I11 tidbits – Dual Swords and Willpower

“Mindripper,” who was at PAX, noted some tidbits about I11 that Positron dropped there (emphasis mine):

1. I asked him about future plans for the Shadow Shard and if it was going to go Co Op. Basically his answer was the the RWZ is what they wanted Co Op to be at this time, and that because of gameplay problems with the shard and how big it is that this wasn’t something they intended on getting into the game anytime soon.

2. I asked him about Pocket D getting year round contacts for Co Op and he basically said that would be seasonal stuuf only. I quickly followed this up with are we getting Halloween agian this year. His response was Yes, with some new twists and some new badges. He didn’t go into details.

3. I asked him if the 5th Column were comeing back. He said yes and left me under the impression that it would come in issue 11. That conjecture on my part though.

4. I asked him what he could tell me about I11, He said that there will be a number of new story lines introduced and plenty of things for level capped aka 50s to do.

5. Another fan asked about the new power sets, Posi said they will be Dual Blades and Willpower, and will be for all 4 of the Melee ATs in whate ever Combo makes sensce for them.

6. That Fan also asked about a lv cap increase. No.

7. I asked about after 50 rewards such as extra enhancement slots. His answer was that was something they had discussed in house but that the tech programming is time consumeing and that that was way on the back burner.

8. I asked about the SG limit and the whole 75 accounts in a sg deal. This is something he says they want to implement but they are haveing Data Base problems with it. He further said that they thought they had the problem licked 2 issues ago but the solution that they had come up with had the potential to massively corrupt the data in super groups through out the game.

9. Also my brother says that Lighthouse said that closed beta for i11 is right around the corner, its a matter of a few weeks. Keep in mind I didn’t actually hear this but others in the group I was in confirmed thats what he said.

This has led to much other discussion about, in particular, the melee powers.

On Dual Blades, Castle says:

1) Primarily Lethal damage (and, yes, I am very aware of the arguments against that.)
2) The animations are pretty darn cool looking. BAB has outdone himself here, I think.
3) As Posi said, the set is FAST. Not quick ‘claws’ speed, but fast nonetheless. For Tankers and Brutes, I imagine that’ll be a nice change!

BackAlleyBrawler added:

Dual Blades are currently fast. Really fast. So fast, probably going to have to slow them down before we go into testing. They are also going to have a few extra gimmicks that are going to make them a very interesting set to play. This set is currently being designed for Stalkers, Scrappers, Brutes, and Tanks.

Willpower is designed as a Resistance set, mostly perma-powers.  Castle says:

Willpower has ‘decent’ resists against Smashing/Lethal/Toxic/Psi damage. It has ‘poor’ resists but ‘decent’ defense against Fire/Cold/Energy/Negative Energy.

BackAlleyBrawler noted:

Willpower is our attempt to give the players a powerset that can fulfill the ‘tough guy’ concept and we’re trying to hit a very minimal FX look to it. We have to have some kind of visual effects for the various toggles and clicks just so players will know what’s on and what’s not on, but overall it’s going to be a much less glowy/sparkly than any of the the other ‘defensive’ powersets. We’ll see if that survives our initial closed beta testing or if players will just feel it’s lackluster because of the subdued FX.

Castle also said (about Willpower? Or more broadly?):

Someone earlier in the thread mentioned Taunt Auras. Brutes, Scrappers and Tankers all have a ‘Taunt Aura’ power called “Rise to the Challenge” that works similarly to Invincibility, but increases Regeneration rate rather than Defense.

Very cool.  Now I’ll have to free up some character slots to play with them.  🙂

9 thoughts on “I11 tidbits – Dual Swords and Willpower”

  1. BAB adds (after people snarking about the polls and choosing the “easiest” animation sets):

    Dual Blades was the most popular choice from the polls and it is far from the easiest powerset to pull off. It’s required a signficant amount of animation, power design, and tech time. Why that is exactly will be clear when you guys are finally able to play around with it.

    Posi chimed in (at Statesman’s behest):

    Dual Blades was the winner of the “offensive powerset” poll. Psionic Weaponry was second, and Street Fighting was a distant third (but strangely had huge forum support in the discussions).

