["The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?]

43 minutes ago, tidge said:

If no other class can slot Mastermind ATO, I don't know how the discussion about game-balance around IOs is relevant to that question. That is a question about Mastermind balance, and not enhancement sets.

 

Full disclosure: if my Dominators could two-slot the Mastermind ATOs (in their pets) they absolutely would... but I don't think such a discussion is valid for whatever this thread is.

It has to do with the Mastermind IO's, which also reaches into the pet IO's with their aura's which are predominantly used by MM's

["The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?]

4 hours ago, tidge said:

The MM henchmen is a completely different sort of balance issue separate than any effect of slotting. Just because there are IO pieces which can be slotted for henchmen's defenses doesn't make it relevant for this thread.

 

Can we just lock this thread? Even before the MM discussion it wasn't much more than simply asking for harder mode.

The other half of the thread beyond harder content is looking at how IO's themselves are balanced. The MM pets are a unique case where it is sort of "required" you get all the aura IO's, and then the inter set balance is in question as some MM sets have an extra pet that can mule the auras, etc.

 

Likewise, certain things like Bonfire with Knockdown, how certain powers can be proc bombs, how some AT's get AMAZING bonuses with their ATO's and some don't, or how certain IO sets are for lack of a better term just obsolete. Those are all valid talking points within the thread that do not have to explicitly deal with harder content, but it is linked up with how IO's do make you stronger than what most of the game was made for.

 

Looping back to the MM pets, yes they need more care than just the IO's, but as-is those IOs are a balancing point. If the MM pets get buffed and the IOs remain the same, would they then be too strong? Are they too reliant on them as is?

[One Wish Granted (COV/COH) (WWYW2021)]

Hi @twozerofoxtrot

[Eco-Friendly Powerset Recycling!]

On 3/9/2021 at 9:57 AM, Tyrannical said:

Following on from this thread I decided to take a stab at the idea of making a beam-focused blast set that doesn't use a rifle.

 

In order to make it different enough to Beam Rifle, I decided to make this powerset energy/fire damage based, as well as reducing enemy DEF. This powerset has two animation styles; eye-lasers and arm-lasers so it can have a few different concepts to play with.

 

I know this means yet another energy damage blast set, but I'm hoping by making it a split between energy/fire we can forgive that and play a little more on the 'heat vision' theme that comes with the whole laser thing. 

 

The unique mechanic I was thinking with this powerset is perhaps generates stacks of 'laser focus' that increases your accuracy the more you use your single target powers. Laser focus is lost when you next use an AoE power (cutting laser, piercing laser, laser blast)

 

Laser Blast

 

 - Laser Bolt: Standard fast attack, dealing low energy/fire damage and reducing defense. Same FX as 'Single Shot', with the animation of 'Psionic Dart'/'Neutrino Bolt'

 

 - Laser Beam: A stronger blast attack, dealing moderate energy/fire damage and reducing defense. Same FX as 'Charged Shot', with the animation of 'Laser Eye Beam'/'Power Blast'

 

 - Cutting Laser: A cone attack power, dealing moderate energy/fire damage to foes and heavily reducing defense. Same FX as 'Cutting Beam', with the animation of 'Shout'/'Steam Spray'

 

 - Aim: Standard Aim power

 

 - Melting Ray: A debuff power, dealing moderate energy/fire DoT and reducing both defense and resistance. Same FX as 'Disintegrate' with the animation of 'Mental Blast'/'Power Push'

 

 - Focused Beam: A snipe power, dealing extreme energy/fire damage and reducing defense. Same FX as 'penetrating Ray', with the animation of 'Psionic Lance'/'Sniper Blast'

 

 - Power Beam: A heavy blast attack, dealing superior energy/fire damage and reducing defense. Same FX as the P-Clockwork 'Anti Matter Ray', with the animation of 'Terrify'/'Power Burst'

 

 - Piercing Laser: A narrow cone piercing attack, dealing high energy/fire damage and reducing defense and resistance. Same FX as the P-Clockwork 'Anti Matter Beam', with the animation of 'Scramble Thoughts'/'Cosmic Burst AltFX'

 

 - Laser Blast: A massive targeted AoE attack, dealing Extreme energy/fire damage and reducing defense and resistance. Same FX as 'Overcharge', with the animation of 'Liquefy AltFX (old)'/'Thunderous Blast'

 

So this is definitely super cool, but mechanically it is sorta just Beam Rifle again. What could be cool is a set where there are *many* Piercing Beam style attacks where your lasers are all thin cones, treated like ST attacks with the bonus of hitting +2 targets in a line.

