What is going to be the 'energy' that powers abilities? Will it be the same for all characters? Will there be a secondary resource for certain characters like defiance (CoH blaster) or fury (CoH Brute)?

Hopefully whatever it is it won't be required to use travel powers.

And hopefully it will be at least similar for all archetypes for simplicity and ease of uses sake.

Interesting question. I think too much diversity here would be challenging to balance. Resource management is a fundamental part of games these days, and if the resource types are so diverse that they lead to unequal management practices, then the best option will become the only thing people use--e.g. the CoX Stamina pool power that was so commonly picked the devs made it intrinsic to all characters.

Defiance and Fury were neat because they scaled differently from endurance. But they balanced out. One of my favorite toons was a blaster that I kept perpetually redlined, but then I died a lot (and also was super nervey when playing that toon).

Things should be kept relatively level, that's my only concern. Otherwise, go crazy. Someone in another forum was talking about slime-type powers, wouldn't it be cool if the resource for that was something water-based, and you could recharge by jumping in a river, but if you stayed in the river too long you'd start to dilute?

One question would be, is the resource archetype-based or powerset-based? Most games use archetype. I could see it going either way.

Currently all archetypes will use the same primary resource(it will be nearly universal). Most travel powers will have some form of consumption of a resource.

As for diversity of travel powers, yes we will be having a very diverse amount of travel powers, but they will all fall into categories for balancing purposes. The diversity is for RPing purposes.

There will be none to very little limitations on travel powers for any archetype or power sets. We are working very hard on making sure no origin is implied by any power we provide so a player can make up their own story.

If a player wants to write a story about they can fly on a ice cube as they throw fire, go for it

I'm concerned with travel powers using a resource as it would make travelling long distances between zones super hero style tedious if you had to stop and rest every so often. If superman can fly across the globe without having to stop for gas, I don't see why we should be prevented from doing that.

SWEET, thanks heaps for the oficial feedback jaximus
also, i will write that story sir

zeehero, im pretty sure it will have a recharge rate, superman would have his energy recharge rate faster then its consumption by flight, but if hes also fighting he might end up collapsing and being unable to fly after a bit in a particularly heavy fight, or if cryptonite is involved extra

There is no need for concern @ZeeHero on the resource of a travel power costing so much that you would need to stop to rest before you reach your destination(With few exceptions i will touch on in a second). The resource cost will not be so much that it would deplete your energy if that is the only thing you are doing, but for the most part the goal will be to make it enough not to be ignored while in combat.

The idea is to give players meaningful choices with their actions and character design let me give you a few examples.

1) Lets call this travel power set acrobatics, this will roughly double your movement speed and jumping height/distance. In the grand realm of travel powers this would be a very weak travel power for moving long distances, but this travel power would also have a very insignificant drain on your resources so using it while in combat will feel very comfortable.

2) Super Speed, lets say this makes you run at 8x normal speed. This travel power will have a significant drain on your resources, but the power still wouldn't be enough of a drain that you couldn't leave it on indefinitely while running around the city. The choice this gives you is how you want to use your travel power in combat, you would either want to work around not using it in combat or making an attempt with your build to mitigate the drain(Either by increasing your existing recovery rate or by lower the cost of the power).

3) Lets call this category extreme travel powers. In this case think of a teleport that allows you to instantly travel across the entire city in a single move, this power will have little to no use in combat but would be a large depletion on your resources when used. This would be by far the fastest travel power but it would have a balancing point around other factors and one of them is the resource cost.


So this is just 3 examples of meaningful character design choices and there are far far more examples.

TLDR? -> It does come down to this simple fact you can trust me on, I am going to be playing this game with you and I wouldn't design anything to be as punishing as what you are imagining

Please keep up the questions guys, I enjoy letting you all in on our design ideas and philosophy!

Jaximus wrote:
My concern with your response is, if we are limited to ONE travel power, I feel everyone will choose the one which costs the least resources, or is just the most convenient for getting around, since it will be the ONLY one we have.

Please consider allowing us to have at least 2 travel powers minimum by the level cap.

I suppose they're going with the general energy used for all powers direction. Though it would of been cool how they did it like they did in Marvel Heroes where every special power set could have it's own resource like every hero had their own special resource that functioned differently like Juggernaut's Momentum and Wolverine's Rage.