The magnitude of status attacks should be somewhat randomized

[temnix]

Homecoming have shown themselves such listeners that their best illustration may an image of a deaf man with a hearing horn in his ear, plugged, so at this point any game suggestions and discussions are mostly for "Here, people, if you ever set out to make a MMOG of your own, these are the pitfalls to avoid!" One of the mechanics these prospective designers should be wary of are yes-no, works-doesn't work, predictable effects such as fear, sleep, knockup and all the rest in CoH.

 

The problem with their implementation is that they are completely binary: they either work against the player or a mob or they do not. There is no element of chance involved for the better or for the worse. If my character has a 2.0-magnitude protection against knock effects and somebody fires a shotgun at him, which probably does a 0.67, the shotgun never performs and the fight turns dull and boring. If it is a higher level enemy with a bigger shotgun that goes over 2.0, the knocking always works, the fight turns dull and boring again, because the player inevitably crashes on his ass unless he has pre-stocked on Break Free etc., AND it gets hard. Either way it is no fun.

 

A CoH character's early life is therefore divided in two parts: before he gets some kind of status protection (and most sets offer a range) and after. Affected/not affected. Worry/Ignore for the rest of the game. Only much higher-level enemies and bosses have some chance of going over these resistances. For their part, players ALWAYS succeed with their knocks, sleep and so on, except with the weakest versions.

 

In that upcoming title, City of Heroes 2, they should put effect magnitude on a random roll: a little below average, a little above. Or perhaps not a little but a lot, only uncommonly. Probably not below 0.67, that would make any effect useless, but if the shotgun sometimes went over 2.0, that could be more exciting. The exact range would have to be tested, but the goal is a situation where enemies sometimes resist tried-and-true (and boring) tactics, surprise the player in return and the player may hope to win by trying his subpar status attacks on more powerful enemies.

[Ukase]

Interesting signature at the bottom of your post. The majority is often wrong, but I don't know that it makes anyone an idiot. 

Here's my point of disagreement with your premise. You see predictable outcomes as boring. I think there are so many trees in the way, you're missing the forest. 

 I'm not a game designer. I'm not a math guy. I can do math, if I need to, but it's not something I embrace, unless I'm analyzing earnings per share, or something that really matters in real life. 

Now, that's not to say what you really want - some variability in outcome isn't a good thing. It's perfectly fine for a strategy to no longer be viable because the mechanics, or even in some future update in 50 years has AI taking over what the npcs will actually do, and they make adaptation of the players necessary. But if I look at what you suggest, here's just an example of what I see happening for my own experience. 

I have a level 30 ice/dark controller. I have shadow fall, so it gives stealth to my pets, (I presume it does. Doesn't matter) I enter a mob of 11 npcs, because at least on the last map I was on, there were 11 ghosts in each group. I enter in the middle and use Glacier, and it holds most of them. The cap on this power is 16, so if the accuracy/toHit check passes, I'm fairly safe. But, even with my pets Jack Frost and Dark Servant, my dps check bounces like the check I wrote to Dominos when I was a freshman in college. I just don't have much of it. I can never clear these mobs before that hold duration expires. But, Jack is pretty good at dps, and he can clobber a few of them, while my immobilizers and ice slick and the debuffs from tar patch and my dark servant help keep me from getting clobbered. 

Now, if you had your way, I'd go in with this strategy, and sometimes it would work, and sometimes it wouldn't. And you know what the end result would be? A reroll into a blaster. There, there isn't a strategy. Just kill them. The only variability is the accuracy. The dps is a given, as long as I'm accurate. 

What you're after is a different game. Not this game. And that's fine. I get it. Who doesn't want a challenge from time to time. You can get that variability through Ouro by removing your temp powers, or your incarnate abilities. Or even your enhancements. It's certainly not the same kind of random challenge you want, but it's still likely to scratch this itch you want. 

[tidge]

There is quite a bit to digest here... I'll lead by writing that the game probably doesn't need as heavy a hand as implemented with respect to critter-affecting controls for most of the game's content. Specifically, for sub-40 content these things bother me:

 

1) I dislike how hard it is to 'stack' controls in solo play... if they can be stacked at all.

 

Adaptive recharge goes a long way to addressing this, but I am still hella bothered by the critters that effectively ignore low-tier powers like immobilization or slow movement. For example: Minions of Igneous and War Wolves. It kinda sucks to be a low-DPS character and also have certain enemies running all over the map that you can't control.

 

2) Aside from a single +2 Mag hold %proc, there has been no player option to try to improve the chance for +Magnitude (setting aside purple set %Contageous Confusion)

 

I get it: devs have always feared the effect of control in PVP. It also isn't lost on me that the favorite child Blasters, alone among ATs, got the ability to use powers while controlled. I lost track of how many changes have been made to critter AI as well as Fear, Stun, and now Sleep effects.

[COH Radgen]

You feel the game's gotten too predictable for you?  Add some variability by forming or joining Pick Up Groups (PUGs)!  Meet new and exciting challenges with people who might be experienced or might be unused to teaming, might have uber solid builds or might 6-slot brawl or even a dedicated healzor!  Find people who stick to it when the going gets rough and some who rage quit if they have to go to the hospital!

 

I understand the appeal for soloing much of the content of the game.  But when you do that, you get the predictability you're saying you don't want.  But you don't need to change the game, just change how you play it.

[Uun]

You're looking at this in terms of a single attack with a 100% probability of an x magnitude status effect. Putting aside the fact that there are many powers that have a less than 100% chance of a status effect, you're ignoring the fact that status effects stack. If I'm fighting Malta on my tank, I will get stunned periodically despite having mag 12.975 stun protection because multiple foes are applying stuns and they will eventually stack to overcome my protection. The same applies to Carnies or Rikti and getting held. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

4 hours ago, Ukase said:

Interesting signature at the bottom of your post. The majority is often wrong, but I don't know that it makes anyone an idiot. 

