Greetings.

What is the plan for gear? Will there be gear progression, similar to DCUO? CO's biggest down fall was yes, you can create cool characters, but every single style was attainable from the Z-store, therefore there were few if any endgame exclusive styles. In DCUO, there was a style grind of sorts, which kept players coming back attempting to finally attain a style piece.

Also, DCUO had gear tiers, while CO had very little in the way of gear progression, therefore when players reach level 40, most just create another alt because there was nothing to do but stand around looking cool.I would like to see some form of gear progression, or something that keeps players coming back. It would be cool if a lot of styles drooped from bosses as-well as purchasable from the cash shop (If there is one).

DCUO has thousands of players, while CO has like 150? Why? Well, imo,there is nothing to do in CO and the players even admit that. DC is a big name, but I refuse to believe that people play DCUO just to see batman every now and then, must be the content as-well. Marvel 2016 has thousands, and it is PC only.

From the few images I have seen it seems that they'll go the route that CoH did, that is enhancing your powers directly by slotting for specific improvements (accuracy, damage, resource reduction, recharge speed and so on) individually in each power rather then indirectly across the board through increasing general stats.

Ah, ok, cool thanks. I am not too familiar with CoH to be honest, was sort of late to the party; sounds interesting though.

I also touched on thoughts regarding gear and gear progression here: valiance.shogn.net/forum/valiance-genera...crafting-in-valiance

I like the idea of gear and gear sets you can progress, another wrinkle to what I posted about in the above link would be similar to LOTRO's Artifact system (if I remember it correctly) you had to use things to upgrade your gear but only after it had gained a certain amount of experience from being equipped on you, think of it as a familiarity with the item that allowed it to be honed to a greater degree.

I know I'm looking forward to working with Jaximus in answering questions like this in news, blogs, and whatnot.

Penitence wrote:
Cool

I hope this game does not go the way of some medieval-genre MMORPGs where crafting is so complex and exclusive that it is largely left to specialized "guild crafters". No offense, but I think of this game as smaller and more intimate than the current top titles, with players who want to experience most of the content personally. If I am wrong, I would rather they expand crafting in later expansions rather than making it a huge sub-game from the start.

I think crafting should be approachable by everyone but I don't think it should be something you spend 5min maxxing one day while waiting on a team to form in a social zone.

If crafting is just "Click Here" and wait for it to bake before it's done with no thought required why even bother sinking the time into a system like that at all. Just put better loot into the loot tables and have it be drops and auction house. Otherwise people just see it as a time sink or another avenue to be monetized. The things that have to be asked are:

1. Why do people craft?
2. If they don't craft what will they do for gear or with drops they don't need?
3. Where do people like to spend time?
4. How many different ways can the game be enjoyed?
5. Can it help fund the game?
6. Can it be a game unto itself

Personally, my answers are:

1. I craft as a way to assist my gaming group and to make money (depending on the game). Also, nice to have games where my items bare my name in their description.

2. If people don't craft in a system that allows in-depth crafting then they'll be just fine. If you don't like complex or in-depth crafting you probably don't want to HAVE to craft or feel like you have to craft. Thats the beauty of complex crafting systems. You spend your time leveling and the people that find more interested in, or have more time for, crafting can do just that. Traditionally, group crafters would pass along items for cost of parts or just for the parts in order to increase their ranks. Leaving more time for the "fun" stuff non-crafters prefer.

3-6. I've always liked playing the game and doing end-game stuff. CoX had some decent PvP to boot. But the ability to achieve something alternate to leveling, perhaps that requires more investment on the player's part than hitting max level but doesn't require the developers to constantly create time-intensive content is also appealing.

I hit max level in Star Trek Online 48 hours or so after launch...and that game had a bit of a grind to get there at launch. Same with so many other games. Leveling is easy in most games it's gearing out and doing things beyond basic leveling where your time consumption comes in.

The more time people spend in/on a game the more they invest mentally and monetarily in a game. It's in their best interest to make a compelling and complex crafting system.

I would love to see a true crafting system in this game. Not that CoX didn't have a decent crafting system... but it seemed sort of 'thrown in' compared to most other games I played. I know that I certainly never had any use for it.

I don't see superheroes flying around to gathering nodes I don't guess, but there's gotta be a way besides drops from 'knocking out' things to get raw materials, craft items, which can then craft together into more complex items, etc.

Like Haplo said, heroes mining for ore doesn't make sense.

Dropping some items makes sense but maybe have rarer items drop off larger enemies. Even then it wouldn't make sense for every robot you blow up to miraculously have undamaged particle reactors.

Perhaps some rarer drops could come in damaged and pristine options the damaged one being able to be handed over to a specialist NPC to repair for a price or repaired by yourself at a certain craft level.

Outside of this, you could also have blueprints or data that PCs find during missions in computers or old scrolls which after collecting a certain amount unlock new things to craft and just have most/all basic crafting materials available from NPCs.

Keep in mind you could also get a "Case of Spare parts" or "Trove of mystical artifacts" as mission rewards and they could have large amounts of craft items too. Maybe with level and story progression get items sent to your mail from contacts and random named NPCs you rescued or helped in previous missions.

I believe Day-Jobs have been mentioned more than once, these could also be more directly linked to your crafting skills and be what funnels some crafting items to you.

they have windows with slots that unlock as you level up you put enhancements in but I would like a more detailed version where you can level up the enhancements you get as you battle and combining them with the same type of enhancement would give them a set chunk of exp based on the level of the enhancement combined with it. For example ifI played the archer and did Lethal damage and got a level 1 damage boost to lethal damage which boost damage by 33... after you get 5000 experience the enhancement would level up and be level 2 now adding 43 damage instead and requiring 10,000 experience to reach level 3. each level 1 damage boost when combined would give you 500 experience to the enhancement you are using. would give 1000 if it were level 2 and so on. this way you wouldn't have to continuously farm higher level versions if you didn't want to you can spend the time defeating lower level enemies and combining them to level up your current ones... this also gives you an alternative to selling all the extra enhancements you pick up.