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Self-Heals: Powers or Devices?
bluhman
Posts: 2,410 Arc User
One of the big dividing playstyle factors between AT and FF is that the Freeform can readily take abilities that allow them to heal themselves, letting them veritably last several times as long as a comparable-theme Archtype. Sure, it can be construed as an advantage to playing a paid gold style, but also consider this question: If you've played freeform, when's the last time you've made a build that hasn't used: Conviction, Bountiful Chi Resurgence, Bionic Shield, or another quick self-healing power? Many, if not all freeforms make liberal use of self-heals and get their benefits for very little cost.
So I kind of want to get a feel of how people are on this issue, as it boils down to two general paradigms on how I think it could be fixed:
A: The developers add self-healing powers that are theme-appropriate to each power category. For example, Elementalist heal working under the pretense of consuming the energy of your powers to heal yourself over time, Technology medkits/stimpack power, Mystical potion-drinking power that can double for adding various random buffs, or other similar things. After these are added in, each AT is tweaked to incorporate them into their build if needed. The end result is that ATs and FFs end up on more even ground, each being able to last longer in a battle, but this would also limit healing devices basically to emergency backup powers - they take the place of Active Defenses in essence. There's also the ramifications that this would have for current challenge/class dynamic, but in theory this could be used to prepare to scale enemies up to a new standard?
B. Developers instead shorten the recharges on healing devices to somewhere around 10-15 seconds, making them a mainstay way of surviving for all character types, because not only of how powerful such healing devices are, but also for how quickly they can be used now. This makes the AT/FF balance more even by essentially 'buffing' devices to such a point that a power like Conviction becomes minute in comparison.
I'm personally in favor of B myself, because this not only closes said gap, but also requires less work, preserves some part of the character class setup of the game (healers are still needed in case you do run out of potables), and provides a money sink for players for all their spare UNTIL/UNITY/MCPD tokens and resources.
So I kind of want to get a feel of how people are on this issue, as it boils down to two general paradigms on how I think it could be fixed:
A: The developers add self-healing powers that are theme-appropriate to each power category. For example, Elementalist heal working under the pretense of consuming the energy of your powers to heal yourself over time, Technology medkits/stimpack power, Mystical potion-drinking power that can double for adding various random buffs, or other similar things. After these are added in, each AT is tweaked to incorporate them into their build if needed. The end result is that ATs and FFs end up on more even ground, each being able to last longer in a battle, but this would also limit healing devices basically to emergency backup powers - they take the place of Active Defenses in essence. There's also the ramifications that this would have for current challenge/class dynamic, but in theory this could be used to prepare to scale enemies up to a new standard?
B. Developers instead shorten the recharges on healing devices to somewhere around 10-15 seconds, making them a mainstay way of surviving for all character types, because not only of how powerful such healing devices are, but also for how quickly they can be used now. This makes the AT/FF balance more even by essentially 'buffing' devices to such a point that a power like Conviction becomes minute in comparison.
I'm personally in favor of B myself, because this not only closes said gap, but also requires less work, preserves some part of the character class setup of the game (healers are still needed in case you do run out of potables), and provides a money sink for players for all their spare UNTIL/UNITY/MCPD tokens and resources.
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Self-Heals: Powers or Devices? 24 votes
Powers! Give the ATs conviction-like abilities.
37%
9 votes
Devices! Shorten the recharges on self-heal consumables.
45%
11 votes
I got my own ideas on all this, and I'd better post about it.
16%
4 votes
0
Comments
I agree with this basically. Let free form be free to all.
Otherwise, as far as self-heals go, I don't use many of them at all, BCR is on maybe 20 out of 122 characters, one has conviction, And only two of my support toons have BS.
I personally prefer to killing quickly to doing little damage but never dying. Adds some challenge to fights to with the threat of failure being possible.
There has been a global cap adjustment for both FF and AT's as well as the option to buy a global extension from the store, whilst this is a good thing, from where I'm sitting there does seem to be fewer reasons to go gold and as a result, fewer reasons to feed money to CO.
Removing AT's whilst that would be a step forward in some ways, as I've already said...why would people now bother to subscribe, if you could operate outside of AT's for free?
I just think that the core idea of freeform is/was a selling point for CO, removing that selling point (however well it is or is not working) may not be a good idea.
BUT
If we removed ATs and allowed everyone Freeform BUT as it has been said before, lock individual power sets behind price tags in the Z store, where players can unlock their first power set for free and can only select powers from within that set until they unlock others....that might work too.