 

I liked reading this:  by definition only half the population can be below average intelligence, much less idiotic.  I prefer hearing Nessus stating, "The majority is always sane."

 

To what I think the original topic is, one of the things I like about how this game treats crowd control is magnitude and duration being different things.  With zero uncertainty, you know how your cc is going to affect mobs by rank, and you know how mobs cc is or is not going to affect you.  Plan accordingly.

[Rudra]

Let's add more uncertainty to status effects? We already have to contend with the ToHit roll for most powers and a lot of powers don't have a 100% chance of applying their status effect either. And now you also want to add the possibility of landing a weaker status effect just for its own sake.

 

From the player side, a Controller, Dominator, Defender, or a Corruptor for instance will rely heavily on their applied status effects. Make their applied status effects unreliable beyond current considerations, and now none of my Corruptors (or few Dominators I have) can run solo. Because if status effects, which again on several powers are not even guaranteed to go off, can now hit for less than they currently do, then I may as well not even be bothering with them because now I can miss, fail to have the status effect trigger even having hit, and also have to worry about it being reduced to worthless before target resists and protections are factored even if it does trigger after hitting the target.

 

(Also, as to your comment about CoH characters' early life being divided between before and after getting status protection? That is melee types and Sentinels only. Blasters can use their T1 and T2 primary and their T1 secondary even while mezzed, but they have no mez protection. Everyone else? Has no mez protection.)

 

Edit: Oh yeah. As far as mobs go? Two words: Council Freem!. You want to see something like that turning up everywhere?

 

Edited yesterday at 05:35 PM by Rudra

[Maelwys]

22 hours ago, temnix said:

There is no element of chance involved for the better or for the worse. If my character has a 2.0-magnitude protection against knock effects and somebody fires a shotgun at him, which probably does a 0.67, the shotgun never performs and the fight turns dull and boring. If it is a higher level enemy with a bigger shotgun that goes over 2.0, the knocking always works, the fight turns dull and boring again, because the player inevitably crashes on his ass unless he has pre-stocked on Break Free etc., AND it gets hard. Either way it is no fun.

 

(i) A lot of powers have a less than 100% percentage chance for knockback to occur.

 

(ii) They added randomized higher-Mag knockback already. Everyone hates it. "FREEM".

[Bionic_Flea]

There is already a degree of variability for player activated controls.  Controllers have [Overpower] which adds a chance for additional magnitude for most controls (https://cod.uberguy.net/html/tags.html?tag=overpower&q=bears).   Dominators have [Domination]  to boost mag and duration to help with stacking.  And, of course, there is always a chance to miss and most controls have to hit first.  You could also invest in Hybrid Control incarnate powers to add magnitude to controls while active.

 

To be fair, this is only players against critters.  I do think that higher level critters (50+) should have some of the controls and debuffs that players get, inherents included!  Some of the newer content has done that to a certain extent.

[LightMaster]

CoX Homecoming does have a share of issues, i.e. Defender’s Inherent being too reactive on a team wheras other ATs’ Inherents are usually active or all-time, but adding variables on top of existing variables (magnitude randomness on top of ToHit in this case) will create more problems than it solves.

 

You know what variables that helped increase replayability of at least some missions arcs and Task / Strike Forces and helped players to improvise as needed? What type of critter thay spawns within an enemy group, encouraging not mindlessly speeding through lest a random Sapper saps our Endurance, for example. This is where you’d want to Mez high-priority targets like a Sapper before they can do something devastating, allowing damage-oriented ATs like Blasters to finish them off. Likewise, an enemy capable of mezzing, like a Mage / Master of Ruin of Circle of Thorns, should be taken care off ASAP.

 

It’s no Director system of Left 4 Dead games, but the variable on critter spawns alone can cause your team to slow down and analyze for a second before attacking a group, and for your Controller / Dominator valuable to Mez out high-priority targets.

 

On 8/10/2025 at 10:26 AM, tidge said:

There is quite a bit to digest here... I'll lead by writing that the game probably doesn't need as heavy a hand as implemented with respect to critter-affecting controls for most of the game's content. Specifically, for sub-40 content these things bother me:

 

1) I dislike how hard it is to 'stack' controls in solo play... if they can be stacked at all.

 

Adaptive recharge goes a long way to addressing this, but I am still hella bothered by the critters that effectively ignore low-tier powers like immobilization or slow movement. For example: Minions of Igneous and War Wolves. It kinda sucks to be a low-DPS character and also have certain enemies running all over the map that you can't control.

 

2) Aside from a single +2 Mag hold %proc, there has been no player option to try to improve the chance for +Magnitude (setting aside purple set %Contageous Confusion)

 

I get it: devs have always feared the effect of control in PVP. It also isn't lost on me that the favorite child Blasters, alone among ATs, got the ability to use powers while controlled. I lost track of how many changes have been made to critter AI as well as Fear, Stun, and now Sleep effects.

 

Being a low-DPS toon on top of the low-tier mezzes not working on specific types of enemies is part of why the Dominator ends up being “the cooler Control AT” in multiple ways. While a Controller can provide buffs and / or debuffs and have a controllable pet for more strategic uses, the Dominator ends up being better in many scenarios, with Perma-Dom being consistent, and that includes DPS to allow Dominator to either defend itself, finish the job quickly, or take on a mez-resistant enemy like a War Wolf head-on.

 

It’s say something that Illusion Control is often iconic with Controller due to high-damage powers compared to other sets and Phantom Army alone helping out with DPS (and the whole set can out-tanking a freaking Tanker but that’s not easy to do).