 

Edit: I have personal bias against War Mace and Battle Axe basically being the same set except one is better (same with BS and Kat), and I would hate to see that happen with new sets. Lets assume for a second that there is a breakthrough and we can decouple weapons from sets and add weapons to sets (You can throw lasers and use a beam rifle for ice blast, etc). What would Laser Beam do different then?

[Eco-Friendly Powerset Recycling!]

On 3/5/2021 at 6:15 PM, Tyrannical said:

Going over some old ideas and I figured I'd try and use some of the FX from Nature Affinity and Plant Control to work it into an armor powerset. It'll share a lot of similarities with Stone Armor, but focusing on resistance instead of defense.

 

Nature Armor

 

 - Wild Armor: Standard smashing/lethal resist toggle power (with a little cold resist too), with the same target FX of 'Entangling Aura' (coiling leaves around the player).

 

 - Barbs: An AoE damage toggle that deals lethal damage, has a similar appearance to 'Entangle/Roots', but larger and focused on the player (Stalkers get Hide at T1 instead).

 

 - Verdant Armor: A fire/cold resist toggle power with a +healing received buff, has the same floral FX as many Nature Affinity powers (Regrowth, Wild Growth, Rebirth, etc.) but on the player. 

 

 - Barkskin: An autopower that increases resistance to smashing/lethal and boosts MaxHealth

 

 - Rooted: Same power as the Stone Armor version, but instead of rocks forming on the player's legs, instead vines similar to the ones from 'Strangler' coil around the character's legs.

 

 - Nature's Healing: A simple click power that heals the player and grants resistance to toxic damage and -heal debuffs. Similar glow to 'Regrowth' with leaves fluttering around the character.

 

 - Fungal Armor: Another toggle power that gives energy/negative/toxic resistance. Similar visual to Spore Cloud's target FX, growing mushrooms on the player.

 

 - Photosynthesis: Another autopower, increasing regeneration and recovery

 

 - One with Nature: A click power that greatly increases defense and grants a huge stack of absorb. Similar visuals to 'Rebirth', but on the player. Also gives the player the 'leaves' aura for a short duration

I feel like this needs a debuff somewhere... like in Fungal Armor it could have an AoE debuff off yourself with the spores or such? I like the idea of Verdant allowing you to receive more buffs as well, maybe that could be a theme in the set?

[Post your best costume designs here!]

1 hour ago, WhiteDwarf said:

Mimefield! "I’d take you to jail, but you’re already in a box."

["The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?]

I wonder if this could be emulated by granting the pets Elusivity to counteract attack accuracy from AoEs, which would then stack with other defenses in much the same way,

["The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?]

The other ATO's are all varying degrees of good, do you think they should all be buffed to be "Game Changers" like the ones mentioned?

 

Also side note for MMs, but all the pet aura IOs are something this thread is definitely made for. They totally "band aid" the issues with them as an AT.

[Community-Agreed Parameters]

10 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

I don't think you should bother unless you're actually attempting to emulate a teaming experience which is just as ridiculous as attempting to take into account SetIO bonuses or Insp usage.

I kind of want to out of pure academia, like redo the tough tests or run in with a blaster with just some added inspiration to see how impactful they really are, but it'd be more like "how impactful is an insp in general" vs redoing whole swaths of data

 

[Community-Agreed Parameters]

37 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

You are talking about testing by solo players I'm assuming as nothing you have posted seems to indicate group size, sidekicking/mentoring, group structure/mix, or player skills at teaming.

Teams are generally going to be a mix of the categories you listed even in beta.

 

Group tactics, the "gel" state of a group, and the experience and skill level of players goes a long way.

 

11 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

This goes back to the argument about insps usage.

It has no relevance to trying to get an understanding of powerset performance within an archetype.

 

It is also too big a variable with what others bring to the table and how they interact. With the note on insps, we could say "test with 1 purple insp on at all times" and that could emulate a support character on the team with defense boosts.

 

In fact, a quick eyeball between Corruptor, Controller, MM, and Defender versions of Cold Dom > Ice Shield, the average value (unenhanced) is 12.19.... very close to a small purple's 12.5%. Enhanced, this would be just under 20%, which we could fudge and say 2 purples / 1 medium purple on at all times could be the same as having a defense oriented support character with you (if they also have Maneuvers, etc).

