When talking about Champions, a friend linked me to a well constructed, if obviously fanboy-outrage slanted, piece about the current respec (or – for those who go outside, respecification) policy for Champions. It’s worth reading, if only because it feeds into quite a few trends about game design. In short, it argues the inability to redesign your character from scratch will kill Champions stone dead. Which got me thinking on the subject…
For people who aren’t following it closely, Champions uses a relatively unusual character design model. Rather than actually having defined classes you’re able to construct your own character by picking powers as you will. Powers are divided into classes – like fire-powers, or force-powers or hugging-powers – and more specialised abilities require prequisites (which are normally multiple abilities in the same class – so, for example, my force-blaster character only opened up her area-effect blast by having a load of abilities in force). But generally speaking, you’re able to pull yourself in whatever direction you want.
There’s more to it than just the powers picking though. Rather than City of Heroes – which kept your power selection much more within a specific framework – you’re also playing with advantages (which allows you to improve and personalise individual abilities. For example, my active block channels energy into me whenever I block… but with the advantage pick, the effect hangs around even after I drop my block, meaning I protect myself for the first few seconds when unleashing attacks) and statistics (i.e. certain ability scores boost certain abilities). The latter brings in more equipment fiddling – which is something aside from what we’re talking about – but also the ability to pick these talents which boost your ability scores. For example, choosing one which gives you +8 dexterity – or one which gives you +5 Strength and Dexterity – or even one which gives +3 to three separate stats.
Which is all very well, but when you start playing, you haven’t got a the proverbial fucking clue what you’re doing.
I think that’s actually at the core of why people have been so divided on the tutorial. On the one hand, you have the developers trying to start the MMO in a full-on semi-scripted battle fashion: Call of Duty with Superheroes. On the other hand, you’re thrown by with massive screens of text explaining mechanics. If you try to follow both, you have no fun whatsoever. If you ignore the text – I totally did – you have a bit of a biff-fest, but you don’t actually come out knowing much.
Point being, you’re going to make mistakes. And point two being, at the moment, it costs a lot to actually fix mistakes. The in-game currency allows you to undo a previously chosen ability, at increasing expense since the first decisions you’ve made. To give you an idea of the expense, not having spent any serious cash, as a level 16 character, I couldn’t afford to swap an ability I gained around level 6 or so. As the essayist puts it, it makes actually picking abilities a time of fear.
Well, I dunno on that. In practice, playing casually, I’m fine with it. If you choose within a framework, you have a guidance for your choices. If you go off choosing random stuff… well, you do know you’re doing random stuff. People who aren’t planning on being competitive in PvP or similar don’t automatically chase the min-maxing.
Which, as an aside, leads to another point point about Champions. There’s been much talk about how little PvP is balanced. I literally have no idea what that means. The thing the Champions Pen and paper RPG system it was based… well, it’s not balanced either. They try, but when a game gives you total freedom to choose stuff from a shopping list, some combos are better than others. As such, the game becomes, at least in part, gaming that system. Some combos are better than others? Fine. So the game becomes about choosing those abilities, and balancing becomes about creating an interesting matrix of choices.
Which of course, feeds back into respecing. You have one good idea about how a character should be and, well, maybe it is for a while. Then someone works out the counter-build, and you’re stuck with last season’s black.
So, at the core I agree with the original essay: it’s a game about experimentation and freedom. To punish the experimentation does seem somewhat perverse.
You have to ask why.
The MMO which most determinedly took the build-competition-is-the-game approach would be Guild Wars, where slotting in and out abilities was a core function. Even they loosened up their ability to respec them from the original, extremely liberal for the time, abilities. While not doing that, City of Heroes also was generous with the respecs. At the time I played, knowing you got a respec at certain points in your characters development was another reward to push towards. The respecs which arrived as seasonal gifts were something which engendered fondness with the developers. Do Cryptic consider that approach a side-effect of the system of City of Heroes which wouldn’t work with Champions?
(i.e. In City Of Heroes you respec, and you’re still fundamentally the same sort of character. In Champions, you may not be. I don’t think that holds up generally either: I’ve stayed within a single framework with my main alt, so am basically the same as City of Heroes’ Warwych, just without the ability to rechoose my powers.)
The conspiracy theory going around is that respecs are going to be part of the Microtransaction system, where you can buy non-essential abilities to enhance your experience. Frankly, if it does go that way, Cryptic are operating at the very boundary of the phrase “non-essential”.
A couple of final notes:
1) It’s interesting how, in single player RPGs, people argue particularly in favour of no-way-back persistence – arguing Bioshock wasn’t even slightly an RPG due to the ability to switch choices around.
2) It’s questionable how much the limitations on respecs actually affects anyone other than those who obsess over the numbers to get the best results. The game, at least what I’ve played, leans on easy rather than hard. It’s as if Cryptic knew there’s more room to make your character work in sub-optimum ways, so designed with that in mind. I’d be interested in any experienced Beta players take on this, if they wish to chip-in in the comments. Yes, we can complain about the character being hurt… but how much does it actually hurt?
Related Stories:
The only real problem I’ve had is not being able to change my energy-building power, which has caused quite a few headaches as I’ve had to run the tutorial for at least the fifteenth time just to pick my starting powers better. If you can pick one of the other energy-building powers later on, great! If not, we really need more respec options.
Say I do something positively inane like give a low survivability high damage character a melee energy build and everything else ranged? Then I am screwed.
Unless you can pick a second power. No one has mentioned if you can, or cannot.
Drunken afterthought: When I said that if you were not interested in seeing your creation experience the content, and only interested in PvP, you should play poker, I think I should have said you should play Eve. And now I’m curious: since Eve seems like an MMO without content to experience, much, from what I’ve read, and having a plot/story created by the players rather than the developers… does it offer a complete respec? Is that even something that’s relevant? I don’t know what kind of stat system Eve has, so I don’t really know if you even pick stuff for your character, or if your only stat is your bank balance.
Respeccing to such a large degree has a big impact on the structure of the game. Look at a “classic” MMORPG like WoW where once you’ve selected your character class, you’re stuck with it. If they implemented the ability to change classes, you’d likely kill off the entire low level game. Still, in Champions, I found that I really didn’t have enough knowledge about the game to make any informed decisions so I just picked the Might powerset and started smashing stuff :)
Todays launch patch has changed the “retcon Prices” they have been lowered
may be able to change earth flight now
As far as I’m concerned the problem was not (only) the price. The fact that you can only respec your ten last choices is a pain.
I’m not asking for a “respec everything any time you want” system, I just think that a CoH-like system (where you need to do a long and limited mission to get your full respec) would be a nice addition to the game.
Anyway, thanks to the patch I finally could respec out of super dexterity on my Ice character, which will now have the almighty super constitution (like pretty much every one of my characters).
