Quote from: Joshex on Jan 14, 2025, 07:51 PMso, If I'm understanding this correctly, you cannot for example use a name of an already existing power but give it different abilities for this specific set?
There's the issue of name confusion, yes ... but I was talking about a different point.
Every Tanker Secondary powerset has a "Taunt" power.
Most of them are even named "Taunt" explicitly, while some use different more flavorful power names.
The "Taunt" power is somewhat AT defining, so the specifics of the power are simply copied over into every Tanker Secondary. The same thing happens with Placate powers for Stalkers.
When you have multiple powersets that have "the same power" in them (such as Taunt or Placate), the details don't really change for the different powersets of that AT.
So far so good?
Now think about the T1 attack power for say ... Defender Secondaries.
Yes, they all have different names ... but are they all copy/paste repeats of the exact same power?
No they're not.
Would it be a good idea to make them all "same-y same-y" as T1 powers in terms of their game mechanics, attributes, details, etc. ... such that if "you've seen one, you've seen them all" ...?
The point that I'm driving at here is the age old maxim of
Familiarity Breeds Contempt when you've got powers that are just copy/paste jobs between 2+ powersets, even if the power names change.
One of the things that makes CoH so "flavorful" and meaningful to play is that the various powersets for ATs are NOT copy/paste jobs. It's actually relatively rare to encounter 2 powers in different powersets that "work" exactly the same (game mechanically as well as user facing stuff like animations and FX).
Martial Arts and Kinetic Melee are broadly similar ... yet they're distinctly different from each other.
Broadsword and Katana, as well as Axe and Mace, might have strong similarities in terms of how their powersets are structured and how they "work" ... but they still have important differences that make them PLAY differently, so they aren't just copy/paste reskins of each other.
It's okay to look at other powersets to find something CLOSE to what you want to do, since that gives you the benefit of precedent to work with and baseline against.
What's NOT okay is to look at other powersets, copy/paste and file off the serial numbers and expect people to not recognize what you've done. EXACT duplication of powers creates perception problems, because it means that those (now) "shared" powers become less UNIQUE and SIGNATURE to the powerset(s) they appear in.
Yes, every Controller Primary gets a single target Hold and an AoE Hold ... but are those powers EXACTLY the same for all Controller Primaries?
After the "normalization" of the AoE Holds @ Level 18 done by Cryptic Studios (when the Containment mechanic got introduced) ... the AoE Holds of Controllers became something they all had in common. But the single target Holds have some interesting and unique differences to them across all of the Controller Primaries.
Likewise, most Controller Primaries have an AoE Immobilize ... but some don't (Illusion and Mind Control come to mind).
Both Illusion and Mind Control have a single target Confuse power, but the details of their respective versions are not an exact copy/paste job, so there are differences between them, which then gives each powerset their own uniquely flavorful spin on the way "their" version of Confuse works in actual gameplay.
This is why I say that you shouldn't just be lifting powers (whole cloth, unmodified) and doing a copy/paste ala carte job with them into a proposed new powerset. Any kind of really obvious duplication like that "cheapens" the original power and the copy of it (even if you change the power names).
