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Enhancement Diversification


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Of course, it was also entirely likely your slotting wouldn't matter at all if you weren't the sole tank on the team. Why? Because you were expected to do nothing but walk just inside each mission. 'teams' like this is why I mostly soloed or ran Synapse and Positron task forces after level 15. I played City of Heroes to play the game, not go AFK while someone else does all the work.

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Disclaimer: I absolutely hated ED when it came and continued disliking it until the introduction of IOs.

 

Now, I'd never trade back IOs and Incarnates for the pre-ED era CoX or even go back to no ED with IOs and Incarnate powers intact. In hindsight, I think ED was a necessity for the future developments of the game, but its implementation had bad timing (two years gap to IOs) as well as bad PR.

 

Here are the top three reasons why I think ED is a good thing for the game:

[*]Like the name says, it promotes a bigger diversity of enhancing strategies. Without ED, playing as a Scrapper your standard slotting was 5-6 Damage SOs in your main attacks and maybe an Accuracy if you need it, 6 Res/Def in your main Defensive powers, 6 EndMod in Stamina, 6 Rech in Conserve Power (to avoid needing EndRed), 6 Rech in Hasten (to avoid needing Rech), and 6 ToHit in Focused Accuracy (to get by with 0-1 Acc). The issue with this was that basically all powers were either 6 or 1 slotted, and there was absolutely no variety in builds whatsoever. If you skipped Hasten, you'd need to devote 2 slots of Recharge in each power to achieve similar recharge rates (at a cost of 66% base damage). Same with Focused Accuracy or Conserve Power.

 

After ED hit, the gap between alternative and optimal strategies wasn't quite as huge so you weren't comparatively gimped by going for 3xDmg, 2xEnd, 1xAcc as opposed to the popular 3/1/1/1 slotting, whereas before ED doing the 3/1/1/1 slotting because you didn't want to go with perma Hasten, Conserve Power and Focused Acc/Tactics, you'd be doing a whopping 33% less damage than someone with 6x Damage (not to mention, your recharge rates and endurance reduction would also be worse).

 

 

[*]ED allowed the introduction of IOs which bring us a huge variety of ways to build your character. Sure, the gap between a fully optimized IO build and an SO build is vastly larger than anything possible in the pre-ED world, but this time around you'll need to spend time designing the build, optimizing it and collecting the gear. The gap in power comes through investment and commitment, as opposed to the pre-ED world when any SO build cost exactly the same.

 

 

[*]We have actual character power progression now thanks to the two previous things. Before ED, the progression was incredibly simple: get the cookie cutter slotting when you hit 50 and you're done. Currently we have several levels of powerful starting from "pretty powerful" at level 50 with generic enhancements, going up to "basically a god" after having fully optimized IO sets and Incarnate abilities, and content to match this progression.

 

With Incarnate abilities partially breaking ED as well as set bonuses, there's absolutely no reason to repeal the change. The way ED exists right now forces trade-offs and promotes unique build designs, which I think is great. I'd much rather have a variety of ways to design a powerful character rather than a 6 or 1 slot world where you fully slot 13 powers and leave the other half unenhanced.

Torchbearer:

Sunsinger - Fire/Time Corruptor

Cursebreaker - TW/Elec Brute

Coldheart - Ill/Cold Controller

Mythoclast - Rad/SD Scrapper

 

Give a man a build export and you feed him for a day, teach him to build and he's fed for a lifetime.

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6 slotted  tanks were gods of survivability who could herd whole maps, those defenses weren't required for run of the mill spawn of mobs, on a team with 5 slotted dmg dealers you can't get more optimal a slotting strategy for decimating huge hordes. herd tank slotting doesn't work well solo, that said solo focused attack tanks had been able to true solo AVs as in the real deal, no temp powers.

 

Likewise those controllers were locking down EBs, AVs, GMs with ease and the 5 slotted scrappers and blasters were killing those locked down enemies faster than all 3 of them can 3 slotted for dmg. Ill & fire Controllers with 5 slotted dmg pefs & the right secondary were true soloing AVs.

 

Scrappers were true soloing AVs, certain defenders could too

 

I don't understand how anyone could look at that, and fail to realize how bad it would be to leave that situation unaddressed.

I can't understand the desire to govern how others play

It's an easy strawman to claim that a change like ED is just governing how people play, but that's not what it was about. The levels of power players could reach needed to be addressed for the long-term health of the game, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to design challenging new content or further progression systems and keep them reasonably balanced.