For all I can see, the level of repec-ness is ok in champions. You can test the powers, undo, even more than one level of undo.
Most powers at level 4 looks the same. Red ray, Gray ray, Green ray… Is like “Marx Attack” weapons, only this time the dead bodies are the same… no hilarious green dead people.. :(
People say that at high level that “opens”, and theres more variables, and different powers. It could be true, or another hyped argumentation from a fanboy, I don’t know.
– - –
Offtopic:
Endurance: energy regeneration
Ego: criticals (burst damage?)
Strengh: mele damage
etc..
It looks to me like very defined skills. People will maxmin *hard* with this game. This game will be a “builds” game.
Also, with the travel powers, If you know the quest, you can level really fast at low level. The first time you do some quest, is really slow to figure out what to do.
This is what turns me off of most rpgs. How do you know whats good and bad when you havent tried it before.
To play Diablo 2 you have to look up tons of information just to get a viable build for later on in the game. It is not fun at all, you cannot make any choices for fun. You have to be so careful about every choice about where you put that one stat. Unless you have this build written down right next to you which you follow to the letter then you are going to make a mistake.
@Tei : “For all I can see, the level of repec-ness is ok in champions. You can test the powers, undo, even more than one level of undo.”
Well the testing room is not all that great actually. Nothing like testing in a real combat situation to see a power’s usefulness.
And the undo isn’t always enough to retcon the power that you want to get rid of.
Example : My level 26 hero just got mini mines, which are awesome (really, try them) but make my munition bot pets completely obsolete. Too bad for me, I can’t respec out of the pets, nor the super intelligence super stat I took to buff their damage.
So I can either stick with those two useless choices I made in my first 10 levels or reroll. And while I do enjoy the game very much, I can’t see myself restarting the same character already.
Sorry to complain but this article had a heck of a lot more typos than usual. Some sentences and thoughts were just outright indiscernible. Maybe give it just one read-through before hitting that publish button?
@Choca: Oooooh… I understand. At some level a full respect is better, since theres some skills that only make sense for a newbie and leveling, once you have a better skill.
Any game with respec’ing is by definition NOT an RPG.
1974, Chainmail: Roll 3d6, write the result under STR. Roll 3d6, write the result under DEX, etc. Your class selection is based upon what you rolled randomly. The “roleplaying” part is to try to make that character come to life and play to its strengths.
1978, AD&D: Alternate rules for multiple rolls and optional (at DM’s choice) single-trait selection.
1999: EverQuest: Infinite re-rolls with bonus point distribution to tailor character. The latter editions of AD&D also adopt this system, making much of the AD&D crowd the ADD crowd.
Post EQ: Everybody’s equal. Just pick a cardboard cutout and start playing. If you run into a challenge, just remake the character mid-stream. Rules? What rules. Not coincidentally, this is also when the term “toon” (from the anime-tards) came into common usage. It is distinct from a “character” in classical roleplaying, and differentiates a generation of gamers raised on sensory overload.
Designers may as well cut out leveling and just have everybody start at max level, focusing design energy on “high-level content.” At which point the MMORPG will have become… a multi-player version of a single-player game. Circle complete.
I suspect a “hard-core” MMORPG would sell well to old codgers such as myself, but it’s a marketing risk that is probably too big for any publishing houses to swallow, considering the enormous overhead of developing and deploying modern MMOs. Ah, well… I’ll be over in the corner grumbling if you need me.
And stay off the damned lawn, ya little bastards.
Wow, yep… Retconning sucks as it exists. I can tell as the defenders of it amount to saying “well, it’s because YOU suck”. The powerhouse is shit and is incapable of putting your character into scenarios that they do encounter.
My Might character I am growing to hate due to the fact I took Thunderclap at a low level… a PBAoE, that had good damage at low levels.. but the damage rate has gone up slowly, and all it does is stun pretty much… a very SMALL radius around me. I’d love to dump it now that I see how ineffective it is. I also have no good way of stopping runners. I tried out Iron Lariat in Powerhouse… it SEEMED to be good, except out in the world, foes just kept running anyhow, making them unuppercuttable. They run around all the damn time making my uppercuts whiff.
The way Defiance works, I shouldn’t have taken it, as I have defensive combo as well, turns out… Defensive combo can stack Defiance just as high as the damn buff could.
I am fine with not being able to do a FULL respec, but the current method, aside from the cost is SHIT. AS All I want to undo are powers and Advantage Points, I don’t give a shit about the Talents, as I can live with possibly not having min/maxed stats.
But hey, I should have to replay everything I did as a Might character with another Might character, but do it BETTER this time, because I didn’t sit there and plan out my character in exacting detail, because I was trying to have fun, but now I can’t have fun because it turns out my character sucks. Real great spirit you self proclaimed RPG hardcore.
The game needs are more player friendly respec system as many of the powers SUCK for regular PVE, let alone for PVP or ultra-hardcore PVE min/maxing.
That’s a particularly interesting observation about single player RPGs–that “people argue particularly in favour of no-way-back persistence”–but I don’t know that it’s a fair one. There are three critical differences between single-player and multiplayer (or, at least, MMO) RPGs:
1.) In single-player RPGs, progression is infinite (or at least close to), while in MMOs it is extremely finite. If I don’t like the way I’ve spent Frau’s LPs in FFXII, I can just go grind out some more; however, once I’ve spent my 71 talent points in WoW I am done, no matter how much more time I spend playing.
2.) Multiplayer RPGs work towards an “end game”, where all players have comparable base stats and abilities so they can work together (or against each other) to achieve marginally better gear and similar augmentations to increase their power. However, they are always limited by some type of “hard cap” (usually a max level) that normalizes the player base and prevents anyone from becoming undefeatable. Single player RPGs don’t have that same constraint, because they don’t need to sustain an endgame. If you want to grind until your entire party has more HP than the final boss, you can.
3.) Single-player RPGs usually have parties, allowing you to partake in several play styles simultaneously. However, multiplayer RPGs limit the player to a single character with a single play style. In the multiplayer game, the player needs to redesign his character if he wants to experience a new play style (or start an entirely new character, which is extremely time consuming); in the single-player game, he needs only change his party.
@Brass Gerbil: I’m also a hardened RPer from the pen and paper days (though I preferred Warhammer to AD&D), and tbh comparing them to MMOs is ludicrous. I had no problem playing the same character for months on end because combat was such a small part of the experience. There was interaction with the other players and with the GM, with NPCs, playing through the plotline and ACTUAL roleplaying! In MMOs, 90% of the gameplay is “activate skill 1, activate skill 2, etc.” How long will you want to do that for before you want to try something new? And how many times are you prepared to spend weeks or months levelling up an alt just so you can try out a slightly different gameplay experience?
