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Cookie Cutter Heros
ethion
Member UncommonPosts: 2,888
I've been looking at the longer term end game and one thing I'm finding that might be more disappointing is that by the time you are lvl 40 you will have 14 powers. This is way more then any one power set can support. So it just seems to me that every character is ultimately going to be interchangable due to the large number of powers? I mean everyone will have a close attack, a ranged attack, an ae attack, crowd control, and healing. I can't really see why you wouldn't. I mean what purpose would there be to have multiple AE attacks or multiples of anything?
At lower levels you can have a lot of fun coming up with unique builds but I just think that later in the game that unique feeling will be gone since every character will probably play the same....
I think they should have had less powers and more power upgrades. Maybe a deeper tree with upgrades further in while keeping the uniqueness of a power tree and making it so sticking with a particular tree would be necessary to have the top teir powers..
Thoughts?
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Ethion
Comments
This system encourages jack of all trades and self-sufficent builds. This further eliminates the need for grouping when you can do everything by yourself and I've already seen CO being criticised for just that - little incentive for socializing.
Class based games have that advantage, so despite being limited in your role because of class choice, other players have to depend on your predefined abilities so they want do group with you.
But it doesn't mean classless MMOs are for solo players only. While picking a group oriented skill may seem detrimental because you wont be getting a better skill 'for yourself' instead (like when your're not grouped), encouters can be deisgned to encourage grouping. This can really get messy especially when the work on balancing the powers of CO is still in early progress.
I don't think you understood my post. The system doesn't encourage a jack of all trades build is forces a jack of all bulds build.
When you make a character you pick a build and they definitely have an orientation. Tanks/dps/healer/crowd control. The problem is after you get to maybe level 25 or so you will have exhaused the abilities in your template. You will have to pick several powers outside your template. Picking redundant powers in the same catagory doesn't make much sense since most powers don't have any cooldown. So I really only need one ranged attack. It really doesn't offer me any benefit to pick another one. Sure they each have minor differences but not enough to make it worthwhile.
Anyway I'd love to hear how I'm overlooking something and what I'm thinking won't happen. But with 14 powers using the power build builder I found online I found by around the 10th power I really didn't see much advantage to picking any more powers. The other thing this begs is why wouldn't you just find the best power in each category and build the superior super hero? You know there are like 20 different ranged attacks. If you compare them all one of them is gonna be best. Do the same for energy builder, and the same for AE power, and the same for Crowd control, And healing, etc.
Thats why I think the game forces you to build cookie cutter jack of all trades characters. Even if you don't want to I don't see how you can avoid it. So you start with a telepath and have good CC, healing skills by the time you are 25 you might add melee, invulnerabilty and pets. In the end you will have it all...
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Ethion
Who cares? People are building the heroes they want to be. For instance my gun wielding character will grab Invul/Regen for defense, have long range attacks, and a little Melee
But if you understood the system insteadf of knee jerking and running to the forums then you would realize heroes will be severly limited by their End building powers.
For instance, a Ranged character will not be able to melee quite as well as a Meleer. Because when you use the ranged end builder skill you want to have nice range on the mob. Also if you understood the way stats worked then you would know its not possible to be all out DPS + all out Tanker.
Additionally, if you played City of HEroes, you'd realize players were very independant in that game too if you made a Defender / Corrupter. It was the NORM for 8 Corrupter team to go storm end game content
Nuff said, thread is terrible
People in class based MMOs complain about soloing too. Has nothing at all to do with being classless or not.
