CO Design Notes

Bits and bobs from relatively recent official CO Dev Blog posts (which am way behind on reading). Not complete by any means — I skipped over stuff I wasn’t interested in.

First off, the 10 July Dev Blog:

When your hero levels up and has a new power slot available, you can go to the Power House to train up. This area has a number of rooms where you can test your new power and try out different combinations of power colors and emanation points in safety. If you decide the new power is not for you, you can easily retcon it and try a new one.

[…] Characters [when they level] can go to any of the conveniently located entrances to the Power House. This facility is designed to allow heroes to try out their new-found powers in a test environment loaded with specialized equipment. What this means to players is that they can try out powers before they become an ongoing part of their character. There are stationary and mobile targets, and different levels of offensive weaponry to test defensive powers against.

Nice — with power customization it’s important to be able to “try before you buy.” I look forward to learning more about this. I’ll be curious to see how CoX handles this as well.

On the subject of melee heroes against ranged attackers (esp. those that can fly):

We’re going to crazy lengths to make sure that players have every tool we can think of available to them to balance the scales. Lots of power sets have travel power disables, or lunges, or roots, or stuns, or some other mechanism that aids melee characters in dealing with speedy or ranged opponents. Additionally, there’s thrown objects. Hitting a flying guy with a flung park bench or a truck or something tends to disrupt any and all travel powers for a few seconds. Finally, there’s teamwork. If you really want to be melee master we suggest you get some friends who can balance your weaknesses vs. their strengths.

The “team up with someone” part of the answer is both obvious and not very satisfying. But the other elements are promising.

On mission difficulty and scaling:

Most of the persistent world missions have a fixed difficulty, but villains in combat with three or more heroes often send one of their number to get reinforcements and even up the battle. The opposition on many of the instanced maps does scale in number and power to the size of your team.

I like (conceptually, not as a hero) the idea of guys running for help.

“Retcon (or “retroactive continuity”) has a progressive cost based on how far back you want to roll back your character. If you don’t like a power you just bought, it’s relatively easy to retcon. Changing powers that were established earlier on in your character’s history gets more expensive. Of course if we make changes to powers we plan on providing full or partial retcons to characters with those powers.

So it’s more expensive than a CoX respec — but also more powerful (in that you’re not trapped with the same power sets). Honestly, in CoX the price for respecs has become virtually nil (between vet awards, issue respecs, etc.). I do like the scalability here where they can give retcons for individual powers that have changed.

What’s the deal with auras and the like? I’ve seen screenshots of characters “bathed” in fire or surrounded with coloured energy fields – does this mean we can make our heroes look as though they’re made of pure fire, or pure ice, or pure electricity and the like? – Sammu 

These are power FX, which can happen several ways. It might be something like fire flight, where your character engulfs themselves in flames to fly around and thwart evil, or it might be that once your energy bar hits max level as an electricity user, your body changes into an entire being of electricity!

In general, Auras only turn on when you’re actually in combat, and automatically turn off when you’ve been out for a few seconds. Additionally, Auras, like almost all our powers, have Master Ranks. Generally at Rank 1, the aura is transparent effect that is mostly visible at the edge of your character (this is called a Fresnel Effect). At higher ranks, the Aura becomes more saturated and full.

That’s pretty cool. Esp. if it means you won’t have the added lag of a common location where everyone’s got all their powers toggled on.

As a point of policy, we don’t believe in obscuring or obfuscating the numbers that drive our powers. That being said, we need to hide a lot of the depth in our interface, because the actual complexity of what’s going on “under the hood” is absurdly complicated. We’ve tried exposing the totality of the mechanics in the tooltips, and the result was a twisted mass that has broken the sanity and will of our testers and has not once but twice nearly allowed the great old ones to break into our world by riding a stream of shattered minds and hollowed out souls. So, yeah. The best answer we can give is “we’re working on it.”

There’s definitely a sweet spot in showing the numbers, esp. of you’re doing comparisons. They also make up for the fact that we don’t live the game world and therefore miss some of the nuances of that experience. I’ll be curious to see what they come up with.