In the pnp days I really enjoyed sitting down before a new campaign thinking what kind of character I wanted to play, what he’d start like and how I’d evolve him, which careers he’d take etc. The difference was in those circumstances you played with a GM, and if he was any good he would adjust the challenge according to what the group could handle. Nor would your friends kick you off the party because you weren’t optimal! In MMOs, finding a group can be difficult, and finding a good group even more so. Endgame pvp in most of them is also more of an e-sport than an RPG, so having a good spec is important, and being able to respec easily is justified. And you know something? Min-maxing is fun, it appeals to the powergamer in me (you must have had moments of flicking through your AD&D rulebooks trying to work out how best to eke the most power out of your character, right?) Even more so in games like Guild Wars, where I wouldn’t just design my own character but spend hours coming up with innovative builds for 8-man teams, which my guild leader would inevitably reject :)
@the RPers
Saying that any game-world mechanic hurts the RP is always a bit of a stretch imo. If your character lives in a world with infinite respecs and you love to RP then shouldn’t you just RP you characters as though they live in a world with infinite respecs?
Or does the infinite respec universe really make for less interesting RP fodder?
Surely your RP already takes into account the millions of other “gamey” abstractions and restrictions that trying to play on a uber-spreadsheet rather than with a creative GM requires? Are infinite respecs really much more of a stretch than infinite respawns for instance?
On the other hand, modern MMOs are very well suited to min\maxing, character building and PVP, given that the mechanics are absolute and consistently enforced.
Given that MMOs are, by design and possibly necessity, far more G than R, I’d rather that they were non-punishing and not excessively time consuming (excessive time consumption being really just another form of punishment imho).
In my opinion infinite respecs are desirable, provided there are many optimal paths, and your goal is for the game to be accessible and time efficient.
And again, this is another thing that WoW did right that people ignore entirely, but contributed hugely to it’s success.
Vast majority of people I know that do raids, PvP and endgame content in WoW never intended to when they started. The number of people going into an MMO intending to be anything other than ‘casual’ players is minute. The success of WoW comes from converting so many people that “just wanted to give it a go” into raiders that keep paying the subscription once they reach the level cap.
Champions kills this, as any endgame content will need to be balanced around those that min-max their characters (else the ones that do will just blaze through it then quit), thus making it impossible for those that were just playing casually.
It seems obvious that more choices = more fun, but in practice it doesn’t always work out that way. Playing in open beta, I found myself wishing I could just pick some basic, reasonably-effective build “off the shelf” and get my feet wet with that, instead of having to pore over documentation for hours just to figure out how to make a non-gimp character. I suspect the combination of a (relatively) complex stats system and (relatively) restricted respec options is going to lead to a lot of newbie frustration.
Of course, when they make sweeping and undocumented changes to the game and don’t offer respecs…
@invisiblejesus
“I knew a lot of roleplayers, some of whom mini-maxed and some of whom didn’t.”
You know a lot of people? Care to name ‘em?
I’ve never known a roleplayer who min/maxes, and whenever someone says that I wonder how my definition of roleplayer (a person who plays a role) differs from someone else’s (a number-cruncher?).
“I feel pretty confident that I am.”
No, you’re not. You can ask them to speak for themselves but you cannot speak for them, you cannot speak for anyone who hasn’t had a quotable instance of something said that supports your viewpoint before.
You’re not in a position to speak for anyone but yourself.
This is the most annoying fallacy I’ve ever encountered, I almost feel like I’m going to pop a vein whenever I come across it.
“Lots of roleplayers [...]”
1) Your definition of a “roleplayer” may differ from the next person’s, I know it differs from mine.
2) “Lots of”? You’re speaking for a large group of people again, you cannot possibly do this! You could only do this if you have a hive-mind link with a huge group of people, if you don’t then you cannot know what any one person is thinking at any moment in time, let alone every moment. Let them speak for themselves and you speak for yourself!
But if you do have a hive-mind link then…
…then…
…then Gods damn it, as a transhumanist, I’m jealous! :<
"[I] like them in CoH,"
I fixed your typo for you.
"[...] and I assure you many RPers in CO will feel the same way."
On what grounds? Give me a basis if you’re going to make a claim like that! Do you even have any questionable statistics supporting such a statement?
Though actually… I do respect you for not using questionable statistics. Still, you’re only speaking for yourself, and on a personal you/I level, I think your definition of what a roleplayer is is different to mine.
“I dunno about DK,”
You mean like you don’t know about all those other people? :p That’s the first honest thing you’ve said thus far.
“[...] but I know enough roleplayers that I think I am in a position to speak for them.”
So you claim to, at least.
And assuming that these people even exist outside of your imagination, have you asked each and every one of them if they agree with you? Hm?
Bloody fallacies.
“If you don’t share that opinion, that’s fine, but it doesn’t change the facts.”
What facts?! D:<
Where's a fact? I see no facts! I wish to perceive these facts of the aether, for thus far I cannot!
You have no 'facts', you have an anecdotal story about how you can speak for a huge group of people, and you have your own opinion, none of these things are 'facts'!
Lordy…
Here, look at this: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fact
A fact is actuality, it has to have a basis in reality and truth and yet you have provided no such basis, therefore you’re speaking as one person with one rather biased opinion, and one that’s making claims that have no anchors in reality.
Not even the combined might of Witchcraft’s and Ravenspeaker’s magicks could turn your baseless warbling into facts.
Seriously, lrn2fact.
@malkav11
“Not only do I not want to ever have to do that, but I’m not sure how you would given that it’s not exactly clear right off the bat what’s available or how things interact.”
Now this is what I find strange…
1) This is a roleplaying game, more so than any other MMO I’ve ever played. Why would you not feel compelled to plan out your character?
2) Either I’m a sparkling intellect of immeasurable depth (I’m not, I’m not particularly smart at all, just rather creative) or it is clear off the bat.
You can head into the tutorial and test things out, if you save your character like I pointed out, then checking things out in the tutorial so that you understand them isn’t a major concern. And after that, you have the Power House.
All this I pointed out all ready.
I really don’t understand your difficulty with constructing a character, I’m not the smartest cookie and yet I found it easy. I think you’re just putting too much thought into min/maxing rather than simply going with what your character would do.
“I had regeneration. I still died like crazy.”
This usually happens due to bad tactics and refusing to group rather than the actual character build.
I could pick the worst build in the game and still avoid dying like crazy. In fact, the only times I’ve died is when I’ve done stupid things on purpose, just for a laugh.
Ex: “I’m going to drop into that VIPER facility, aggro all of those guys who’re levels higher than me, and then run like hell to see what happens! :D”
So yeah, death is usually due to that. And that I did just because I was feeling sadistic and thought it would be pretty funny, and it was. I ran past three heroes with about 20 VIPER guys chasing me, and they were all “what?”.
