Moonbeam, this does not make them a ranged damage archetype. So on and so forth.

My defender can casually walk into a full group of +4 EB's and face tank the alpha strike no problems.... then proceed to solo destroy them all. Has 55 defense for alpha strike, then 40 defense after that. 75 lethal / smashing resist. And other resists sit at 20+.

Oh, and can shut down entire groups from being able to attack like a controller for infinite amount of time, while dishing out damage. 

Solo ran ITF task force.....

What does my AT say I should be able to do? Uhhh -checks the new trinity chart- .... support? Yea, sure. 

[Indystruck]

Hi, fellow defender soloist of +4/x8 ITF, yes, it is infact, still support.

[PancakeGnome]

6 minutes ago, Indystruck said:

Hi, fellow defender soloist of +4/x8 ITF, yes, it is infact, still support.

If you call leading teams into groups / alpha strikes while controlling large number of mobs and dealing damage as "support".... then I think the terms are meaningless. 

I'm a tank / control as primary. My support is on the level of my damage (good, but not great) 

Next you are going to tell me someone sitting back and buffing / healing as a peacebringer is "really damage, because peacebringer AT is damage dealers". COMPLETELY ignoring the reality of what is happening to just look at what the new player tooltip says.... lol

This is why people are against this silly "RPG trinity system"..... because it just doesn't have anything to do with City of Heroes. 

Edited January 27 by PancakeGnome

[Indystruck]

Sitting back and buffing someone as a peacebringer is really just putting a power on autofire and doing nothing while you go to the bathroom because you just have glowing touch. Photon Seekers if you want to lie to yourself and put that on the pile. There's no RPG trinity system in any point of this conversation. It'd be more of a quintipartite, but, I digress.

[Cyclone Jack]

2 minutes ago, Indystruck said:

Hi, fellow defender soloist of +4/x8 ITF, yes, it is infact, still support.

And what of the Corruptor, with the exact same powersets, powers, slots and build?

 

What role would this character be:

A single target immobilize, multiple single target holds, two AoE Sleeps, two AoE Slows, and an AoE Knockdown?

[Indystruck]

Damage, because corruptors get the double damage rate up when the enemy is below half health and their primary power ability is a blast set.

 

I could tell you about a class that has a stun in almost every ability, a fear aura, and epic pool with further chances to stun. Spoilers it's still a Tanker e:BRUTE, because the primary is Energy Melee, secondary Dark Armor, epic Earth Mastery and the other incidental stuns are just that, incidental. No one is relying on their tanks to do all the mezzing. Going "uhhh, excuse me, what about this one ability" doesn't change that. 

 

Edited January 27 by Indystruck
oops

[PancakeGnome]

7 minutes ago, Indystruck said:

Sitting back and buffing someone as a peacebringer is really just putting a power on autofire and doing nothing while you go to the bathroom because you just have glowing touch. Photon Seekers if you want to lie to yourself and put that on the pile. There's no RPG trinity system in any point of this conversation. It'd be more of a quintipartite, but, I digress.

I did a +2 challenge star ITF yesterday with the main support / healer being a peacebringer. The very low recharge glowing touch was HUGE support (way more than my defender was doing to keep people up). I was off running control shutting down the mobs damage (as a defender)... while also doing pretty ok damage. You can't pretend that our roles were "incidental" on a 2 star advanced difficulty haha, my control was top notch in keeping a lot of pretty challenging enemies shut down.

I don't know why you are pretending things don't work the way they work in City of Heroes..... it's great how flexible your character can be depending on what skills you take and how you build your character and where you focus your attention / actions.

Shrugging and just pretending none of that exists though? I don't get it. Why? haha

Edited January 27 by PancakeGnome

[Indystruck]

377 x 2s being huge support is maybe sort of not really a thing, no.

[PancakeGnome]

2 minutes ago, Indystruck said:

377 x 2s being huge support is maybe sort of not really a thing, no.

Haha, you don't think a targeted heal for 40% hp is support.... but I'm sure you probably think a rad defenders AE heal for 20% is..... 

Ok, yea, we just have completely different ideas of how the game works. I'm talking about how things ACTUALLY work when playing the game. Who contributes what when people are ACTUALLY fighting and trying to do content..... not just the AT name....

[Cyclone Jack]

41 minutes ago, Indystruck said:

Damage, because corruptors get the double damage rate up when the enemy is below half health and their primary power ability is a blast set.

Interesting.  Yet the Mastermind, who's primary power ability is damage, and who has a weaker support secondary than the Corruptor, and who has an inherent designed to make them more Tanky, is somehow considered "Support".  That's odd.  How can one AT who primarily does damage but has a weak Support secondary be labeled as Support, but another AT who primarily does damage but has a good Support secondary not be labeled as Support?  It almost seems like the CoH ATs don't fit into a simple role-based label.

