Moving the slots from power levels to slot levels

[AlwaysAPrice]

What if we (mostly) didn't have that one automatically granted slot per power chosen and instead gained 3 slots at slot levels before 30 as well as after?

 

(Yes, Level 1 & 2 provide a total of 3 power picks so level 3 would have to provide 5 slots to ensure all are accounted for. I just didn't want to cram a caveat about that exception into the sentence summarizing the general idea. I'll come back to level 1 concerns in a moment.)

 

End result would come out to the same total number of slots at level 50, but none of them get wasted where you really don't need them, in powers whose utility is outleveled, that were picked only to open pools, or that the rest of your build or Alpha make useful even without enhancement. It would also bring enhancement parity to the handful of sets that come up one slot short if they take their unenhanceable stance toggles (Dual Pistols, Staff Fighting, and Bio Armor - 2 slots short if you happen to be dp/bio or staff/bio using both stance sets)

 

Now, the level 1-3 complication makes me think if this idea were explored, it should not be the standard levelling experience. For one, it would conflict with the standard tutorials, which introduce enhancements and invite you to slot them before you reach level 2, so level 1-3 probably have to remain unchanged in standard level-ups, despite early power slot tie-ups being half the reason I got to thinking about this. And generally speaking, the more measured pace of slot distribution and requiring a slot in each power is probably better for new and casual players, as there's less opportunity to botch yourself up with poor picks/placement if everything you pick has still has at least one slot to experiment with and adjust.

 

But experienced players who know exactly how they're going to use or not use all their powers could get a lot out of this, if either the standard respec mode worked this way or an "advanced respec" mode were implemented that did.

(Other slot-related oddity that just occurred to me to clarify: as I imagine it this wouldn't affect inherents. Brawl, Sprint, Fitness etc. would all be intended to retain their slots, not add freebies that don't come from levelling into the mix.)

Edited August 28 by AlwaysAPrice

[Luminara]

14 minutes ago, AlwaysAPrice said:

What if we (mostly) didn't have that one automatically granted slot per power chosen and instead gained 3 slots at slot levels before 30 as well as after?

 

We'd have a lot of powers being literally unusable due to not being able to slot them until the next level or a respec to allocate a slot, as opposed to the existing system which, by granting the default slot when a power is taken, guarantees usability out of the box, not to mention complaints and support requests from players who, accustomed to the way the game has functioned for 20 years, didn't know the default slot wouldn't be assigned to powers and failed to add them during respecs.

 

Game balance in the 1-31 range would also be shit-canned (17 extra slots would not be an insignificant amount of power creep), and sorely disrupted in the 32+ range.

[Rudra]

First off, why should the game's enhancement system work two different ways, one for normal leveling and another for respecs?

 

Second, how would the game know if a player using a respec is a veteran player. You earn respecs just by leveling up, and a newbie or more casual player would be more likely to use or need them since they would much more likely need to correct any power/slotting mistakes they made in their intended build leveling up. And if you have the devs add an "advanced respec", then how do you ensure a newbie or casual player doesn't screw themselves over getting and using it, winding up with an unplayable character at their current level or while exemplared?

 

Third, your proposal would only really benefit end game players that never exemplar down for anything, or at least never exemplar down beyond a minimum threshold to always have access to specific powers they are not harvesting enhancement slots from, making those characters more powerful than other characters that continue to play through the whole range of levels via exemplaring/Ouroboros when they go to do end game content, not because those more powerful character players are more knowledgeable about building their characters but because they will have more enhancement slots available to devote to their late game powers than anyone else.

 

Fourth, we can already make insanely powerful characters that laugh at pretty much anything the game can throw at us without harvesting default enhancement slots to place elsewhere.

[AlwaysAPrice]

8 minutes ago, Rudra said:

First off, why should the game's enhancement system work two different ways, one for normal leveling and another for respecs?

 

It already does. In a respec you place all your slots wherever you want them in one go after selecting all your powers, allowing you to six-slot your level 49 power pick, which can normally at best be 4-slotted with level 50's slots, and otherwise arrange your slots in ways that are impossible while levelling. For another example, I'll often make use of the free respecs from levelling to immediately move full slotting into nukes as soon as I get them.

