Honestly, Rest is an under-utilized ability

[Major_Decoy]

It's useful at low levels, but generally around the time I use my first respecification on a character, I'll take rest off of the power tray. It's not a bad mechanic, but it's awkward on teams and, between inspiration drops, inherent fitness, procs, and set bonuses, it just takes up tray space and you're often better suited just standing around to recover.

 

I think that a lot of the powers that get mechanically implemented as having crashes would be better if they had no crashes but only recharged while resting. It wouldn't be something like "Unstoppable has a ten minute recharge so you have to spend ten minutes resting" but maybe "a once you rest, it starts recharging" or maybe even "it recharges completely after 30 seconds of rest" I don't know.

 

I believe it would better represent the fatigue and stress that these powers subject you to.

[ThatGuyCDude]

Hmm...  I'm not sure that stopping recharge altogether would work well with the flow of the game, but changing crash powers to have huge recharge times instead and giving Rest a comparable huge boost to recharge rate could make for some interesting gameplay... perhaps coupled with a second version of Rest ("Breathing Pace"?  I'm sure there's a better name for it... something that uses the Walk animation, any which way) with lowered boosts and vulnerabilities and a less-hampering speed reduction instead of a full root.

Having Rest boost recharge to powers (excluding those that ignore global recharge boosts, of course) would also help low-level players who don't have a full attack chain and are forced to stand around while they wait for their attacks to replenish.

[Lockely]

I do feel like Rest needs a rework. I agree that it's basically only utilized on lower leveled characters who need to regen END between pulls when soloing prior to having enough Inspiration Slots to carry a few blues with you. Part of the awkwardness is the fact that it takes a full six seconds to activate (which is an eternity at the game's current pace in group content), at which point it functions as a Hold but with -1000% Res and -100000% Def for its duration. The times you need it most (fighting multiple waves of ambushes) are also when it is most useless because the waves come at you quicker than its activation and use time.

It feels very much like a relic of a bygone era.

Maybe if it had an instant activation time but kept the rest of the drawbacks so you still needed to use it for a short breather between pulls it would function better as intended, but I would not be opposed to a full rework of it at the core.

[Hedgefund]

My request for Rest - available at level 1, not 2.  I have reasons.

Edited 22 hours ago by Hedgefund

[biostem]

Rest is kind of like sprint and brawl - useful early on, but cast aside once you grow in power.  Seems perfectly sensible to me...

[MsSmart]

The problem I have with rest, it takes too long to activate, often by the time it activates, I already healed up! Making this ability moot. Not sure how you improve such a lame ability to be frank, maybe let you rest while you hover, delete the auto hit me feature, etc.

[PoptartsNinja]

The game has outgrown rest, and I'm so glad it has.

The original design was: Fight a spawn or two, spend a minute resting. Fight a spawn or two, spend a minute resting. Endlessly.

It was a mind-numbing way to keep people subscribed for just a little longer, to inflate play times at the expense of actual enjoyable game design.


The Fight-Fight-Rest gameplay loop was the reason why I quit the first time, way back during I0 or I1 (I forget), and came back a few issues later when Health and Stamina were made universal.

[Luminara]

If I have to use Rest to recharge my powers, I'm eating someone's kidneys.

[Major_Decoy]

28 minutes ago, Luminara said:

If I have to use Rest to recharge my powers, I'm eating someone's kidneys.

Yes! That's exactly it! It's annoying but it gives you control over when you're vulnerable as opposed to just "Well, I hope I'm not in combat three minutes from now."

 

Edit: I suppose that they have methods to track whether or not you're in combat, they could also implement things so that you don't need to rest, they just only recharge when you're not in combat.

Edited 11 hours ago by Major_Decoy

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Major_Decoy said:

Yes! That's exactly it! It's annoying but it gives you control over when you're vulnerable as opposed to just "Well, I hope I'm not in combat three minutes from now."

 

No-one's going to take a power that requires them to stop and Rest before it works.  No-one.

 

1 hour ago, Major_Decoy said:

Edit: I suppose that they have methods to track whether or not you're in combat, they could also implement things so that you don't need to rest, they just only recharge when you're not in combat.