Yup.  Just like hit chance needs to be clamped, max and min power level of characters needs to be clamped.

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ED hurt.  I was maining a fire/devices blaster with 6 slotted damage and an aim bot.  Oh lord, I set the world on fire.  There was a satisfaction in watching all those numbers roll off the herd and how fast they dropped.  After the diversification hit, without anything to fill the vacuum, my poor blaster died so much.  Things just didn't die fast enough for me to live.  I spent a month diving into perma-debt trying to figure out a way to make him, well, feel like a hero again...  and basically gave up on Blasters until IO's.

 

I try not to think much about that time in CoH.  There's some scars there.  But I like the game as it is more now than how it was then.  It worked out eventually but damn was it ham-fisted.

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ED hurt.  I was maining a fire/devices blaster with 6 slotted damage and an aim bot.  Oh lord, I set the world on fire.  There was a satisfaction in watching all those numbers roll off the herd and how fast they dropped.  After the diversification hit, without anything to fill the vacuum, my poor blaster died so much.  Things just didn't die fast enough for me to live.  I spent a month diving into perma-debt trying to figure out a way to make him, well, feel like a hero again...  and basically gave up on Blasters until IO's.

 

I try not to think much about that time in CoH.  There's some scars there.  But I like the game as it is more now than how it was then.  It worked out eventually but damn was it ham-fisted.

 

The simple solution was... to fight smaller groups of enemies. If solo, did you really need to be trying to fight 16+ enemies all at once? By being willing to use more single target and fight smaller groups at a time, the aggro was survivable. By all means use the AoE attacks. But doing so could bring more heat then the blaster might be capable of surviving.

 

To be fair, a Trick Arrow defender faced the same issue. The debuffs are nice, very nice in fact when slotted up. And yet in large teams it could prove difficult to survive laying them out. I mean, I've literally seen my trick arrow defenders peal all aggro of a pair of very skilled and well slotted tankers using just the debuffs.

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ED hurt.  I was maining a fire/devices blaster with 6 slotted damage and an aim bot.  Oh lord, I set the world on fire.  There was a satisfaction in watching all those numbers roll off the herd and how fast they dropped.  After the diversification hit, without anything to fill the vacuum, my poor blaster died so much.  Things just didn't die fast enough for me to live.  I spent a month diving into perma-debt trying to figure out a way to make him, well, feel like a hero again...  and basically gave up on Blasters until IO's.

 

I try not to think much about that time in CoH.  There's some scars there.  But I like the game as it is more now than how it was then.  It worked out eventually but damn was it ham-fisted.

 

The simple solution was... to fight smaller groups of enemies. If solo, did you really need to be trying to fight 16+ enemies all at once? By being willing to use more single target and fight smaller groups at a time, the aggro was survivable. By all means use the AoE attacks. But doing so could bring more heat then the blaster might be capable of surviving.

 

To be fair, a Trick Arrow defender faced the same issue. The debuffs are nice, very nice in fact when slotted up. And yet in large teams it could prove difficult to survive laying them out. I mean, I've literally seen my trick arrow defenders peal all aggro of a pair of very skilled and well slotted tankers using just the debuffs.

 

Well said - ED right or wrong, never stopped anyone from being able to play or even solo...They might have had to alter their difficulty settings, tactics, or play style to adjust, but no one was rendered powerless by the change.

"The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth." - Niels Bohr

 

Global Handle: @JusticeBeliever ... Home servers on Live: Guardian ... Playing on: Everlasting

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Besides, you want perma debt? You wanted a /super reflexes scrapper in issue 1. I didn't manage to claw my way out of debt (literally since it was a claws/sr scrapper) until level 30. Between not being able to afford to fully replace every single DO right away, not having enough slots for everything that needed them yet, and cascading defense failure due to zero def debuff resistance Madam Enigma was constantly paying off xp debt from level 12 till level 30. By level 30 I was finally making enough inf to keep my SO enhancements up to date. At which point Madam Enigma finally stopped dying regularly. Of course the Defense Reduction patch hit shortly before she got to level 30, and I over reacted by switching to just 2 attacks and six slotting every +Def power I could get. Which in retrospect I regret doing since while the character stopped dying regularly, I also stopped having fun with the character until ED caused me to switch to a more reasonable build.

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Some powers only accept one type of enhancement (especially defensive powers tanks/melee rely on). ED nerfed these powers into oblivion, and ED was something that originally made me quit playing and move on to another game due to nobody wanting me in a team anymore. I got tired of being punished for having powers I needed to survive that only used one enhancement type.