 

10 minutes ago, Rudra said:

And if you have the devs add an "advanced respec", then how do you ensure a newbie or casual player doesn't screw themselves over getting and using it, winding up with an unplayable character at their current level or while exemplared?

 

Mainly by calling it that and not handing it out like candy as is done with normal respecs, though a warning pop-up when initiating the process wouldn't hurt. We already have a respec recipe as a rare drop, maybe this could be a very rare one -- or, more ambitiously, it could serve as a reward choice for an Advanced Mode update of the respec trials.

 

[Rudra]

55 minutes ago, AlwaysAPrice said:

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

First off, why should the game's enhancement system work two different ways, one for normal leveling and another for respecs?

 

It already does. In a respec you place all your slots wherever you want them in one go after selecting all your powers, allowing you to six-slot your level 49 power pick, which can normally at best be 4-slotted with level 50's slots, and otherwise arrange your slots in ways that are impossible while levelling. For another example, I'll often make use of the free respecs from levelling to immediately move full slotting into nukes as soon as I get them.

 

No, it doesn't. Enhancement slots are not tracked for level, so when you do a respec, all your level granted enhancement slots can be assigned however you want, even placing 5 slots on your level 49 power if you want. You are talking about default power granted enhancement slots. Those do not change between leveling and respec'ing. Because the enhancement slot is baked into the power rather than a free to assign slot granted as a level up reward. That is what we are talking about. That is the difference between leveling and respec'ing. As you level, those slots are locked into their power because they are part of the power. For your proposal though, during respec, they would be split off, which is different than when you level. The difference is a power's default enhancement slot versus free to assign enhancement slots. So no, it does not already do so.

 

(Edit: So to be clear, we are talking the difference between the free to assign as you wish enhancement slots, which remain so during a respec, and the locked in their power enhancement slots. During a respec, those free to assign enhancement slots remain free to assign, but now you are asking to differentiate between respecs and leveling for enhancement slots that are not free to assign.))

 

And you still haven't addressed points 3 and 4.

Edited August 28 by Rudra

[AlwaysAPrice]

TF you mean 'still' I responded to you in like 40 minutes, can I go do my STO dailies first is that all right

 

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

(Edit: So to be clear, we are talking the difference between the free to assign as you wish enhancement slots, which remain so during a respec, and the locked in their power enhancement slots. During a respec, those free to assign enhancement slots remain free to assign, but now you are asking to differentiate between respecs and leveling for enhancement slots that are not free to assign.))

 

I took that question to be referring to the user experience between the two modes. Determining actual feasibility is up to anyone interested in implementing the idea, not really any point to discussing that amongst ourselves because it sounds like we have very different conjectures about how that initial slot (or slots in general) probably works under the hood. I just think the existence of a respec screen that works different than the level-up screen provides sufficient precedent to consider the implementation of a second, cooler kind of respec a not outlandish prospect.

As for the earlier third and fourth points, I think they just overestimate the impact the moved slots could actually have. There's already a maximum of six slots per power, which most of the important powers in an especially tricked out build are already going to meet just to achieve the build's main goals. The moved slots aren't going to be enhancing those. And most powers are going to keep their base slot right where it is because they're being slotted further on top of it. Considering the build I was working on when this occurred to me, half its powers are already six-slotted. It has 7 1-slot powers, of which I could see giving up the slot from 3, and only one of those 3 is a power I actually wouldn't use ever on that build; the other two are things from my epic I would still have occasion to use, so I'd be paying a cost for moving the slot in losing some of their performance potential. The huge gain in this example is maybe Stealth goes from 2 to 5 slots of LotG, or Tough gets to pack in the Psi res pieces, or my travel powers can each take an extra piece of Zephyr. Nice to quite good extras, but they're probably not going to redefine the build's relationship to +4/x8.

[Rudra]

39 minutes ago, AlwaysAPrice said:

TF you mean 'still' I responded to you in like 40 minutes, can I go do my STO dailies first is that all right

Where is this coming from? You posted a response, and it only addressed my first 2 points. So I pointed that out.

 

39 minutes ago, AlwaysAPrice said:

I took that question to be referring to the user experience between the two modes. Determining actual feasibility is up to anyone interested in implementing the idea, not really any point to discussing that amongst ourselves because it sounds like we have very different conjectures about how that initial slot (or slots in general) probably works under the hood.

