Other Game's Gameplay mechanics

[skippy7721]

[doc7924]

I have tried to recreate a few of my favorite heroes in DCU and CO.

The problem is after 8 years of being used to a system and style of play, it is hard to start over with a whole new game.

I have been in CO for over 6 months and still haven't a clue about fusions and crafting and a lot of other things.

I do like they way they handle their powers though with being able to tweak and upgrade in stages. I think COH started that with their last few new power sets.

[JaguarX]

I'm pretty flexible when it comes to game gear/ehancement. When I start any game it's all new and alien to me for the most part unless coming across a game that used the same system as previous game.

The first 8 months I was lost in COX with the enhancement system and many of the other systems for that matter. The first few months I didnt even know about enhancements and never even slotted them and even justrandomly slotted powers (days of six slotted sprint).Then the rest of the time took a few time to figure out what does what and what way to slot powers to fit my needs.


Moved to WoW, smame process. Moved to CO same process. AT first in CO I was new to how and what superstat even meant and how it should have been the focus on slotting the stuff and the bonues. Eventually by the third character I had it down packed and the later toons were more efficient and more focused.


I havent seen any other game have controls like COX, and at first it was annoying and seemed like cheap moves to find ya self fighting a mob and then spend most of the time held instead of fighting. Player wise, it was good. But I wished they toned it down a bit. It made Doms and Controller too simple to play for my taste. Walk in, mass mezz the entire group and pick them off and repeat. It's like I wasnt even fighting anything. Maybe that is what resulted in me going melee. Up close and personal. I punch they punch we fight. Then again, I havent found a decent middle ground in controls. CO, control is mostly moot, not because the power themselves are useless as I like how the control work there but that usually the mob is already dead or near dead by the time a control would be useful or meaningless against the ones that totally immune to it.  But then again that may not be the control fault as there seem to be the popular thing of building only for DPS and everything else is secondary so thus the mob dies not from the hold but the damage the hold causes. But the DPS focus inst new, why many people played blasters and loved AOEs. And why many prefered brutes over tanks especially after IOs came out. But of course in COX everything was serverly limited with ATs and inherant stats of those ATs while in CO ya could in theory build a range tank that kill everything in a one or two hits. Guess it's the downside of freedom and shows that even given the freedom, people still congregate to only one or two features and call the rest like, controls useless. (Although I found controls in CO very useful especially for the large groups I gather up usually. One ice power dual blades do encase groups of foes in ice rendering them helpless as I tag away. But it doesnt last long enough where I can just take my sweet time and or spam it to the point where it's an auto "I win" button. After after three sets of it, they beome immune to it for a while, so spamming dont work but very useful sometimes in tight spots I found.)

[Thunder Glove]

My problem with CO's power system that there's no way to really make a themed character without severely gimping yourself.  As a poster on the CO forums themselves says, there's only two types of characters, "'Uber-Elite Powerbuild Nonsense with no recognizable theme' and 'Everyone else'."

For example:

If you wanted to make an entirely Fire-based character in CoH, eight out of the ten standard ATs will fully support that (Mastermind comes close with Demon/Thermal, leaving only Stalker as the only class with no Fire/Fire option whatsoever).  You have choices in playstyle.  You can be all-fire while still having powerful controls, or strong armor, good melee, or whatever.

But if you want to make an entirely fire-based character in CO, you are essentially a Fire Blaster with no secondary, and that's your one and only option.  If you want a defensive power, or a heal, or a mez, or anything other than blasts, your only choice is to break theme and dip into other powersets.  (Even Infernal Supernatural, despite the name, is not fire-based, it's poison-based)

In CO, You can have a themed character or you can have an effective one, not both.

In CoH, you could have both.

[General Idiot]

Yeah, they really need to add more powers to that game. Every powerset needs:
 - melee attacks (Unless it doesn't make sense, like Archery or Munitions)
 - ranged attacks (Again, unless it makes no sense)
 - support powers of some description. And not always heals! Game needs more non-healing support.
 - passives to support all of the above unless they don't have them, and a defensive passive.

In particular, I miss my elemental melee characters from CoH.