 

If we get punished for single type powers, why allow us to 6 slot them in the first place? Meanwhile, multi enhancement powers can still diversify and be useful with 6 full slots.

Most of those powers really only need one or two extra slots, so you can spend others elsewhere. My Water/Cold Corr has several powers like this, Benumb and both of the Shields really only get one or two enhancement types in them. Benumb won't even take sets. So I put 2 rchg and an acc in, and spent those other slots on powers that can accept them. Even if I could put six slots in each, I just don't think I would.
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Enhancement Diversification proved that the 'optimal' slotting of "Six Damage Single Origin enhancements" was neither needed,

ED didn't prove anything, everyone had the choice of slotting suboptimally, suboptimal slotting could be just fine depending on your individual performance requirements., ED just made it so everyone had to
nor actually optimal.
How is it not optimal to 1 acc, 5 damage Pre ED? The whole point of ED was to reduce Player Character effectiveness across the board.

 

Neither was six Hold Duration enhancements in a controller's holds. Other things could be viable too, and possibly even more optimal. And remember, you can still six slot for damage if you want to. Your damage wont be as high as it was in issue 1, true. But it'll still be higher then anyone who isn't six slotting for damage. So your 'optimal' slotting strategy is still viable. Enhancements after the 3rd one do still have an effect, it's just greatly diminished. But that's still a viable strategy. In fact, I may experiment with Madam Enigma with taking fewer attacks on one build, but six slotting defenses. You know, see how that works out.

 

If the idea of only putting 3 enhancements of one type in a single power offends you so much, the option to use more is still there.

Pre ED 3 slotting would get you 100% enhancement over base damage of a power. Pre ED 6 slotting for damage (something only devices blasters could get away with) would get you 200% enhancement over base damage of a power now a days it will only get you 110% enhancement a completely negligible "improvement" over 3 slots, that is a figure less than 3 SOs & 3 TOs combined pre ED! Pretending that 6 slotting an enhancement type post ED is much of a choice at all is pure sophistry.

 

The whole point of ED was to eliminate the incredibly boring cookie cutter builds. It opened up the game tremendously.

Sophist nonsense, the point was to reduce effectiveness across the board & it succeeded there are people who support reducing the top end effectiveness of players which I disagree with but at least they're being intellectually honest about what ED was about & it's impact.

 

Yes, because having exactly one acceptable build for each archetype was really forward looking and a solid base to build the game on.

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I'm all for ED, and I really like the invention system. Just to be clear.

 

People were super angry at the time ED happened because it was the culmination of an unfortunate series of events: Jack expressed that there was concern about regeneration being too powerful, which he later (dishonestly) clarified to mean "small tweak." Then a dev recorded a demo of a something/regen scrapper handily defeating +10 enemies, which was frankly impossible on live servers, and when it came out that the test was mistakenly done on a build that doesn't penalize for level differences, this didn't really change Cryptic's course. After that, we got the global defense reduction: Lower resist caps for every AT but tankers, plus a reduction to every defensive power in the game. I think this was also when AOE caps and aggro caps were added (although the "aggro cap" was not exactly what it claimed to be, it worked out fairly well).

 

After all this, we get the City of Villains beta. Partway through the beta, devs announced ED, and misrepresented the nature of the adjustment (as pointed out earlier - it's not diminishing returns, it's a cliff). I predicted at the time that the practical loss in effectiveness would not ultimately make life harder for most players, but that the psychological impact of ED coming only a few months after the global defense reduction was going to have an impact on many players for quite some time. This information also spread outside the beta despite NDA, and ultimately didn't help.

 

There was also Jack's infamous formula that one hero should equal three equal level minions, and that an equal level boss should equal 1.5 heroes, and that the adjustments made to the game (discounting clear errors like smoke grenade) were intended to bring the game in line with that formula.

 

There were also several other elements that were obfuscated: Purple inspirations claimed to be twice as effective as they really were (fortunately no longer the case), it wasn't clear that different types of defense would stack against attacks that did two types of damage, making Rikti guardians very powerful against dark scrappers, energy blasters, just to name one example.

 

That said, we also got a lot of good stuff in the first couple of years - scrapper criticals, inherent AOE taunt in tanker attacks, Kheldians, and City of Villains itself.

 

Overall, ED is fine, the defense reduction is fine. Inventions are great, and Incarnate powers are better. There's not really much reason to complain about anything that happened as far back as 2005 at this point.