Yeah, we do, except I'm doing my best to cite (from memory) how the devs back on Live explained the powers and their built in enhancement slot. At those levels where we get enhancement slots, those slots are not linked to anything, so we can assign them to anything we want up to a total of 6 enhancement slots, 1 default + 5 free to assign. Powers come with an enhancement slot built in to them. As best I can remember the explanation, they are built into the power. They are not just another enhancement slot that can be re-assigned to whatever we want. Now, I may be remembering wrong, and if so, feel free to provide the correcting source because I would like to know, but to the best of my knowledge, this is how the enhancement slots work. We have a total of 67 enhancement slots that are available to slot however we choose with our characters, and get another 24 enhancement slots (edit: 31 counting inherent powers) that are built into our chosen powers, 1 per power.

 

39 minutes ago, AlwaysAPrice said:

There's already a maximum of six slots per power, which most of the important powers in an especially tricked out build are already going to meet just to achieve the build's main goals. The moved slots aren't going to be enhancing those. And most powers are going to keep their base slot right where it is because they're being slotted further on top of it. Considering the build I was working on when this occurred to me, half its powers are already six-slotted. It has 7 1-slot powers, of which I could see giving up the slot from 3, and only one of those 3 is a power I actually wouldn't use ever on that build; the other two are things from my epic I would still have occasion to use, so I'd be paying a cost for moving the slot in losing some of their performance potential. The huge gain in this example is maybe Stealth goes from 2 to 5 slots of LotG, or Tough gets to pack in the Psi res pieces, or my travel powers can each take an extra piece of Zephyr. Nice to quite good extras, but they're probably not going to redefine the build's relationship to +4/x8.

Yes, all powers are capped at a maximum of 6 slots, but you are ignoring what a player can do with 24 more slots to place however they want. (Yes, we get 24 power picks, but Brawl, Sprint, Rest, Swift, Hurdle, Health, and Stamina also have those default enhancement slots.) For starters, that makes it much easier to get the preferred set bonuses players have to juggle currently on their builds. Second, right now you have a maximum of 13 powers you can 6-slot. With your proposal, that becomes 15 16 powers you can 6-slot to get the final set bonuses from and still have a 3-slot power. And I guarantee you and others will be stripping Brawl and Boxing/Kick, as well as probably Swift and Hurdle. And while that may not change some build's relationship to +4/x8, it will others, +4/x8 is not the game's defining difficulty, and you will make even the Advanced Mode content much easier to deal with because it will now be easier to build for them. Especially since players will use incarnate abilities to make up for the shortfalls they may find from stripping starting enhancement slots. (Edit: They already do by not building for END management and just relying on their Alpha to keep them afloat.) So your proposal is still a call to more optimize what are most likely already heavily optimized characters for end game content, even possibly trivializing 4-star Advanced Mode content with no justification, creating a larger gap between players that only do end game or high end content versus players that build for all level ranges of content, and calling for a change to how powers and enhancements work for powers being chosen with no justification.

 

Edited August 29 by Rudra
Edited to change counts and strike out lines since OP specifies not including inherent powers. And again to add "because it will now be easier to build for them".

[AlwaysAPrice]

11 hours ago, Luminara said:

We'd have a lot of powers being literally unusable due to not being able to slot them until the next level or a respec to allocate a slot, as opposed to the existing system which, by granting the default slot when a power is taken, guarantees usability out of the box, not to mention complaints and support requests from players who, accustomed to the way the game has functioned for 20 years, didn't know the default slot wouldn't be assigned to powers and failed to add them during respecs.

 

This is about why by the end of the post I'd stopped considering it as an overhaul to normal levelling and raised the idea of a respec option/variant.

 

11 hours ago, Luminara said:

Game balance in the 1-31 range would also be shit-canned (17 extra slots would not be an insignificant amount of power creep), and sorely disrupted in the 32+ range.

 

There were no extra slots. It's the same amount of slots.

Or that was what I meant.

 

Rereading what I wrote I botched describing it in such a way that you actually end up with fewer slots as the question is phrased, since my wording suggests 3 per slot level after 30 when some of those should be 4 to incorporate the slot from the preceding power pick.

