The Glory (and Menace) of Armories

I wouldn't hold my hopes up about changing in combat. This wouldn't be the first time the devs said something and took it back. remember when they announced transmuting exobits and said you could transmute and exobit of YOUR CHOSING and then changed their mind to a chance to get either or of the other two colors available.

These things will be figured out. I thought of these things when armories were first mentioned, but I trust the devs also think of them, and they know what to do.
Also, nobody has a base of 2000 precision silly silly

From what I heard I think you still need to go to the respec chamber to activate it hopefully not because it would kill the point of changing on the fly! But hey it at least it I'll save time when asking some one to do their opposite role.

I'll never understand why people like to cry before they get hit. We know very little about armories, and what restrictions they may or may not have. I think it sounds super cool to be able to switch roles in combat (not in pvp though, but i don't pvp and they might restrit that so w/e)

I agree with BB that it opens up lots of possibilities for new strategies in raids and alerts.

In any case, armories are something we have asked for, for ages!

Be happy for once, try it out, give it a chance. if you don't like it, then come in and tell devs about it, if you like then smile and shut up. As they say in my country, "you're drowning in a glass of water" .

2000 prec, 4000 might? Houston, we have a problem....

To take precaution ? , don't tell me that we would have to wait to be hit to start thinking and saying our feels ?

I doubt it will work as simple as that. Changing armor may require the expending of a supercharge bar (something they admitted they were looking into months ago when seeing if it would be viable to allow switching role stance in combat).

The insistence on refusing to allow players access to both roles and all of their powers while in combat is actually something that held this game back. Some may have considered that a balance to the game, but it is really much more of a restriction in a game that is already heavily restricted in such ways to promote the cookie cutter builds for each power type.

They've also heavily limited themselves from the whole cross-class spec option, with the most players can do is to supplement movement mode abilities and iconics powers (which are also incredibly lacking in options) to try to create additional builds.

They're going to want to take notes from Final Fantasy XIV. FF gives you the ability to change to any role by switching weapons (roles are bound to weapon types), but there are limitations to this. You cannot change roles once an instance has been entered (locked in), and I do not believe you can switch weapons/roles in combat. Once you've escaped a target lock on you can. Similar to the armories idea, FF also allows you to swap out an entire loadout from a list you compile (you obtain as many loadout list options as there are vocations in the game - over 20). Armories will give DCUO a similar option, for those that get around the pay wall, and it'll help the game more than hurt it.

I also doubt there won't be a hiccup when you switch to an armory loadout on the PS3. If you equip a single piece of armor the game has to stop and think for a minute. Switching a whole loadout will probably induce a lag hiccup of 3 seconds, minimum.

I believe we have less to worry about with the armory update than we have to gain.

That's a good, point man, but my problem is the tone some people are using here, "if they do this I quit!" "it's a stupid idea" "and so on. It's one thing to express concern and something completely different is questioning dev's IQ and insutling people even before they have complete information.

Imo, it's not acceptable to address devs (or anyone for that matter) in such disrespectful manners even when you have full information and you have 100% reason to complain, it's much less acceptable to act like that when you have bits and pieces of information and you have no idea if your concerns are valid.

The OP is actually a well thought out post, but there are some posts after that which are the opposite of constructive.

To me changing in combat is exciting for many reasons, one of them is being able to sub in for a fallen teammate. If your healer/troller/tank dies, one of the dps could, if they have the right powerset, switch on the fly and keep the raid from wiping. It's very likely you would be in combat when one of your friends dies, so making it out of combat eliminates this possibility.

They could very well put it on a cooldown to avoid abuse, 30secs- 1 minute cooldown seems fair to me. Or have no cooldowns in pve while making it a longer cooldown in pvp or if people don't like it, just dissallowing it completely.

Oh and small bit of info that wasn't said on this last fnl or on the announcement. You can't change powersets on the fly, a few weeks ago Mepps posted about it and said you still need a power respec token for that. You can save spec for several specific power's loadout, but to access them your active powerset has to be the one you used for that loadout. If you want to use a gadgets loadout, you have to be gadgets, if you switched to quantum, you can't use the gadgets one until you respec back.

I will say this, there won't be any changing in combat. If you can't switch your role now in combat why does anyone even hope that you can do this with Armories?

Speaking on behalf of the entire Playstation community: We will find a way to totally abuse this.

In fact, we have top men working on it right now.