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I'm all for ED, and I really like the invention system. Just to be clear.

 

People were super angry at the time ED happened because it was the culmination of an unfortunate series of events: Jack expressed that there was concern about regeneration being too powerful, which he later (dishonestly) clarified to mean "small tweak." Then a dev recorded a demo of a something/regen scrapper handily defeating +10 enemies, which was frankly impossible on live servers, and when it came out that the test was mistakenly done on a build that doesn't penalize for level differences, this didn't really change Cryptic's course. After that, we got the global defense reduction: Lower resist caps for every AT but tankers, plus a reduction to every defensive power in the game. I think this was also when AOE caps and aggro caps were added (although the "aggro cap" was not exactly what it claimed to be, it worked out fairly well).

 

After all this, we get the City of Villains beta. Partway through the beta, devs announced ED, and misrepresented the nature of the adjustment (as pointed out earlier - it's not diminishing returns, it's a cliff). I predicted at the time that the practical loss in effectiveness would not ultimately make life harder for most players, but that the psychological impact of ED coming only a few months after the global defense reduction was going to have an impact on many players for quite some time. This information also spread outside the beta despite NDA, and ultimately didn't help.

 

There was also Jack's infamous formula that one hero should equal three equal level minions, and that an equal level boss should equal 1.5 heroes, and that the adjustments made to the game (discounting clear errors like smoke grenade) were intended to bring the game in line with that formula.

 

There were also several other elements that were obfuscated: Purple inspirations claimed to be twice as effective as they really were (fortunately no longer the case), it wasn't clear that different types of defense would stack against attacks that did two types of damage, making Rikti guardians very powerful against dark scrappers, energy blasters, just to name one example.

 

That said, we also got a lot of good stuff in the first couple of years - scrapper criticals, inherent AOE taunt in tanker attacks, Kheldians, and City of Villains itself.

 

Overall, ED is fine, the defense reduction is fine. Inventions are great, and Incarnate powers are better. There's not really much reason to complain about anything that happened as far back as 2005 at this point.

 

Point of Fact, the Defense Reduction patch didn't lower the caps. Scrappers were still capable of hitting 75% resistance. Tankers could still hit 90% resistance. And I think other classes still had 50% as their cap. The defense hard cap didn't change either. What changed was how easy it was to achieve those levels. As I recall, a /invuln scrapper in issue 1 was capable of capping their smash/lethal resistance without Unstoppable. And in fact they could achive a large percentage of said cap before ever slotting a single  SO enhancement. Tankers could cap their resistances and defense with ease, especially invulnerability tankers. After the patch, nobody was capable of reaching the cap on their own. With inspirations or outside buffs, sure. But not just by slotting their powers.

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Then a dev recorded a demo of a something/regen scrapper handily defeating +10 enemies, which was frankly impossible on live servers

 

I remember my MA/Regen scrapper on live. I could plant myself in front of a +10 Rikti Lt, go AFK for half an hour, and come back to find myself still at full health while it wailed on me. I may not have been able to "handily" defeat it, but the difficulty would be the tedium of whittling it down with the severe hit and damage penalties, not the risk of losing. That was absolutely overpowered, sorry.

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Holy crap I've created a monster. <hides face with hands>

 

You did not create this monster.

It lives in the human psyche.

Some people seem to just get thier dopamine hits by talking about what they hate and how much they hate it.

Watching this one after so many years just shows me that some humans, once they think they have been wronged, will wait an eternity for vengance and live with a deep level of anger for years to fuel it.

 

While I can understand this kind of thing over RL issues, I simply do not comprehend this level of angst and anger over a video game, never did.

After watching the spittle fly off of a couple of gamers ranting about changes in games over the years, I tend to just back away slowly.

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8 pages of people complaining and arguing about something that was fixed over a decade ago...

 

  ::)

Excelsior - Grey Scale 50+ Emp/Dark Def - Thermal Meltdown 50+ Rad/Fire Brute - Old Growth 50+ Plant Troll - Enrico Fermi 50+ Rad Blaster

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Then a dev recorded a demo of a something/regen scrapper handily defeating +10 enemies, which was frankly impossible on live servers

 

I remember my MA/Regen scrapper on live. I could plant myself in front of a +10 Rikti Lt, go AFK for half an hour, and come back to find myself still at full health while it wailed on me. I may not have been able to "handily" defeat it, but the difficulty would be the tedium of whittling it down with the severe hit and damage penalties, not the risk of losing. That was absolutely overpowered, sorry.