But for the moment, I'd be fine with them shortening the recharge times on devices for AT's
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Otherwise, yeah, I could see having Silver players having to buy the individual power sets. But silvers should get power sets that correspond with their current characters for free.
So how would I have worked it? Each power frame would have one power set unlocked by default. For instance the Projector sets, would have Ice unlocked, the tech sets would have munitions, martial arts would have had Martial Arts, the Psychic set would have had Telepathy, Brick would have had Might, and Mystic would have had one of the sorceries. All the other power sets would either require a subscription to have unlocked, or, they would would require Zen to unlock. Current ATs are umm I believe 675 zen (Not sure since I can't see the prices as a lifer). If that is the case (guesstimating) I would say then a power set should unlock for the account at around 900 to 1500 zen, based on the power set possibly and work required (such as animation and other things). And as an incentive to try subscribe, say subscribers might get a head start of a week or so using a new power set as it is introduced.
As the Archetype system I feel is an absolutely disastrous failure now and cost Cryptic money they could have made and potential many potential customers. Hell, a silver freeform system would have actually inspired more creative ways to make powers, I believe, as demand for more would definitely improve, and if a power set is done well, balanced and fits ideals of the players, Cryptic would have more than had enough money to not only continue this, but also build more power sets, continue with the game growth, and of course had a much larger player base for Champions than the few thousand we have now.
Considering the number of people who have said they would have jumped on Champions if that were the case, I think this would have generated much more interest, and revenue, for Champions than the current AT approach which I will state, pushed people away, and did not create interest. But at this point in time, the question becomes would it be worth it anymore, as the ship has sailed issue has come and gone. Would it garner interest if they did the conversion now? Hell yes, easily, but the problem there is nothing new has been added to the game, other than what would be considered token in the eyes of a gaming community.
And add into the fact that a change like that would be costly now, because so much would have to change. For instance, what about the people that have bought the freeform slot already? Well my answer would have been something along the lines of give them a couple of tokens to unlock freeform power sets, say 3 and let them keep the additional slot since that would have just about evened out there, but that's me and would require even more database work to fix that issue.
Champions could have benefited by leaps and bounds if they properly did the Free to Play conversion. Instead they pushed potential customers away with the Archetype system, and of course the superior, constant neglect the game has received has produced even less reasons for people to want to come back or check the game out.
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It just feels so common sense to shorten the recharge length. As a Silver player who sometimes goes Gold through charge cards, I sometimes feel a little scared to use heal devices for worry that "if I wait a little longer..." it'll be better to use. Besides, a change to heal devices will alter the in game economy and make things easier for low level players.
-Sterga
Easy. Give everyone 1 FF slot for free. Continue to charge 50 bucks to get more. gold/LTS remains an infinitely better deal than repeatedly buying slots. Oh and don't worry, those people who would just use the 1 slot over and over again - you weren't getting them to go gold/LTS no matter what you ever did, so the only effect the free FF slot does is make them end up playing the game longer, so still a net gain for a game that can use more active players; no, they wouldn't have bought that FF slot before.
I never spent a dime on this game until the grab bag event netted me 3 character slots. THREE! and guess what effect that had? I bought 4 more. Next time a sale comes around I'll probably buy another one even though I don't play this game as much as I used to. Without that grab bag event I would likely have just stopped playing long ago. Amazing effect those free slots had. If I were someone with a severe case of altitis it would probably have gotten me to go gold/lts, but I honestly don't know what I would do with an infinite supply of character slots.
It's like crack. Let someone smoke some crack for free, then charge for more. Cryptic needs to use that drug dealer tech.
What? The unlimited, free FF slots you get isn't good enough? Those things silver players pay $25 ($50) each for. Yeah, no incentive to go gold/lts even if filthy silvers get TWO free FF slots.
CO needs to figure out wtf they're trying to be. FFs are expected to have the basic ability to take care of themselves, even as a DPS toon. Then AT are hardcore trinity for the most part. Gravitar embodies the first, while Fire/Ice is the latter. You don't take a 5k Blade into Grav and expect to do anything other than be dead the whole time, but it's probably fine in Fire/Ice.
And of course, we have vehicles hamfisted into the game.
Ideally, I would change ATs to be build guides for new players like what Rift has. Basically, everyone would be FF, but new players could choose a theme to follow and deviate from at any time. Having heally patches with lower cooldowns would be OK as well. I guess.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Does basically the same but less work than tuning each and every AT. Plus, it retains some value of having self-heals.
