[Suggestion] New Power Pool: Clairsentience

[winey]

First a disclaimer: I played CoH as a kid when it was released in retail, up to around when CoV came out. I also played a bit on Homecoming some years ago, and am just now getting back into it. I'm a very casual player and have never really played past level 30ish content. I don't think any of this is OP or game-breaking, but I don't know what end-game stuff looks like.

 

Unlike(?) many players, I like leveling very slowly and spamming door missions. However, I hateeeee getting lost in caves or wandering all over the multiple floors of a labyrinthine office, trying to find the last hostage or whatever. Sometimes when you get near the end of a mission the map will show you where the last bit is, but not always or not all objectives. I think it'd be neat to have a supplementary ability set that helps you find this stuff. I'm not sure if these suggestions are even technically possible within the game client, but I'm thinking of a "Clarsentience" type power pool for this purpose, with abilities like:

 

Clairvoyance (lvl 4) - Fully reveals the current floor's or zone's map, so that it appears completely explored.

 

Read Auras (lvl 4) - When this power is used, the player can select "allies," "objects," or any enemy group they've encountered (Trolls, Skulls...). All NPC's or things belonging to that group are shown on the current map, using the existing symbols we currently sometimes get in an instance (green/red arrows, that white splat thing...). Only one group can be "read" at a time, so subsequent uses on the same map would remove the previous icon set. If the map has unrevealed areas, the symbols would appear over the blacked out area/s. The symbols aren't labelled, so you don't necessarily know which red arrow is the boss, for example. Though combined with Clairvoyance it would often be easy to guess where your destination is.

 

The main use of this power is to help locate what you need to complete a mission, especially when you're lost and have already cleared most of a place out. It could also be used outside to find  find enemies for hunt missions.

 

Remote Viewing (lvl 4) - The player selects a revealed point on the map and projects an intangible copy of their character to it. The projection cannot be detected or harmed, cannot move, and cannot use abilities (but can look around). During this time, the actual character remains in place and can be seen or attacked. This would work like the "Far Sight" Shaman ability from WoW, but the range is either very far or limited only by the revealed portion of the map. Attempting to use any power, inspiration, etc. breaks the remote view. The purpose of this power is for scouting and as a companion to the power set's travel power:

 

Astral Jaunt (lvl 14) - Travel power. The character traverses the astral plane to instantly teleport from their current location to any location they can see. This can be used through Remote Viewing. (Using the ability while Remote Viewing transports the character then breaks the remote view.)

 

This should have a high endurance cost and recharge (maybe 5 minutes), otherwise it would be the fastest travel power by far out in the shared world. It's additionally balanced against other travel powers by being somewhat dependent on Remote Viewing, and a second tier power pool ability (level 14, requires 2 other powers).

 

Without the ability to Remote View, this would essentially work like the standard Teleport travel power, but with a higher cost and cool down. Its primary purpose is to be combined with Remote Viewing to jump across instanced missions. The high cool down would limit exploitation since most instances have multiple maps/floors.

 

Future Sight (lvl 14) - Toggle power similar to precognition. The character peers into the immediate future and grants defense buffs to themself and their teammates in a close radius. This is kind of a throwaway slot, but the other four already cover what I'm trying to accomplish and I feel like every set has some combat ability in it. The benefit here should be at least kind of appealing since it's a second-tier ability.

 

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Ultimately what I'm thinking about is something to make soloing/small group leveling missions a little less frustrating. The primary powers can be used together to get you to the end of some missions quickly (Clairvoyance to reveal the floor's map, Reveal Auras/Remote View to try to find the area you need to get to, Astral Jaunt+Remote View to get there). In other cases Remote Viewing everywhere trying to find the objective from the start might be tedious. I don't feel like this is too different from how people use stealth to get through things now, but where it really shines is when you get stuck wandering around lost.

 

I've also considered that needing to learn multiple abilities to get the full benefit might be too limiting. As an alternative, Clairvoyance could also incorporate the Read Auras effect, and the 2nd power slot could be filled with another combat power. 

 

 

[Ukase]

Back on retail, there was an app of sorts called Blinkie Finder. 

It did a demo record, and when you ran the demo record through blinkie finder, it would reveal where the glowies were, and where all the mobs were. Very useful for back when Quantums and Voids were a real hand full. 

But now, it sounds like all you need is invis. Just zip into the room and look around. The glowies find themselves just from the sounds they make. 

Some of the hostages are hard to find, sure. Generally a target macro will find them when my eyes can't. 

 

4 hours ago, winey said:

Clairvoyance (lvl 4) - Fully reveals the current floor's or zone's map, so that it appears completely explored.

 

We already have this available for 10K inf from the START vendor. It's called Reveal. 

[El D]

I dig the concept and usability of these powers, but bouncing off of @Ukase's comment, they seem like they'd be better served as START powers rather than a power pool. While the utility is interesting and the roleplay opportunities pretty great, aside from the travel power and the final team buff there's not much in the way of actual power mechanics to balance around, especially considering as a power pool it'd be locking a group of mostly QoL abilities to a specific choice (and forcing build compromises as a result). As START powers though, there wouldn't be any quibbles of how to tweak them versus options like Fighting or Medicine - they can just work that way as the benefit of purchasing them.

[CoeruleumBlue]

I think an astral projection power you could actually use some powers through and a self and team defense/to-hit/perception buff could be actual powers, but the devs have to be very careful, there's a reason they don't change things willy-nilly on Homecoming. The rest is basically just stuff in Start vendors.

 

Just turn the Remote Viewing power into an Astral Projection power and put the teleport in it and make it the top-tier power in the set is my opinion, and also let you use a limited amount of powers through it but treat it like a Deep Sleep or something where if you are "woken up" from your Astral Projection your character dies at their location. Team defense/to-hit/perception buff can be second from the top so everyone with psychic characters who just wants to minmax perception for thematic reasons despite it only being in a few rare PvE missions and certain PvP builds can and also get more ToHit with whatever weapons they're using and better dodge from being psychic. Third power could be a teammate version of the Astral Projection power called Psionic Phantasm that lets you see through your teammate's camera and swap places with them if they accept a teleport request maybe, and works on pets so you can swap places with pets. First and second can just give you a wussy version of Mind Probe and Psychic Shockwave whether or not they'll give us a whole telepathy melee set.

 

Blasters have a Temporal Manipulation that has some similar powers as well. Force of Will has ranged psychic attacks so why not some melee psychic attacks in a power pool if they're sufficiently toned down to be equal to other power pool attacks that are still actually good ones that people actually use sometimes? These are just like my ideas, man. There's a reason the devs don't change things willy-nilly but yeah I'd like a more ESP-based set for psionic, magic, or tech or whatever characters who'd like more of that too. Trying to RP "I am remote viewing the other side of the map right now" whether it's in RP missions or the various RP clubs gets kind of annoying sometimes though I do like using the Reveal power from START as part of it. Besides that you just end up with some combination of Sorcery, Stealth, Teleport, and Flight depending on what powers you get from other sets, accolades, START, and what's balanced with your build in general.