 

Uh huh.

 

The dev demo had multiple +10 mobs taken down at once. And regen was still not as powerful as Invulnerability. I'm not sure what you think I was arguing, but it wasn't that regen wasn't overpowered. Just that the devs' justification for nerfing it as hard as they did was actually dishonest.

 

Point of Fact, the Defense Reduction patch didn't lower the caps. Scrappers were still capable of hitting 75% resistance. Tankers could still hit 90% resistance. And I think other classes still had 50% as their cap. The defense hard cap didn't change either. What changed was how easy it was to achieve those levels. As I recall, a /invuln scrapper in issue 1 was capable of capping their smash/lethal resistance without Unstoppable. And in fact they could achive a large percentage of said cap before ever slotting a single  SO enhancement. Tankers could cap their resistances and defense with ease, especially invulnerability tankers. After the patch, nobody was capable of reaching the cap on their own. With inspirations or outside buffs, sure. But not just by slotting their powers.

 

My mistake, damage resistance for scrappers, blasters, controllers, defenders, and Kheldians were reduced in issue 3.

 

Tankers could hit 90%, Kheldians could hit 85%, and everyone else could hit 75%. Later on, Brutes got 90%, Arachnos ATs got 85%, and everyone else got 75%. I do not know what the Sentinel resist cap is, though.

 

This is beside the point. ED is good and people need to let it go. It happened 14 years ago.

 

Addendum: Tl;dr my other post: Devs had reduced several powers and powersets from issue 2 to issue 6, and when ED hit in 6, people were tired of all the bad news and not knowing how their characters would play with a later patch. That's one reason why people are still mad about it.

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Holy crap I've created a monster. <hides face with hands>

More like you found a book of evil spells and read aloud from it and now the dead are rising and your hand is about to be replaced with a chainsaw or shotgun.

 

That said I absolutely agree that the biggest problem with ED was the tactless, hamfisted, disingenuous way it was shoved onto the community which Belle has nicely summarized. It would have been nice if the original devs had balanced the game around it at launch.

See me on Excelsior as Eridanus - Whisperkill - Kid Physics - Ranger Wilde - The Hometown Scrapper - Firewatch - and more!

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You did not create this monster.

It lives in the human psyche.

Some people seem to just get thier dopamine hits by talking about what they hate and how much they hate it.

Watching this one after so many years just shows me that some humans, once they think they have been wronged, will wait an eternity for vengance and live with a deep level of anger for years to fuel it.

 

There is a particular sort of person who will cling to a grudge until it dies of old age; then take it to a taxidermist to have it stuffed and mounted so they can pass it on to their grandchildren.

Be excellent to eachother!

Penumbra Dancer, Everlasting; Warshade

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Holy crap I've created a monster. <hides face with hands>

More like you found a book of evil spells and read aloud from it and now the dead are rising and your hand is about to be replaced with a chainsaw or shotgun.

 

That said I absolutely agree that the biggest problem with ED was the tactless, hamfisted, disingenuous way it was shoved onto the community which Belle has nicely summarized. It would have been nice if the original devs had balanced the game around it at launch.

 

Well, that's the way of software development, isn't it?  At some point you've just got to release, regardless of the state of the build, otherwise you'll never get anything launched at all chasing that "perfect" build/game/implementation without any outside input from your customer base.  The best you can do is get a "Good Enough" design and build out for people to play with, and have a list already in reserve for all the additions you hope to implement in the future.

 

Well said - ED right or wrong, never stopped anyone from being able to play or even solo...They might have had to alter their difficulty settings, tactics, or play style to adjust, but no one was rendered powerless by the change.

 

I came into the game really late, after Freedom on live, so I never lived in a pre-ED world, so honestly I don't see what the fuss is about.  I got a pretty balanced and robust build on my Katana/Willpower Scrapper and leveled up to 50 in three months of dedicated play and no ability to make/buy/sell IO's and only the Overwhelming Force set from the Summer Blockbuster and gifted parts of Scrapper's Strike to top her off.  But I do remember complaints from my COH-playing friends about various things over the years, especially once CoV came out and MM's were strictly redside, and that the ability to swap sides "should have" been in there from the initial release of CoV day one and it was a dire affront that it was not so.

 

(there is SOME advantage to coming to a gaming platform late in the game's lifecycle, once the game has matured and everything has been hammered out by the infinite monkeys of the player base...)