 

I also love that Arachnos Soldiers are labeled as Support...simply because of their built-in Leadership Pool (also in their secondary, I might add).  Wow!  Such support! 🤣

 

And the AT I described above is an Ice/Ice/Ice Blaster, which often appeared in all those "Top 5 Controllers" lists back on live.

Edited January 27 by Cyclone Jack

[Kaika]

6 hours ago, Wispur said:

In it's current form, this bonus runs contradictory to the playstyles defined at character creation.
Which then leads to it running contradictory to the stated goal of helping new players understand the game better.

For example, in the character creation window - 

When I click "Melee Damage" as my playstyle, Brutes are listed.
When I click "Support" as my playstyle, Corruptors are listed.

It's not unreasonable for a new player to assume that they will be treated as the role/playstyle they chose.

So, at the very least, the Playstyles in Character Creation should match the Roles for this bonus to minimize new player confusion.
Preferably adding *more* Roles to the appropriate AT's ingame to properly reflect the Playstyles available to them.
(Brutes counting as both Tanks and Melee, Corruptors counting as both Ranged and Support, etc)
-

I think Wispur brings up a excellent point here, as this system is already contradicting the labels in character creation.

 

I was personally on the fence about this one, since encouraging players to make more diverse teams isn't a terrible idea. However it's not really needed and quite frankly any system that labels Master Minds as "Support" and Corrupters as "Damage" is already flawed just by a comparison of support numbers. I'm of the opinion that long time players will just ignore the system, as that not how we build teams. New players I think will strictly stick to the system, likely to their detriment, as I suspect they will take it as a hard "This is what this AT does" rather then a suggestion. Remember new players likely don't know what all the ATs do, and if they play other MMOs, are used to games where roles are strict and non-flexible. This system implies that CoH is the same way, which it is not, the lack of hard roles has always been one of the best parts of this game.

 

What I would recommend instead is simply to give out the bonus for bringing 5 differing ATs, any 5, rather then sticking to these weird and frankly misleading definitions of a ATs role. That way it still encourages players to diversify their team, but does not shoe horn them into bringing something they may not need to get the bonus, and possibly teach new players extremely limited definitions of what a specific AT does.

Edited January 27 by Riot Siren

[Koopak]

2 hours ago, PancakeGnome said:

Shrugging and just pretending none of that exists though? I don't get it. Why? haha

I don't see anyone arguing that doesn't exist. What I see is people arguing that just because an AT CAN do a role to limited degree does not make the role the AT's designed purpose. I feel a good number of people here have grown so used to the power creeped nature of late CoH that they are unwilling to recognize that ATs have design intent.

Comparing what you can do on +4x8 solo is not even close to a practical demonstration of how good say, a Defender, can control over a Controller, or Tank over a Tanker. In fact much of your survival would be coming from buffs and debuffs granted as a matter of incident in your support set. Instead of arguing anecdote, I think it would be more productive to look at the actual numeric capabilities.

Defender has a MaxHP of 1017.4, and a MaxMaxHP of 1606.4
Assuming the Defender is able to reach both defense and resist caps, this means the Defender's effective health range is...
81,392‬ - 128,512‬

A Tanker has a Max HP of 1874.1 and a MaxMaxHP of 3534
Assuming the Tanker accomplishes the same through, likely through the same support the Defender needs, their effective health range is...
374,820‬ - 706,800‬

Even at a casual glance here we can see the TOUGHEST a Defender can become is ~34% the durability of a Tanker with the minimum max hp under similar conditions and ~18% of an hp capped Tanker.

Okay I think that clarifies that NO a Defender is not equal to a Tanker. Just because the squishiest class in the game can be made tough enough to solo radios does not mean it is not still the squishiest class. Lets also remember a Defender lacks any aggro management tools, and has a Threat scalar of 1 vs Tanker's 4 and a Taunt scalar of 0.5 to the Tanker's of 1 (these are multiplicative.

Lets look at Control next. Lets take Defender's Petrifying Gaze vs Controller Dark Grasp as they have the same mag

Petrifying Gaze has a duration of 11.92s
Dark Grasp has a duration of 22.35s

Thus a Defender's mez lasts ~53% of a Controller's This carries through under equivalent enhancements as well. To further hammer this point home, Dark Grasp is avaialable at level 1, Petrifying Gaze is available at level 18. Dark Grasp has a base accuracy mod of 1.2, Petrifying Gaze has a mod of 1

 

 

2 hours ago, PancakeGnome said:

Haha, you don't think a targeted heal for 40% hp is support.... but I'm sure you probably think a rad defenders AE heal for 20% is.....

