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Thematic Passives
tilarta
Posts: 291 Arc User
This is just a crazy idea I had while looking at my lavastone character in CO.
What if we had passives that were based off our concept design?
For example, with my lavastone character, they'd be hard as stone and hot as fire.
So, if an enemy punched them, they'd break their bones and get burned at the same time.
I'll work through my other concepts, just to provide other ideas.
Most of my characters wear metal armor, so they'd have an armor plating passive, which would work along the same lines as hard as stone.
I have another one who has an Electric shield around them, so physical contact would result in electrocution.
And there's another one who is made of sand, so if you punched them, you'd actually be incapable of harming them, as they're not solid.
That's all I've got for now, but if you can think of any others, feel free to add them.
What if we had passives that were based off our concept design?
For example, with my lavastone character, they'd be hard as stone and hot as fire.
So, if an enemy punched them, they'd break their bones and get burned at the same time.
I'll work through my other concepts, just to provide other ideas.
Most of my characters wear metal armor, so they'd have an armor plating passive, which would work along the same lines as hard as stone.
I have another one who has an Electric shield around them, so physical contact would result in electrocution.
And there's another one who is made of sand, so if you punched them, you'd actually be incapable of harming them, as they're not solid.
That's all I've got for now, but if you can think of any others, feel free to add them.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Post edited by tilarta on
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As for rocks...my rock guy uses Invulnerability. What happens when you thump a rock? Nothing (the damage reduction from smaller hits from Invuln). What happens when you hit it with a large sledgehammer? Possibly crack and destroy it (such as damage from larger hits that Invul is susceptible to).
Remember: Half the people you know are below average...
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I would rather see this approached in the manner of the PnP game where, "Damage Shield," is an advantage that can be applied to an attack power.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
The actual mechanics would be complicated to implement, but it would play off like this.
Metal and stone passives would resist each other.
So they might be able to slug it out on equal terms.
But the more fleshy enemies would respond a different way, since they're not armored.
Naturally, if you attempt to hit someone who has stone or metal armor, you're going to really hurt yourself.
And if they're superheated as well, you're going to set your hand on fire as well!
The Elemental Passives could also be factored in as well.
Fire=burns enemy
Ice=freezes enemy
This idea was motivated by seeing vampires a lot in Vibora Bay.
I kept thinking, okay, this is incredibly unrealistic!
For example, how do you drink someone's blood if they're wearing an armored plate on their neck?
Likewise, if they're made of stone, it's equally as impossible!
They'd just snap their fangs off.
And since they always claw at you, they'd just be breaking their fingers.
And then there's the superheated thing, since they were fighting my lavastone character.
Vampires are not fond of fire, so I can't imagine they'd handle making contact with a character who is hot or on fire very well.
And even if we handwave the neckbiting aspect, can you imagine what would happen if you drank the blood of someone who had lava instead of blood?
You'd burn to death from the inside!
And then you have mechanical characters, who don't have blood at all.
Well, Fantastic Four and X-Men did explain it somewhat with the Thing and Colossus.
They're actually made of living rock and metal, which is substiantially different from inert rock and metal.
Whatever process makes it into a living material significantly increases it's damage resistance.
For example, they said Colossus' body is several times harder then titanium armor, which is not possible in the natural world.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Hunh. Not only were toggles that simultaneously taunt and injure nearby opponents a staple of many powersets in Cryptic's previous superhero game, they're also a staple of many powersets in the original Champions sourcebooks.
Powers like Personal Electric Field, Electric Shield (with the Zap Field advantage), Acid Shield, Flame Aura, Fire Shield (with the Burning Shield advantage), Energy Sheath, and many others are all exactly the sort of powers described in the OP's post, so there's plenty of precedent within both the MMO genre and the Champions universe.
"It is unthinkable. But such is the nature of villainy, don't you think? To do the unthinkable, to challenge the impossible, to conquer all before you and make destiny your own." - Ghost Widow
And that's why I like villains.
