My biggest issue is that I didn’t like Jack Emmertt telling me how “his” game should be played. I don’t think I’m really onboard to play another game where he is right and everyone who plays his game are a bunch of whiners.
(Yeah, I still don’t like enhancement diversification…)
Reading the articles, I wonder how much that customization will be beaten down in alpha testing. One lesson he didn’t learn from CoH was that no one wants to be gimped, BUT they want to play their vision. Players will make a character based on a vision, then they will complain that it doesn’t stack up to the number crunchers’ builds.
Me, I want to recreate my 12 speed Flash rip-off, with his two measly attacks - a 5d6 double penetrating HtH attack (take that hardened defenses!), and a 5d6 single penetrating ranged attack. And yes, he could run up walls and on water (but I couldn’t pass through solid objects - not enough points). I used the least active points of the group, yet had the most effective character (probably because I was always in a different zip code whenever it was the villians turn to act).
(P.S. I actually like ED, but I’m weird like that)
I’ll definitely follow along the Champions Online development. The more customization, the better. It’s what kept me playing CoH so long. What drove me away was the repetitive gameplay.
For balance, their best bet is to make the character’s power have no effect on the perceived difficulty or progress rate. Scale the missions to match the effectiveness of a character. Basically, a smarter version of the mission scaling CoH has.
The other thing to do is make altering your character’s abilities (and appearance and everything else) easy to do. Players are very forgiving of perceived imbalances if they have a way to fix it themselves (by tweaking or outright re-doing their own abilities).
When I played Champions PNP, I tended to make characters with serviceable abilities with a some over-the-top powers that only worked in limited circumstances. So, characters like a werewolf who was an average melee grunt who became nigh-unstoppable when in moonlight, the stronger the better. Or, a witch who was a typical flying blaster with a few really disabling hexes (which happened to completely fail in the presence of music). Gave me something to do all the time, yet gave me moments of really being “the best”. And easy for the gamemaster to control the flow with. If I can make characters like that in Champs Online, I will be hooked for a good while.
ED: never bothered me much, but I didn’t play as much once they put it in.
I’m with you. Jack’s “vision” isn’t fun or heroic. It’s tedious.
ED is necessary for the game. It has to be playable for everyone, even those that don’t six slot their attack for damage or pile enough recharge reducers into haste so it’s always on. Invention Origin enhancements couldn’t exist without diversification.
On topic:
I’m stoked about the system. Obviously it isn’t going to be the Hero system cp for cp, but if they can keep most of the feel, and the flexibility of it I’m in. One of my biggest problems with CoX is that all energy blasts look the same. They all have the same colors and animations. They all fly from the hands. If we can tailor the exact toon we want it’s a big win. Not to mention putting auto fire, area effect, nnd or invisible power effects on your power is just cool.
Also, I will defeat foxbat! I swear this!
I’m still wary of how mass ‘customization’, not of costumes and power effects, but of actual character build, will be gutted once this game hits a large audience who haven’t necessarily played Champions and do not know how to work the system. I would love the power customization that Champions offers, but the businessman in me sees that as a losing proposition. Champions is a min/maxer paradise; a GM can minimize the impact (and punish notorious min/maxers) in a small group. I don’t know how one does the same in a MMORPG. It’s a good dream, but I don’t think they can pull it off. (Why yes, I am a pessimist. How did you know?)
ETA: No one defeats Foxbat! Not Dr. Destroyer, not Mechanon, not Eurostar. Not UNTIL, not Primus. No one!
Except a 5 year old with a banana.
I disagree. I think it was playable by everyone before ED - you just had more choice about what you wanted to be. Want to six slot damage - that was fine. Its MY character, I really should be able to gimp her any way I want.
Except it was an exploit of a game mechanic, which had to be adjusted to make way for IOs and other stuff.
Those who bothered to RTFM would have noticed ED is what was intended all along.
You aren’t seeing it right. If you uber your character out the wazoo his damage gets very high. The developers want the game to be a challenge for everyone. Against baseline monsters you don’t have a challenge, you waltz through. More and more people start 6 slotting damages. The devs to keep the level of challenge constant have to raise resistance levels for monsters. Now people who aren’t six slotting can’t compete. You have to six slot or you can’t advance. It’s a problem they fixed with ED.