I have this in Marvel Heroes. Every build there can spam SHIELD medpacks. But some characters have actual self heals and can last for longer.
As for FF, Cryptic dropped the ball during F2P conversion and now may be kiiinda too late. It should be FF only, no ATs, but only few powersets available for f2p. Of course it would require more work at powersets and probably balancing.
So they went with an easier approach, ATs.
Which in the end only limited their option what to sell. Or how to expand the game.
*shrug*
^ no. This game doesn't need to be swtor.
Yes.
Because game would still need making make money to proggress.
And it wouldn't be any different than selling archetypes or FF slots.
And with this kind of f2p system they could still sell silver FF slots for their current price, having it all something like that:
1 - Subscribers, lifetimers - all powersets unlocked.
2 - Z-Store FF slots - all powersets unlocked but only for this 5000 Z character slot
3 - F2P accounts - default f2p character slots, both 2 starter ones and "normal" slots bough from Z-Store - only basic powersets unlocked, more sets must be bought with Zen.
But it's kinda too late for changing current system, anyway.
SWTOR only makes money because its SWTOR. If you took the same restrictions and everything and slapped it on another game, people wouldn't play it. They can get away with it because of the game itself.
You are wrong.
It has nothing to do with IP. Plenty of games gets around with their own original IP and does just fine.
If CO had better f2p conversion and was successful enough to see more development in the past, people would play it because the game would end in a better shape.
The game is starved also because even its f2p model is weak.
Few ATs are attractive enough for purchase.
Not everyone wants or needs what is in lockboxes.
Also, DCUO has similar system.
And that's why they would sell FF slots, and gold/LTS. Selling off individual power sets would just send us right back to the problem we have with archetypes: they would need to balance the game around people who only had access to a very small number of power sets. Remember the problem we're trying to solve here; just switching to a different version of the problem won't do.
Adding more Active Defenses and Active Offenses in and giving them to the ATs that don't have them already would be a great step forward. It's far from a complete solution though. So for those that don't quite have the same self-healing capabilities as other ATs fixing up the Devices so their Cooldowns aren't so long would be a great idea as well. As a matter of fact, I think we should do away with the cooldowns on self-healing devices completely and instead give them a Debuff that diminishes their effects when using them too often. Let's say the debuff should last 20 seconds and can stack up to 5 times but the first stack does nothing and is rather just a marker, reducing the effects by half for each stack afterward. So, you'd go from a 100% heal, to a 50%, to 25%, then 12.5% and finally winding up at 6.25% healing from the device for using it too often.
And I will always be @DZPlayer122.
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And that's why it's too late.
A model like that should be introduced back when CO went f2p without even thinking about making ATs.
But I suppose ATs were easier to do. DCUO went with a different approach that proved to be better in the long run.
Now CO hardly has enough resources to get by, let alone to build any more complex system.
R.I.P.
Furthermore, I strongly disagree any major balancing would need to be done compared to ATs. In fact, from what I was told, AT's required more balancing and thus QA time. If players want a power or a few powers, they will know they will have to put down the cash for it. It would satisfy people who were pissed off about the fact they removed freeform for silvers to begin with, as many would have been satisfied with a limited freeform and pay for power sets.
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Removing archetypes wouldn't "build any more complex system"... in fact, it would simplify the game. Yes, your idea would complicate things more, which is another reason why your idea wasn't a good one.
Sure, they wouldn't actually have to change the game at all with a "sell individual power sets" plan... in fact, they couldn't change the balancing of the game and that's the problem.
The point of getting rid of archetypes is that they wouldn't have to balance the game around them anymore.
Also, just picture this: You're a new player, you log in all super excited to play this game where you heard about this great freeform power system where you can mix and match all sorts of powers to create a unique custom hero! ... then you see that you can't actually pick a bunch of the powers you had envisioned with your hero until you pay.
Entirely defeating the entire point of giving silvers access to freeform.
First you are stating that not having ATs would be more simple.
Then you are stating that not having ATs would complicate things.
And now look how things are looking in comparison to other games.
STO has new ships and consoles because STO can monetize on new ships and consoles.
DCUO had new powersets added because they could monetize on new powersets sold with DLCs.
And what's an incentive to develop new powersets to CO? There's none. And when we had any new powersets? The last one was Earth. Cryptic isn't even making it any secret that new powersets aren't even in scope.
ATs were slowly choking this game from the start. They are different way of balancing things, they don't work with anything itended for freeforms. But some of them are paid, so they kinda enforce this requirement that things should be playable with ATs as well.