Yes, I can be pretty stupid if there’s humour to be had in doing so, but I digress.
“I should also add that while at that stage of the beta they didn’t have the Powerhouse yet, [...]”
If you’d said that at the start, I would’ve just pointed out that the game is very different with the Power House and not have argued anything. The game without the Power House would be total arse.
This I freely admit.
“I don’t think it would have helped.”
You don’t know that without having tried it, the Power House is an incredible concept.
“But then I got higher level and the foes changed and I was losing a lot.”
The foes became harder and you have to use more intelligent tactics, yes. You can’t just rush into a huge group of people and hope to survive, only the mightiest (Might-based) heroes can do that.
If you’re not primarily Might-based (which it sounds like you weren’t), then you’re not going to be able to survive that.
You need to learn to use the environment and travel powers to your advantage.
@Zyrusticae
Going by a lot of posts I don’t think anyone even bothered to look in the corridors of the Power House, and are now too embarrassed to admit this.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if what you’d pointed out was new to a lot of people.
@Moorkh
That’s exactly what I was getting at when I asked “Where’s the loyalty to characters?” earlier. In a game like Champions Online, it’s nice to see someone and think to yourself… hey, I know that guy.
Myself, I’m becoming a once-hobo werewolf crossed with a hardened military vet, and I’m building on that and making the character stronger instead of desiring to change things. I want people to see me and know me, if I run by I want people to be able to recognise my character by how he looks and how he’s fighting, rather than just his name.
And that’s how it is in the comic books too, heroes are memorable.
@devlocke
Thank you! I couldn’t have said it better myself.
As I’ll get to with another reply in this post, I think the game is about character building. I see many heroes which are just min/maxing. They have horrendous, random costumes, they have no backstory, their name makes no sense, and they just look like a bloody pointless abomination.
I ask myself: What’s the point?
In a superhero Universe, you’re out to create an individual aspect of awesomeness, whether it’s hilarious, simply brilliant, or something that makes someone stop and think. And then it’s absolutely bloody beautiful to talk to that person and find out they’ve planned out their entire character, that they can effortlessly answer any questions that you have for them. They become their character, and their character has almost endless depths and facets.
I love that shit.
When I see someone who’s just min/maxing and a random pile of junk with no backstory and a pointless name… well, they’re not someone who I could really talk to or enjoy the company of.
I welcome people, like you, who come into the game to make their own hero, something that they’ve put real effort into and that’s individually theirs.
Not number-crunchers, but people with history, stuff that’s actually, genuinely interesting.
@Calabi
You can completely test every power from top to bottom in the Power House, and frankly, it sounds like anyone who doesn’t realise this just hasn’t plumbed the depths of the Power House yet.
You can know what’s good and bad, because until you leave the Power House you get free refunds on every choice you make.
@Choca
Your complaint isn’t in regards to the Power House though, the Power House has let you test every power you’ve had. Your complaint is whining about how you’ve picked one power that makes another power you have obsolete.
I think that a worthwhile solution there would be that certain powers should be classified as an upgrade of previous powers, so that if you select power A that makes power B obsolete, you get a refund token for the obsolete power, and I think that idea could be posed to Cryptic.
Really though, I don’t mind “obsolete” powers, because I keep plugging advantages into everything, and eventually powers that seemed obsolete make themselves very worthwhile again as A) one works them into their tactics and B) one upgrades them with advantages.
But that’s just me, and I do support the refund token idea for powers which are truly obsolete.
@Deadend
I find the irony of the way you begin your post delicious, you claim that the defenders amount to saying that you suck and yet you go on to say that the methods of powers management in the game sucks. So you turn the whole thing into “You suck!”, “No you do!”
That made me giggle, but it wasn’t at all constructive.
To you and anyone else who’s whining instead of playing the game: What’s so bad about the Power House? I’ve seen people talk ill of the Power House, and I’ve seen people say that it’s not like a real combat scenario. Uh… okay. Want to tell me why?
Let’s examine what the Power House has…
- Target dummies for ranged and close quarters.
You can test your powers here and see their animations, visual effects, and effectiveness in general.
You can also test offensive drones here.
- Attack lasers.
You can use these to test your basic defense buffs, blocks, and combinations thereof, just keep activating the lasers and watch what happens.
You can also test how defensive drones will respond to you being damaged via the attack lasers.
- A huge room with platforms at various heights to romp in.
This place is fantastic for giving travel powers a go, and the Power House itself is pretty spacious, too.
So at the end of the day, we have the ability to test close quarters attacks, ranged attacks, response to damage, and drones. What is the Power House missing? Give me a constructive write-up on what the Power House could use, and then give that write-up to Cryptic as well.
Because Cryptic will fix the Power House system if it needs fixing, they’ve already responded to no end of player feedback, and rarely does anything ever go ignored.
I don’t think the Power House is broken, I think it accounts for every combat scenario. If you disagree, then why? And why not do something about it by asking Cryptic to implement your ideas instead of just whining on comments threads about it?
@M.P.
Here we go again…
“(though I preferred Warhammer to AD&D)”
I’ve only played a tiny bit of Warhammer, but having experienced Warhammer at least a couple of times I can tell you it’s a very, very different beast to D&D.
“[...] here was interaction with the other players [...]”
You’re claiming that there’s less interaction between players in MMOs than in PnP? I disagree as I can spend six hours or more roleplaying in a good group in PnP or in an MMO that supports roleplaying.
I have to say that the people in Champions Online are bloody marvellous. I haven’t wanted to leave some zones because the players there were so much fun!
“[...] and ACTUAL roleplaying!”
Let me give you my definition of roleplaying: The playing of a role, the personality of an imaginary character and building upon these things over time, creating a rich story in the process.
This is something one can do anywhere, isn’t it? One could even do this writing a book, or acting in a play that has a loose plot.
In my opinion, to suggest that PnP is the only system that allows for roleplaying, and indeed that roleplaying can’t be achieved anywhere else is elitist, dis-ingenious, and utterly fallacious.
Number-crunching and die-rolling isn’t my definition of roleplaying, not at all.
“In MMOs, 90% of the gameplay is “activate skill 1, activate skill 2, etc.” How long will you want to do that for before you want to try something new?”
Uh, I have a varied selection of skills even as a low level Champions. Good grief, did you even bother to examine Champions before making a post in a comments thread about Champions?
My low-level werewolf already has guns, kick-boxing, feral attacks, smoke bombs, and he can travel by swinging around on a grappling hook, soon I’ll add even more to that arsenal. He’s as detailed as any of my similarly levelled D&D characters ever were.
“And how many times are you prepared to spend weeks or months levelling up an alt just so you can try out a slightly different gameplay experience?”