Will there be any kind of journal that records your super/hero/villain adventures (Number of kills, stories completed etc)? – Fhuzzy 

Yes! In Champions we call these Perks, and they are recorded in a special tab of a player’s journal. Perks are records of heroic deeds and accomplishments that a character has done such as defeating a large number of VIPER agents or bringing a Super-Villain, like Talisman, to justice. They’re called Perks because as a result of their heroism, player heroes are awarded benefits including titles and Perk points. Perk points can be spent at a special vendor who sells capes, costume pieces and even some special gear items.

I like the idea of a character journal. I never quite got the hang of the one in LotRO, but I find the “history-less-ness” of CoX (except for badges) disengaging.

Moving onto the State of the Game for 22 July:

On the “classless” nature of the game, CO seems to be fudging this slightly with “roles” — which are less flavor/power-centered and more, well, what you do and how your character is run:

Guardian (Balanced)

• Standard Damage
• Standard Bonus Hit Points
• Potency of Healing powers are standard
• Potency of Hold and Root powers are standard
• Resistance to Hold and Root powers are standard
• Power decays at normal rate
• Energy generated when blocking incoming attacks is standard
• Standard Threat generation
• 1 Versatile Passive slot

Avenger (Offense)

• + All damage is increased by 20%
• – Bonus Hit Points are reduced by 50%
• – Potency of Healing powers and effects are reduced by 20%
• – Potency of Hold and Root powers are reduced by 20%
• – Resistance to Hold and Root powers are reduced by 20%.
• + Power decays at 50% normal rate
• – No energy generated when blocking incoming attacks
• Standard Threat generation
• 1 Offensive Passive Slot

Sentinel (Defense)

• Standard Damage
• + Bonus Hit Points are increased by 25%
• Potency of Healing powers are standard
• Potency of Hold and Root powers are standard
• + Resistance to Hold and Root powers are increased by 20%.
• – Power decays at twice normal rate
• + Energy generated when blocking incoming attacks is doubled
• + Bonus to Threat generation
• 1 Defensive Passive Slot

Protector (Support)

• – All damage is reduced by 20%
• – Bonus Hit Points are reduced by 25%
• + Potency of Healing powers are increased by 20%
• + Potency of Hold and Root powers are increased by 20%
• + Resistance to Hold and Root powers are increased by 20%.
• + Power decays at 50% normal rate
• Energy generated when blocking incoming attacks is standard
• Standard Threat generation
• 1 Support Passive Slot

It’s unclear if these are fixed for the character, switchable on the fly, or something in-between. You could argue that these serve as “classes” but are a lot more flexible and not tied to specific power sets, which I think is the important thing.

On soloability:

There was a BIG miscommunication in a recent interview where the writer made it sound like there wasn’t enough content for solo players to get to the level cap. While we have been putting a greater emphasis on getting group content into the game, players can easily solo their way to the level cap if that’s how they want to play. We hope this clears things up.

That’s good to hear. It will be even better to see.

In the State of the Game 6 August:

Crafting specialization:

Heroes enter into the research and development in one of the three crafting schools by talking to a trainer. After this, they also now choose which of three specializations within that field they want to pursue. There are different items available to craft within each specialization, and even some of the items that are similar across specialization may have different visual effects that players can choose to display.

A hero can change specializations at any time. To change specializations within a school, simply talks to the trainer and choose to switch to the new specialization. Be forewarned that there is a cost, however. All accumulated skill points will be lost when switching to a different school OR a different specialization within the same school. The skill point cap will also be set back to 100 in both cases. And don’t worry, blueprints are not be lost as a result of changing schools or specializations. They can, however, become temporarily unusable if your skill points are too low. Also, you can only buy blueprints that are in your field of specialization.

You can manufacture any item that is in the same school, even if it is a different specialization, as long as you have the blueprint and you match or exceed that blueprint’s minimum required school skill points. This means that you never lose the knowledge required to craft an item, but if you want to hold more than a single specialization, you will need to rebuild your overall ability to create items within that school. Dedicated crafters can learn all three specializations within a school and then be able to craft everything within that field of research and development.

Ugh. I mean, it makes sense (more than the highly-abstract CoX crafting system), but it’s still a drag. I’ll be curious to see how “necessary” it is.