Teleport Foe Revisited

AAAAAAAAAAAAGGHHHHH!!!!!

Who is that Crazy Guy??

God save us from the 2:00am inspirations. Somewhat punchy, I was playing yet another test character and thought, "yaknow, it's a wonder some of these civilians don't get fed up with all the crime around here and just start chasing Hellions with a board." With this concept running wild through my exhaustion-addled brain, "That Crazy Guy" was born. A natural tanker (he has to have some chance of lasting through a fight), that crazy guy runs around Galaxy City, in his dirty wife beater and jeans, punching out criminals. And I do mean "punching out." The only "power" he's using is Brawl. No flaming fists... no giant stone mallets... no super strength punch... Just plain old Brawl. There are going to be rules here. That crazy guy is nothing more than a normal bum who's fed up with crime. Therefore, he'll never level (beyond 2nd, which I had to do to get Rest), he'll never use any powers beyond Brawl (and maybe that throwing knife beginning characters get... I haven't decided yet), he'll never use contacts, he'll never slot anything, and he'll never use Inspirations. Ever. No matter what. If that crazy guy ever gets beat up, he'll go to the hospital just like, well, some crazy guy who gets in fights.

I was somewhat bemused to find that it wasn't really difficult to beat up +1 level leutenants and groups of equivelant level thugs by just repeatedly punching them. (Brawl is set on auto-activate; we just select a target, and off we go, punching until someone falls.) And so far, while he's gone down to literally zero Health, he hasn't fallen yet. It's a sad statement on the capabilities of Paragon's villains really. There's a grittiness to this approach, and a little bit of a thrill knowing he doesn't have super powers to swing the odds in his favor. (I've even scrolled the camera angle up real close, giving things more of a tight, in-your-personal-space feel.) Eventually he's going to stake out a little neighborhood that he likes and just hang out there, keeping it spotlessly clean of crime.

So watch out for some crazy guy, who looks like any other working stiff in Paragon City, as he runs around meating out two fisted vindication on the faces of the criminal element. Marvel at the size of his balls in fighting villainy with his bare hands, and wonder... who is that crazy guy??

New Power Set: Body Manipulation

Body Manipulation allows the hero to alter the size, shape, and consistancy of his body to attack his foes. This set is a Scrapper primary set.

BODY MANIPULATION (Scrapper primary set)
-Reach: arms stretch to hit target at short range.
-Hammer Fist: The hero's fist grows to giant size and he punches target.
-Spike Fist: The hero's arm and hand become a spike doing lethal damage.
-Increase Mass: Temporarily increases the hero's physical mass & size, increasing his damage and healing rate. Provides less of a damage increase than Build Up, but lasts longer.
-Throw Punch: The hero's arms actually fly from his body and attack target at medium range doing medium damage. The hero regrows new arms to continue fighting.
-Flex: While activated, the hero's body becomes rubbery and flexible, reducing damage from smashing and lethal attacks and providing good resistance to knockback.
-Tangle: The hero's arms stretch to tangle a foe and squeeze him for good damage over time. Target is held for that time, but hero is unable to make further attacks during the duration. Any attack on the hero during this time also damages the held target.
-Explode: The hero's body explodes doing high damage over an area around him. The hero's body takes a moment to reform, and during that time he can't attack or be attacked.
-Duplicate: Creates 3 duplicates of the hero which last for a period of time. The duplicates and the original hero all share one HP pool when duplicates are created, but each heals normally and individually after the power is first activated. Duplicates all have the same attack powers ad the original hero though they do less damage.

New Power Set: Gravity Melee

It's time for a new power set, and this time I thought Tankers needed a little love. Their options feel more limited to me than, say, controllers and ripe with possibilities for new sets. Gravity seemed like an appropriate tanker effect, so here it is....

GRAVITY MELEE (tanker secondary set)
-Accelorated Punch: Deals moderate damage with high chance of knockback.
-Slap Down: Hero causes a gravity wave for a short distance in front of him, slapping all opponants to the ground, doing minor damage to each.
-Gravity Pull: Gravity tankers don't get taunt as part of their set. Instead they get an AoE Hold of all targets in their immediate melee range.
-Pound: Like accelerated punch with greater damage and further knockback.
-Build Up: The usual.
-Rocket Punch: Does high damage and causes target to fly high into the air and taking some time to fall again, taking additional falling damage. Less air time indoors, though the target takes damage from hitting the ceiling and floor.
-Piledriver: Hero leaps into the air and comes down on target with increased weight, dealing superior damage and smashing him to the ground.
-Hurl Boulder: As stone mellee power.
-Human Projectile: Hero picks up target foe and throws him at another foe, dealing superior damage to each. Thrown foe is prone, second foe has a high chance of being prone.


Other sets are being worked on. Stay tuned....

It's an Illuuuuusion!