You really aren’t talking about Champions Online. No doubt in my mind at this point. Seriously.
Go play Champions Online, understand how the game works, then form your opinion. You fail at arguments because you’re arguing without knowledge of all the elements present within the current topic.
If you’re not arguing about Champions Online then why bring up this argument in a thread where that’s the said topic?
In Champions Online you can have an incredibly varied power-set off the bat (it’s a classless game) and one which can become even more varied as time goes on.
This isn’t World of Warcraft, where you select Priest or Druid and that’s that, but I’m sure that’s the picture you have in your head due to the points you’re positing, like people are locked into a class.
“In the pnp [You mean Warhammer? - Wulf] days I really enjoyed sitting down before a new campaign thinking what kind of character I wanted to play, [...]”
Did you even read my big post about how I describe doing just that with Champions Online and how strongly I recommend that people do so? Once again you’re speaking from the perspective of MMOs only having cookie-cutter classes which you simply pick and then run into the game with.
“[...] what he’d start like and how I’d evolve him, which careers he’d take etc.”
Seriously, read my post above. I always do the same thing; why my character has the appearance he does, explanations for disfiguring scars, or other individual visual elements, stories behind his clothing and equipment, a detailed write-up on his personality which would define what kind of training he’d opt for, an origin story behind whatever powers he might possess, and so on.
This is seriously getting old because you obviously haven’t played the game you’re supposed to be arguing against. Champions Online is more like PnP than any other MMO I’ve ever played.
I might be wrong though, you may have played Champions Online. If you have, care to link a Champion profile?
“The difference was in those circumstances you played with a GM, and if he was any good he would adjust the challenge according to what the group could handle.”
And you can do this with Nemesis content, in Champions, you’re your own GM.
“[...] or would your friends kick you off the party because you weren’t optimal!”
Uh… that happens in many MMOs out there and it’s pretty shit, I hate min/maxing. Is that your idea of what roleplaying is? Because if it is then I’m not sure it’s worth discussing this any further with you because our ideas of what roleplaying is vary greatly.
It’s sounding like your idea of roleplaying is carefully tailoring numbers, stats, and abilities, rather than giving a damn about the history of your character, his personality, or anything else.
The end result is that you’re throwing around an algorithm, a mathematical formulae, and one without a shred of personal character or charm to speak of. In my opinion that’s number-crunching and a pure staple of past MMOs, that’s not PnP at all (or Champions Online).
If my assumptions are right, you’ve performed a bait and switch by moving from talking about PnP — in which one creates and roleplays a character — to MMOish number-crunching. But let’s continue and see where this goes…
“In MMOs, finding a group can be difficult, [...]”
Not in Champions Onlilne as I find the zone chat is pretty much occupied by people trying to group, a second doesn’t go by where a person asks if people want to group to do this or that, and it’s always met by a positive response.
This isn’t Final Fantasy XI, where you’d sit around for ages waiting for a group, you can just do your own thing until someone wants to group with you just for fun, and I’ve found no shortage of people who want just that!
I admit that’s just my take on it, and it’s anecdotal, but speaking from my own experiences I find myself grouping more often than not.
“[...] and finding a good group even more so.”
Now you’re doing the elitist thing again. Show me a good PnP group that has no weak links and I’ll show you an Elder Myth.
“Endgame pvp in most of them is also more of an e-sport than an RPG, [...]”
PvP is almost pointless in Champions, but I don’t care because I always roleplayed with friends and I never took a weapon or spell to any of them.
“[...] so having a good spec is important, and being able to respec easily is justified.”
Now you’re doing the min/max MMO number-crunching thing again and ignoring your original argument regarding PnP. I suspected this earlier on though so it’s hardly surprising.
To me, it sounds like you’re actually supporting having an eSport PvP system in a game, and potentially even sacrificing the rest of the game to promote that PvP system. So PvP > character-growth? That doesn’t sound very PnP to me.
Hmmm…
“And you know something? Min-maxing is fun, it appeals to the powergamer in me [...]”
I’m sorry, I don’t do this often, but…
LoL.
I saw that coming a mile away!
I had a feeling that this was less about PnP and more about PvP, number-crunching, power-munchkinry and wotnot.
Still, let’s continue, for amusement’s sake.
“[...] (you must have had moments of flicking through your AD&D rulebooks trying to work out how best to eke the most power out of your character, right?) [...]”
Er no, that’s not how I play D&D at least, and speaking from personal experiences I’ve never been in a group where any of my favourite players have been min/maxing.
There was the odd person who loved min/maxing but they were often the weak link in a PnP group because they were all about phat loots, number-crunching, and they couldn’t roleplay or get into character worth shit.
Has anyone else with D&D PnP experience actually experienced a helpful min/maxer who they didn’t end up wishing wasn’t a part of the group?
Ex: I’d honestly claim that a Paladin who’s all ‘omigawd, i got to have that sword’ instead of playing up his role and acting on in-character motivations is invariably a D&D detriment.
“Even more so in games like Guild Wars, where I wouldn’t just design my own character but spend hours coming up with innovative builds for 8-man teams, which my guild leader would inevitably reject :)”
So this is all about being a PvP fanboy and damning games which don’t embrace PvP? Oh, and nice bait-and-switch between PnP and PvP, by the way.
Well, PvP isn’t a staple of D&D, and it isn’t a staple of Champions/Champions Online. Champions Online is the most D&D/D20-like MMO I’ve ever played, and that includes Dungeons & Dragons Online (which had a ludicrous XP curve which made no sense to D&D players).
So please don’t present your post as though you’re damning Champions Online as a PnPer, when really you’re damning it as a a PvPer.
You can damn it as a Guild Wars/Warhammer PvP gamer and number-cruncher but you haven’t made one single good, solid argument with which to damn it as a PnPer or by my definition of what a roleplayer is.
Champions Online is a brilliant game for anyone who subscribes to my definition of roleplaying, and to compare it to D&D/D20 is entirely fair. To compare it to the PvP element of Warhammer isn’t fair, sure, but to be honest … when I think of PnP (Pen & Paper), I think of D&D (and D20 in general).
The reason I think of D&D is because D&D is pen & paper. Whereas PvP-oriented Warhammer is more about figurines and boards, no? It’s not as focused around the singular character as D&D is.
So to draw this to its inevitable conclusion: In Champions Online you don’t PvP and you don’t min/max so much, but you actually play the role of a character. That comes first and foremost, the playing of a role > stat-crunching.
If you want to stat-crunch and number-juggle, well… there’s always Warhammer and the MMOs that love that kind of thing. But you’re not really roleplaying a character, are you?
*cough*
@eyemessiah
“If your character lives in a world with infinite respecs and you love to RP then shouldn’t you just RP you characters as though they live in a world with infinite respecs?”