 

People leave their travel powers on so they can be in combat more frequently.  People take Hasten so they can clear a spawn and get to the next one more quickly.  People spend hours perfecting builds before they even create characters so they can be in combat for longer periods.  People slot +Recovery Uniques so they don't have to wait a couple of seconds for a recovery tick.  People build for soft-capped Defense so they don't have to wait for a Regeneration tick or a heal.

 

Trying to bring relevance to Rest by imposing mandatory pauses between fights would be received even less congenially than travel suppression.

[Maelwys]

Meh, just let it slot Set IOs and I'd be happy.
I've got more than a few toons that'd free up a slot in Health if they could stick their Preventive Medicine Global in Rest.

[Major_Decoy]

5 hours ago, Luminara said:

Trying to bring relevance to Rest by imposing mandatory pauses between fights would be received even less congenially than travel suppression.

The goal is not to bring relevance to rest. It's not a case of "oh, poor little rest is useless, I miss the days of making sure a patrol wasn't coming and sitting down to recover health and endurance"

 

The idea is that a bunch of powers have crashes to emulate the "Oh, you've just exerted yourself so much and now you're tired" The nukes had crashes for that reason too. But in practice the crashes suck. If the goal is to mechanically indicate "You've overexerted yourself and you can't do that again soon" I feel that rest is a mechanic already in game that could serve that same purpose.

 

Obviously it wouldn't be appropriate for every power with a crash, but it might be appropriate for some.

[Rudra]

Random question: Players already make characters that abandon their starter powers and just use their later powers, and those starter powers retain usefulness as long as you build them up and still find themselves cast away. Why does players abandoning Rest after they build their characters up to no longer needing it pose a problem or concern?

[Major_Decoy]

33 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Random question: Players already make characters that abandon their starter powers and just use their later powers, and those starter powers retain usefulness as long as you build them up and still find themselves cast away. Why does players abandoning Rest after they build their characters up to no longer needing it pose a problem or concern?

 

It's not specifically about the power rest. I do not care how people use their powers. What I care about is that so many powers are balanced around health and endurance and I feel that more flavour and depth could be added to the game by considering other mechanics that already exist in the game.

 

There are a number of powers that specify "you are left exhausted" and thematically, if you are exhausted you need rest.

[Rudra]

2 minutes ago, Major_Decoy said:

 

It's not specifically about the power rest. I do not care how people use their powers. What I care about is that so many powers are balanced around health and endurance and I feel that more flavour and depth could be added to the game by considering other mechanics that already exist in the game.

 

There are a number of powers that specify "you are left exhausted" and thematically, if you are exhausted you need rest.

There are only two effects in the game I am aware of that states the character is exhausted. Blood Frenzy from using 5 stacks of it, which locks out the ability to gain Blood Frenzy for its duration, and Rage which crashes the character's combat ability. And making it so that either requires the character to use Rest to recover them is going to royally piss off a lot of players.

[Major_Decoy]

6 minutes ago, Rudra said:

There are only two effects in the game I am aware of that states the character is exhausted. Blood Frenzy from using 5 stacks of it, which locks out the ability to gain Blood Frenzy for its duration, and Rage which crashes the character's combat ability. And making it so that either requires the character to use Rest to recover them is going to royally piss off a lot of players.

 

Strength of Will, One with the Shield, Unstoppable, and Light Form all state exhausted. Hasten says "left tired"

 

Now, I am not saying that all of those powers should require you to rest before using them again, but it would be thematically appropriate. Changing Hasten would piss off way more people than either Blood Frenzy or Rage.

 

The Nukes used to have text "This power leaves you drained of endurance and unable to recover endurance for a while" which also could have been represented by needing to rest (and many blasters did) and would have allowed you to keep on fighting after the nuke, only stopping to rest and recharge the nuke when convenient. Now, the nukes don't have the crash any more so you can just keep on fighting and it would probably piss off more people than rage but... maybe fewer hasten if it were changed.