If you guys understood city of heroes then you would know players always had freedom to solo. Very builds couldnt solo well (like some controller builds couldnt solo). But it was SLOWER by far to solo. only reason in CoX people grouped nicely was because you could jack up the difficulty in missions and farm xp hard (majority)
Only thing CO is missing in this regard is the instanced missions that let players tune difficulty. Thus, yeah the only reason to really group is for public quests and PVP
Plain common sense- most people will prefer classless. No one really likes sitting for 1 hour waiting on a Healer. In this game people will be a lot more sufficient
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
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I may not be understanding the orignal post but. CO has as far as I can see the least cookie cutter approach to leveling i've seen in any mmorpg except possibly the pre-nge star wars galaxies. Yes everyone can build characters that melee-dps,range-dps,tank and utility BUT and this is a really big BUT no two will necessarily be then same. It is important to note the differences. Suppose I make a fire based character well I want to firstly give him or her a solid grounding in the fire attack#s and those nifty buffs to the fire framework. Of course this means im not particularly strong in melee so I give myself a nice set of melee attacks hmmm maybe a good solid one hitter lets take the power sword from power armour because it looks cool. Now I have my energy form a flaming sword and ahhh im lacking in physical defence the energy form is very good when fighting energy but not so hot vs physical so lets grab that energy shield as well. Sooo now we have a flaming person with a sword and shield add wings to that and youve got a nice concpt there.
Now lets look at the flame build again hmmmm you think energy sheath combined with some claws from the clawed attack form and regeneration as my slotted passive. Again get as many of the flame based attacks as I want.
There you have it two very similar builds at yet by the very fact that you choose to take bits from other frameworks they are different and more importantly will play different.
A cookie cutter build would be if all 14 powers came from the same framework at that point your the same as everyone else who takes that framework....
Just my 2 cents
Gadareth
I think Co is well beyond what anyone would consider a cookie cutter heroes. Having played it for closed as well as open beta, I have to say that in the beginning, I felt like the OP. You look at one set, and you feel limited because of the lack of powers, and groan at the fact you would have to choose a second set. However, as I played more and more, I realized that this is more about customization than anything.
Everyone has an idea of what they want their hero to be, what powers, what look, what personality. When I look at being able to choose any power from any one of the sets (provided I met the requirements), I see a limitless possibility to define my character as I see fit instead of being pigeon-holed into melee, range, tank, or healer. And in this, the game offers a great chance to create your hero as full as you could create his/her costume. This may cause concern that it will create a jack-of-all-trades, but if you choose your abilities right, you can find abilities that coincide with your stats.
For example: Might Powerset is based off strength and constitution, when you run out of powers there, you can rush over to Martial Arts Powerset, which also uses strength and gain even more abilities.
If you choose powers without any regard to your stats, then yes, you will build a jack of all trades but a master to none. But if you gear yourself to whatever stat you want in particular, you will be a master and a force to be reckoned with.
On a side note: To all those who are worried that the game promotes soloing and no socializing, I want to say that don't worry. In my opinion, I think the self-sufficiency of the heroes we create were purposely done. Because what sense does it make to have a hero that needs a healer otherwise they are dead in seconds. They had to make them soloable because most heroes are lone wolves. I can see why people are concerned, but if you socialize, its not hard to get a group. I personally group up all the time for instances and sometimes quests in large areas because it makes it go so much faster. And as a group, you can really handle large groups. I'm talking like up to 10 or more enemies at a time.
You can't take all 14 powers from the same build. Most frameworks only have roughly 8 or so powers. But you make my point perfectly just continue that logic till you hit 14 powers. What you end up with is a character that is strong in ranged, melee, ae, healing, pets, etc. Yes each character has different looking power but looks aside each character will play pretty much the same.
You know you can't quite get the full feel for what I'm talking about from just playing the game since at lower levels you really are forced to pick and choose your build. It is more about higher levels that you see what I'm talking about. Not that I've played any high lvl characters but what I have done is downloaded the champion builder and played with it for awhile. You might want to check it out at champions.zarzu.ch/
Play with some builds and I think you will see what I mean.
