This will be a Heroic Worlds only feature where the Familiar Badges can have potential, 3 lines per badge, focus on adding in fun utility lines rather than giving more damage.
All potential lines will have the same power to each other regardless of the badge the potential is on; i.e. if the best possible All Stat % is 9% on a single line then that is the best outcome for every badge (example and not actual value).
How it would work:
You will tier up and roll for potential lines identically to how you would do it with regular equipment with the same cubes - Mystical, Hard, Solid, Glowing, and Bright.
Potentials will be saved to each badge individually, so if you want different setups for different scenarios, this is always an option the player can choose to do by having more than 8 badges (the equip-able limit) with good potentials on them.
The reason for this is to offer more of the utility lines, like cooldown reduction for example, so that classes that benefit heavily from cooldown reduction lines are more-less on equal footing to interactive worlds.
Doing extra potential lines this way for Heroic Worlds is a better approach than doing something like adding in Bonus Potentials since it works with existing systems that are already implemented into the world type and does not add in any additional systems.
System creep turns into system bloat is a majour issue and should be always considered, the most conservative approach is the best approach to not overwhelm any and all potential new players. Interactive Worlds is in doomed state due to system bloat, so do not make the same mistake with Heroic Worlds for the long term health and growth of the game.
UPDATE: October 20th, 2024:
Going to create a list of possible outcomes that the potential lines can give:
~ Flat Second(s) Cooldown Reduction {Total cap of -6 seconds among the 8 equipped badges}
~ % Cooldown Reduction {Total cap of -6% among the 8 equipped badges}
~ % Chance to Skip Cooldowns {Total cap of +10% among the 8 equipped badges}
~ Incoming % Increased Healing [i.e. All healing that the self-user receives from own skills and skills from party members is increased.]
~ Outgoing % Increased Healing [i.e. Lynn's Focus Heal will heal party members for more, but self healing is unaffected.]
~ % HP Recovery Over Time [This would work like Familiar Healing where it also ignores anti-healing mechanics.]
~ % MP Recovery Over Time
~ % All Stat
~ % Main Stat (One-out-of-Four of the following of STR/INT/LUK/DEX)
~ Take % Reduced Damage [Take less damage from all sources of damage, including % HP Attacks.] {Total cap of -10% among the 8 equipped badges}
~ Item Drop Rate % Increase [Cap shares with Equipment's Cap]
~ Mesos Obtain % Increase [Cap shares with Equipment's Cap]
It was not clear at all that the intention was to create a bonus potential substitute that Heroic Worlds can have while making it entirely unique to bonus potential with a de-emphasis on making your damage higher and more of an emphasis on useful utility lines.
This includes introducing lines that bonus potentials currently does not have, but bonus potentials could always receive an update to give more freedom of choice for Interactive Worlds to include more utility lines.
UPDATE: October 20th, 2024 (Part 2):
A better aspect of balance to this system is have no true hard cap on any value, but rather the Familiar Badges can only have 1 Legendary Line max at Legendary Rank, while the other 2 lines are Unique Lines. It could also just be 1 Legendary and 1 Unique line at Legendary rank (for lower ranks, 2nd line is 1 rank lower than that badge's rank) making for 2 lines per badge instead of 3 lines per badge.
Certain lines can only be found as a Legendary Tier Line like Chance to Skip Cooldowns, Flat Cooldown Reduction, and % Cooldown Reduction.
While the other lines will have different values based on its tier of rare, epic, unique, or legendary; i.e. % HP Recovery is 1/2/4/8% every 5 seconds based on what rank the line is founded on.
This will create a situation where there are these very powerful utility lines that can really enhance one's gameplay opportunities, but there is meaningful choice on how the player wants to set up the effect they want based on personal playstyle and what job they are playing as.
Comments
For your suggestion, do you mean it replaces the function of preset badge effects?
So that in effect we get bonus potentials (or something very similar) but lose the badge system?
This would require a lot more work for almost the same effect. Putting BPotenial on reboot is porting an already existing system over and then maintaining the one system on both servers from that point onward.
Adding a potential system to badges is replacing an existing system and making it more complex. This requires initial programming and maintenance for two server specific systems. Both the potential badge and the non-potential badge version of fams have to be maintained.
The number of badges would need to be the same as BPotentialable items to match the power, ignoring the fact that not all equipment gets the same BPot lines. Caps on potentials would have to be included (similar to how badges work already) to prevent players from getting say, -24s CD across 8 badges.
I see this as a potential (ha!) alternative to bonus potential if Nexon wants to add BPot while still keeping reboot weaker than reg by not giving them full access to BPot. I don't think adding more options (this or BPot) is a great solution though when they can just adjust FD bonus and keep extra systems out of the game that they later have to adjust against other systems. (Or worse, Server specific systems)
The only utility lines of BPot appears to be Elemental Resistance*, HP Recovery%, MP Consumption%, Meso/Item %, All Skill Levels/CD Reduction on hat, Status Resistance on WSE.
It is a bit lame that reg gets access to a potential -3s CD (Extremely rare) on their hats, but I think it's fine to limit access to this as a perk of being on reg and another way they can be stronger than reboot.