Small idea and adjustment. Let's scrap invisibility out of the Illusion Controller set and put it solely in the Stealth set where it belongs. Both sets are lamer because of the similarity. As a replacement, I propose this for Illusionists: Doppleganger. The illusionist selects a target and activates the power. He then takes on the physical appearance of that target for as long as the toggle is activated. This produces essentially the same effect as invisibility but flavors it specifically towards the set. In addition, I'd make these adjustments. The illusionist can mimic minions and leutenants without incident, but if they mimic bosses or archvillains they run a greater risk of being found out. Essentially, if the disguised hero and his "original" are both within line of sight of villains, each of those villains are aggroed to attack either the hero or the original (with an equal chance of either). Interesting? Flavorful? Yes! And it would add some interesting strategizing to the game.

You say PoTAYto, I say PoTAWto...

...you say Zapp, I say Proton Volley.

One of the most frustrating and disinteresting aspects of CoH for me is the similarity, sometimes extreme similarity, between powers and even power sets. Often it seems a blaster is a blaster is a blaster.... It's mainly a matter of what color flies out of his hands. I realize that this is a way to establish game balance. (And let's face it... This was about establishing game balance during the initial design proccess, not about maintaining game balance. There's a distinct difference.) I'm sure there were a billion things that needed to be done while bringing CoH to the public, but this is one shortcut they took that I believe really cost them seriously, in a very real financial sense, in the long run. It causes loss of interest which in turn causes subscriber drop off.

Powers and power sets can be different from each other and still have game balance. Sure, it requires a lot of testing (which I think they have enough people to help with now) and a broad understanding of the game environment as a whole (ie, not missing the forest for the trees). Illusion controllers should be very different in some ways than fire controllers.... Fire blasters from ice blasters... Stone tankers from invulnerability tankers. Yes, each archetype should still serve its assigned "roll" in the game (much as I'd love for that to not be the case), but each power set should have it's own advantages and disadvantages. This is done a little in CoH, but it's not stressed or accomodated to any degree. Electricity manipulators should be balls-nasty against robots, but should take it in the ass from ice (or water? ...where's my water??) attacks. Fire users should get heavily smacked up by ice users, as ice users should by them in turn. Common sense adjustments like that could add a lot to the feel of a game.

Disappointing Mission and Inspiration

I just did a mission that disappointed me in it's failure to rise above the typical "rescue X" missions. The contact tells me something to the effect of "hey, how about something easy? You've been invited to appear at a sci-fi convention." When you arrive, sadly, the building is abandoned and the entry message actually tells you it's an ambush. Sad. Boy, this had the potential to be something really interesting, combining combat and non-combat goals into an actual [gasp!] plot! Here's how I'd do it. I don't think there's anything here that can't be done with existing coding.

The hero arrives at the mission location and enters. Inside, the hero is immediately charged by a number of men in robes and a wizard... apparently a Circle of Thorns ambush! The assailants target normally, but when powers are activated against them an "invalid target" message results. When the "attackers" reach the hero, they deliver a message explaining they're dressed up for the sci-fi convention and welcome the hero. They tell him there are a number of people who want to meet him and that an audience is waiting for him to speak.

Moving into the actual "convention hall" (the large, multi-tiered room of the standard business office map), the hero finds the room filled with people, some dressed like heroes and villains. Vendor booths (graphics taken from the various store layouts) line the room. The hero moves around the room collecting glowies. Each of these glowies is something at a booth or fan related. Clicking them causes the hero to wave or pose for the people present (who applaud when he does) and XP is awarded. In a few places is the very familiar scene of CoT thugs threatening a civilian. The thugs are, of course, targetable... but when the heroes attack the "thugs" say, "dont hurt us! We were just fooling around!" ....More "invalid target" fans.

Once all the glowies have been collected, the hero is given a target location to go to. At this location is a stage and podium (glowie) and an audience of civilians. When the hero clicks the podium, he goes into the "lecture" emote. Moments later an attack of real CoT spawns. CoT Guards, Guides, and Archers shoot wildly around the room, and spectral Daemons chase panicking civillians (via the "follow" command programming).

Throughout the mission, all costumed civilians are targetable, but not attackable. I think this adds to the surprise nature of the actual villains. Initially, this might seem annoying when actual combat finally breaks out, but I think it adds a "don't shoot the civilians!" feel when villains enter and the crowd panics.... The hero has to choose his target carefully.

Beyond this room are a number of real cornered hostages in need of rescue. The last one will tell the hero that the villains grabbed one of the merchants and jumped into the elevator. The elevator leads to a parking garage (the garage from the standard city zone map). Near the garage elevator is a truck unloading weapons and explosives. Villains here to defeat and stuff to be destroyed. Further down the garage, thugs are planting bombs, and other bombs await disarming. At the bottom of the garage is the big villain with the kidnapped merchant. Defeat villain, rescue hostage. The merchant explains that the villain wanted something from his booth. Apparently one of his "replica props" was an authentic artifact. If the hero waits a moment before exiting the mission, a mob of civillian sci-fi fans will gather and cheer.

There. Now wasn't that more interesting?