Anyway, do still think this could work as a levelling process if, after a power pick, instead of getting nothing and getting the slot the next level, you got a single slot slot placement screen right away. Sensible thing to do usually being to put that slot in the power you just got, but if you know what you're doing or just like to experiment you wouldn't have to. I don't think it'd be any more or less confusing than the enhancement system already is, there have and will always be poor bastards out there with six slots and zero enhancements in everything they can fit, somehow getting by.

 

My preference remains the 'advanced respec' approach over dinkering with levelling at all though.

 

[biostem]

Kind of a weird idea - but I wonder if they could allow us, on levels where we get slots, to sort of leave them "unplaced", but still progress in level, so we could then place them later, at our discretion...

[Luminara]

6 minutes ago, AlwaysAPrice said:

There were no extra slots. It's the same amount of slots.

 

17 additional slots available to use in other powers which didn't have those 17 slots available previously.

 

Hence the word extra.

 

And that's on top of potential IO sets and set bonuses (which provide the functionality of extra slots), and the Alpha Incarnates (which actually do provide the value of additional slotted enhancements in relevant powers).

 

Not happening.  Maybe one of the other server groups will try it, but HC won't.

[biostem]

Just now, Luminara said:

Not happening.

[Sarcasm] I looooove CoH so much, that I want to change it into something else! [/Sarcasm]

 

Seriously, though - I don't know if people making these suggestions simply cannot see the ramifications of their suggestions, or just don't care...

[Luminara]

29 minutes ago, biostem said:

Seriously, though - I don't know if people making these suggestions simply cannot see the ramifications of their suggestions, or just don't care...

 

Balance is... an abstract concept, like gravity, or sunlight, or why water flows, for the average person.  It's there, it's real, and it affects them, but it's not something they think about, ask how it works, wonder what would happen if this were changed or that worked differently.  It is what it is, and they don't question it because the answer isn't pertinent to their lives in a practical sense.

 

To understand balance, the same scientific principles and approach one applies to astrophysics or geology is applicable.  Read a lot.  Experiment.  Observe results and try to reproduce them.  Formulate a theory and test it.  Change one variable and test it again.  Repeat until the theory is verified or refuted... then move on to the next thing and start over.  Most people don't do that.  Some can't, some never realize that it can be tested, some believe it's a waste of time, some expect that "it'll sort itself out", some assume that discovering the answers is too hard, some expect someone else to know the answers, some are convinced that they know enough and what they propose won't be "a big deal"... and yes, some people don't care because personal satisfaction is more important.

[AlwaysAPrice]

25 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Where is this coming from? You posted a response, and it only addressed my first 2 points. So I pointed that out.

 

It came from it just made me laugh. If we'd been going back and forth on the first two points for a couple posts first, it would have fit as a reminder there was more I wasn't addressing, but right off the bat it just read inexplicably impatient so I had some fun with it.

 

 

50 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Yeah, we do, except I'm doing my best to cite (from memory) how the devs back on Live explained the powers and their built in enhancement slot. At those levels where we get enhancement slots, those slots are not linked to anything, so we can assign them to anything we want up to a total of 6 enhancement slots, 1 default + 5 free to assign. Powers come with an enhancement slot built in to them. As best I can remember the explanation, they are built into the power. They are not just another enhancement slot that can be re-assigned to whatever we want. Now, I may be remembering wrong, and if so, feel free to provide the correcting source because I would like to know, but to the best of my knowledge, this is how the enhancement slots work. We have a total of 67 enhancement slots that are available to slot however we choose with our characters, and get another 24 enhancement slots (edit: 31 counting inherent powers) that are built into our chosen powers, 1 per power.

 

If it works as you recall, yeah it'd be more complex to make those slots optional than I'd hope.

 

 

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

Yes, all powers are capped at a maximum of 6 slots, but you are ignoring what a player can do with 24 more slots to place however they want.

 

For starters, that makes it much easier to get the preferred set bonuses players have to juggle currently on their builds. Second, right now you have a maximum of 13 powers you can 6-slot. With your proposal, that becomes 15 powers you can 6-slot to get the final set bonuses from and still have a 3-slot power.

