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City of Heroes 2

Started by princezilla, July 10, 2017, 05:39:15 AM

BitLoadR

Quote from: TinFoil on October 07, 2018, 05:13:40 PM
How 'bout a no-level system where your powers unlock per enemy type (aliens, machines, humanoid, otherworld, etc) rather than just a straight improvement across the board. It would sort of make sense that if you fought machines all the time you would start learning some tricks to better defeat those enemies while those same tricks wouldn't work on aliens.

The idea of having a non-level system where you would "learn better tricks to defeat X type enemies" has the limitation that a character becomes unplayable against other enemy types...(sorry, stating the obvious here). It would make playing that character boring at some point, because you keep fighting the same type of bad guys. And you would get defeated instantly if you team up with some people and run into mobs you barely have any skills for.

Taking CoH as an example...
If your character fights Thorns (magic beings) all the time and develops skills to defeat magic beings or beings using magic attacks in seconds, the next time you run into a Skulls mob you faceplant before you can even launch your attack.


playing on Reunion as Star Jewel, Emberflair, Lumitia, Novaspark, Dawnshade, Mystfure, Ion Blaze, Heatstrike, more...

MyriVerse

#61
Put enough skill types out for availability and you can be more than just one-note. Even fighting Thorns is going to give you some hand-to-hand skills that could apply to any/all other groups.

Advancement should be based on character actions not who they fight. The character can fight Thorns with her bare hands, melee weapons, magic, energy blasts, whatever, and how she defeats them is how the character should advance.

But yeah, level systems tend to be better imo, especially when it comes to grouping. You need a system to determine who should ideally be grouping together.
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BitLoadR

Quote from: MyriVerse on October 15, 2018, 01:15:12 PM
... But yeah, level systems tend to be better imo, especially when it comes to grouping. You need a system to determine who should ideally be grouping together.
I think most MMO's (and other types?) use levels because of the above.
If a game wouldn't use levels but only XP to determine a character's skills, strength, hit-points, etc, I guess there is no way of telling who would make a good team-mate.
Also....
If the developers want you to spend hours playing their game and there is no leveling system in place, things might get ... ugly(?).
I think it would mean that you will start at 0 XP and every time you defeat something/someone you will gain a tiny amount of XP.
Like, for every mob you defeat you'll get 1 XP.
A minion? 1 XP
A lieutenant? 1 XP
A boss? 1 XP
Either that or your max XP would be somewhere around 9.99*10 to 27th power (I dunno about sciency stuff, but something like 9 Octillion XP)


playing on Reunion as Star Jewel, Emberflair, Lumitia, Novaspark, Dawnshade, Mystfure, Ion Blaze, Heatstrike, more...

Thunder Glove

Several tabletop games (and many video games) use XP but without levels; you just buy abilities directly for the XP.  Stats that can be increased generally have an increasing cost.

Whether that would work in a MMO setting (particularly in determining relative character power for teaming) is another matter.

slickriptide

City of Heroes was originally conceived as being Champions-inspired skills-based system. It would have XP but no levels. Rather, every power and sub-power would have its own skill rating that would be individually boosted by using it.

Additionally, power trees were not all equivalent. The number of powers in a set and the ranges of effectiveness in a powerset were determined partially upon a character's origin. A magic ice powerset might have ten powers while a natural fighting set might have four.

By 2002, that system had been scrapped in favor of the experience levels and powersets that all had identical leveling structures, with origin strictly as flavor and minor story effect. By the end of the first year of live, they even had removed the unique origin-based opening stories, and relegated origin to an essentially "cosmetic" role.

Mister Hassenpheffer

So Wildstar is going poof. I'm sure everyone already knows that. 

I know this one isn't really NcSoft's fault (not totally) but they really are living up to the reputation of being the kiss of death for games, even if it's by proxy.

Don't count on them for anything but negligent homicide. I guess.