Now someone did make a good point in this thread which is a potentially game saving factor if it really matters and this is stats. Stats have a variety of effects on game play which do make some difference in what your character can do although keep in mind at the end game you can have sets of equipment and builds defining any characteristic. However there is one area that I think could be important and that is the affect of stats on powers. There is some implication that powers are affected by stats specific to that framework. Unfortunately this information isn't apparent in the game there are very few powers that actually mention a stat as being improtant to that power but I did read on the CO forums that each framework powers are affected by that frameworks powers. If this is significant it might make builds more interesting but it depends on how significant it is.
However I've done some testing and so far it doesn't make much difference that I can see. Any damage power crits a lot more with dex so i've found dex is a great stat for any power framework. Power mod items are also great. Like on my ice framework guy I have an enhancer that adds dark powers to ice which seems to happen pretty frequently and gives a massive dark damage proc which usually kills most henchmen outright and makes a huge difference in any battle.
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Ethion
This is where stats come in. Yes you can have skills from every set but unless you spread your points among every stat certain areas will be severly gimped. So while you have a healing skill if you don't up the stat the raises your healing powers you won't heal as well as someone whos focus is in healing. This can be said about most skills.
At early levels you won't notice this as much, but later on you will notice the difference of someone who focus is in ego and prensence and someone who focus is in constinution and strength.
Build a group of friends who go with Special classes and watch the rapage fly. Sure Jacks are good. But A deadacated Hardcore Build will beat their pants off.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams
This is where stats come in. Yes you can have skills from every set but unless you spread your points among every stat certain areas will be severly gimped. So while you have a healing skill if you don't up the stat the raises your healing powers you won't heal as well as someone whos focus is in healing. This can be said about most skills.
At early levels you won't notice this as much, but later on you will notice the difference of someone who focus is in ego and prensence and someone who focus is in constinution and strength.
Were that it were true.... I did some testing tonight and found some really interesting stuff....
Yes stats do matter. When you pick a framework the two stats is says are your most important ones do add a little bit of damage vs other stats. I had two characters I compared. A darkness and ice hero. Darkness was con & end and the ice guy was dex and rec.
I removed all the stat upgrades and most powers. I then would add the talent and primary focus that matched. So something like 25 or so points. I also stripped all gear off both characters.
What I found is that any stat points add to your damage values. They all add equally, except the two primary stats. The primary stats gave approximately a 20% increase in damage vs the other stats. All other stat characteristics mostly matched the descriptions from the ones I could measure.
Ok so far so good. So I decided to try mixing powers to see if the bonuses were tied to the character or the powers. So I took my ice guy and added Shdow Blast to him. What I found is that it doesn't matter what power you use the stats affect them all the same. On my ice guy dex and rec maxed my shadow damage instead of con/end.
Needless to say the repercusions of this to game balance is huge. If you do the best dps for example they you want to go with the munitions power set. You can then consider the first power you get a throwaway and build whatever power set you want. It maybe gives you a slightly gimped start but this will be the best dps build since dex increases crit chance and ego increase crit damage. by a LOT I might add. Doing my test with ego increased crit damge from 12% to 50% which is a lot for only around 25 points of stat.
So it looks to me like the mechanics of this game have some issues....
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Ethion
I am putting my BS to the test
I just made a munitions framework character and am puttting points into ego and dex and I gotta say wow this guy mows down groups like there's no tomorrow. Be interesting to see how it goes....
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Ethion
This here is the truth of it. Sure, you can take all sorts of different powers, but ultimately your not going to have the stats to function well at all of them. If you spread your stats too thin your ultimately hurting yourself by not specializing.
This is where stats come in. Yes you can have skills from every set but unless you spread your points among every stat certain areas will be severly gimped. So while you have a healing skill if you don't up the stat the raises your healing powers you won't heal as well as someone whos focus is in healing. This can be said about most skills.
At early levels you won't notice this as much, but later on you will notice the difference of someone who focus is in ego and prensence and someone who focus is in constinution and strength.
Were that it were true.... I did some testing tonight and found some really interesting stuff....
