Powers One thing I noticed on test was that actually creating power loadouts was harder. There is just so much you get, all at once, so the selection lists are huge. It actually makes it hard to pick out things on a single Pi chain that would make a good loadout, which is a pain when many powers have different Pi chains. The limited selection is the one place the 15 powers was a bit of a benefit. This got me to thinking about what was really wrong with the 15 powers. First, it was 15... that gives a selection, but when mixed with Iconic Powers, well, it is limited. However, Iconics are up in the air right now. So why not put them back in, minus the innate stats that are now SP, and then increase it to 18. That would take care of the number part and give a path to reintroduce Iconic Powers. Second, 18 is 3 rows of 6. This is very easy to display and pick from. We know what 1 row of six looks like... the power bar! So 3 rows of 6 on the bar Loadout screen will work within the display constraints. And, if people pick one of the few, remaining innates (5% perception) then it becomes less than that, so the only time it would go over this is possibly on shape shifting. I do not know all of those forms and what they offer, so at some times it could become a 4th row... perhaps. Still, that is not a huge mess to select from that is mixed Pi types etc. Third, the trees... dependency trees are one of the big flaws. Now, a person won't have the power to push out a high cost one at the start, so you don't want them all unlocked right away. However, by 16 if every power was available, people would have plenty of time to examine and select what they want. They won't have their full 18 until 30, so a novice player will have from 16 to 30 to really decide things... and these choices are not set in stone thanks to respec. Fourth, you have people that paid real money for respec machines. Now you are devaluing those. However, with the above, those machines retain some more of their worth. It also keeps armories more valuable because people could do completely different loadouts in armories for say Main Tank and Support Tank and DPS where support has more DPS and less pull/aggro stuff, but still works towards being a tank in case the main goes down or split tanking is required. Skills As I noted above, dependency trees are a PITA. They have their place, but only for a logical flow of connected items. This is easier with weapons, but for powers and skill, it makes less sense. So reduce or eliminate them for skills too! Right now on Test you must buy so many crits to unlock the next step, etc. But the devs have clearly stated that the number of points you get is a non-linear progression that favors specialization. So if you make a tank it is best to put things into health, but you can't put things into health. You have to increase your DPS or HPS first.... and so on. Why did you do this? Probably because the first steps are huge. OK, so take the +200 out of health point 1. Make it a modulo operation that adds 15 every 10 put in, or some such. Then, as a person specializes in say health, they get larger bumps along the way. Thus, as they point in SP they get 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 40, 41, and so on until the non-linear point boost makes it +2, +3, +4 per SP invested with the predictable +15 along the way. Thus, the non-linear curve is preserved as well as the +200, but people only get both if they really invest in health. This sort of change would make it so you could open all skill investments from the start. No need to have any dependency trees in there at all. If people want to change crit percent or crit result percent or dominance, or health, or restoration, or whatever, fine. Let them. Just have predicable kicks to boost the people as they go.
One of the main points of this revamp is choice. So the power points need to stay gone. As for respec stations, power points aren't the only thing that can be re-allocated and trying out new skill point specs is going to be a huge thing going forward (along with possibly switching between a weapon based, or power based, or hybrid build as mechanics in content may encourage). I understand what you are saying about the Devs forcing you to spend SP on crits before you can get to the second row of stats. While that may not be your play style, that is the Devs way of messaging that the crits are important and you should invest in them first. Maybe they should message this better in game and leave it up to you to decide if you actually want to follow the recommendation (which will help more with damage out, healing out, etc. in the long run than the raw stats) or just get the raw stats now and come back for the crits latter. For the specific example of Tank, it is a little odd, and a turtle tank (use a power to taunt, then block) is about the only type of tank that doesn't benefit from those spent SP. Also, turtle tanking isn't the best idea any more since most bosses have pvp mechanics and will block break you. Part of the Tank's job any more is to counter the boss, and the damage the boss takes off the counter is based off the Tank's stats. So you might as well make it count. For Tanks, I would suggest either getting the damage crits because you should be doing some damage with your weapon or the healing crits if you a a fire tank (or possibly for the regenerative shielding mod). I personally will lean towards the weapon crits if this goes live as is.
How do the points, simply as points remove choice? Even if people only had 6 power points, they could fill their bar. It would then mean we would all need more armories. At 15 you can have two completely different loadouts and three iconic powers, all without a second armory. By the time you hit 18 you have a lot of choice. Additionally, when people have a large list to select from it is harder to make a selection. It is easier if they can prune the list before going on to make their selection. This has to do with human psychology. "Intuitively, people feel that the more options they have, the greater their chances are of finding the choice that will perfectly satisfy their needs. But this intuitive assumption turns out to be an illusion – the more options we have, the less likely we are to make a decision at all." - Liraz Margalit Ph.D. With the way people make choices you actually improve the ability t chose by having them make choices in stages. You can look up tons more on this topic. Which is why I said, "retain some more of their worth." The some more part means they already retain some, the ability to change skills. The main point of that part is that people have the illusion that they buy things in the game, rather than just rent them, and they like to feel that what they paid is going to keep all the value it has. Otherwise, people will feel cheated and so on. Everything I have seen from he devs is that all of this is up in the air and that they are trying to see if they can do other play styles that don't really depends on this. If they want real choice and the option for other play styles then they should let people go whatever way they want, even in a poor direction, and see how it works. It very well could open up some of those other things they say they want to do. As for tanking, I think you will agree that every multi-player game with aggro has two basic methods of generating/maintaining aggro: damage and ability. Damage being the person with the highest damage done has aggro and ability being skills, spells, etc. that add, reduce or otherwise modify aggro. DCUO uses a combination system because damage gets aggro but there are also powers that add tank aggro and clear non-tank aggro. Still, the damage aggro can exceed the tank aggro, which I have seen, so where the balance is in this game is not known to me. I was not talking about your description of turtle tanking. I was talking about possibly having more dominance for stun off the bat because dominance is unrelated to aggro (as I understand it) vs. more Health/Defense to take the blows while tanking vs. more crit and say might for a more damaging tank seeing as how non-DPS and DPS will be closer in damage output so a more DPS tank might actually have a place in the game. I am not saying the crits are unimportant, just that things are in flux and one of the thing that caused problems in the past was the power dependency trees, so why set themselves up for the same issue with skill dependency trees? Also, I was trying to point out that right now there is not a visible path to give people iconic powers. No matter what happens, I doubt they will give everyone all the iconic powers. If they do, everyone would be able to lift large objects, see through stealth, and so on. In the present system, the most popular iconic powers have to do with crits and stats. Those iconics are now part of the skills, leaving X-Ray Vision and Super-Strength as the only two innate ones that ill probably remain. All the active ones (Amazonium Deflection, Batarang Multi-Shot, etc) will probably remain. So how many will people get? All? More confusion? I doubt it. So there will be some sort of point limit on iconics no matter what. So why not build that into an overall system that aims just to fix the problems in the present point system. Another thing about choice is that the present system on test really only gives people choices after they reach 30. Since everyone starts at 30 on test, that is no big deal. I am saying that they need to get there before 30. That way people will be faces with this before the game changes into the Ppost-30, DLCs, and so on. This will let new players develop their choices a bit more before they are faced with how the game shifts. For older players, it won't matter if it is that much before 30 or not because they understand how the real tutorial is the entire game before 30.