Lastly lets examine this claim regarding Peacebringer's Glowing Touch.

Glowing Touch has a heal of 188.9062, at 100% slotting this is 377.8124‬ with a recharge of 4 seconds.
Here are the MaxHP values and MaxMaxHP values of all ATs and what % of a heal this represents to them.

 

Archetype	Base HP	Max HP Cap	%Heal of Base HP	%Heal of Max HP Cap
Blaster	1204.8	1847.3	~31.35%	~20.45%
Controller	1017.4	1606.4	~37.13%	~23.51%
Defender	1017.4	1606.4	~37.13%	~23.51%
Scrapper	1338.6	2409.5	~28.22%	~15.68%
Tanker	1874.1	3534	~20.15%	~10.69%
Peacebringer	1070.9	2409.5	~35.27%	~15.68%
Warshade	1070.9	2409.5	~35.27%	~15.68%
Sentinel	1204.8	2088.3	~31.35%	~18.09%
Brute	1499.3	3212.7	~25.19%	~11.75%
Stalker	1204.8	2088.3	~31.35%	~18.09%
Mastermind	803.2	1606.4	~47.03%	~23.51%
Dominator	1017.4	1606.4	~37.13%	~23.51%
Corruptor	1070.9	1606.4	~35.27%	~23.51%
Arachnos Widow	1070.9	2409.5	~35.27%	~15.68%
Arachnos Soldier	1070.9	2409.5	~35.27%	~15.68%

 

So I wont redo that table for your AoE heal example but lets just comapre the numbers, ill leave the rest of the math to the reader.

Radiation Aura provides 133.8621 at 100% slotting thats 267.7242 which is 70.86% the healing of Glowing Touch. However unlike Glowing Touch, this is applied to the entire tean in a 25 ft radius rather than a single target. Target Cap for Radiation Aura is 255, but I'm going to say you are duoing.

Healing two peoples thats 535.4484 hit points healed for ~141.72% the healing of Glowing Touch.

Granted Glowing Touch has a recharge time of 4 seconds vs Radiation Aura's 8 seconds, but if you heal 3 people each cast you are now at 212% of Glowing Touch thus 12% more healing per second.

Given Radiation Emission has 8 other powers further supporting this single heal, while Peacebringer can barely be argued to have 1 more. I find it diffcult to argue that a Peacebringer is at all on par with a Radiation Emission Defender in terms of support. If your argument can be boiled down to "My Stalker took the medicine pool power there for I am a Support" then I feel it lacks merit. Just because an AT can take powers that help perform a specific role, does not make that AT equivelent to ATs specialised in that role. By the same token, no ammount of Support tuning to your Stalker will ever make you stalker less than a solid source of DPS (short of deciding attack powers are for losers, which i dont think is terrible to argue is a very poor choice.)

I think iv about exhausted what I can say here, but I feel that anyone who is arguing that roles dont exists or that ATs cant fill roles outside their intent particularly well is not really looking at this objectively.

I will agree that not all ATs fit cleanly into the roles they are in, but those are the minority, Corruptor and SoA being good examples, and in each case a strong argument can be made for their chosen role. While Corruptor for example can absolutely be consdier Support as much as Ranged, the fact fo the matter is, its inherit is dedicated to more damage, and unlike a Defender its primary is an attack set. But to argue that ATs dont have roles, or that they can be blanketly bypassed, is just flatly not true. You will never get a Team lead running content that they know they might fail such as a 4 star, who does not consider these roles, and none of them will agree that a Defender will successfuly tank Rommulous for the Team or that a Peacebringer will be sufficent support to keep them alive.

Edited January 27 by Koopak

[golstat2003]

1 hour ago, Koopak said:

I will agree that not all ATs fit cleanly into the roles they are in, but those are the minority, Corruptor and SoA being good examples, and in each case a strong argument can be made for their chosen role. While Corruptor for example can absolutely be consdier Support as much as Ranged, the fact fo the matter is, its inherit is dedicated to more damage, and unlike a Defender its primary is an attack set. But to argue that ATs dont have roles, or that they can be blanketly bypassed, is just flatly not true. You will never get a Team lead running content that they know they might fail such as a 4 star, who does not consider these roles, and none of them will agree that a Defender will successfuly tank Rommulous for the Team or that a Peacebringer will be sufficent support to keep them alive.

 

If one of the goals is to teach players about the roles, then the system should match what they see when they first log in and create a character. Regardless of anything else the role setting for this new system is a major problem. 

 

I like the earlier suggestions already made to improve it.

[Reiska]

12 hours ago, Seed22 said:

I dunno, it may still go live, but as something different. I dont care either way being honest, you get more PAPs doing HM 1 of which I am certain all the naysayers have never nor will ever do 

 

I have literally never seen anyone forming a team for HM 1 and I don't feel comfortable forming one myself with no experience.

