All About Powers: Power Replacers

We’re continuing our coverage of powers this week with designer Brian "Balseraph" Urbanek to discuss the various power sets and the different roles and play styles they each fulfill. Later this week, we’ll be talking about the Mystic power sets, but for now, we’re taking a step away from specific sets, and discussing a feature that has been widely asked for: power replacers.

Power replacers are items you can equip, which will change the effect of specific powers you use in the game. These items are not widely available, and will not be available for every power nor every power set. At launch, Martial Arts and the sets that have something to do with using items will have them. There’s talk about letting Sorcery have wands, but it’s still a “maybe”. The amount of time it takes for us to make and develop power replacers is much longer than the amount of time it takes to create a brand new power, oddly enough. It’s our opinion that the majority of players would prefer having a new power than an item that simply makes a cosmetic change to an existing power.

Well, they’re not entirely just cosmetic changes. Some do have an in-game effect. For example, Munitions can get a Freeze Ray, which adds a cold snare effect to your gunshots, but the effect is still lower than if you had just taken an Ice power with a snare effect. So, in theory, if you really want to be a Freeze Ray guy, here’s a way to do that. It made sense to do it for Munitions and Martial Arts because in many cases it’s different kinds of swords or guns and those make too much sense in terms of our customization goals for us not to do them. That being said, we’re still investigating and deciding on the payoff of launching a fireball by holding a staff as opposed to just giving you a new power.

Back to cosmetic vs. practical effects on power replacers... What it comes down to is that if there’s no visual change between two power replacers, say, an assault rifle that fires two different types of bullets, then there won’t be an actual change in how the power itself will work. But, if instead of firing bullets it fires a laser, it will have some additional (or different) mechanics applied to it. In general, these will be very minor in-game effects. Though there are a few places where this isn’t the case. The exception I can think of is the Gatling gun in Munitions. It’s a Gatling cannon by default. There is a flamethrower replacer, and an assault cannon replacer, and those are mechanic changes, but that is solidly an exception, and it will remain, by definition, an exception.

Power replacers will be available by a variety of means. Some will be available very early in the game, some will be rare boss drops. Some will be crafted (and sellable). And, the only ones which bind to a character are the boss drops. The best part is that these boss drops will never be “class specific”. Power replacers can be equipped like any other item, and they have stat bonuses like any other item. The effect of the replacer generally isn’t an improvement, but it’s just different. The example of the freeze ray I described earlier has a snare component, yes, but also does less damage. So if the boss drops the freeze ray, and no one in your group has Munitions, so what? It still has stat bonuses equivalent to any other boss drop. The idea behind it is that you’ll never get a useless drop, you just get items you can’t use as power replacers. In the situation where you desperately want to use that power replacer’s effect, you can always Retcon to pick up the appropriate power.

Link to the forum post