If it makes anyone feel better, the early days of Champions Online did give enemies damage resistance to certain types of attacks. Ice demons were resistant to cold damage, robots were resistant to ego damage, incorporeal entities were resistant to physical damage, etc.
As anyone who has played a pen-and-paper RPG knows, a live GM makes a world of difference. Computer games usually don't have that, so they have to generalize to keep things simple. Can you imagine working out power limitations (such as only works on humans) and conditions (that interaction between stone, metal, and everything in between that the OP used as an example) in CO? Speaking of which... how's that suspension of disbelief holding in regards to all attacks powers being usable in Lemuria (which stretches even comic book logic)?
Also, you can't fire bullets underwater either.
Not unless you have a specially built gas chamber gun.
That's to compensate for the extra resistance of water against the flight of the bullet.
Likewise, it would be pretty hard to shoot arrows, so you'd have to replace your bow with a harpoon gun.
Earth would be another strange one, unless you're standing on the ocean floor, where are you going to find dirt and stones to toss around?
Most other powers should work though, as they're not disrupted by being underwater.
Well, with the exception of Electric and Wind.
Electric would actually become more deadly, because you'd be electrifying the surrounding water as a side effect of shooting a bolt of electricity underwater.
Instant AOE.
Wind would probably change to water currents, since there's no air anymore.
And Lemuria was never the best example of logic there is in the game.
I have a breathing helmet, I can breathe underwater or I don't breathe at all, yet, I still need to do the mission to build a breathing apparatus.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
That only responded to half of what I said. I said that it's feasible not just because it's part of Champions Lore, but also because it was a part of Cryptic's previous superhero game (that would be City of Heroes) as well. Most Tanker armor powersets had a power whereby you could just stand there and both damage and taunt nearby enemies, and the sets that didn't have a "damage and taunt" aura instead had a "debuff and taunt" aura. And it worked fine. It wasn't gamebreaking.
So while you're looking at it from one side and dismissing that it could never work in an MMO environment, I'm coming at it from both sides - saying that it's true to the Champions source material, and that it very much does work in an MMO environment, because I played a MMO with that exact sort of thing for years.
While I agree that they would probably not work (balance-wise) as passives, "damage auras" would work fine in CO as Toggle abilities in each elemental set. Since you can only have one Toggle ability active at a time (which means you couldn't use Forms at the same time), that would limit it fine.
"It is unthinkable. But such is the nature of villainy, don't you think? To do the unthinkable, to challenge the impossible, to conquer all before you and make destiny your own." - Ghost Widow
And that's why I like villains.
1. The OP wanting a defensive passive with some form of damage returning because he refuses to compromise on his own ideas (which would be easily done in the PnP game; find some people and give that a try, tilarta!).
2. The viability/feasibility/appropriateness of such a passive in the Champions Online MMO.
There are already various blocks that allow you to just "stand there and damage nearby stuff": Ebon Void, Electric Shield, Fire Shield; and to a lesser extent, Ice Shield. And then there's Aura of Ebon Destruction, which already does that without blocking (though not with a 100% rate). No Taunt mechanic though.
I do agree that a passive damage aura Form would work. As I mentioned before, one of the major differences between CO and CoX (and most other MMOs) is mob strength. On CO, they drop like flies and make general debuffing moot (not a day goes by in Barren-, er, MC chat without a CoX controller refugee complaining that). The CO mob fragility would make an interesting combination with such a Form. Take a defensive passive, run up to mobs, stand there, and watch them drop in a minute. It's not game breaking, but certainly amusing. Coupled with all the clamor for some implementation of elemental melee attacks, maybe we'll see something like that if the devs ever get around to do such a pass.
For the record, I abandoned that thread because it was just repeating the same mistakes as before.
And that's not helping solve the problem.
And what does that have to do with this topic?
I don't recall mentioning taunts, energy building or blocks.
Now don't turn this into a build advice thread or mention that other thread again.
Okay, back on topic now.
What I am after is a level of realism here.
Being made of stone or generating electric fields or whatever passive fits your theme should have some effect on your enemies.