Yes stats do matter. When you pick a framework the two stats is says are your most important ones do add a little bit of damage vs other stats. I had two characters I compared. A darkness and ice hero. Darkness was con & end and the ice guy was dex and rec.
I removed all the stat upgrades and most powers. I then would add the talent and primary focus that matched. So something like 25 or so points. I also stripped all gear off both characters.
What I found is that any stat points add to your damage values. They all add equally, except the two primary stats. The primary stats gave approximately a 20% increase in damage vs the other stats. All other stat characteristics mostly matched the descriptions from the ones I could measure.
Ok so far so good. So I decided to try mixing powers to see if the bonuses were tied to the character or the powers. So I took my ice guy and added Shdow Blast to him. What I found is that it doesn't matter what power you use the stats affect them all the same. On my ice guy dex and rec maxed my shadow damage instead of con/end.
Needless to say the repercusions of this to game balance is huge. If you do the best dps for example they you want to go with the munitions power set. You can then consider the first power you get a throwaway and build whatever power set you want. It maybe gives you a slightly gimped start but this will be the best dps build since dex increases crit chance and ego increase crit damage. by a LOT I might add. Doing my test with ego increased crit damge from 12% to 50% which is a lot for only around 25 points of stat.
So it looks to me like the mechanics of this game have some issues....
LoL, I had to reread this about 20x to figure out what you were trying to say. I couldn't wrap my head around why you "needed to go Munitions and take a throwaway skill"
You can pick your Super Stats using a custom build. You don't need to Go munitions to get Dex/Ego as super-stats.
Yeah, a group with a dedicated tank who can hold aggro so that the other members can use offensive passives + offensives roles is a beautiful thing.
This is where stats come in. Yes you can have skills from every set but unless you spread your points among every stat certain areas will be severly gimped. So while you have a healing skill if you don't up the stat the raises your healing powers you won't heal as well as someone whos focus is in healing. This can be said about most skills.
At early levels you won't notice this as much, but later on you will notice the difference of someone who focus is in ego and prensence and someone who focus is in constinution and strength.
Were that it were true.... I did some testing tonight and found some really interesting stuff....
Yes stats do matter. When you pick a framework the two stats is says are your most important ones do add a little bit of damage vs other stats. I had two characters I compared. A darkness and ice hero. Darkness was con & end and the ice guy was dex and rec.
I removed all the stat upgrades and most powers. I then would add the talent and primary focus that matched. So something like 25 or so points. I also stripped all gear off both characters.
What I found is that any stat points add to your damage values. They all add equally, except the two primary stats. The primary stats gave approximately a 20% increase in damage vs the other stats. All other stat characteristics mostly matched the descriptions from the ones I could measure.
Ok so far so good. So I decided to try mixing powers to see if the bonuses were tied to the character or the powers. So I took my ice guy and added Shdow Blast to him. What I found is that it doesn't matter what power you use the stats affect them all the same. On my ice guy dex and rec maxed my shadow damage instead of con/end.
Needless to say the repercusions of this to game balance is huge. If you do the best dps for example they you want to go with the munitions power set. You can then consider the first power you get a throwaway and build whatever power set you want. It maybe gives you a slightly gimped start but this will be the best dps build since dex increases crit chance and ego increase crit damage. by a LOT I might add. Doing my test with ego increased crit damge from 12% to 50% which is a lot for only around 25 points of stat.
So it looks to me like the mechanics of this game have some issues....
LoL, I had to reread this about 20x to figure out what you were trying to say. I couldn't wrap my head around why you "needed to go Munitions and take a throwaway skill"
You can pick your Super Stats using a custom build. You don't need to Go munitions to get Dex/Ego as super-stats.
I don't think that a custom build gets the stat damage bonus a framework does. At least there isn't any obvious way to gage it. Maybe I'll make one and level him up some so I can play with the stats some like I did with the other frameworks.