    Weird. I would have chosen Street Fighting in a flash — indeed, I think I did. It’s the one “standard power” that really isn’t well represented (unless your fisticuffs technique involves black smoke or tremendous thunder-crashes).

    The winner of the “defensive powerset” poll was… Shields. And we did try to implement this for Issue 11. The only problem was to make Dual Blades as cool as possible, that left us without the time to get Shields done in time for the release. Shields is the single most complicated powerset we will ever do. The amount of animations it involves is staggering. But we DO KNOW you want it. It is on the list of things to get into the game!
    Willpower was second place, and a lot simpler animation-wise. Castle had some really cool ideas for it, so it got the greenlight. (Third place was Growth, another troublesome-in-the-engine powerset).
    So there you have it. I expanded upon the troubles of Shields a little at PAX, so those of you who caught me there got the full story on that, and probably shared it elsewhere in the forums that I haven’t read yet.

  2. Color me underwhelmed with the announcement of both sets. I was looking forward to shields, water control, electric hammers, hell gopher nunchucks event. We already have Katana, Broadsword, and l33t ninja blade. So Im Meh on that. A street fighting set that accompanied willpower would have sold me. Im a super hero. I wanna punch somebody into the next panel, dammit!

  3. Exactly. The dual blades is doubtless kind of cool (Margie suggests the Red Caps were probably at least partial animation inspiration), but …
    … why do Scrappers only have a single punchy-punchy set that spews dark smoke? I warrant that 40% of comic book characters are punchers (and another 40% are blasters), but while everyone punches to some degree, Scrappers don’t even get Super-Strength as a set.
    That said, shields, electric hammers, etc., that are too “iconic” leave me cold as possibilities, too. I’d rather see all the Tanker secondaries (and Brute primaries) brought over to Scrappers first. No animation problems — just game balancing.
    (Next up: Why do villains not have axes and maces? Why do only Masterminds have access to a pistol power set? Who the hell decided that Spines was a must-have power?)

  6. More on why Shields was put on the back burn, by BAB:

    The biggest hurdle for Shields is that the default combat stance that all of our power animations are based on doesn’t accommodate having a shield equipped on the left arm. When we looked into how many animations we’d need to create modified duplicates of we ended up with a list of 102 animations. Take that list and multiply it by two as everything needs a standing and a flying version. Then take chunks of that list and multiply it by 3, as some animations are unique to each of the 3 basic player rigs. By contrast, Dual Blades, which has completely new animations for every single power, has required 23 animations. Willpower, zero.
    And that’s with restricting certain powerset combos. We can’t have Katana/Shield scrappers or Shield/Dual Blade tankers for instance. Any left wield, dual wield, or 2 handed powersets have to be restricted with a Shield set. Sets like Stone Melee that have a couple of powers that use a two handed swing for their stone mallet would have to use a different animation instead.

    I’m a big Captain America fan from way back — but I have a ton of things I’d rather see them work on than Shields, for just this reason.
    In a later thread, someone suggested getting around this by making shields just sort of glorified bucklers. BAB noted, correctly, that would satisfy nobody.

  7. States promises that Street Fighting is still on the agenda.

    We definitely want to do Street Fighting. Really. We want to capture the feeling of those “two fisted” vigilantes…and as one poster already noted, we want to make sure that it stands out from the other melee sets.

  8. 5th Column vs. Council
    The Fifth Column were nazis. Other than that they’re identical. I don’t know for sure, but it was speculated that Fifth Column was phased out just before the European release because of restrictions on Nazi imagery in some countries.
    I just hate them both. Watered-down Nemesis. The only interesting AV (that I’ve encountered) is Maestro.

  9. I actually kind of like the jackbooted neofascists — esp. with the Council’s dabblings in magic (werewolves, vampires). I think there’s room for both them and the Nemmies, though they could use something to make them stand out more as a threat.
    I’ve heard that rumor, too, btw, though it’s evidently been debunked multiple times. (I don’t know that a reasonable alternative has ever been given, though.)

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