Otherwise we're just all organic characters, regardless of what we may actually be.
And well, that's boring. :cool:
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
However, we have to remember when it comes to something thematic like this, we need 'catch all' systems, as an MMO has many players.
What if I made a character and said the concept was 'Undefeatable'. Would that give me a defensive passive that made me immune to damage because it's 'in my theme'? I hope not.
The one, one thing against customization that Champs has, is that we have to create the theme, then use the tools that we have to build under that theme. Not all the tools fit under that theme, but we try to manage with what we have.
Ex : I have a character that uses a heavily armoured gravity suit. To explain the toughness of the suit I use the Regeneration passive, as well as Kinetic Manipulation when the suit is in 'Overdrive'.
There's no 'Gravity' passive that lets me fling people into walls or suck them into the ground, but I make do with Force and Power Armour attacks. It's just as simple to do with other characters. Hell, I even made the magic powers have a sci-fi theme that semi-worked.
PS : Tilarta, you should really listen to other people more. They know what they're talking about, and wanted to help in that thread.
Deliciously nutritious!
I left a link to your other thread so others can see where you're coming from. And I was simply going leave it at that if you didn't continue to be stubborn and defensive to raise a stink about it, but since you did...
The short answer: Your desire to have in-game powers to fit the theme of your magma man/lava stone character is the seed for both threads.
The long answer: This isn't about taunts and energy management, but rather about your own yearning to fit your concept, balance and viability issues be damned. In that thread, you could've simply said that you were making a lava stone themed character, stated your issues, listed your power choices, and stated what powers could not be altered for the sake of theme/personal preference. Like what everyone else does. And given your seemingly very limited preference of powers, you could've listed all the powers you considered acceptable and let people try to solve your problem with the constraints known. Instead, you made people guess your build and left little in the way of making your thematically acceptable power choices known. As you've mentioned in the first thread of this post, it's "a crazy idea" and just open-ended pining for very specific powers. The implications I'll leave to everyone else since I have little desire to go on about this in such a manner. If you want it dropped, that's fine. But don't be so defensive about it (again, the two emphases in the quote block above). It really doesn't help your case.
(this whole thing would've been better in a spoiler block, but it seems this forum lacks such)
The PnP game is pretty good at capturing the realism you seek.
As mentioned before, this is a MMO game that needs to be general to fit as many concepts as possible. What's the most definitive thing about an armor of stone/metal/"hard light"? That it is tough, correct? The Invulnerability passive is a representation of that. Damage reflection because someone punched you too hard (what you were going about in your first post) is a more specific thing. Superheroes such as Superman and the Hulk have no problems punching such things even when they can't break them.
Also, the offensive passives in the game have such a mechanic built into them. Take a look at things like Fiery Form and Electric Form. They grant good resistance to attacks of that specific damage type in addition to a lesser amount against those in the same subcategories. They even return energy when hit by that same specific damage type. Ego Form not only makes Psimon (and anyone else reliant on Ego damage) less of a threat, but also a mini-energy battery... for all of five seconds that any villain below Legendary lasts in this game anyway.
EDIT #1: fudgemonsta probably said it better.
EDIT #2: A "thorns aura" would be a pretty neat addition to an upcoming Plant powerset.
You say that like it should have meaning.
And it probably does, just not to me.
I call that Acryonym syndrome, people get so used to using a shorthand term, it doesn't occur to them that someone not familiar with it won't understand what you mean.
And no, nobody can be undefeatable.
So we don't have to worry about that.
You'd just have to take the HardAsStone or ArmoredMetal passive and live with it.
Acid based passive?
Interesting idea, but I don't think we have a powerset that involves acid.
What I'm proposing is they give each powerset a passive to fit the theme and well, pick the one closest to what you want.
It would indeed be a foolish idea to cater to every crazy idea someone may have when you could just cover the bases with generic passives.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
The old talk to one another style of Role Playing.
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The one who can't shut up formerly known as 4rksakes
About the @handle - it's a long story.
Profound quote.. "I'm not a complete idiot - several parts are missing."
