Saga Mode

[battlewraith]

3 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

 

How is saga mode going to make that any different other than to give you a nuke at level 2 so you can blow through content even faster?

That nuke is going to be unslotted initially. It won't have IO rchg bonuses so it won't be up all the time. And it really won't be the big deal people are making it out to be.

 

The mode will let you do things that you normally have to respec into later to accomplish. Skip powers you don't want for one thing. Except you don't have to wait until 50 to do so.

[Troo]

22 hours ago, battlewraith said:

Allow players to cobble together exotic builds that are precluded by the current system.

 

It could be interesting.

 

[Snarky]

This reminds me of freeform from champions.  And that immediately broke the game.   So, i do not like the idea.  Sorry

[Rudra]

20 minutes ago, Snarky said:

This reminds me of freeform from champions.  And that immediately broke the game.   So, i do not like the idea.  Sorry

Even free form builds in Champions Online had prerequisites for every power past the initial character creation choices. You want that Fireball attack? You have to start as Fire Blast and have either the energy builder or the energy consumer attack. You want that higher level fire power in the fire set? You have to have X number of fire powers from the fire set to get ti, with higher level powers in a set requiring progressively more powers from the set to unlock access to with the highest level powers in a set requiring 5(?) other powers from the set to already be part of the character to get.

[battlewraith]

19 minutes ago, Snarky said:

This reminds me of freeform from champions.  And that immediately broke the game.   So, i do not like the idea.  Sorry

 

I didn't play Champions Online (if that's what you're referencing) but doing a search suggests it's not the same. All this does is unlock the sequence that powers become available in the sets you choose. You still are bound by primary/secondary/pool selection etc. You can't mix and match powers from different sets in a way you couldn't before. 

 

There is no way this idea can break the game. Worst case scenario is that it makes some lowbie characters more powerful than they were before and they can thus outlevel that content more quickly than before. Which is nothing on par with the pling options that are already available.

[Skyhawke]

18 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

There is no way this idea can break the game.

 

A level 6 Fire/Kinetics Corrupter with siphon speed, fulcrum shift, fireball, inferno and hasten. 😈

[battlewraith]

19 minutes ago, Skyhawke said:

 

A level 6 Fire/Kinetics Corrupter with siphon speed, fulcrum shift, fireball, inferno and hasten. 😈

Yup. With the normal amount of slot for that lvl. They would burn through lvls until they hit the late 20s and then start to slow down. 

And they would be committed to SOs the entire time they played that mode. 

 

Not game breaking at all. Maybe you'd have less people begging for farms on brand new characters.

[arcane]

Just remember… the OP wants you all to believe that quality ideas like this would be implemented if not for evil posters like Rudra and myself.

[ZacKing]

8 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

Yup. With the normal amount of slot for that lvl. They would burn through lvls until they hit the late 20s and then start to slow down. 

And they would be committed to SOs the entire time they played that mode. 

 

Not game breaking at all.

 

Well yeah, it is game breaking.  You're granting access to powers at levels the content isn't designed or tuned for.  That's game breaking.  Also, this doesn't make sense since one of your stated goals was to make "lower level content more appealing", but now you're suggesting players using this would "burn through levels" so they can blow past lower level content faster. 

 

10 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

Maybe you'd have less people begging for farms on brand new characters.

 

Yeah no, it wouldn't have any real impact on people looking for farms, if any at all.  "Saga mode" would mean players would actually have to play the game.  Quite a lot of people looking for farms don't want to play the lower level content.  It's why people run DFBs, DiBs and AE farms.

[Jacke]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

This reminds me of freeform from champions.  And that immediately broke the game.   So, i do not like the idea.  Sorry

 

It's been a long while, but as I recall, what made Freeform (the original character method from the launch) in Champions Online so gamebreaking is the presence of many powerful "Pool" Powers (with little or no prerequisite Powers needed) that could be combined on one Toon.  When it went free-to-play, the free Toons were limited to Powers templates (can't remember the exact term) that prevented a massively powerful combination of Powers on one Toon.

 

As for this idea for "Saga Mode", @Snarky has a point that being able to take Powers at any point in a build does smack a bit like the Freeform problem in CO.  Powers balancing is hard enough now.

 

 

6 minutes ago, arcane said:

Just remember… the OP wants you all to believe that quality ideas like this would be implemented if not for evil posters like Rudra and myself.

 

Stop it with those negative waves, man.  You can disagree with an idea without being so...snarky.  Follow @Snarky's example.

 

 

[battlewraith]

10 minutes ago, arcane said:

Just remember… the OP wants you all to believe that quality ideas like this would be implemented if not for evil posters like Rudra and myself.

Once again, you're bringing nothing of substance to the discussion. 

Some people are just naysayers. They like to just pop in and crap on other people's ideas. 

They always reek of insecurity to me--they constantly appeal to an imagined majority. We think this. It matters to us. You all should think that.

Far be it from me to call out specific posters for such things.

[battlewraith]

16 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

Well yeah, it is game breaking.  You're granting access to powers at levels the content isn't designed or tuned for.  That's game breaking.  Also, this doesn't make sense since one of your stated goals was to make "lower level content more appealing", but now you're suggesting players using this would "burn through levels" so they can blow past lower level content faster. 

 

When you make a suggestion like this you have to deal with the range of possible behaviors it would entail. People opposing the idea immediately view someone grabbing fulcrum shift or a nuke or whatever. So if that person wants to do that--yes they could level faster through those early levels. It would still be slower and more effort than just pling, so I have a very difficult time seeing this as game breaking. Moreover, this assumes that the person wants fast leveling instead of different build options. 

 

Somebody might just hit on some fun combo that is enjoyable at a certain level range. Maybe they turn off xp to stay there.

Maybe someone would want to RP a character that has an unorthodox build permitted by this mode. 

And so on.

 

27 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

Yeah no, it wouldn't have any real impact on people looking for farms, if any at all.  "Saga mode" would mean players would actually have to play the game.  Quite a lot of people looking for farms don't want to play the lower level content.  It's why people run DFBs, DiBs and AE farms.

 

The irony is that the game breaking has already been done. None of the things you are pointing to here were part of the original plan. Out of a reverence for that initial plan, you are opposed to carving out a constrained domain where the original limitations don't apply. Yet at the same time, you acknowledge that the level range where it would matter is completely and easily skippable. So why would you care if someone, under certain circumstances, has FS or a nuke at low level when most people aren't even doing that content?

[arcane]

31 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

Once again, you're bringing nothing of substance to the discussion. 

Some people are just naysayers. They like to just pop in and crap on other people's ideas. 

They always reek of insecurity to me--they constantly appeal to an imagined majority. We think this. It matters to us. You all should think that.

Far be it from me to call out specific posters for such things.

Look bud, I just found highly ironic that you spent so much time lecturing us and alleging that people were blocking good ideas from being implemented by disagreeing with those ideas… and then you drop a steaming turd of an idea like this. I find it both humorous and vindicating.

[ZacKing]

13 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

People opposing the idea immediately view someone grabbing fulcrum shift or a nuke or whatever. So if that person wants to do that--yes they could level faster through those early levels. It would still be slower and more effort than just pling, so I have a very difficult time seeing this as game breaking.

 

Again, your idea is granting access to powers that the content within the level range isn't designed for.  That's breaking the game no matter how you slice it. 

 

15 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

Moreover, this assumes that the person wants fast leveling instead of different build options.

 

You're still accessing the same powers within a given set, so it really isn't creating a different build option. 

 

17 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

The irony is that the game breaking has already been done. None of the things you are pointing to here were part of the original plan. Out of a reverence for that initial plan, you are opposed to carving out a constrained domain where the original limitations don't apply. Yet at the same time, you acknowledge that the level range where it would matter is completely and easily skippable. So why would you care if someone, under certain circumstances, has FS or a nuke at low level when most people aren't even doing that content?

 

Well, I could ask why do you care if people want to PL and skip content?  Most everyone I know who farms up alts are doing so because they don't care for the overly repetitive grind of leveling the "traditional/right" way.  Seems to me that's what most people looking for farms want to do as well.  I'm just being honest, I don't see this idea as enticing enough for them to try it out to play through content they find overly repetitive.  It's not making the content any less repetitive and boring for them, just giving them access to abilities that will make it go a little faster, which if given the option to PL instead, they'd still go with PLing in AE. 

[battlewraith]

Just now, arcane said:

Look bud, I just found highly ironic that you spent so much time lecturing us and alleging that people were blocking good ideas from being implemented by disagreeing with those ideas… and then you drop a steaming turd of an idea like this. I find it both humorous and vindicating.

And I'm sure that someone, somewhere, hypothetically speaking finds this glimpse into your psyche interesting. I don't.

You don't like my idea, that's fine. But as far as I can tell, you don't have ideas. You don't present anything positive. All you do, like a lot of other people, is just weigh in on things. 

So I see no reason to take you seriously in any way FWIW. You're mildly amusing. And you try to derail threads you don't like....because you don't get enough attention?

[battlewraith]

4 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

Again, your idea is granting access to powers that the content within the level range isn't designed for.  That's breaking the game no matter how you slice it. 