If you don't like the idea that this only really affects certain classes I think you could fit the -3 somewhere else.
Perhaps give hearts a single -1 to 3s CD potential line in reboot only. But I think this just ends up being another reason to play reboot over reg.
The rest of the lines are only related to increased damage. So an increase in FD fixes the lack of BPot in reboot, just not the CD reduction one.
Ultimately I don't think replacing/adding systems is required to solve reboot's lack of damage when they can just adjust FD as they go and not have to balance new systems or take away said systems from players down the road is the better option.
If you need to add in a new item, that is a new system to deal with. The less we have to deal with, the better.
Where as you take the familiar badges and treat them like 8 more equipment slots, this functions like an extension of the current system.
You got to be careful with adding in bloat to the game, whatever you think is small and insignificant, just adds to making the game more overwhelming and turns players away.
Since you are unimaginative, I will create a list of possible outcomes for lines. The addition of these lines are meant to be substitute to bonus potentials in a different way.
And stop trying to get bonus cubes into Heroic, we don't need them and never need them and should never have them. Leave the system to be Interactive Worlds only.
Yea, hard caps to the familiar badges could happen, but it would be fun to let players have freedom to build how they want. Maybe Interactive Worlds could get an update to bonus potentials to give them more freedom with what they can do too.
That's not a good argument. If we change it so that BPotential uses the exact same cubes and you just decide which potential you want to roll before hand, is it suddenly not a new system?
The same thing about bloat applies to your suggestion as well.
Ad hominem. It is not my job to make your suggestion work.
Re-read my post, I am making an argument that BPot is a better solution than yours (disagreeing with you) but I am still saying they aren't really the best solution and the better solution is to just adjust FD.
BPot isn't some reboot killer, it would be fine it just doesn't really have to be added either. FD increase is a passive free option one that is fully in Nexon's control, BPot is basically the same thing except it has to be "earned" and Nexon can't nerf/buff it as easily.
Hard caps would absolutely have to happen to some extent. If you allow players to get even -6% CD -6s CD that heavily favors classes that benefit from that.
I play several classes who do not benefit from this, compare that to a F/P that heavily benefits from it and suddenly you've reversed the roles and now CD reduction classes are the ones getting too much.
It becomes possible to get F/P mage's main damage moves down to a 10s CD like this for example, 40% of their original CD.
Currently this limit is 58% on reg and 70% on reboot.
If you can somehow make the system work with the same cubes and work out in an intuitive way, then that would be better than just adding in bonus potentials. I cannot see a world where this just does not add an unnecessary annoyance, but it would be better than adding in bonus cubes.
Expanding on the familiar badges to work more like equipment has no additional learnings than just learning about potentials in the first place or learning about the familiar system. The only learnings here is knowing that the familiar badges have different potential lines than all of the other equipment, at least the familiar badges are all in a different place making it more intuitive.
I don't really like familiars and legion artifact being in the game, but we stuck with them now so make the best out of them.
Legion Artifact has the benefit of at least being a simple system and 99% passive progression so it is not that bad, but keep adding things that are 99% passive and not 100% passive adds up over time and creates an over design bloat still. There is a lot worse you can do than Legion Artifact.
Familiars however is a mess of a system that needs a rework. Though the concept of capturing monsters to summon alongside and fight with you is cool, this has a pokemon aspect to it and can be done in a much better way, while being very unique and different to pokemon.
Been playing Maple Soul Hero on MapleStory Worlds and an aspect to that is you have up to 6 weapons equipped which are actually summons that fight for you, taking a page from this into a Familiar System rework could be cool.
~ Like taking familiars, reducing the potential down to 1, and can have 6 of them out at a time - where the type of monster that it is will have a special "active" skill it uses (it is fully passive for the user) alongside 1 line of potential you can tier up and roll for (or keep 2 lines, but the second line is utility-based only) - allowing for more creative skills for the familiars and have "team-building" combination by the player.
~ With that, familiar badges could be removed outright. Instead you just have a familiar codex to flip through the pages and equip the familiars that you "captured" to build your team, with familiar cards to tier up and roll their potential lines in the same way cubes work - Mystical, Hard, Solid, Glowing, and Bright Cards - or only one (two, the other will do the same thing, but be more expensive and can choose between current or new potential) card can roll for lines.
- While gathering the same card and using other consumable cards will give that familiar exp - when it levels up its "active" skill will get stronger and at key levels will rank up for better potential lines, until it reaches Legendary Rank, but can still level up more until it reaches its level cap.
For damage output for Heroic, the best solution is just to buff and/or change into a straight buff for the Heroic World Passive.
This post was actually to introduce more fun and creative utility lines more than anything, and not actually be like bonus potentials, but rather the Heroic World's version of bonus potentials. Updated the post with examples towards the direction I was thinking of.
For more damage, they should only buff the final damage passive. This is the simplest and easiest thing to do, and has the most control for balancing the game since you know exactly how much more damage everyone will do, making it impossible for anyone to get out of line.
Heroic Worlds and Interactive Worlds should be different to each other.