 

I mean definitely not. The point is pretty specifically to find out what will they do with the slots that become maneuverable. Most powers are chosen because they are useful and contribute something to your build and playstyle and are worth investing at least one slot, usually more. But some really aren't, due to either power design, conflict with playstyle, powerset/pool structure, or lack of enhancement options that your other build options don't already account for to make the slot unnecessary. And some are actually perfectly sufficient and useful in their particular niche without any enhancement attention at all. I'd be curious to see what powers people decided to sacrifice the slot from most often, it'd provide some interesting insight into how those powers are perceived as performing and invite consideration of whether they can be made stronger contenders for enhancing.

 

If people wanted to use a feature like this to fine-tune their builds with a handful more set bonuses or uniques for a little more of an edge against whatever content they find challenging, more power to them. I think it's a fair trade-off to essentially take on a negative enhancement to do so, deaden a power's potential and limit any performance it could offer to its absolute baseline. All the power picks some ambitious min-maxer might spend just to strip the base slot from would represent powers that could actually do things they aren't taking. Personally, I think more people would just be interested in shelving a pool opener they don't have any gameplay use for to throw an extra slot into a flavor power to meet their concept and gameplay goals. Also, the potential isn't just relevant to setted-out near-gods, ordinary SO/IO builds could use the same process.

 

 

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

17 additional slots available to use in other powers which didn't have those 17 slots available previously.

 

14 hours ago, AlwaysAPrice said:

(Other slot-related oddity that just occurred to me to clarify: as I imagine it this wouldn't affect inherents. Brawl, Sprint, Fitness etc. would all be intended to retain their slots, not add freebies that don't come from levelling into the mix.)

 

I'm guessing the extra 7 here is from missing the last line of the OP, as Rudra initially did but caught in an edit. Without inherents that would drop to 10. One could potentially free up additional 1st slots, maybe even more than 17, if you dumped enough normal slots into Brawl, Sprint, Rest, all of Fitness and all Prestige Sprints. Going to just ignore Inherents for now while admitting they're a problem to this idea, if not really that bad of one because that problem is just providing a dumping ground for slots that enables more one-slots to be disposed of so someone trying to prove a point using them could have a ton of crap-ass unslottable powers and a really sweet Brawl, Health, and Sprint.

Keeping all slots to chosen powers, the maximum number of sacrificial slots is 10, until they start getting placed. Then it becomes 8.

24 powers that come with one slot each (-1 for dp, bio, and staff), 67 slots rewarded from 3 - 50.

5 slots in each power as long as we have slots gives us 13 6-slotted powers, and a 14th 3-slotted power.

10 1-slotted powers remain.

Moving base slots from those, put 3 in the 14th to bring it to 6.

Use 5 more to fill the 15th 6-slot, which also stops it from being a 1-slot.

There's one 1-slot power left, but it has nowhere to put its slot.

 

And that's only if the builder is pursuing six slots in 15 powers with no other concerns, no powers that will fulfill their purpose with only 2-5 slots, which they probably aren't. Hasten, travel powers, pool toggles, plenty of stuff that is super useful with less than 6 slots, often things that would be wasteful with more than 2 or 3, and every power that has more than one slot is a power that by definition didn't lose its base slot. My hunch is that even someone trying to use this to milk out as much extra performance for performance's sake is only going to shuffle around maybe 3-5 slots, at some noticable cost. Definitely enough to have some potential to be significant to some build goal that really wants to eke out that little bit more for a couple specific stats, depending on how those slots are added to the mix, but still likely to be dwarfed in overall impact by their Incarnate choices.

[Luminara]

4 hours ago, AlwaysAPrice said:

I'm guessing the extra 7 here is from missing the last line of the OP, as Rudra initially did but caught in an edit. Without inherents that would drop to 10.

1. Level 1
2. Level 1 (because we acquire 2 powers at level 1)
3. Level 2
4. Level 4
5. Level 6
6. Level 8
7. Level 10
8. Level 12
9. Level 14
10. Level 16
11. Level 18
12. Level 20
13. Level 22
14. Level 24
15. Level 26
16. Level 28
17. Level 30

I didn't fail to account for the inherent powers, I addressed the idea of having default slots in primary/secondary powers freed for reassignment, of which there are 17 by the time a character reaches level 30.  Not 10, not 8, 17.  The discrepancy is a result of your assumptions about how the slots would be used, not my ability to perform basic addition.  17 slots no longer locked to specific powers is 17 slots players could move to other powers.  Whether or not all of those would be moved is irrelevant, the mere fact that they could be moved is what has to be considered for balance.