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Ethion
LoL, I had to reread this about 20x to figure out what you were trying to say. I couldn't wrap my head around why you "needed to go Munitions and take a throwaway skill"
You can pick your Super Stats using a custom build. You don't need to Go munitions to get Dex/Ego as super-stats.
Sorry I didn't explain it well...
Ok, you go munitions because this framework gives you in inherient damage bonus to uses dex/ego stats. What I found is that is you put a point into any stat your characters damage increases for all powers. If you put a point into any framework state like munitions dex/ego you get a 20% bonus for those stats in terms of damage.
The second point is that the stat damage bonuses are tied to the framework not the powers. So if I start a munitions framework and choose dark powers those powers still get the bonuses associated with dex/ego stats. This is aside from what the stats normally do for crits and crit damage.
My munitions guy is definitely kicking butt. He can mow down even lvl henchmen in one burst of his machine gun. He can take out villians in two burst from his mojo ability. I'm critting like 40% and my damage from crits is in the 40% range too. So my normal hits are 60-70 and with crits they are doing over 100. The only thing that makes this character stopable is dying :P He doesn't have as many hit points because he hasn't got many points in con and so far munitions has no healing ability. However I think at lvl 14 I'll be able to take gaggetier healing drones which are pretty nice.
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Ethion
With this new patch who knows what they are doing.... All my results from the other night are different...
Now on my dark guy no stats seem to increase the damage of my attacks at all other then the rec ones...
I made a custom build focused on dual blades and got strange upgrades for all stats.
Looking at the max damage on one of my attacks I saw the following after putting different talent choices.
dex 36
str 35
con 33
int 32
ego 32
pre 33
rec 33
end 33
So it is strange....
On my ice guy things seem to work they way they used to. He still gets the best upgrades to dark powers like ice powers.
I'm not sure if this is as intended or just completely broken. One thing for sure they nerfed the hell out of xp. My custom guy got through the starting area and was only lvl 4 my other characters were 5-6. In the instance at the end he couldn't even use the items he found. Then when I left the instance it gave me 2800 xp bumping me to lvl 5... is that artificial bump? I'm really worried about what the next section will be like. Maybe they are gonna make us grind for xp although the xp from mobs is soo tiny you will need to kill a ton of them....
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Ethion
LoL, I had to reread this about 20x to figure out what you were trying to say. I couldn't wrap my head around why you "needed to go Munitions and take a throwaway skill"
You can pick your Super Stats using a custom build. You don't need to Go munitions to get Dex/Ego as super-stats.
Sorry I didn't explain it well...
Ok, you go munitions because this framework gives you in inherient damage bonus to uses dex/ego stats. What I found is that is you put a point into any stat your characters damage increases for all powers. If you put a point into any framework state like munitions dex/ego you get a 20% bonus for those stats in terms of damage.
The second point is that the stat damage bonuses are tied to the framework not the powers. So if I start a munitions framework and choose dark powers those powers still get the bonuses associated with dex/ego stats. This is aside from what the stats normally do for crits and crit damage.
My munitions guy is definitely kicking butt. He can mow down even lvl henchmen in one burst of his machine gun. He can take out villians in two burst from his mojo ability. I'm critting like 40% and my damage from crits is in the 40% range too. So my normal hits are 60-70 and with crits they are doing over 100. The only thing that makes this character stopable is dying :P He doesn't have as many hit points because he hasn't got many points in con and so far munitions has no healing ability. However I think at lvl 14 I'll be able to take gaggetier healing drones which are pretty nice.
Ok, maybe I'm missing something because I've never played with munitions and I don't have access to the game right at the moment. What exactly about munitions gives it a bonus to Dex/Ego?
hmm I think maybe they did something to prevent people from looking at stats in the powerhouse... they seem to change now when I attack something. Oh well I guess they don't want us to know how stats affect powers. Best to hide the mechanics which I suspect are still broken.