You wanting an easy walk through the levels could ruin the game for everyone. So their solution was the only logical one.
The same thing happened in a Gurps super hero game I was running. One character had a blast that was only 4d (the agreed upon limit) but it lasted for three rounds and divided armor by 10 and was simply very powerful. The result was that any villian that could stand up to him even for a single shot would be invulnerable to the other PCs. It’s an unsustainable situation. I had to ask him to modify his character, which is pretty much what CoH did.
Years ago I had the team against Foxbat and he actually had almost all of them out when the brick picked up a gasoline truck and slammed it at him. It didn’t look like he could dive for cover to get out of the way, so I had him entangle himself with his pingpong gun for the extra armor it would provide.
Ah the good old days.
These are the kinds of attitudes that turn me off to every gaming forum. It is why I’ll mostly only visit Dev Trackers, and maybe, occasionally, visit character guides.
I RTFM. The developers expected players not to single slot powers en masse. They gave the MMORPG player base too much credit. Players determined the maximized builds, and flocked to them. (Of course, many players of single archetypes then always complained how every other archetype was better - blasters are better than scrappers, scrappers are better than tanks, tanks are better than controllers, controllers are better than defenders, defenders are better than blasters - it is laughable). When there was no incentive to slot powers with different enhancements, no one did, so they Cryptic made an incentive. Forced ED was not intended all along - it was the consequence of not realizing just how shallow the MMORPG playing base really is. I will agree with Lobohan - by giving too much credit to the player base, Cryptic backed themselves into a corner in creating challenges, especially for build that are not DPS-based. I won’t say it was the ‘only logical’ solution, but it did force players into doing what Cryptic expected them to do from the start.
Moral of the story to Champions developers: Don’t overestimate your player base. And don’t worry about underestimating your player base - it’s impossible.
I wasn’t trying to cop an attitude. I just thought that Dangerosa wasn’t looking beyond his/her own character’s build. It’s *obvious *that ED was necessary and to think otherwise shows someone isn’t looking at the big picture. If I offended your sensibilities, so sorry.
I was gonna ad an In My Opinion to the end of that, forgot. 
Which is not at all what I was saying.
The manual suggested players diversify their enhancements. They didn’t, so ED was forced on everyone.
I think… I think Jack’s learned. Let’s see how things go.
Which is what I said. Cryptic expected people to play one way, and didn’t account for the style that developed. But it is dismissive to say RTFM (and there is no way not to say that dismissively) when the manual only suggests a style of play (diversifying enhancements). Anyone who has played any RPGs know anything that isn’t expressly forbidden or actively discouraged is fair game. It was clearly a case of not knowing the plurality of the audience of MMORPGs, which is surprising.
Lobohan, maybe I read more into what you were saying, but it rubbed me the wrong way, and I’m not Dangerosa. However, I did team with Dangerosa a lot, and let me assure you, she was not building nor playing min-maxed characters. Personally, I liked that ED opened up options, and that the game was rebalanced the way it was.
No, Eliza certainly wasn’t.
What I don’t like is that when I play my game, its my game. I don’t like someone saying “oh, well, it isn’t the game the way we wanted you to play it, here, play it differently.” I liked the way I was playing it. I don’t enjoy building characters, so if you gimp powers, or change mechanics and force a respec on me, for a character I know how to play, I resent it. I don’t play on teams, I generally duo with Brainiac4 or solo my characters, so some fire blaster doing bookoo damage or some invulnerability tank able to hold aggro on 92 guys and survive really doesn’t effect my game one way or another. If I do team and I don’t like your build, well, I can drop from the team.
Starting out with ED would have been fine, I have no problem with it as game theory. I have a problem with telling people they aren’t supposed to like what they have been enjoying - and paying you for. “Hey, you guys aren’t playing it RIGHT and I’m going to force you to do it my way - and all you guys who complain are a bunch of whiners” is not the way I expect to be treated by a company I’ve given several hundred dollars to over the past few years.
Oh, and Mr. Odds, we do miss you. If you ever find time to come back…
Actually, I recently upgraded my computer, reloaded CoH, and logged on as ERG-1 last Tuesday. I should be around this weekend, relearning the game. 
Right. And those who bothered to read the manual should have realized that forced diversification would have come along eventually.
To be fair, this was Emmert’s baby and he had only written stuff for P&P games before.