 

What you propose creates a situation identical to the conundrum that Cryptic faced between launch and Issue 5.  Game balance was impossible because players were ignoring the expected slotting schema around which the game was originally balanced and, instead, six-slotting their attacks with Damage enhancements, six-slotting Tactics and Hasten to bypass the lack of Accuracy and Recharge Reduction enhancements in those attacks, and using powers like Conserve Power to compensate for the lack of Endurance Reduction.  In essence, players had more slots than they knew what to do with, because they were using their slots in an unconstrained manner.

 

Cryptic couldn't simply make enemies tougher because they couldn't guarantee that all players were doing that.  Nor could they simply go big on enemy damage in hope of defeating player characters more rapidly so couldn't do things like dumpster diving and map herding, because, again, they couldn't guarantee that all players would have sufficient Defense/Resistance/-ToHit/-Damage to handle it.  They couldn't do anything to counterbalance player choices within the enemy portion of the balance equation without negatively impacting players who weren't making those choices.  Tighter constraints on player characters only solution, thus Enhancement Diversification.

 

The same holds true here.  Default slots create a baseline from which developers can formulate basic performance expectations.  They assure that every power can be slotted, and thus usable to a minimum degree, without forcing reliance on potentially unavailable powers.  Teammates cannot be guaranteed.  Buffs from external sources, like mission NPCs, or P2W vendors, cannot be guaranteed.  Pool powers cannot be guaranteed.  *PP powers cannot be guaranteed.  But a default slot does guarantee that a player can slot for Damage, or Recharge Reduction, or ToHit Debuff, or Stun, and even if the player doesn't make use of that option, its existence allows developers to designate minimum enemy strength.

 

Default slots also create an upper limit by preventing players from doing exactly what you propose, using every available slot in a maximally efficient way.  Not permitting all slots to be assigned freely is one of the balance decisions which allows developers to create challenge without making encounters impossible for characters who don't have all of their slots yet, or who don't slot the "right" way, or who don't follow specific build patterns.

 

Like the common "Remove pool power prerequisites" demand, this will never be on the table because every form of balance in the game relies on its existence as a balance point.  And pinky swearing on your great aunt Tilly's ashes that it won't be a problem, or trying explain that it wouldn't be as bad because it only works out to 10 or 8 or even "a couple of" slots, or presenting the supposition that it could be okay if players follow the build patterns you outline... these don't support your argument, because the problem of balance would still exist, and in a game with IO sets and Incarantes and nearly free P2W buffs and temp powers, it would be disastrous.

 

It's not happening.  Let it go.

[AlwaysAPrice]

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

I didn't fail to account for the inherent powers, I addressed the idea of having default slots in primary/secondary powers freed for reassignment, of which there are 17 by the time a character reaches level 30.

 

Ahh, okay. Highlighting the number of base slots that exists misrepresents how many of those can actually end up somewhere else, though. Any power that gets any slotting no longer contributes a slot to the count, and the regular slots per level filling out powers forces the count of actually movable slots down further. It's still high, the lower number of regular slots means there's one more actually movable base slot at 30 than there is at 50, it's just 9, not 17. But again, I've acknowledged from the start that this kind of flexibility wouldn't be well-suited to a levelling overhaul. Appreciate the overall insights and analysis on the topic of early game balance and design though, that is why the post started with a general question about what-if-things-worked-this-way.

 

 

3 hours ago, Luminara said:

And pinky swearing on your great aunt Tilly's ashes

 

It's my birthday, don't be snide.

 

Hammering on the concept of balance is fine, but can you at least acknowledge that there is a respect for balance baked into the concept in the removal of a slot from a power that normally comes with one? Whether that balance is adequate for the resulting balance is of course in question, but it's there. Potential is being taken away to make room for it elsewhere. The importance you place on the presence of those slots in the low-level scenario indicates that the ability to place an enhancement in a power has a value that is lost when they are taken away.

