An example of Enhancements from the Invention system (from the same MMORPG.com article):
Well, all the recipes you find while playing the game are multi-purpose Enhancements, or something equally as cool.
Here’s an example:
Sting of the Manticore (a set of 6) – Slots into any Sniper power
- Accuracy/Damage
- Damage/Endurance Reduction
- Accuracy/Interrupt/Range
- Damage/Interrupt/Recharge
- Damage/Endurance/Recharge
- Toxic DoT Proc
If you have 2 Enhancements in the set slotted: Bonus to your Regeneration rate
If you have 3 Enhancements in the set slotted: The above plus Energy/Negative Energy resistance
If you have 4 Enhancements in the set slotted: The above plus Overall Damage Boost
If you have 5 Enhancements in the set slotted: The above plus Overall Recharge Rate Boost
If you have all 6 Enhancements in the set slotted: The above plus Toxic damage resistanceI’ll talk about the Enhancements. The last one in the list is a Proc, meaning a procedure that has a chance of happening. Every time you fire your sniper power with the Toxic DoT Proc Enhancement slotted in it, there is a chance your target gets hit with a Toxic Damage over Time effect as well as the normal damage and effect of your Sniper attack.
The other Enhancements are all multi-purpose. This means that their overall bonuses are lower than a single-purpose Enhancement, but they fill multiple rolls for only a single slot.
Next we have the set bonuses. The numbers are not set in stone what the bonuses are going to be, but as you can see, you get a lot of little advantages out of your Sniper power that you normally wouldn’t have. These bonuses make collecting sets highly desirable, as they can shore up holes in your character that you didn’t have any other way of shoring up before.
Okay, so that actually looks pretty cool. You can do any, some, or all of the Enhancement slots in the set, and get a variety of bonuses on the power (and let’s hope this means they’ve cleaned up the Power Slotting interface) plus some synergistic effects.
One big downside — everyone’s going to have to modify their Guides …
One thing to keep in mind is that while the new crafted Enhancements have some nice bonuses and set improvements, the design intent is such that they do not completely overshadow the performance of currently available Enhancements. That way, someone who isn’t all that interested in collecting and crafting can play the game as they always have and still have a strong hero or villain. We don’t want this new system to reinvent the game and how people play it, but rather add a new dimension and avenue
for fun.
Which is the big threat, of course — “I can’t have an Uber Chararacter unless I get X, Y, and Z.” If the “design intent” is met, faboo, because while these things would be nice, I don’t see spending all my time with my characters collecting the bits and pieces necessary for them.
And on a related note …
Well out the gate we have some new costume pieces that you can find the recipes for. We’ve got a bunch more wings for characters to make. The wings we introduced in Issue 8 with Veteran Rewards were really well received and having more wings that are available to everyone has been a popular request. We hope these new wings will make a lot of players happy. And since recipes are tradable, you can give the wing recipe and the salvage needed to make it to a 1st level character so they can have their
super-special wings at the start of their careers.
Here’s where you lose me. I understand the player side of this, but the contextual setup eludes me. Aside from the cool tech wings, why would you need/get “inventions” to get fairy wings, or dragon wings, or butterfly wings, etc.? (Or, conversely, why should a new player be able tog et dragon wings, but not get demon wings, which are a Vet reward?) Other costume bits, sure, but having broached the whole wings thing with Vet Rewards, I they should have left
it all there.
That said, the ability to hand off recipes/salvage to 1st level characters is a nice touch.
And the last bit, on actually doing the inventions thing:
First off you need access to an Invention Worktable. These are inside the Universities in Paragon City and Rogue Isles. For players with a Supergroup base, they can add an Invention Worktable to their base. Built into the table are “Invention Origin” recipes of the 28 standard Enhancements. These “IO’s” act just like normal Enhancements except they do not expire, and their bonus stays static no matter what level you are. Lower level IO’s are strengthened around that of Training Enhancements,
mid level IO’s are about the power of Dual Origin Enhancements, and IO’s level 25 and above have about the same punch as current Single Origin Enhancements. Of course the power of the Enhancement is better with level, so high level invented Enhancements are slightly more powerful than the equivalent SO.You go to the worktable and open up the interface. Here you see what Enhancements you can make with the salvage you currently have. Higher level Enhancements take higher level salvage (i.e., salvage that comes from higher level enemies), so you should always have salvage appropriate to the level of Enhancements you want to build. These “built-in” recipes also have an Influence/Infamy cost to build, but they only take common-level salvage. Uncommon and rare salvage is reserved for use by the one-use recipes you
find in the world.
Again, once we actually start being able to use this, it will be interesting to see how straightforward, or how tactical-logistical (see complaints about WoW) this actually is. But this article definitely makes me feel a bit better about the whole thing.
Now, further clarifications from the forums:
Will IOed characters be no better than non-IOed?