Ah. So. Invulnerability. Gotchya. You want what you have but you want it different.
This is...What we have though.
And these passives are even more generalized, so people could handwave them quite more. Invulnerability for a magic user? Arcane defenses. Done.
It seems like you're just asking for things that are already here.
Deliciously nutritious!
Someone could easily take:
1. Reverse IDF Form
2. Invul
3. Sentinel Aura
Find a nice high respawn area and afk to 40...which is probably not something the devs will wish to deal with.
Remember: Half the people you know are below average...
Do not correct a fool, for he will hate you for it. Correct a wise man, for he will appreciate you for it.
Don't be like the Qularr. They would not last one round in the Interstellar Galactic Arena...
Handle @brayv
You could get that concept however with Pestilence Passive and Resurgence + Conviction!
I've never really been interested in that kind of thing.
Mostly because I'm a visual person, if I can't see it, it fails to engage me.
I did find it interesting though that the PnP version has the mechanic I suggested, but it didn't make it into the game?
To me, that suggests the Devs didn't want to do the extra work coding that system into the game.
And yes, every system has the potential for abuse, but that's no reason not to give us something fun to have.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
The components for what you want are there in the PnP system; you just pay the point costs for them and put them together. The devs didn't/couldn't take everything in there and put it in the game. If they did, the powers system would be very different. You want a fiery lightning bolt attack that when it's daylight also banishes things not in their native world? Doable. Complication where your character must immerse self in water at least once a day or suffer damage (the Lemurians in the Champions PnP have this)? Doable. Want a power where you ram into people (and get a damage and cost reduction bonus if you're running at superspeed)? Doable. A vampiric chi attack that only works on humans? Doable. A preternatural sense that allows you to detect strong radiation sources within 100 meters of you? Doable. You can see where this is going.
The closest video game implementation I've seen of such is Freedom Force, an awesome tactical superhero RPG. If you can find a copy of the game, go to the character creator, and see how the powers built in relation to point cost. That's sort of how the Champions PnP game works powers. The ranks and advantages systems of Champions Online is an understandable approximation of it.
Yeah, they did. So what?
"Failing to tell you what you want to hear" is not a "mistake." It's called "advice," that thing you were supposedly asking for, but then refused to consider.
The fact that you're making the same mistakes here that you did there.
...Or else what?
You're doing the same thing in this thread that you did in the last one: Trying to boss and bully people around, making demands and threats, despite having no power or clout whatsoever.
What do you think gives you the right to talk to people like this? Are you this much of a jerk to people in real life, too?
There is a limit to how granular the mechanics of every single power can be in a game like this. I'll concede that there is still room for more customization. But this game already has a level of both mechanical and cosmetic customization which is unprecendented in any video game, massively-multiplier or not. At a certain point, you have to accept that (bored billionaires aside) no studio is going to design games specifically for you, and you have to compromise and bend your vision enough to meet the game halfway. Come to think of it, that's a pretty good metaphor for Life in general.
And with this quote you have failed. :rolleyes:
If you acknowledge that your suggestion in the current system of CO could be abused...why would you still want it?
Look at the Legacy Devices situation as an example. It is possible to gain devices which can stun or hold anything in game from Henchmen to Legendary level. It is possible to gain devices which grant 100% immunity to damage from Cosmics and everything else.
Whilst they in themselves are "FUN". What has been the outcome of the existence of these devices?
People can gain multiple versions of the same one, like Immunity to all damage, stack them and run godmode, thereby abusing the system.
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Or multple animations for the passives.
For example. Lava/Stone Perhaps using unuln which gives you the sparkles could have an animation options which would have fire and rocks falling from you.
For a toxic/Acid toon you would have dripping,
Metal armor could use the general inviln skin to show light bouncing off the armour.
No just more animations.
Damage passives could be possible sure. But just grab fire shield instead of force shield. There you go.
I do however support different skins for defensive and perhaps offensive passivies, and also the ability to hide the visial effects of the passive.
Old time member. I miss NERF :eek: