MHertz

Here are some ideas: Temp “powers” that put things in the hand: lunch pail, tool box, briefcase, hammer, screwdriver, monkey wrench, power drill, etc, even if these “powers” don’t do more than Brawling damage. Doors in bases that can be opened or accessed by all members of the SG, or by specific members: for bedrooms, offices, back rooms, or other personal/private spaces. A “turn to face” option in the menu that pops up when you click a name in chat. Sometimes when someone speaks in a crowded area it’s hard to see where that person was. A space in the bio for demographic data: given name, family name, age, pronouns, gender ID, and species. A “highlight these words” option in chat that automatically puts certain text in a different color, like your character’s name, the name of someone you’re talking to, or your character’s given name (as in demographics, above). Alternately, a “filter from local” button to remove a person’s local chat from your screen only, for about 5 minutes. Might be thought of as a time-limited and scope-limited ignore feature.

I agree that the Council need a buff in the late game, preferably something other than “transform into a new form with 60% resist all and Mag 9 immob resist.” People choose Council missions because they lag behind Carnival of Shadows and Circle of Thorns and Arachnos in those late levels. My opinion is that Council already get an XP buff by being lame. That’s the problem to fix.

Proposed testing protocol: 1. Tests will be run in pairs only (at first). Some tests will be two non-Sentinels, some will be one non-Sentinel paired with a Sentinel; I will also need some tests for 2 Sentinels. Both members of the duo should be actively played by separate players. This means a) no farming with door sitting because one character is deliberately drawing 0 aggro; also AFK farming is probably not good data either b) no dual-boxing with one character on follow, as this puts a character into melee and AOE range that might not otherwise play at that range 2. Tests will be conducted in an AE mission with a fixed level, where both members are set to the same level, so there is no noise coming from level differentials (eg, someone sidekicked and fighting at an additional +1, as can happen in regular missions). 3. Both players in the trial will send their combat logs to me so I can calculate the total amount of aggro accrued by the team. A solo combat log doesn’t tell me very much, nor does getting only half of the player data. 4. Tests will be conducted at a fixed difficulty. This difficulty will likely be +0/x2, to reduce the possibility of team wipeouts or player defeats (which would skew the figures for incoming aggro, as the remaining mob will turn all aggro on the surviving member). It may be that problems with Sentinels only become obvious at higher team sizes, due to the number of AOEs available to some ATs, but let’s start with something we can manage. 5. The combat log should not be modified except to trim out any personal conversations before, during and after the combat to be reviewed, or to remove non-essential log data before and after that combat. If you run multiple tests on the same day, please indicate this, or send separate log files (so the parser doesn’t combine them). 6. Please indicate the names, effective combat levels, ATs and power sets of your duo in the log file. You can do this by speaking in Team, or by adding a line preceding the combat log. 7. If one character is heavily twinked out and the other is not (eg, running mostly IO sets by level 20 while the other has –2 DOs) then indicate this as well.

I would like to test Sentinels under live in-game conditions to see what kind of team contribution they are making — in specific, the amount of aggro taken versus the amount of damage dealt. The plan is to run the same AE mission with pairs of characters at a fixed level, say around level 25. I want to compare how much aggro a Blaster gets when teamed with a Sentinel and compare it to being teamed with a Controller, a Defender, etc. I have written a combat log parser that will analyze the log file and calculate the number of attacks (for and against), number of hits, and how much damage. If I can get volunteers to send me combat logs (you can just send the combat part, not the whole file), that would greatly speed data collection. Is there anybody out there willing to run these tests? It shouldn’t be much harder than running a single mission on AE and emailing the log to me. When I have some volunteers we can talk about testing protocol and control tests, number of trials, which AR mission to run, and so on.

That is a more reasonable figure. If that is the case, then on that 6-person team, the Sentinel would be taking 21.3% of team aggro. I still find it odd. I don’t feel like the Sentinels I play are getting that much of a workout, defensively. There are probably factors (other than debuffs and taunts) that I’m missing — like how quickly each AT can generate threat and among how many separate targets. If Blasters and Controllers have better AOE capability, that might make a difference. Time to get some actual data and then refit the model.