Sure… if respecs are a part of the lore of the World.
But I’d just cringe if Captain America could just run off and respec as Commander France, going from Might to Mind Control in the process.
“Or does the infinite respec universe really make for less interesting RP fodder?”
It depends on the World. For something like Warcraft? It makes sense. For something like Champions? It doesn’t.
“Surely your RP already takes into account the millions of other “gamey” abstractions and restrictions that trying to play on a uber-spreadsheet rather than with a creative GM requires?”
Again, if they fit the World we’re roleplaying in? Yes. That’s very important and I’ll stress it until it sinks in.
“Are infinite respecs really much more of a stretch than infinite respawns for instance?”
Absolutely.
Is it unreasonable to believe that Nightcrawler might teleport Cyclops away if he’s hurt in battle? No.
Is it unreasonable to believe that Defender may reroll as Offender: Man of Insults? Yes.
“On the other hand, modern MMOs are very well suited to min\maxing, character building and PVP, given that the mechanics are absolute and consistently enforced.”
Which is what Champions Online tends to be veering away from, it wants to be different from games like World of Warcraft, and it is.
Champions Online is actually more like Ultima Online. And in Ultima Online respecs don’t make sense either. If a woodcutter spends most of their life cutting down trees, is it really believable that they’d be able to forget that and reconfigure their brain so that they can take up blacksmithing? Err, yeah, pretty much.
It all depends on the nature of the World in question.
What works for Azeroth may not work for Sosaria.
“Given that MMOs are, by design and possibly necessity, far more G than R, [...]”
I think the balance of game and roleplay is pretty balanced in Champions Online, compared to say… World of Warcraft, where in my opinion the balance is strongly in the favour of G over R, as you’ve said.
We have to accept that Champions Online is a different kind of beast, we need to accept its individuality, and see it for what it is instead of trying to make it into what we want it to be. No?
“I’d rather that they were non-punishing and not excessively time consuming (excessive time consumption being really just another form of punishment imho).”
I don’t find Champions Online to be either punishing or time consuming.
“In my opinion infinite respecs are desirable, provided there are many optimal paths, and your goal is for the game to be accessible and time efficient.”
That may fit other games, but it doesn’t seem to fit the ethos of Champions Online. It really sounds like your post is saying that you want Champions Online to be World of Warcraft with a cape and in spandex, and that you’re throwing a bit of a wobbly because it isn’t.
Well, it isn’t.
I wish you could see that and actually try to accept it for what it is, if you do that, you may find that Champions Online is a far more beautiful beast than World of Warcraft. That’s if you were to give it a chance, and allow it to be the unique and individual identity that it’s trying to be.
@Dean
You make the claims, but as is my clarion call: Where’s your evidence?
You claim that the end-game in Champions Online will be focused around those that min/max. O rly? Have Cryptic said as much? If so, show me. If you have a magical basis to determine this, explain it to me.
You’re assuming that the end-game of Champions Online will be like World of Warcraft, but the Nemesis-play tells a very different story, and one of a more dynamic end-game than Warcraft knows.
In Champions Online, I would posit that the player can tailor their own end-game.
@J. Kevin. Carrier
You weave an argument based around the idea that it’s easy to create gimped characters in Champions Online that won’t last long without being min/maxed.
Where is the basis for this idea that min/maxing is necessary in Champions Online? I can only counter your opinion with my own opinion, and with my experience (however anecdotal), but I’ve been and encountered high-level players in the beta (and working my way there in Live) that never min/maxed at any point.
I’m truly baffled by the people who’re assuming that min/maxing is at all necessary in the game, whereas the game itself seems to tell a different story.
How many Champions Online players have found that min/maxing is a necessity?
@Lafinass
Who’s to say that they won’t offer a coupon to allow a full Power House redo when they make such sweeping changes? We have no evidence as to how they’ll handle that either way, so making assumptions before the fact is rather pointless.
But I’m seeing a lot of assumptions and baseless claims across the board, here. :/
To emphasise the point of teleporters a bit, I’d like to ramble some more. Hear me out, eh?
I find teleporters an ingenious concept, and one which fits with the World. To exposit a bit, if I may, the World of Champions is one where all the Champions (the heroes) are registered into a sort of International, militaristic force. This also explains why there are heroes everywhere, and why they’re so organised.
Now let’s say that as an element of standard Champion outfitting, you’re given an emergency transmitter, one that monitors your vitals. When it detects that you’re in danger of dying, it sends your position to a nearby military outpost (a respawn point) and they mobilise to rescue you.
One of a number of sanctioned teleporters is given the location of your body, and they bamf over there, via powers or technology, collect your body, and then bamf on back. Your body is then treated by medical services and you’re left ready at that military outpost for further Champions duty, if a bit weakened (you lost a star). But as your body recovers from its injuries, you work your way back up to full health (you gain a star).
I believe that this is a reasonable explanation for the respawn system because the idea is supported by the World, that there are teleporters and that the Champions are part of an organised military effort. In fact, a similar thing is true in Kirkman’s Invincible Universe. The guy can teleport around using advanced Gov’t technology and sometimes he does pull people’s fat out of the fire.
So I can explain the teleportation system, but there’s no system within the Champions game or in Champions Online to support the following idea, that: A hero may lose all the fantastic powers they’ve gained and then, within a very short space of time, become a completely different hero without haviing had any training in their new powers.
I don’t know how that could be explained rationally within the Champions Universe, and to be honest I don’t believe it can. Any attempt I make comes out sounding improbable at best and utterly ludicrous and completely impractical at worst. Because it literally is wiping out the individuality of a person and replacing it with something else.
The only thing I can come up with is if we were all robots, we could change our equipment and get reprogrammed. But what about the people that aren’t robots? Could we all be brainwashed every time we needed to become someone else? Is that healthy? Is that ethical? It sounds like something the villains would do. Mind Inc as a case in point.
I have no problem with it if it does fit within the nature of the World, but in the case of Champions, I can’t make it fit.
Can you?
Honest question, I’m tasking creative writers here. If anyone can come up with a well-written explanation of how completely rewriting the nature of entities mechanical, biological, and mystical then I’m all for it.
Er, oops. Let me try that last paragraph again:
“Honest question, I’m tasking creative writers here. If anyone can come up with a well-written explanation of how completely rewriting the nature of entities mechanical, biological, and mystical can actually work in a practical and functional way, then I’m all for it.”
In fact, I’m still not done! Ignore me if you like, no skin off my back, but I have thinkythinks and I must share! I have so much to say about this game, I love it! I haven’t been this passionate about a game in a while.
Anyway, I support the idea of having a coupon which changes a few powers but not a complete respec, I mentioned supporting that early on but I never said why. I want to. It’s because I already had an idea in my head of how that could work.