 

Considering this in the context of a special endgame respec variant, there are questions of balance inherent to what slots are moved and for what purpose. A character with a complete attack chain from primary powers ditching the slot from the Boxing they don't even put on their tray is just getting a straight benefit. But ditching the slot from a mez toggle or Assault and making do with its normal endurance cost but using it to pick up a recovery bonus, is a more even exchange, while any other bonus means fully accepting that endurance cost as the trade-off for some other buff. Leaving Combat Jumping unslotted to fit an extra slot in Tough for a +3% Def Unique, that could be seen as a good trade for getting a sizable chunk more Def than slotting CJ for Def would, but also less so for the loss of a LotG opportunity.

 

I think describing the potential effects as "disastrous" is hyperbolic. There's two benefits to what is only arguably the most effective use of this, the only-6-slot-approach: 2 more powers one was going to be using anyway now being at six-slot effectiveness instead of at three and one, and 8 set bonuses (1 (2), 1 (3), 2 (4), 2 (5), 2 (6)) or global IOs -- lesser rate ones in the latter case since all the particularly good ones already fit into the sort of builds someone trying to milk this maximally would be starting with. More full strength powers is not at all something to sneeze at, but that top-tier build is already going to have all the powers it needs to keep up whatever cycle its role calls for. So maybe adding in situational extras, except they're not added in they were already going to be part of the build just at lesser effectiveness, in exchange for limiting a third of the build to its most baseline functionality.

 

Of course the min-max 'worst case scenario' does have to be taken into account when determining how well something is balanced, but it's not the whole or only consideration. The game has other kinds of players. I'd wager it's mostly other kinds of players, who are either ignorant of 'the meta' or aware of and choosing to ignore it to make their own gameplay more satisfying and reflective of their creativity. Experienced players among all groups know what powers they can live without enhancing in exchange for making some other aspect of the character perform that little bit better, and being able to use those extraneous slots as a build resource through a special respec with limited availability strikes me as an interesting way to do something new with the process of building, something that's been really rote for a while now.

 

 

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

It's not happening.  Let it go.

 

This isn't a campaign, it's enrichment. Had an idea that intrigued me as someone who thinks the art of building is a little stagnant and decided to float it as a rare instance of engaging with a community I mostly just float around the edges of, on the board where literally every topic is just a game design thought experiment up until and unless the HC team decide of their own volition, interest, and capability to do anything with it. Thanks for participating in the shit-shooting thus far, if you're not enjoying it you don't have to.

[Rudra]

34 minutes ago, AlwaysAPrice said:

Hammering on the concept of balance is fine, but can you at least acknowledge that there is a respect for balance baked into the concept in the removal of a slot from a power that normally comes with one? Whether that balance is adequate for the resulting balance is of course in question, but it's there. Potential is being taken away to make room for it elsewhere. The importance you place on the presence of those slots in the low-level scenario indicates that the ability to place an enhancement in a power has a value that is lost when they are taken away.

Except as you yourself stated, players will pull those slots from powers they aren't or won't use but need to take for whatever reason anyway. So the balance you think is built into the proposal is out the window. Powers like Boxing and Kick that players quite often take because they have to in order to get Tough and Weave, so now there is an enhancement slot they can use to further strengthen another power they previously couldn't to the same extent for no cost to them. (Edit: Or powers like Quickness from Super Reflexes that already gives their full +recharge effect before slotting and can only slot movement enhancements that are not part of sets. So still a power that will be chosen and used, but literally needs 0 enhancement slots to be as effective as many players want.) Powers like Assault that can only slot endurance reduction enhancements and no sets, because they are going to or have taken the Cardiac Alpha power to control their endurance cost and so weren't going to assign any extra slots to that power anyway, so again they get an enhancement slot they wouldn't have had prior to further strengthen a power to an extent they previously couldn't. Or when they get high enough level, they respec to strip their T1 and/or T2 attack because they won't use it in their attack chain because Hasten lets them chain their strongest attacks instead. So again, more enhancement slots they would not have had before now available to further strengthen a more limited array of powers the player was going to focus on anyway.