 

 

["The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?]

The MM aura ones are totally gamechanging for scaling up content with MMs

[Lets talk about Stone Armor:]

14 hours ago, crazysaneman said:

YMMV, just my two bits.

I love seeing posts like this!

 

Curious though, do you not find it weird that stone is set up to basically not have half the set get deleted once you get to the ultimate power, and until then it's kinda meh? That is my ultimate issue with the set as a whole in that it is basically Granite, not "Stone Armor".

[Community-Agreed Parameters]

41 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

The game sets the Parameters.

The Community is always within those Parameters.

The Community doesn't set the parameters; the DEVs do through game changes.

 

If parts of the Community want to limit themselves or create little boxes for themselves, then that is their version of game play and their own personally imposed parameters.

I am opposed to anyone that is trying to set parameters on others that are not set by the game itself or Code of Conduct.

What I mean by this is agreed upon parameters for testing stuff out as it seems discussions about certain topics vary wildly depending on the point of view, and it ends up with the discussion / balancing point (even when testing in beta) being lost in the fray. 

 

I'm not asking anyone to "play this way or else", but rather to find a way to have structure when it comes to balance/etc talks given we do have thousands of ways to play the game. If we can get to like "here are 5 concrete tests to go off of" that represent dozens of styles and approaches, then great! Otherwise, we could have any anecdotal evidence come in and be unsubstantiated such as "Oh, I bought 10 super inspirations and was able to do X, so Y is fine." which does not point to Y being fine as a very big variable was tossed into the mix.

 

The ultimate goal would be to have community-agreed standards that we can weight against. If sets A/B/C can all do X/Y/Z thing, but then Set D (which is in the same group) can only do X/Y and not Z, then there may be something to look at with D. We just need to determine XYZ.

 

["The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?]

28 minutes ago, Hew said:

I am not sure. They certainly have an outsized affect on play. 

 

Importantly, you can slot them at 10, and that is an amazing boost to survivability/function/whatever.

 

BUT, not everyone has them, or can afford to buy them (yes yes, everyone can be a billionaire), or is even aware of how potent they really are, so I am torn on it.

The last part is sort of where I am too, though everywhere you look (Reddit, Discord, Facebook, these Forums) they are always talked about especially with the ATs I highlighted. Combine that with how you only need 100 merits to get one of your "gamechanger" ones and I feel it may be more common than we think

["The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?]

Brining up a topic from earlier in the thread, but how do we feel about ATOs? 

 

Currently, it seems a few ATs are basically defined by their access to them (Scraps, Stalks, MMs, Tanks, etc), while some are not. Should this be something that is more emphasized?

[One Wish Granted (COV/COH) (WWYW2021)]

1 hour ago, Herotu said:

This is going to seem stupid.

 

I am irked by the way the game down-levels content. I appreciate that it's a very clever system and it's also the fairest way of making out-levelled content doable.

 

But I find that losing powers that I've earnt is really frustrating - especially at Incarnate level where I have an amazing AoE power and can't use it in much content. Hah! Joke's on me!

 

So my wish would be to keep all powers but downscale their effects. Ofc, that means having Veteran players that can AoE a lot more than other players at that level - which is an additional problem to be worked out... hmm...

 

 

Locking out judgement is good for the game

[Community-Agreed Parameters]

@Apparition, @DreadShinobi, this is the chance to actually measure their impact as opposed to just speculation!

[Post your best costume designs here!]

Firedrive, my new Fire/Nin blaster

 

 

[One Wish Granted (COV/COH) (WWYW2021)]

4 minutes ago, Grindingsucks said:

2) Animations (not animation TIMES, just the look of the animation, itself) able to be chosen from a dropdown menu for any power (where it makes sense, at least.  Firing sonic beams from dual pistols, shooting disentegration beams from gauntlets, and so on.  Also, the ablity to turn an animation off, if desired (again, where it makes logical sense).

Ditto this, if the tech was able to do it where we could just match a whole bracket of animations, like a Sword Slash to shoot a Fire Blast, use Power Bolt's animation to fire Bullets from your fists, etc, it'd be amazing.

[Community-Agreed Parameters]

1 hour ago, TemporalVileTerror said:

Which is why I was proposing the mining of Builds from the forums here.  Testing every single permutation of Set Bonuses would be so mathematically huge as to be effectively impossible.  So let's cheat a little and see which combinations are already floating around.