[Rudra]

5 minutes ago, Major_Decoy said:

Strength of Will, One with the Shield, Unstoppable, and Light Form all state exhausted. Hasten says "left tired"

My mistake then. Apologies. (Edit: Doesn't change my statement that having Rest be required to use them again will royally piss off a lot of players.)

 

Edited 2 hours ago by Rudra

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Major_Decoy said:

The goal is not to bring relevance to rest. It's not a case of "oh, poor little rest is useless, I miss the days of making sure a patrol wasn't coming and sitting down to recover health and endurance"

 

The idea is that a bunch of powers have crashes to emulate the "Oh, you've just exerted yourself so much and now you're tired" The nukes had crashes for that reason too. But in practice the crashes suck. If the goal is to mechanically indicate "You've overexerted yourself and you can't do that again soon" I feel that rest is a mechanic already in game that could serve that same purpose.

 

Obviously it wouldn't be appropriate for every power with a crash, but it might be appropriate for some.

 

Coupling powers' recharge to not playing the game is counter to the most fundamental idea of this game.  This is a combat-oriented action game, not a mobile "idle" clicker.

 

We log in to deliver beatdowns, not stare at the goddamn floor.  If we wanted to twiddle our thumbs while a power was recharging, we'd log out and do something else.

[Major_Decoy]

41 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

Coupling powers' recharge to not playing the game is counter to the most fundamental idea of this game.  This is a combat-oriented action game, not a mobile "idle" clicker.

 

We log in to deliver beatdowns, not stare at the goddamn floor.  If we wanted to twiddle our thumbs while a power was recharging, we'd log out and do something else.

 

Yes, this is a combat oriented game, but resting is not "not playing the game" it is making a decision where and when it is safe to rest.

 

We do not log in to deliver beatings. We log in to play heroes, vigilantes, rogues, and villains. There are any number of games where you can just beat people up.

 

Your argument here could also be applied to the invention system, enhancements, and picking what power to level as. It would be be absurd for me to represent your argument that way, please give my argument the same courtesy.

[Rudra]

16 minutes ago, Major_Decoy said:

Your argument here could also be applied to the invention system, enhancements, and picking what power to level as. It would be be absurd for me to represent your argument that way, please give my argument the same courtesy.

Actually, we can run with that argument. Because they do work in a similar fashion for player use. The invention system lets players craft IOs (generic or set) to permanently enhance their powers. Once they have their desired IOs slotted, the player will not be interacting with the invention system again unless that player chooses to for whatever reason the player may have for doing so. Enhancements get slotted into the powers the player wants to improve beyond base performance. Once the enhancement is slotted, the player no longer worries about that enhancement until the power needs to be enhanced again. (Edit: With attuned IOs not needing to ever be replaced.) Picking a power to level as lets the player improve the array of powers that character has access to. Once that power is selected, barring a respec, that player never has to make that power pick for that character again. Rest lets characters recover between combats. Once that character is sufficiently developed to no longer need to recover between combats (edit: or has teammates that render the need to recover between combats moot), the player never has to bother with Rest again with that character. A progression of something the player character needs initially that eventually gets left behind.

 

Edited 1 hour ago by Rudra

[Luminara]

7 minutes ago, Major_Decoy said:

Yes, this is a combat oriented game, but resting is not "not playing the game" it is making a decision where and when it is safe to rest.

 

It's a time-out.  You can spin it six ways to Sunday, it's still a time-out.  It's a period during which your character can take no action, just like being mezzed, or Knocked, or running out of endurance, or being defeated.  It's why people don't like crashes, they cause time-outs if they're not handled appropriately and quickly.  Nobody likes time-outs.  That's why they were addressed, in some cases multiple times.  Toned down critter mez, -mez inspirations changed to be usable after being mezzed, inherent Stamina, IOs to resolve outstanding KB/endurance issues, blasters being able to attack through mez with their T1/T2 powers, Amplifiers, temp powers, inspirations, Clarion, toggle suppression instead of drops, so on and so forth.

 

Replacing the potential time-out caused by crashes with a mandatory time-out would be on of the biggest mistakes the developers could possibly make.  It's a bad idea.