And of course with debalance between powers and powersets... There's no balance between different ATs as well.
So, in a hypothetical situation when there are no ATs, but powersets are free. Then there is yet another problem - what else CO could sell?
Getting rid of ATs would make any sense only if powersets were monetised, otherwise this game has nothing else to sell. Just selling character slots wouldn't be enough.
Wrong. Read again.
What I'm actually stating is that the level of complication does not change between having archetypes or having your "limited selection of power sets" idea. If you remove Archetypes and just replace them with a different version of Archetypes, then it's no surprise that the situation remains complex. It does not become complex when you remove archetypes and replace it with your version of archetypes, it just remains at the same level of complexity because the game still has to be balanced around true freeforms, and your limited freeforms.
See? Nice and consistent.
New powersets mean more builds/characters that people want to make, which equates to more sales of freeform slots, gold, and lts.
Also, good luck selling your idea to people who currently are not subscribers, and who own freeform slots, who will now have to rebuy power sets that they're currently using. And yes, I'm talking about ideas to implement with our current reality, not "what should have been done x number of years ago", since the latter is a pointless conversation until we get a time machine.
There's an entire Z store full of things to sell. Whatever money they're currently making on archetype sales would be replaced with freeform slot sales - note one important thing, there are only so many archetypes, but there are hundreds of characters that could fill those freeform slots. The potential for freeform slot sales is simply higher. The same goes for power sets - there are only so many powersets, and once someone has bought them all that's it, you've exhausted all potential sales from that individual. On the other hand, with unfettered access to the freeform system, you open the door to unlimited freeform slot sales, or a subscription, because the player will constantly be exposed to the ability to use those powers and so will constantly have opportunity to fantasize about the characters they could be making with them. You know, the dynamic that leads to those players that have hundreds of alts?
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
What keeps DCUO afloat is their console sales. It's a situations where Ex-Sony develops things on the console first and port to the PC< hence why the updates always look so lackluster on the PC.
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Some very good reasons to not take any ques from DCUO
Actually, I'm not wrong about SWTOR. And DCUO is in the same boat. Those have star power behind it due to what they are. Otherwise, both games are horrible to play as free-to-play. Bad free-to-play designs on both games, just like this one. But since DC comics and Star Wars are huge name IPs they can get away with some bad designs.
As for the games that do fine with their original IP, well, CO is not doing fine with its IP. I doubt even you will say otherwise. CO is not those other games. You can't even compare CO to other games. CO is barely afloat.
But you are right about if it had better f2p conversion and more development. If CO did better with the conversion and had more development, it would indeed be in a better boat.
Now, unfortunately, Cryptic is on the corporate greed bandwagon. But as things going, a shining example of what obviously abandoning a product will do. Between token updates from Cryptic (and lets' face it, redoing the tutorial again is a token update, since they removed more than they added) and only throwing out costumes is not updates or content. The game is currently the equivalent of a comatose child left on life support, and only given enough injections and medication to make sure the heart is still beating. In short, the brain is dead, the body is just being left alive to prolong the suffering.
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According to official sources, CO has perfect buoyancy >.>
I still get a giggle out of this every time I see it. Especially any time I go play another MMO and realize how spoiled CO has made me in regards to how much free stuff I feel entitled to be able to easily acquire. I don't think any other company has ever given me as much free stuff as CO has.
If you ignore the quantity of the other games have versus what CO has, then you might be right. But when that factor gets put in, I have to go with no on this one. Allowing me to play the game hardly rates up on my free stuff o meter anymore. Hell, even SWTOR does that.
Throwing out a few easily disposable items doesn't really amount to what I call a lot of stuff, especially since we've not had any real content updates in a severely long time, yet they are constantly putting out things they want us to pay for.
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I'm gonna go ahead and stick with what I said.
Too bad Cryptic apparently isn't sharing your opinion.
Once again, when was the last time when you saw a new powerset?
Exactly.
Proves my point.
No monetization from powersets = no new powersets.
AT should also have the ability to change Role, every passive has 2 roles, so what's the point on restricting that. Besides Roles should be more restrictive, if you want to play in a especialized role (melee, range, support or tank) you should be severely penalized/buffed if you want a more versatile playstyle go into hybrid. This way, everybody is self capable hybrid but you can enter a especific role whenever you want.
Summary:
Actually, they agree with my point more than yours. Remember when they gave away a bunch of free freeform slots? Yeah, that happened, and it didn't involve selling off individual power sets.
Hell, remember when people were making the argument that cryptic would never sell individual freeform slots because it would hurt potential gold sales? That happened too.