What I meant was that normal SO specced characters will not be signifigantly underpowered in the new Invention based (PvE) world. We’re making NO changes to enemies to make them tougher, so SO slotted characters will still be able to play the game as they always have. IO slotted characters who stack their bonuses well are probably going to have an easier go in PvE, and have an advantage in PvP (where every little advantage is an edge your opponent doesn’t have).
Basically if you and your group want the (PvE) game to remain “the same”, it will. You’ll just be getting Invention oriented rewards that you never use, but the difficulty of the (PvE) missions you are doing are not going to increase forcing you into a system you didn’t want to partake in.
One of our goals with new systems is to make sure that players who don’t want to use it are not punished for playing the game like they always have. The game is totally playable and enjoyable without badges, bases, trials, task forces, new zones… but we add them to give players more options if they want them.
Which makes sense — but it does mean that IOed characters will be able to shorten the “grind,” ratchet up to higher difficulties, etc. Is that “unfair?” I’m sure some will argue that, but I won’t — yet.
Now, whether new zones and enemies will be designed around non-IOed characters … will be a real test.
We tried to make it so that if you had a full set of Set-based IOs, then your overall bonuses were similar in power to straight up SO slotting.
I should also point out that because of this, you will only be able to slot in ONE of a particular Set IO into a particular power. So in the Sting of the Manticore example, you can’t slot in 6 SotM: Damage/Accuracy IOs into your Sniper power.
Later …
You will be able to mix and match different sets into a single power.
So you could have 1 enhancement from 6 different sets in one 6 slotted power, or 2 enh from 3 sets, or 5 from one set and 1 from another… or whatever combo you can think of.
The rule is simply you can’t have more than one of a particular Enhancement in a power. Of course multiple Enh from the same set start to unlock the Set Bonus abilities, making them more attractive.
Okay, that’s becoming complicated. Though, again, this throws all the Guides out the window, it seems …
Are there different sets for the same thing?
Sure, there are 5 different Sniper sets: Exploit Weakness, Calibrated Accuacy, Executioner’s Contract, Extreme Measures, and Sting of the Manticore. All of them exist all the way to level 53, but some “start” later than others. The earliest starts at level 10 (slottable at level 7). Sting of the Manticore starts at level 35 (so slottable at level 32).
Are there sets with less than 6 slots?
Yes. In the above sets, Exploit Weakness is a 4 Enhancement set.
Enhancements have a level. This (minus 3) is the minimum level you can slot it at. Since Sting of the Manticore starts at level 35, you can start slotting the set at level 32… that is if you actually have a level 35 Enhancement, not a 36 or higher one.
And recipes (other than the “Table 28”) are use-once (after which they’re consumed).
More info as it’s unveiled by the Devs …
The “Set” bonuses are exactly what they do in WoW (and Diablo II, originally) with high level magic items. Get the Helmet and it’s pretty cool, the Breastplate is also cool, but if you have it AND the helmet both equipped, you get an additional set bonus — all the way up to getting the full set of however many items that make up “Iskandar’s Chain Suit of Puissant Buttkicking” — plus the fact that, combined, they look really cool on the charater, instead of mismatched.
So this is essentially that — basically themed Hami-O’s that you can make yourself, with a ‘theme bonus’ — it’s the closest thing to the better MMO-invention systems that CoH can do, and it works — nice thing about that is that they already KNOW it works, as it’s been working for seven million-plus players in other games for several years. It’s also simpler, because you’ll automatically (if randomly) get the recipes while you play, as well as the salvage to use them, so there’s no inventory management, which some people *coff* don’t care for.
Kudos to putting invention tables in the Universities, also — it’s great for people who aren’t in SGs, it finally USES the real estate after more than a year of gathering dust, and it plays nicely into the SuperHero trope of all those mad inventions made by College Professors with tenure. 🙂
And it works to enhance the character ICly as well — maybe the bonuses for all the Sniper sets are basically the same, but ‘sting of the manticore’ doesn’t make any sense for Hang Time, while “Extreme Measures” really suits his play(er) style. 🙂
I don’t see it changing the character guides that much — everything that’s been said remains true — I *do* foresee the creation of a number of new guides focusing on when and where the new Sets will be useful and best applied.
Well, the ICly thing remains to be seen — the Sets are of different levels, as I understand it, so “Extreme Measures” would not add as much of a bonus as “Sting of the Manticore” would (if I follow what’s being said here). That’s only a minor problem, though — given the goofy enhancement names to begin with, it’s a lot more trivial than that (no, my tech character is not using Flare Grenades to increase his accuracy, no matter what the DO says …). As long as it doesn’t say “Sting of the Manticore” above your head, who cares?
Agreed on use of the Unis — this is, supposedly, what they were there for (well, the Skills set, really, but that’s what Inventions morphed into) in the first place.
I might have exaggerated on the Guides — but depending on what the Inventions actually do, simply leaving something as “this should be slotted with X & Y” will need to start taking IOs into account.