 

This is a dogma. It doesn't make any sense in a 20+ year old game that has had multiple eras of development. When you suggest that something is game breaking, I'm concerned about the consequences for players, not the fact that some initial design philosophy has been infringed upon.

6 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

Well, I could ask why do you care if people want to PL and skip content?

 

I don't care. I only mention it because this was something that was a big issue for the retail devs. They were constantly trying to shut pling down. And the other relevance is that the existence and prevalence of means to skip this early content completely undermines the notion that that content is somehow in danger of this proposal.

[ZacKing]

1 minute ago, battlewraith said:

This is a dogma. It doesn't make any sense in a 20+ year old game that has had multiple eras of development. When you suggest that something is game breaking, I'm concerned about the consequences for players, not the fact that some initial design philosophy has been infringed upon.

 

It's not "dogma", it's how the game is built.  NPCs and content within specific level ranges are purposely designed and balanced for the available power levels of the players within that given level range.  It's a core aspect of the game.  

 

There are consequences to giving players abilities that they would normally get in the 20s, 30s, and 40s at level 2.  All that would serve to do is further trivialize content.  It's not fixing or solving any problem, it's just making new problems and making content even more trivial than it already is.  What would be the consequences of players having access to level 30 and 40 powers on a Posi or Synapse TF?  Your idea is making those TFs even easier than they already are.  That's a negative consequence. 

[JasperStone]

4 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

This is a dogma. It doesn't make any sense in a 20+ year old game that has had multiple eras of development. When you suggest that something is game breaking, I'm concerned about the consequences for players, not the fact that some initial design philosophy has been infringed upon.

 

It is not about initial design philosophy. It is actual code.

 

It is how powers and slots are tied into how we level.

This is more important than you think.

Players have made suggestions and asked for changes to how we respec.

They were not possible for the same reason.   

 

Your initial idea was intriguing.

Saga, to me, implies something else.

A giant solo TF where certain story arcs are lumped together.

...

But I can do that now through Ouro.

[biostem]

11 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

some initial design philosophy has been infringed upon

Like the original dev team or not, that "initial design philosophy" is the entire reason CoH still has a following.  I'm not saying that things can't be changed or added to/replaced, but whenever you do so, it must be in the broader context of how the game functions across all level ranges.  The OP may not "break the game", but what it will do is dramatically alter the rate of progression and how lower level enemies, which are geared toward similarly less-powerful player characters, interact...

[Rudra]

6 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

What would be the consequences of players having access to level 30 and 40 powers on a Posi or Synapse TF?  Your idea is making those TFs even easier than they already are.  That's a negative consequence. 

Especially since exemplared they would be fully slotted as well?

 

Edit: Hells, not even exemplared. If a Blaster can get their nuke at level 2, as long as they have the funds for it, that nuke can be fully slotted at level 7 with PvP or ATO enhancements. Even if sets are disallowed, fully slotted with SOs or generic IOs.

 

Edited 9 hours ago by Rudra

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

Just remember… the OP wants you all to believe that quality ideas like this would be implemented if not for evil posters like Rudra and myself.

You are evil.  And i still want my two dollars!

[biostem]

3 minutes ago, Snarky said:

You are evil.  And i still want my two dollars!

You really should specify which dollars you want, as you may get $2 in Zimbabwean Dollars...

 

1 ZWL = 0.003106 USD

Edited 9 hours ago by biostem

[Snarky]

11 minutes ago, biostem said:

You really should specify which dollars you want, as you may get $2 in Zimbabwean Dollars...

 

1 ZWL = 0.003106 USD

and a $3 fee at the bank to exchange them...

[biostem]

21 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Edit: Hells, not even exemplared. If a Blaster can get their nuke at level 2, as long as they have the funds for it, that nuke can be fully slotted at level 7 with PvP or ATO enhancements. Even if sets are disallowed, fully slotted with SOs or generic IOs.

Well, the OP did specify "No IOs", but my concern would more be about things like blaster maintains, controller T9 pets, MM T3 pets, or, heck, a MM gaining access to their 2nd upgrade early on is a huge buff to their pets...

[Rudra]

3 minutes ago, biostem said:

Well, the OP did specify "No IOs", but my concern would more be about things like blaster maintains, controller T9 pets, MM T3 pets, or, heck, a MM gaining access to their 2nd upgrade early on is a huge buff to their pets...

MM T3 at level 2. MM 2nd upgrade (or even just 1st) at level 4. At level 6 have a fully upgraded T3 pet. (Edit: And still have the no level penalties yet T1 pet from level 1.) No enhancements needed to just walk through missions.

 

Edited 8 hours ago by Rudra