Every now and then, characters in comic books have life-chanigng events which change them a bit but never completely. An example of this is the Beast. Their primary powers will stay the same, but they may have minor additions or changes to their character profile.
What I’m thinking is that at certain points in the game, it may be possible to acquire, via a micro-transaction or simply through questing as a rare-drop, a Life-changing Event.
A Life-changing Event would be a coupon to allow someone to get refunds on up to three powers whilst ignoring the order of the retcon list that the Power House enforces, any more than that and it would be more than a life-changing event. It would allow a person to get rid of useless powers whilst still keeping their character mostly the same.
I also think that there should be a maximum on how many Life-changing Events a character can have, not limited to the account but limited to the player. I’d keep this limit tight, perhaps even just to one or two, since this kind of thing doesn’t happen to heroes often. It is life-changing, after all.
The reason for this is say … if a character lost their arms at some point in their adventures and had them replaced with cybernetic ones, it might not change the nature of their character, but they might want to drop a few of their close quarters powers in favour of power armour ones to go with the shiny robotic limbs they picked up at the costume tailor.
So definitely not a complete respec, but the ability to earn a very partial one.
It would also be nice if a life-changing event allowed for an addendum to the origin story of a character, so you’d get a second section in that field where you could scrawl something about how such an event actually occurred.
So yes, I support the idea of Life-changing Event coupons!
@Wulf
If you want an example for the irrationality of super powers and people changing from one t other then you just have to look at Heroes(the series).
They change powers more often than they have hot dinners, and they change their minds more often than that.
Wulf:
You’re clearly open to the idea of different people meaning different things by roleplayer. You’re clearly of the opinion that people who play the game mechanics are not your sort of roleplayer.
In the ~GNS system you’re not a roleplayer either. You’re a simulator. You’re portraying a role, but you’re not portraying it in the sense of an actor playing a part – you’re portraying it in the sense of a simulation system. Your arguments hinge on the notion of *mechanical* enforcement of roleplaying.
To many roleplayers, this idea is as anti-roleplaying as the idea of min/maxing is anti-roleplaying to you.
To me, roleplaying is about a shared storytelling experience. Glossing over things is an intrinsic part of that process. Just as Superman never uses the toilet on screen, my characters (in MMOs) never die on screen. Some players like to incorporate death and respawn mechanics into their roleplay, whereas to me they stretch the believability of the world long, long past breaking point and so I simply ignore it “canonically”. (You can see the ridiculous consequences of not doing this in any story setting which ostensibly includes resurrection magic but then decides it wants a tragic character death – Warcraft 3 springs to mind.)
A typical play session might go:
Fight boss
Die
Die
Die
Die
Die
Kill boss
In character, my character explains what he’s been up to as “Oh yes, we fought and it went this way and that and we looked like we were going to lose but then eventually we prevailed!” rather than “Oh yes, we fought and we five times and then we prevailed!”
You don’t have to incporate mechanics into your roleplay to be a roleplayer. You can step back from them. To me the mechanics themselves – the literal script of events – is nothing but a framework to draw inspiration from. The official truth is whatever I want it to be.
The relevance to respeccing is this; you are required to explain only as much as you want to. If someone isn’t a roleplayer, and their character literally leaps from powerset to powerset on a daily basis, then you as a roleplayer are not required to interact with that player in a roleplaying sense. As they’re probably called “xXxDarkKnightxXx” this is not a problem for you. You don’t need to explain how they’re doing it, and neither do they.
Someone who is a roleplayer is free to respec as much or as little as they like, and explain as much and as little of it as they like. Although some people enjoy it, is it absolutely not a requirement in roleplaying to explain every detail. All Superheroes have changed radically over the years, and sometimes this is expained and sometimes it isn’t. Characters undergo gradual refinement as you bring them closer towards an emergent vision – all of this change can be retconned, off-camera.
In a professional storytelling product, such aimless retconning would be completely unacceptable (I’m looking at you, Metzen). This is not a professional storytelling product. If I decide that actually my character’s ability to throw out chains is actually inappropriate or harmful to his premise, it doesn’t make me not a roleplayer to rub out that aspect and replace it with something else. I could explain that he’s undergone some transformation, or I could ask you to kindly pretend he’s always had XYZ power and just get on with things.
Remember, simulation is not the be-all and end-all of roleplaying, it is simply one way to do it.
“Has anyone else with D&D PnP experience actually experienced a helpful min/maxer who they didn’t end up wishing wasn’t a part of the group?”
Yes, wholeheartedly yes. I’m sorry if you have had so many bad experiences that you can’t conceive of play that freely mixes the powery-G & high-R but yes, it is possible. If it wasn’t I wouldn’t bother!
“It depends on the World. For something like Warcraft? It makes sense. For something like Champions? It doesn’t.”
I’m happy to take your word for it that the WOW’s lore explicitly permits infinte respecs, but that CO’s does not, I haven’t played WOW for many years, and I don’t play CO.
Personally I don’t tend to think of MMO’s as immersive-type games, and so have never paid much attention to the lore. For me the game-universe is a product of the mechanical features of the Game. The reason being that I have high standard when it comes to narrative and exposition and MMOs are so appalling crude on both counts that it doesn’t seem at all unfair to treat them like elaborate strategy games with lots of text boxes pasted on the front end.
“Is it unreasonable to believe that Nightcrawler might teleport Cyclops away if he’s hurt in battle”
Is this what happens in CO? PCs never “die”? Does the game intervene to provide an explanation for the PCs escape? One that isn’t pretty quickly rendered absurd by repetition?
As I say I haven’t played CO much beyond a few hours in beta, and I’d love to believe that the mechanical shortcuts and abstractions don’t excessively impinge on the narrative and render it supersubpar, but I’m pretty sceptical. Complaining that a convenient and accessible implementation of one mechanic messes with the RP when the very medium itself is so far from being conducive to it seems to me to be a bit mean. If I’m wrong about CO and it is in fact at least as good a platform for real RP as other MMOs are for power-gaming then, hooray!
“We have to accept that Champions Online is a different kind of beast, we need to accept its individuality, and see it for what it is instead of trying to make it into what we want it to be. No.”
I may be underestimating how innovative CO is, but I suspect that like other MMOs its probably a decent platform for G, and a weak platform for pnp quality R. That being the case I I’d imagine that enabling the playstyle its inherently inclined toward will probably produce a better play experience (for me anyway), compared to trying to get it to facilitate a type of play it probably can’t, at the expense of what it probably can.
I’m speculating wildly though, based on familiarity with MMOs in general. As I say CO might indeed be substantially different.
“It really sounds like your post is saying that you want Champions Online to be World of Warcraft with a cape and in spandex, and that you’re throwing a bit of a wobbly because it isn’t.”