[dwturducken]

Archery and munitions would still make sense, since most character backgrounds, at least going by the examples for each would include some kind of hand to hand combat.

And, to be fair (somewhat), I had one munitions character (Kombat Wombat) in CoH, and one archery/archery character (I forget his name, he was so terrible), and neither was the least bit effective solo. The archer didn't even last through the evening's game session with a team. I'm not even sure he was still a character when the lights went out.

It was still possible to create a completely ineffectual character with other powersets, but it wasn't as easy as it is in CO.

Also, I happen to have two AT characters that I find pretty effective. One is a Behemoth (Paragon Crusader, my Statesman homage), and the other is a Radiant (Brian Blessed, like from Flash Gordon; I'm Silver and don't have the hammer AT). The Radiant is a bit more of a challenge to solo, but I have him a level or so above the level of his missions, which helps.

[JaguarX]

In CO, You can have a themed character or you can have an effective one, not both.

Uh... actually I have both.

Theme came first and built around that. SOme are not super one shot everything but can and does go up against just about any foe. Of course some approach the situation differently and some  like Krazy just hop in there and go at it "too Krazy to have fear".

BUt yeah majority of my toons are effective and themed because I dont and never used programs to build a toon including COX days with Mids, and always built to the theme and to my play style and lastly I'm not worried about some that is more powerful than me or trying to keep up with the Jones. AKA comparing my self worth to others. If they can kill and they can survive well while stuicking to the theme then they are effective. ANd I made some duds and usually those get deleted quickly.


But one thing I found out is that just about anything can be effective in CO. But not everything can use the same stats and playstyle the same way. Alot of people go for dex/con/int. and that is how they build everything. Now there is some themse and powers that does wonders for but there are others where dex asa primary is not best and int. become near irrelevant. And thye end up with a bootleg build but instead of looking at their own building style they just say that "oh that powerset or power is useless." Yeah useless if the only thing ya know how to build with is one set of stats and only DPS.

In COX. Some people say that defenders (prior to IOs) couldnt and shouldnt solo. Yet I seen some that refused to take the well beaten path of defenders only being support and actually soloed pretty effecientcy. They did it by not trying to copy builds to listening to what is effecient to everyone else standards which was a defender is supposed to support the team and not so much do any damage. This defender and a few others that I came across could kill stuff faster than some blasters and lay out support/debuffs.


But see, you can also create an ineffective character. To me in COX it was fairly easy to create an ineffective character, well actually very easy, easier with some ATs than others, and solo or team. But ya restricted to that AT structure and stats. In CO, if ya gold and up, there is no AT restriction but can build as easily and ineffective toon as the easiest toon to make ineffective in COX but easier to make uber toon beyond the ranges of any AT restriction. Really though I cant control how people build and stuff but I like the freedom. I guess I'll say what been said  in COX many times to various people, "Learn to build better." In this case the freedom to build better is there but no one can force someone to build better. That is up to the person to either build better or continue to build ineffective toons and this time, the restriction of AT and it's limitations is not an excuse.

[Thunder Glove]

I should really have said it's difficult to have a themed and effective character in CO.

Some powersets are rather well-rounded.  Unarmed (a sub-group of Martial Arts), for example, has melee attacks, ranged attacks, weapon attacks, bare-handed attacks, offensive buffs, defensive buffs, debuffs, and a self-heal.  Several of the Sorcery and Supernatural powersets are equally well-rounded.

But, like I said, the elemental sets are horribly one-note and not well-rounded at all, while in CoH you had a dozen different character playstyle choices for a given element (except Water, but that was in the pipeline).  And those are the types of "themes" I mean.  Those are the sorts of powers I tend to build concepts around.

Heck, at one point I tried to just build a guy with a machine gun in CO (a pseudo Wolf Spider SoA), and I couldn't do it, because the Munitions powerset won't let you use just one gun for all the powers.  You can't be a guy with a machine gun, you have to be a guy with two handguns, three different types of machine guns, a shotgun, a sniper rifle, and a bazooka.

"Learn to build better" only goes so far when the powers that fit a theme - or, at least, the themes I like to use - don't exist.