 

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I'll toss my 2 cents in here on ED:

 

Frankly, I loved it and hated it at the same time.  Mainly because, my main (a level 41 Energy/Electric Blaster at the time) was already slotted for ED.  It literally did NOTHING to my build or my influence when it dropped.  Until the IO's and Set Enhancements came out, as well as Wentworths.  By the time those happened, everyone knew that slotting for the effects was more beneficial than just 6 slotting with 5 damage and 1 accuracy in a power.  It made the IOs more valuable, and it made the Set Enhancements ungodly expensive.  So, I loved it because it forced some people I played with who wanted to go all cookie-cutter 5/1 slotting to rethink how they made their awesome builds.. and later I hated it because those "useless" set enhancements now had a massive worth.

 

Even now, unless it's my tanks, I always plan to slot for ED from Outbreak, it's why I make builds that aren't supposed to work very well into survivable, and even later in game, amazing damage dealers.  Pre-ED, I had a Dark/Dark Scrapper.. NO ONE wanted to team with him because they figured it was a wasted team space.  At least until they saw him run in almost tank mode because no one could hit him due to slotting debuffs into everything.

 

ED allows you to really get creative with your builds, to work those secondary power effects, and really maximize your playing potential.  I've always been glad ED was introduced, even with the higher cost of "useless" set enhancements :)

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Yeah, ED when it came out turned out to be... not the game breaker we all assumed it would be. There were enough other tweaks on the back end that you didn't need as high of a 'max performance' cap. Not that we probably needed it before. But if you *can* improve your character's damage by 200%, people *will* improve their damage by 200% then claim that if you don't do so you're gimped and useless even if a 100% boost to damage would have been more then enough. If you *can* reach the hard cap for defensive abilities, people *will* reach the hard cap then claim that you're gimped and useless if you don't do so.

 

Sure, it can be fun on occasion to breeze through a game with zero challenge. I use to play Resident Evil 2 using the unlocked infinite ammo rocket launcher as a means to relieve stress. But often games with zero challenge quickly stop being fun. Especially if you're expected to be playing for 40+ hours. In fact, the difficulty slider was originally added because some people were finding the game too easy. But if your builds all completely trivialize the hardest content in the game, how long will it be before you lose interest in the game?

 

Yes, it's a hard pill to swallow when a developer nerfs something in a game. And sometimes they do go too far. I remember how bad Trick Arrow was at launch due to the developers seeing teams of 8 TA/A defenders blazing through content on the test server due to stacking all the debuffs, so to 'fix' the powerset they gave every power a recharge so long that with slotting for recharge meant there was *only* a 1 minute cooldown on your main debuffs (which have a 30 second duration). This later got changed to having a 1 minute base recharge, so with slotting you could reapply debuffs about as soon as they wear off. Flagging them as not stacking probably would have been a better fix.

 

But 'nerfs' are not a universally bad things. While it may be painful for those who were abusing the previous capabilities, nerfs are a part of a developer's tool chest for balancing a game. And everyone had known that the current environment of tankers being able to solo 8 man content all at once wasn't going to last. Blasters were well aware that sooner or later the developers were probably going to do something about their insane damage output. I know on Atlas server this was a frequent topic in general chat. And when the changes were made to stop tankers from farming 8 man content on their own, everyone except the tankers running those xp farm teams was happy about it because those teams were too damn common and boring as hell. In fact, none of the changes made to try to stop or limit power leveling came as any great surprise to the player base. We had fully expected something would be done.

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True, the aggro/target cap didn't stop them from soloing 8 man content. But it did stop them from gathering up every enemy on the map THEN aoeing them to death. And losing the ability to self cap their own defense/resistance outside of an 'oh shit' power caused even that to grind to a halt. Suddenly they realized "Oh, I do need the team if I want to face these odds." And this was a good thing if you ask  me, and the majority of other players at the time. The only ones truly upset at losing this 'play style' were the people who were abusing it. The rest of us were panicked because we thought our defenses were getting gutted and we were going to do nothing but die in missions, even solo missions. But teams being needed for group content? This was a good thing, and something most of us praised.

 

Oh sure, we'd still try to solo group content. But this was for the personal challenge of doing so. For the bragging rights of being able to say "I soloed this Giant Monster" or "I beat this Archvillain all on my own". And those of us pulling such feats off acknowledged that we were the outliers, not the standard to be embraced. Even so, the devs didn't like it happening so took steps to try stopping it from happening.

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