This isn't meant as the whole solution to the problem.  Just one way to potentially extrapolate an abstraction for a more rapid test cycle.

Oh, god yeah testing all bonuses would be goofy! What would be way, way, way easier and more likely would be to test out certain brackets that people shoot for:

 

add in 35% / 70% / 140% global rech

add in 10/20/30(?) defense

 

etc

[Community-Agreed Parameters]

Mids can show the bonuses, but how they actually play out and the relative impact is much different. Part of why I do what I do on SO's is to then circle back and compare that SO baseline to "Ok, same thing but now I have all the def/res uniques" or "now I have Achilles Heel" etc, to show the comparative power in an actual scenario. 

 

Part of what I need help with is coming up with an accepted standard we can all point to and say "Ok, if we run this (set/power/combo) through the agreed upon standardized tests, we have a basis to talk about how it would perform as we have existing things that went through the tests too".

 

The point about IOs vs Incarnates would be a perfect one to measure! Decked out IO build with no Incarnates, vs an SO build with full T4 incarnates tackle the same scenario, which is more impactful for that character? etc

[Community-Agreed Parameters]

7 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

With that said if there ever a large change that would require testing like this, you would need a whole lot more testers focused on this to test all those parameters. I can't see this being accomplished easily (when I say easy, I mean in time that shorter than the heat death of the sun) in a closed beta, since folks (both testers and our volunteer dev team) have actual lives and jobs. 😛 

Which is why I want to try and get some community benchmarks and whittle them down as far as possible. If we can agree on like "run these X missions with Y slotting options" then we can get a good idea when a new set pops out, and currently live sets could be run once and used as a benchmark.

[Community-Agreed Parameters]

14 minutes ago, TemporalVileTerror said:

Not to subvert further, but I think it's worth tackling the assumption of "most true for the most people" at some point.  In another thread, probably.

This matters on what you are looking at. If we take the BIGGEST step back, I believe my definition on the last post is pretty on point for the core gameplay experience of CoH. 

 

As for datamining, while I am sure it can bring up "X amount of people play on 4/8" I think it is more reasonable to show how certain things perform on different settings as there are a lot of factors that could skew that data. All you need is 1 person on the team to set the mission, so it could only capture 1/8th the amount of actual data, etc.

 

[Community-Agreed Parameters]

2 hours ago, nihilii said:

Doesn't Judgement predate crashless nukes?

Judgements were added in i20 iirc, and the nuke changes were all slated in the i24 patch notes, so Judgements as a concept predate that by quite a bit. Also, looking at the issues I am shocked to see Bruising on Tanks was only introduced in i18???

 

Anyways, incarnates are part of the game and would definitely be a category to look at.

 

7 hours ago, TemporalVileTerror said:

Sort of like the original premise for the IO Balance Thread being your attempt to read the situation based on a slice of market trends, @Galaxy Brain, I think you're looking for the crucial answers to the important questions . . . but I'm not sure the framework you're asking this particular question with is necessarily going to get us there.

When "getting to 50" / "reaching endgame" isn't even the agreed upon primary motivator for players, we're already at a huge disadvantage when trying to analyze City of Heroes by metrics which other games in the MMO genre are.
A foundational series of questions we ask all players (and Devs) may want to start with:  What do you consider "playing City of Heroes" to mean?

 

This thread is still a good prompt for a discussion of course.  I'm not meaning to subvert that.  Just trying to illuminate that we may need to pull back a little further to really get to the answers I think you're looking for.

The highlight here I think is too ambiguous as it could mean anything from high lvl power gaming to making fun costumes and hanging in Pocket D, or anything in between. That said, I do feel the following definition to be the most true for the most people:

 

Playing CoH = Designing a highly customized character in order to use super powers and defeat hoards of enemies in specially instanced missions. 

 

Even at 0/1 difficulty, your average mission has dozens of enemies to where I'd call it a hoard! The main gameplay loop of CoH for the vast majority of it is going into instanced missions and kicking ass. How you go about that changes, but that is the core of it. You kick ass, get experience and get more opportunities for growth in your own way, and gain inf to further improve yourself. Yes, there are outside missions / events / etc, but tbh 90% of all missions are instanced beat-em-ups. There is stuff in between with travel, stories, side games, etc, but the core gameplay loop is Go Hunt Kill Skulls.