[dwturducken]

I started an Inferno, last night, just to compare, and it is difficult to solo. It takes a particular methodology and a fair amount of luck to even take out a simple villain-henchman-henchman group. Now, the Glacier, on the other hand, is pretty well-rounded. I can solo with one as easily as I do with a Behemoth.

[Thunder Glove]

I started an Inferno, last night, just to compare, and it is difficult to solo. It takes a particular methodology and a fair amount of luck to even take out a simple villain-henchman-henchman group. Now, the Glacier, on the other hand, is pretty well-rounded. I can solo with one as easily as I do with a Behemoth.

That'd be because the Inferno uses only powers from the Fire power set, while the Glacier dips into the Technology power sets (specifically, Power Armor, for Invulnerability, Unbreakable, and Concentration).

If you were to make a freeform character with JUST Ice powers, it'd be much less well-rounded.

[JaguarX]

I should really have said it's difficult to have a themed and effective character in CO.

Some powersets are rather well-rounded.  Unarmed (a sub-group of Martial Arts), for example, has melee attacks, ranged attacks, weapon attacks, bare-handed attacks, offensive buffs, defensive buffs, debuffs, and a self-heal.  Several of the Sorcery and Supernatural powersets are equally well-rounded.

But, like I said, the elemental sets are horribly one-note and not well-rounded at all, while in CoH you had a dozen different character playstyle choices for a given element (except Water, but that was in the pipeline).  And those are the types of "themes" I mean.  Those are the sorts of powers I tend to build concepts around.

Heck, at one point I tried to just build a guy with a machine gun in CO (a pseudo Wolf Spider SoA), and I couldn't do it, because the Munitions powerset won't let you use just one gun for all the powers.  You can't be a guy with a machine gun, you have to be a guy with two handguns, three different types of machine guns, a shotgun, a sniper rifle, and a bazooka.

"Learn to build better" only goes so far when the powers that fit a theme - or, at least, the themes I like to use - don't exist.

I see.

Yeah some themes are harder to pull off in that respect. But then again, some themes aree hard to pull off in any game. In COX, many of the toons that finally exist been around just as long on "paper" in concept longer than some of my COX toons and some longer than CO mmo game itself. But was limited by COX power choices between the ATs and available power combinations.

Yeah hard to build a machine gun themed toon in CO for sure. But even in COX it wasnt all machine gun. Even the rifle thing had burts, I think a single shot sniper, and full auto, but then eneded up being filled out with flamethowers, shotgun (buckshots), explosives, and I think for crab spiders a rifle butt to the head, which I always found funny it wasnt included in the blaster rifle set. But then on the same token, there was no pistol to add to rifle set, like a back up weapon, lot of cops and mercenaries have a back up pistol but couldnt make that theme for that reason. In CO I could come closer to it but yeah the rifle again would be not primary and barely there.

I do wish some of those powers in CO was fleshed out but you can combine powers but in COX the power set themes were well fleshed out but limited by AT mechanics. Now if there was a way to combine freeform with the selection of fleshed out sets in COX, then it will be uber gravy and less limiting to many themes.

[General Idiot]

But, like I said, the elemental sets are horribly one-note and not well-rounded at all, while in CoH you had a dozen different character playstyle choices for a given element (except Water, but that was in the pipeline).  And those are the types of "themes" I mean.  Those are the sorts of powers I tend to build concepts around.

I think a part of that is that the other sets like martial arts, sorcery and supernatural have been through multiple revamps over the years. While all the elemental sets are more or less exactly as they were at launch. Back then, almost everything was horribly one-note and to make an effective character you pretty much had to throw concept to the wind.

[dwturducken]

Actually, I'm not quite ready to take it back, yet, but I might be changing my mind on the Inferno. I got him up to level ten, and he's pretty good at holding his own, as long as I keep the aggro under control. The only problem is, I was messing around with the costume creator to see how good a copy of Ascendant's look I could get for a screenshot idea, so I never planned on keeping the character. (I thought the Inferno was funny, because of the "burning halo action") Now that I'm starting to like the build, I'm torn.

At the very least, I have to start from scratch on the costume. The name is original, so it's not like I was being disrespectful. I still kinda feel bad, though.