 

So, yes, I have not done HM 1.  But again, I am not complaining about the addition of additional PA vectors.  I think there needs to be more of them!

 

I am complaining about adding a specific vector which I believe will likely incentivize bad behavior.

 

13 hours ago, arcane said:

Yeah, no chance of it going live at this point. Our playerbase despises free and completely optional bonuses apparently.

 

Because we know that many people will not treat them as optional, because we have seen them not do so over and over and over again in many games including this one.  The path of least resistance + most reward is almost always taken.  That's why so much of high end teaming that isn't AE farming is +4x8 Council/CoT farms in PI; why would you *choose* to fight Arachnos or Carnies when you can fight those easier opponents for the same reward?  Why do you think people are complaining so much about those two specific villain groups getting buffed in this very same patch?

 

Why would you choose to form a team that gives you less rewards when you quite easily can choose not to do so? 

 

Literal decades of history of game design has taught us that player psychology always sees the best possible result as the expected baseline and complains whenever they get less.  The devs can intend it as a bonus and call it a bonus all they want; it will not be treated as one.

 

10 hours ago, PancakeGnome said:

Scenario 1) The feature becomes one in demand and people actively try to achieve it.... causing the way City of Heroes groups form to become more toxic and arbitrarily exclusionary (despite the game not requiring this sort of "optimal group makeup" in reality). 

Scenario 2) The feature is ignored, and was added for no reason. 

The people arguing it's fine are basically arguing that it will be "no big deal Scenario 2", where it will just largely be ignored and won't effect how people make groups. It's very weird that the argument FOR adding a feature is "don't worry, it won't be used much and people won't care about it".

Devs should add stuff that people want to engage with.... not random things that they hope people DON'T engage with.....

 

This sums it up pretty well, I think.

 

If scenario 1 happens, I think all of us can agree it's a bad outcome, yes?  (I'm not addressing the likelihood of that scenario, because it isn't relevant to my point.)

If scenario 2 happens, nothing changes except a small increase in PA flow, probably smaller than is actually needed.

 

So I really have to ask the devs: What is the actual primary intent of this change?  Is it a purposeful attempt to influence the way players form teams?  Is it a purposeful attempt to increase the flow of PA into the game?  Is it both?

 

Because right now, the core intent is unclear, and without knowing that core intent, it's difficult to give meaningful, directed feedback on the change's efficacy.

 

If the primary goal is to influence the way players form teams, I think it will be reasonably successful at doing so, but I question if that is something we *want* to do and I agree with some of the other voices around here that it would make me less excited about attempting to team with people in general.

 

If the primary goal is to increase the flow of PA into the game, I think there are other suggestions already in this thread that would do so more effectively while not being nearly as contentious or controversial, and I think this is a worthy goal that should be pursued.

 

What I want to see is an unstated scenario 3: a better feature goes into the game that doesn't divide players and achieves the intended goal of the designers.

 

So what is that goal?

[gameboy1234]

On 1/22/2024 at 4:15 AM, Cobalt Arachne said:

Lastly, it puts a little more Prismatic Aether into everyone's pocket for minimal effort, which helps new players by virtue of being able to convert it to influence on the AH which also stimulates the player economy and also teaches new players to utilize the AH while working on their characters.
For a new player, a single Prismatic Aether could potentially fund their entire build on SO enhancements; Extremely valuable for somebody just starting out.

 

Just as an aside, if this feature gets removed, another way to add Inf and items for new players is to just dump them on players during one of the intro missions.  For example, Manticore could show up at the end of Twinshot's first arc and say "I'm rich AF, here's a Prismatic Aether."  I don't think this is valuable enough to make the arc feel mandatory but it would help out new players who will often be the one's to run that arc.

 

Ditto for Dr. Graves, he could say at the end of the arc "Our mysterious benefactor has decided that you will receive one of these" and there's a Prismatic Aether.

 

Also, besides valuables, new players don't know about P2W, so it might be nice to add one or more arcs to those intro missions that direct a player to talk to P2W so they know where she's at.  Heck, the mission could just dump some goodies on players, like the basic free attacks, prestige enhancements, and explain what the free movement powers do.  Or, during this one intro mission, P2W could have an abbreviated menu listing just  the free powers and letting the player choose which ones they want.

 

Finally while I'm thinking about it, P2W has confusing menus for new players.  Is there any reason a new player should understand what powers used to be "prestige powers" when the game was live?  It's weird, honestly.  I think all powers should be listed by what category they fit into, what they do, like attacks or movement or just for fun.  That should be the top menu.  Then powers get listed under those categories.  Temporary powers should be carefully marked as such.