 

With that in mind, I would imagine test parameters around balance would have to do with a mission format. "How fast / safe can X help complete a mission?" would be the ultimate question asked per test IMO as that is what it all sort of boils down to in the end for everyone. In my point of view, the two variables to this question are X and Mission.

 

X we kind of went over, but that is the wildcard. Powerset? Power? Inspirations? IO's? Incarnates? The list goes on, and we definitely need to come up with something there otherwise it'd be endless.

 

On the Mission side, we at least have more refined control in terms of the content. The map I feel is more of a player issue than a power issue most of the time, and with them being random per most missions can probably be excluded as a wild card unless we have a set task. So that leaves Difficulty and Enemy groups as the main factors.

 

Starting with difficulty, we have the ability to tweak the enemy's level from -1 to +4, the team size from 1-8, enable or disable bosses, as well as enable or disable AV's. off the bat, I feel that AV's should be disabled as honestly beating them down solo is more of a gimmick than an expected task. Likewise, I feel Bosses should be enabled as normal content seems to be built around boss-tier enemies being standard. The next step is a doozy with a possible 40 combinations... but I feel we can narrow it down to 6:

1. +0/x1 = The absolute standard, bare minimum default difficulty. This will determine the baseline of baselines in all scenarios as this is what the game itself sets you to.
2. +0/x3 = After some research, I found that in a mission with 10 encounters, a x1 difficulty averages out to about 25 enemies per mission. At x3, this averaged out to 61 enemies which is a little over double the amount which seems fitting for a next step up. Avg group size goes from 3 to 6 as well as more frequent boss encounters.
3. +0/x8 = The max team size, this puts AoE to the test with an avg of 131 enemies per mission in the 10-encounter tests, a little over double x3. Likewise, avg spawn size increased from 6 to 12~13. In my research, other difficulties between 3 and 8 did not provide avg spawn sizes greater than 10 which is where AoE coverage comes into play with a decent chunk of AT's capping at 10 targets. x8 will be able to showcase why target caps matter more than just raw AoE potential.
4. +3/x1 = Instead of jumping to +4, +3 offers a mix of +3 and +4 that is a little more palatable. In the 10 encounters, 40% of the mission had a higher lvl enemy every time so in this case it would be 60% +3 and 40% +4 (same at +0 but still).
5. +3/x3 = Like both above, this will test a group of harder enemies per fight. Odds are if you can breeze through this, the higher difficulties would be doable.
6. +3/x8 = Essentially the max difficulty with a decent portion being +4, also mirrors end game a bit due to the +1 level shift capping you at technically +3. 

 

This gives us 6 distinct challenge ratings that would likely cover a large swath of content options, without having to do 40 per test. Thinking about it more, we could probably even axe 3/1 if need be, and if we really want we could average it all out and have +2/x4 be a default test as a sort of "medium difficulty" option. x4 had 89 enemies on avg, 3.6x more than x1 and about 67% of x8, combine that with +2/+3 enemies and you can have a decent benchmark. 

 

I think this category has to weigh time as a factor to get the most data in the most effecient way possible. What do you all think?

[Community-Agreed Parameters]

A lot of controversy comes from perspective and the multitude of different ways we can play CoH. You can adjust basically any part of the game to your liking, and tackle any kind of content you want, even make your own content! With all these options, it is sometimes hard to decide what lens to view something through.

 

Do we look at things purely on their own merits, with 0 outside influence? Do we look at how it performs with no holds barred, all the outside abilities stacked on? Somewhere in between? In a test environment or throw them into the meat grinder of soloing a very hard task? Just one way is clearly not enough! I would like to take an opportunity for us to come together and devise a handful of "Community Parameters" that we can judge things on. It won't be just one point of view, but each lens I feel should be weighed equally and represent different aspects of the game.

 

Just to start things off, some of the categories tossed around I see are:

 

• "100% Pure", no bells and whistles outside (SO enhancements) and using only X thing as isolated as possible
• "Mid Tier" investment where you use a lot of common tools (LotG, etc) but nothing extreme (no purples, temp powers, incarnates)
• "High Tier" investment where basically anything you can use on a build goes (purples, incarnates, etc), but still no "outside" factors like temp powers, boosts, or inspirations
• "Freeform" where there's no rules outside multi-boxing / other oddities 

 

There are probably many more permutations when it then comes to what content you face, difficulty levels, and so on and so forth but I'm confident we could come up with a list of parameters that could accommodate many different viewpoints without going too crazy.

 

Thoughts?