Imma come out and say it right off: I think Rogue should use Spirit. Despite the many conversions of characters over to new resource pools, few other words fit the spunky southern scrapper quite so well thematically. Both with and without her Marvelous powers, she is a survivor built of an unbreakable will and untamable spirit -- frequently down, but never out.
But as Spirit exists in her kit right now, it is very dated and not particularly representative of her as a character. It's a mana bar, setting an arbitrary limit on powers that are, for the most part, fairly self-limiting. DoTs don't stack with themselves. Cooldowns control big hits. The game has long since evolved past the need to throttle power usage through a universal resource. What resources have become is a flow control. When designed well, they give a texture to how the character is played, injecting small moments of downtime in sets of abilities or directing the player to a different style of play in an intuitive cycle. When handled poorly, the player runs out and goes "well what do I do now?" Veterans know the gear tricks, like spamming medkits with a 3k/100 core, but those are external to the character. They don't affect how the character plays so much as adding a separate element of required gearing system mastery.
The goal of this discussion is to brainstorm how Gaz could theoretically migrate Rogue's Spirit from being a dated mana bar to a dynamic resource that speaks to her character and is compelling to interact with from a gameplay perspective. This is a far more challenging endevour than it would be for other characters, who have a closed kit of predefined powers. I could take a character like Black Cat, say "she gains Spirit rapidly while in Stealth," and bam she has a resource loop. Rogue has close to 150 Powers and Traits that can potentially interact with, enhance and break a resource system. We've already seen how quickly people flocked to Beast's new Bestial Fury trait, consequences and hurdles be damned. Any change in the resource meta is huge.
Some notes I've been making for myself on thinking points:
- The fundamental mechanics need to work without stolen powers and traits, but may be augmented or changed by them. A new player needs to be able to pick up a fresh copy of Rogue, take their first few Marvelous Physique powers and feel like there's a natural flow to how she plays and interacts with her Spirit. If that player quickly walks through Avengers Tower, grabs 20 powers and promptly ditches their Marvelous Physique powers, it still needs to function. Obviously not every combination needs to be optimal, but the mechanics should be understandable such that the player understands why certain combinations don't work and can look for other stolen options to complement what they were going for.
Gear should not be mandatory to manage Spirit, but should still have advantages. If a player runs out of Spirit, there should be an in-kit action they can take or some mechanic/consequence that takes effect. If I blast through all my power with Electromagnetic Flux, it should not be ambiguous how I'm going to manage that. Spirit-starved should not be a gameplay dead-end. Hell, this is Rogue, who revels in bouncing back from the brink and showing up people who underestimate her. There could be a build that benefits from that!
Likewise, if a player has excess Spirit there should be means to spend and benefit from that surplus. If I take Draining Punch and it generates lots of Spirit, that should feed into other options and playstyles. Resource management should not start and stop at achieving neutrality. That's not interesting.
The mechanics should speak to her character thematically. She may be designed in this game as a sort of blank-canvas, to be built as we see fit, but in the comics she has no shortage of personality. Spirit is a very literal term for her, and not a trait she's in any short supply of. The player should feel that "never say die" fire with her in their hands, bouncing back against the odds with a mix of brutish forwardness, unchecked force of will and impulsive cunning. She is not an animal you want to corner. It's the thematic origin of her primary attributes. When you strip away all the layers of powers and memories, she is a scrapper and she is a survivor.
I want to see Rogue's resource management be fun and compelling, not something we throw gear at until it goes away. I want there to be lots of different ways to interpret it and ways to bend it to inherit behaviors from other characters. I want it to open up new power ideas on into the future with even more ways to play her. Spirit doesn't need to be the flag bearer for neglected characters, when the most versatile character in the game has the tools to show off just how diverse of a pool it can be when a character's own mechanics fully support it. That's what's been occupying my mind the last couple of days, and I figured I shouldn't be alone.
I have a lot of half-baked ideas cooking at the moment, but I thought I'd put the topic out now anyways. For now, it's little things like:
- Draining Punch is her first Basic. It shouldn't be required to play her, but it's the perfect opportunity to immediately introduce the player to her primary resource. Essentially, let it be a tutorial-by-way-of-doing. Give her this power that generates Spirit -- preferably way more than it currently does, like 2% per hit with no internal cooldown -- and pair it with a power that spends Spirit in a dynamic way. Her Marvelous Physique powers come from Captain/Ms. Marvel, so perhaps update to include an homage to her updated kit. Give Vaulting Uppercut the ability to spend X% of Rogue's Max Spirit and increase its damage by a percentage of the amount spent. Immediately introduce that this is a dynamic resource and that there will be ample ways to gain and spend it as well as benefits for gearing more into it.