 

There is also the consideration that even though you said inherent powers would not be included for being able to strip default enhancement slots from to use elsewhere, I guarantee that if the OP were to be implemented, it would that day or the day immediately after see a suggestion to add the inherent powers to having their default enhancement slots allowed to be stripped to be used elsewhere as well.

 

Edited August 29 by Rudra

[AlwaysAPrice]

31 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Powers like Assault that can only slot endurance reduction enhancements and no sets, because they are going to or have taken the Cardiac Alpha power to control their endurance cost and so weren't going to assign any extra slots to that power anyway, so again they get an enhancement slot they wouldn't have had prior to further strengthen a power to an extent they previously couldn't.

 

That's actually just the kind of tradeoff I find interesting here. I think I've taken Cardiac once since Alphas were introduced, eventually switching to Musc Radial to buff Stamina along with just more conscious endurance slotting to address the end woes that character was having. But in that example, Assault is still more expensive to run slotless than it would be if they had Cardiac and an End in there. If I had several toggles I didn't necessarily need to slot and could move those slots elsewhere, I could justify taking Cardiac to affect them all, while still paying a cost in giving up the ability to slot them for anything at all. Say I was willing to trade off the slots from all 3 of Assault, Maneuvers, and Tactics and just rely on Cardiac to keep the extra endurance cost in check. Assault may seem like a freebie but Maneuvers and Tactics would still be giving up slots that could improve their performance or hold globals.

 

46 minutes ago, Rudra said:

There is also the consideration that even though you said inherent powers would not be included for being able to strip default enhancement slots from to use elsewhere, I guarantee that if the OP were to be implemented, it would that day or the day immediately after see a suggestion to add the inherent powers to having their default enhancement slots allowed to be stripped to be used elsewhere as well.

 

Yeah. The fact that inherents have and can take more slots is the one part of this that actually makes me leery. I rarely want to give up a slot to Health or Stamina but I know lots of people do rely on them, and all the extra recovery that could be added through Heal & End Mod procs and just plain end mod slotting with some slots moved over there could be a way more significant buff than most set bonuses, for a build that isn't already managing its endurance. IME few builds can't get by on Health & Stam's base slots alone with some effort, but it's still the side of this that creates what I think would be the most common, cookie-cutter use of the feature, when my interest was in adding flexibility.

[Luminara]

25 minutes ago, AlwaysAPrice said:

Hammering on the concept of balance is fine, but can you at least acknowledge that there is a respect for balance baked into the concept in the removal of a slot from a power that normally comes with one?

 

No, because the slots being theoretically reallocated weren't being efficiently used, if they were used at all.  It doesn't preserve balance, it disregards it.  And it doesn't do it in one direction, by simply making every character "better", rather it also allows players to make characters which cannot achieve baseline metrics and places them in the same space with the even more godlike tankmages that the change would permit.

 

Moreover, the constraint of not being allowed to move those default slots is a balance point for which there is no counterpoint.  There's no adjustment to modifiers or scalars or attrib tables that can restore the middle ground.  Buffing or nerfing enemies or powers would only give a positive outcome for one subset of players, while exacerbating the problems experienced by the other.  The gap, the spread between excelling and struggling, can't be reduced by any other systems or mechanics because default slots fill a unique balance role.  There's nothing else in the engine which can be adjusted to provide the same, or even somewhat comparable results, nor could anything be created to resolve the balance problem without completely redesigning the game.

 

1 hour ago, AlwaysAPrice said:

I think describing the potential effects as "disastrous" is hyperbolic.

 

 

When I resort to hyperbole, it's mocking, snide, derisive and blown far enough out of proportion to be obviously satirical.

 

This ain't that.

 

2 hours ago, AlwaysAPrice said:

an interesting way to do something new with the process of building, something that's been really rote for a while now.

 

 

That's a player problem, not a game problem.  I had it, slotting most of my characters relatively similarly.  I realized that I was piling redundancies on top of redundancies, special and Unique IOs crammed in even if the character never needed them, comparable powers slotted identically, building safely and according to a generalized, all-encompassing pattern.  Once I pushed my builds out of my slotting comfort zone, I discovered a lot of squandered potential.  Now, as often as I find myself muttering, "One more slot... if I can find just one more slot...", I also find myself with one slot that I cannot, for the life of me, find a really good use for.