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Ethion
LoL, I had to reread this about 20x to figure out what you were trying to say. I couldn't wrap my head around why you "needed to go Munitions and take a throwaway skill"
You can pick your Super Stats using a custom build. You don't need to Go munitions to get Dex/Ego as super-stats.
Sorry I didn't explain it well...
Ok, you go munitions because this framework gives you in inherient damage bonus to uses dex/ego stats. What I found is that is you put a point into any stat your characters damage increases for all powers. If you put a point into any framework state like munitions dex/ego you get a 20% bonus for those stats in terms of damage.
The second point is that the stat damage bonuses are tied to the framework not the powers. So if I start a munitions framework and choose dark powers those powers still get the bonuses associated with dex/ego stats. This is aside from what the stats normally do for crits and crit damage.
My munitions guy is definitely kicking butt. He can mow down even lvl henchmen in one burst of his machine gun. He can take out villians in two burst from his mojo ability. I'm critting like 40% and my damage from crits is in the 40% range too. So my normal hits are 60-70 and with crits they are doing over 100. The only thing that makes this character stopable is dying :P He doesn't have as many hit points because he hasn't got many points in con and so far munitions has no healing ability. However I think at lvl 14 I'll be able to take gaggetier healing drones which are pretty nice.
Ok, maybe I'm missing something because I've never played with munitions and I don't have access to the game right at the moment. What exactly about munitions gives it a bonus to Dex/Ego?
Each framework in the description of the framework says two stats are primary for that framework. Earlier what I'd found is that increasing stats that were primary for your framework increased damage of all skills by 20% more then other stats.
So Dex & Ego are two stats that also increase the chance of a crit for dex and increase the amount of damage a crit does for ego. So making a munitions guy lets you max our based damage and also gives you the benefit of maxing out crit and dex. I think it is very likely that a munitions character at lvl 40 would be at 100% crit and some ensane crit damage modifier unless these are capped somewhere in which case things change
. But even so my munitions guy was totally mowing things down critting an insane amount for over 40% bonus damage.
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Ethion
Ok, yeah thats not how it works. Those are only "recommended" super-stats for that framework. They aren't actually tied to the framework itself in any way. It's just a recommendation by the developers to give players an "idea" of what super stats work well w/ that particular framework.
Any super-stats you select, regardless of frame work, function as what your base damage scales off of. If you were munitions, and selected strength and constitution... they'd scale up your damage just the same as Dex/ego... outside of the fact they wouldn't change your crit rates.
But yes, a Dex/Ego build will have high burst damage... regardless of what powers you take.
This is where the cookie cutter really comes in though.
While stats mean you can't maximise your effectiveness in everything, certain groups of powers utilise the same statistics, so it's more effective to limit yourself to selecting powers that utilise your power stats.
I'm not sure how you are missing what I'm saying.... The "recommended" stats give a bonus of like 20% in damage to powers vs other stats or the same stats from a different build. They also give that bonus to all powers reguardless of what framework you pull the power from.
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Ethion
I finally deciphered how the stats are working on advancing your powers...
It doesn't have anything to do with the recommended stats other then you start off with bonus points in that area.
Damage in powers is based on your primary stats that you select. So if you select a primary stat of str then as you add points into str it increases the damage of all your powers. This is based on that stat exclusively. Later you get to pick a secondary stat focus and if you pick say rec then that also adds to your damage. From that point on those are the two stats that control damage output. So framework you choose is actually irrelevant and the recommended powers don't matter other then that you get a few extra points in those powers for a particular framework.
What was confusing me was that on my ice character I was changing the primary and talent picks to be the same so every time it went up but it was better for the two recommended stats because they both had 7 more base points then the other stats. this was why some of the other character tests were confusing cause they were higher lvl and I couldn't drop my first primary stat selection which I'd made to correspond to the recommended stat.
So frameworks don't matter and unless you want to go with the recommended stats you are probably better off making a custom character although it really only gets you a few points difference which in the long run probably doesn't matter much.
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Ethion