Easy tiger. I don’t think I mentioned CO in my OP, and was responding to the discussion re. the mechanical aspect in general. I also laced my post with lots of imo, so the patronisation is, imo, unnecessary. I’m not at all invested in WoW, or CO, or CO-as-WoW.
I’d love to play a graphical multiplayer rpg that was capable of facilitating pnp quality RP, and I’d be very impressed if CO specifically was a substantial step forward in that regard, but so far I’m not convinced. Feel free to correct me though, as I say I’m not intimately familiar with CO.
@teleporters
Its a bit a YMMV thing I suppose.
Constantly teleporting away a few moments before death is a passable explanation for respawning, but its still going to seem absurd with lots of repetition isn’t it? It did in bioshock, (which may as well be Dostoevsky in comparison to narrative in MMOs) despite the fact that on paper it wasn’t complete nonsense in terms of what was possible in-universe.
Is, what is a fairly trivial narrative patch job over the ugly mess that is constant respawning really so convincing for you that it doesn’t jar your suspension of disbelief?
And don’t you think that someone could come up with an explanation for respeccing that was at least as serviceable? Nanobots rewriting the pathways in the brain, brainwashing, cloning, UBER-NLP, I don’t know it doesn’t seem that difficulty. I mean its a universe where people fly about with capes shooting energy beams from their foreheads and your telling me their isn’t enough space in the fluff to coherently explain repeccing? Really?
It’s worth pointing out I think that many pen and paper games don’t support “RP” as Wulf defines it. D&D certainly doesn’t. Storyteller doesn’t. Conspiracy X (old system) probably does.
Most RP systems I’ve played (the exceptions are the ultra-detailed ones… you can see where this is going) play merry havoc with realism and simulation in favour of broad strokes. Hit points inevitably lead to people surviving things they couldn’t survive (like falling from terminal velocity) or dying instantly from things that couldn’t possibly be lethal (like being punched in the leg).
As a roleplayer you always have to choose; do the mechanics define the game world, or does the player’s imagination define the game world? In the former, you take hit points literally. In such a world (like D20 Modern) humans can, with sufficient combat experience, survive falls from terminal velocity. In the latter, you gloss over such things, typically at the GM’s discretion. A player claiming that the mechanics supported surviving a fall from terminal velocity would be told to get stuffed, and that their character was dead.
Neither is superior or deserves the undisputed title “roleplaying”. Both work as long as the players involved want to play it that way.
A typical example of this in action is D&D’s Paralyse spell. This spell has a mechanical intention – it makes someone inactive in combat – and a characterful explanation – it literally paralyses their whole body.
Over the years this has evolved in two different directions. The attitude taken by hardcore 2E players is that the characterful explanation rules, ad therefore if you cast paralyse on someone and throw then in a river, they drown.
The attitude taken by 4E is that the (balanced) mechanical effect rules. Paralyse is a “debuff”, not a “kill”, so it can’t be “exploited” to turn it into a death spell except as demarked by the rules (for example in 3E you could Coup De Grace the subject of a paralyse spell). How you choose to explain it is less important – 4E explicitly endorses this by encouraging the players to come up with alternate explanations for their powers. Whether the paralysis comes from magical force, or poison, or roots bursting from the ground is mechanically irrelevant and therefore up to the players to decide. Using a more literal system, this difference would be desperately important – where are you going to find roots on a glacier? What happens when you run out of poison or are fighting a golem?
Most systems ultimately find an unwieldly balance somewhere along this axis, and most groups include players who would prefer it in different ways, which is where all this legendary “You’re just a rollplayer” etc etc comes from.
Neither is better. Both are valid.
@Wulf
Fair enough, Cryptic might not balance the endgame around people that min-max. But if they don’t do that it will be utterly boring and trivial for the people that do, and hence they’ll lose those people instead of losing the casual players.
And while the hardcore min-maxers are fewer in number they really help drive publicity and word of mouth online. You need both groups. And you need catch-up and respec mechanisms to allow people to move back and forth between those two groups.
Unless you’re talking about a truly dynamic endgame that adjusts in difficulty based on the efficiency of the player’s spec, but in that case you end up with the opposite problem, as customisation becomes entirely meaningless as it doesn’t actually make you any stronger.
Ha. You can now respec right back to the beginning. Which didn’t take long for them to patch in.
And SPOOKILY it’s exactly what I said would happen. I’m a modern nostra-fucking-damus.
@Wolf
“Who’s to say that they won’t offer a coupon to allow a full Power House redo when they make such sweeping changes? We have no evidence as to how they’ll handle that either way, so making assumptions before the fact is rather pointless.”
I was actually referring specifically to the exact sweeping changes that happened the morning of Sept 1st. And while in the light of things they’ve made some changes to the respec system they haven’t given any coupon for a free respec to anyone but sorcery builds. Which, while appreciated, is not quite the same thing. So no, I was not making assumptions.
I’ve got a relatively high level toon that was rendered fairly impotent by the changes that will now have to spend a significant amount of currency to respec. I’m not a min/max player. I roleplay, I build characters with certain images and pick from power sets that fit that image. My sword wielding wraith spartan is not going to have robots that heal him or any such nonsense. But in that same vein, I’m not going to pick skills that are useless to me.
What I think it boils down to is that these aren’t RPG’s. They’re MMOs. Ever changing, ever evolving. As such, the system needs to allow for the players to do the same without having to re-start. The skills I picked in NWN aren’t going to change anytime soon, so I don’t need the respec functionality. But in a game with active development working to ‘balance’ the gameplay? Respecs are a must.
@Wulf:
I’m not interested in roleplaying in this or any other MMO. I’ll save that for the tabletop, thanks. (Or IRC or whatever). And if I were going to roleplay in CO, I certainly wouldn’t plan out my character’s every power choice at creation, because that doesn’t allow for organic character growth.
Beyond that…well, hey, thanks for assuming that I’m a terrible player who doesn’t know what he’s doing. Ass.
It’s poor game design not to allow respec. In every other aspect of gameplay, you learn by trying, failing, and trying again after obtaining feedback. That process is quashed if no respec is allowed because your cycle to “try again” becomes so much longer.
Also, having to research optimal build combinations on forums is just… fail. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun when it’s your first RPG. Once you’ve “done the maths” on a half dozen or so of these games, it gets pretty old.
This is partially because RPG stat/combat systems are just so arbitrary. Compare it to an FPS game where at least your aiming skills will carry over to the next game you play, or an RTS where your micro skills can be put to good use next time, etc… all having the mad “build skillz” does is make you good at *that* game. No others. This promotes you playing the same game in your mother’s basement for 5 years (cough WoW cough).
Just robs the motivation from me these days.
Thanks for reading and discussing my article.
Very interesting analysis here as well. I am definitely going to bookmark your site and check back.