You sure you know what Cryptic's opinion is?
Yea, because those 450 dollar freeforms just flew right off the shelves didn't they. No, your point isn't made.
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And you can't ignore the impact of having a well known IP. I bet plenty of people play SWTOR because it's Star Wars. The same can be said for DCUO. Neither game is particularly amazing.
What is the difference between a "concept" and an "average" build? Don't most people make concept builds? All of the Batman, Superman, Hulk clones leads me to believe concept is important. If everyone just made frankenbuilds, no one would need to ask for build advice.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
For the poll, I want to see frameworks fleshed out with basic necessities to make them full and contained sets. Heals are one of them.
I assume everybody follows a concept the game has no sense if not, that's why I said "pure concept".
Pure concept: taking concept to the limit, like not taking a self heal because none description fits the theme, even when Conviction and Resurgence animations are generic enough for almost any concept if you ignore the celestial/supernatural label.
Average: any build following a concept and keeping performance in mind too (most of the builds).
They obviously didn't because the never existed? o_O
I actually like the reasoning behind this, even if it might be a far way off from our capabilities. Definitely something we should be trying to aim for in an eventuality.
So I wanted to work out some of the errata on how to balance self-heal devices and their cooldown. Assuming that it's as simple as changing a single 'healCooldown' parameter that is.
So first, I tried working out the HPS (Heal per second) that a R3 conviction pumps out on a non-statted level 40 character:
So +800 health every 6 seconds.
802/6 = just about 133 Health per second.
In practice, this could easily be less due to the requirements for energy cost, and potentially more thanks to this being a bare-bones character build with no recharge shortening, energy cost reduction, equipment, or anything like that. That all said, A good estimate would probably be about 200HPS.
The device version is a bit more hairy to figure out, considering that there's a wide variety of healing devices and such you can get through different means. Though they all (mostly) share the same cooldown it turns out. Luckily, the same test character has a 15-pack of healing patches he got from opening his Level 40 pack, which seems as good as a baseline as anything really, esp. for a 40 character:
So that's a pretty hefty 4048 heal burst put out every... 119 seconds.
4048/119 = 34HPS
This will not do.
Incidentally, this also points out that a 34 second cooldown wouldn't be too bad for these healing devices, as it'd result in a HPS of 119, but that still doesn't quite get to the same level that Conviction can in practice.
Let's try and reverse engineer this by instead dividing the healing output of this healing patch, and divide it by the ideal HPS:
4048/133 = 30.36 Cooldown
4048/200 = 20.24 Cooldown
So if we wanted our healing devices to be balanced, a 20-30 second cooldown would be optimal. And it'd create these sorts of pros and cons between the two:
Bonuses of Healing Powers:
Bonuses to Healing Devices:
Extinguish
Consume all nearby flame patches and stacks of Clinging Flames; for each consumed, the player is healed by a certain amount.
Burnado
Maintained power that surrounds the player in a fiery twister. Creates a shield that absorbs ranged attacks; power deals heavy damage to anyone that attacks the player with melee attacks.
If every power set had stuff like that, we wouldn't have to cherry pick the same 4 powers all the time, and we wouldn't have to explain awkward visuals for our themes.
So true. But, diversity is not the name of the game when it comes to healing powers.
But it should be... especially when diversity is the implied name of the game given the freeform power system.
That is true, but its not. Unless you want all new healing powers to be gated behind lockboxes... For I see that becoming a thing with Cryptic. They seem to like taking the route of the most hated.
More Variety than just Convicion, BCR, Bionic Shielding and more Theme-friendly
For example, a Thematic Self Heal for Inferno could take advantage and consume the Clinging Flames mechanic
I guess getting rid of AT's and selling powersets would only work well if powersets were somewhat self sufficient, but that might detract from the appeal or need to buy other powersets...but then again...not a lot of people just want one character or a number of character with the same powers.
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Quite frequently. If it doesn't fit the character as I imagined, they don't get a self-heal, they just use the devices.
This is where you get "my own ideas". I don't see this as a problem to be fixed. All my characters are plenty survivable for my needs. I don't need to be "uber", not in this easy game.
So we should be afraid to ask for new powers and greater diversity now? I think not good sir. Bad argument.
Heals should have just as much diversity as anything else.
orly?
HPS is only relevant to tanks that are constantly taking damage.
Burst healing with long cooldowns is entirely appropriate for everyone else. Healing items should not be able to prop up a tank consistently - active play should be promoted over "stand there and heal".