People are speculating that you may also be able to switch roles in combat because as of now, you cant change your power load out in combat. If armories allow you to do the latter, its theoretically possible that they will allow you to do the former as well.

We think this because the devs have said:
-Armories allow you to switch between DPS and your Role on the fly
-You will be able to use Armories in combat.

Read the official post in the Announcements section and watch the first fifteen minutes of this week's FNL for evidence:

https://forums.station.sony.com/dcu...xt-in-dc-universe-online.179400/#post-2132505



Now it is certainly possible (if not likely) that you are correct. But since most of us see this as a huge red flag, I thought it might be wise to bring up the concern as early as possible to prepare all of the folks on Test Server so that they can see just how exploitable it is.

I think the limitation will be that we still can't switch stance in combat, just our gear/loadout/specs... (So we could switch to our specs that were optimized for DPS stance, but still be stuck in Troll stance until we get out of combat so we can switch stance.) Basically Armories will let us change our skill/power loadouts along with our gear during combat, but not affect what stance we are in... (So as a troll you could switch to your damage loadout.) So for example a DPS that switches to his Troll loadout while in combat basically becomes a Troll stuck in DPS stance...)

Admittedly this is still highly useful should you be doing open world stuff PvP side... (Being able to switch from PvE troll to PvP troll setup could be quite handy and fun for dealing with would be Gankers when doing PvP open world stuff.)

Yeah lots of options, lots of possibilities. Whatever kinks and wrinkles the system may have they can be ironed out, but the general functionality is one of the most exciting things they've introduced to the game in a long time.

Because reasons!

Actually in case you didn't see Mr Migrane's response (just as you didnt see the half dozen times people answered this in this thread before you posted this the first time and the half dozen who said it after) Here is the direct quote in the announcement

December – Armories
Armories are coming in December and will be one of the biggest features to enter DCUO. They will bring unprecedented flexibility, convenience, and strategy to how you build and play your characters. Armories will allow you to save and recall different setups for your characters – even on the fly, even in combat. Each Armory will save a set of gear, a set of styles, your skill point selections, your power point selections, and your power loadouts, making switching back and forth between different setups immensely more convenient and opening up a new level of strategy to the game. Also, Armories are a base item, placed in your Bases and visually representing the set of equipment stored inside. The best part? All players get their first Armory free

My guess is that when you switch roles using armories there is a minimum cooldown before you can switch to another armory. Also when switching roles all previous buffs will be removed. Examply HoT when switching to dps role you would lose your current HoT buff until it is casted on you again.

People really need to bring some common sense, and a little assumption to this thread.

It says that you will be able to use them in combat.

You cannot change ROLES in combat.

Armories are not roles, and do not change role.

You will be able to use the armory while fighting, but you're going to be restricted to whatever ROLE you began combat in until you exit combat and change said role.

This makes the most sense, and sounds EXACTLY like what they are hinting at.

Totally agree, going from DPS to Healer and back in the middle of a fight would be stupidly broken and I'm glad that changing stance mid combat isn't what they were talking about. Switching between DPS and Troll stance would be broken. Going from Troll or Healer loadout lacking their power/healing over time to troll/healer with power/healing over time would be downright useful in PvE when the primary gets knocked out of the fight... (Heck depending on how it's handled in your inventory it might make keeping several suits of backup armor a viable solution to needing to repair in places where there is no repair vendor... Just swap to a fresh suit and repair the trashed one later.)

Yeah i highly doubt that, we can't switch powers manually in combat now.

Regardless of what you can currently do, it's not a bad idea, and kudos to MM, to take the devs at their word - especially when they make a point of explicitly delineating "on the fly," and "even in combat." Mepps deliberately chose his words there, lets give those words the generally understood meaning and move on.

Given that meaning, these changes represent the potential to significantly change many aspects of this game - from group compilation, to combat rotations and load outs. There's truly the potential here that this change causes us to throw out much of what we know about using certain powersets and certain team compilations. It's potentially a huge deal, and represents potentially big positives and equally big negatives, especially if there are unforeseen consequences of certain mechanics. It's not at all like changes in this game never come with unforeseen consequences that significantly impact gameplay, and then take weeks and months to resolve.

So, with that understanding, it is quite important to begin to "prime the pump" so-to-speak with issues for testers to try and answer when this change makes it to the test server. The test server community is quite limited, because it's just PC players. Thus, it's crucial that we begin to raise questions like these now, to stress the importance of community input on test for this particular addition.