I decided to use the same calculations to examine a full team: 1 of each Blaster, Controller, Defender, Scrapper, Tanker, and Sentinel. Blaster takes 11% of team aggro Controller takes 5.6% Defender takes 5.6% Scrapper takes 34.7% Tanker takes 32.9% (remember, Taunt is not accounted for here, just damage and threat) Sentinel takes 9.8% This is the problem I was talking about earlier. If these figures are correct, Sentinels have armor that is being under-leveraged by the game mechanics compared to other ATs with similar armor. They could take at least 3x, possibly 4x as much heat as they do. They need a way to draw at least a little more aggro, and in a productive way.

I’ve been thinking about the whole aggro position — that due to their weak damage, Sentinels don’t generate enough of it. Until I get a chance to run copious tests in AE with a fixed set of testing characters, I’ll make do with numbers we know of and try to predict what I think the data would say. What I tried to calculate was the total amount of Threat generated by each AT over the course of a single fight. This meant coming up with a formula: Melee_DPS = Base_Dam * AT_Melee_Dam_Scale * AT_%Melee Ranged_DPS = Base_Dam * AT_Ranged_Dam_Mod * AT_%Ranged Avg_DPS = Melee_DPS + Range_DPS ((where Base_DPS is 50, for the sake of argument; AT_Melee_Dam_Scale is B 1, C 0.55, D 0.55, Scr 1.125, T 0.8, Sent 0.95; AT_Ranged_Dam_Scale is B 1.125, C 0.55, D 0.65, Scr 0.5, T 0.5, Sent 0.95; AT_%Melee is the proportion of time spent using melee powers: B 0.4, C 0, D 0, Scr 1, T 1, Sent 0 AT_%Ranged is B 0.6, C 1, D 1, Scr 0, T 0, Sent 1)) Dam_Output = Avg_DPS * AT_%Att ((where AT_%Att is the proportion of time the AT spends attacking and not managing their secondary set, as follows: B 1, C 0.8, D 0.6, Scr 0.9, T 0.8, Sent 0.9)) Time_to_Defeat (solo) = Crowd_HP / Dam_Output ((the ideal number of seconds it takes to defeat a group of enemies, not accounting for overkill DPS; where Crowd_XP is the total HP of a group of enemies; for the sake of argument, there are 3 enemies X 120 HP for 360 total; the actual number here isn’t essential because all we care about is the percent of damage each AT contributes)) Time to Defeat (duo) = Crowd_HP / (member1_Dam_Output + member2_Dam_Output) ((the time to defeat a group of enemies on a duo, with each member bringing their respective damage outputs)) Threat_Gen = Time_to_Defeat (duo) * Dam_Output (member1) * AT_Threat (member1) ((the amount of Threat generated by each member, discounting Taunt and any applied debuffs — just imagine all attacks are Fire, and have no secondary effect; where AT_Threat is assumed as follows: B 1, C 1, D 1, Scr 3, T 4, Sent 1. Edit: I could not find a figure for Sentinel AT Threat, so I am going with 1. If the real figure is closer to 2 or 3 that would help manage group aggro, but it doesn’t seem to match with what I’m seeing.)) %_Threat = divide total Threat_Gen of the team by the Threat_Gen of the individual So yeah. What I got was this: Estimated Amount of Damage-Based Aggro of Given AT Based on AT of Teammate: Blaster. C 66.2%, D 66.2%, Scr 24.2%, T 25.1%, Sent 53.1% Controller. B 33.8%, D 45.8%, Scr 14.0%, T 14.7%, Sent 36.7% Defender. B 33.8%, C 54.2%, Scr 16.1%, T 16.9%, Sent 40.6% Scrapper: B 75.8%, C 86.0%, D 83.9%, T 51.3%, Sent 78.0% Tanker: B 74.8%, C 85.3%, D 83.1%, Scr 48.7%, Sent 77.1% Sentinel: B 46.9%, C 63.3%, D 59.4%, Scr 22.0%, T 22.9% I think these calculations are pretty close. It shows Blasters get lots of aggro when teamed with another squishy; but they benefit when there’s a meat shield around. When there’s a Sentinel on the team, the Sent takes some aggro off the Blaster’s shoulders, taking about half of the total — but that still means the Blaster takes the other half of the aggro without armor. Controllers grab more aggro when teamed with Defenders. They get about as much aggro teamed with either a Blaster or a Sentinel; and of course they benefit from melee guys. A Controller’s secondary set doesn’t do much good when paired with a Sentinel; the Controller can’t protect herself and the Sent doesn’t need much. Defenders take the most aggro when teamed with Controllers (54.2%), and second most with Sentinels (40.6%). Defenders can also protect the Sentinel, who doesn’t need it; but the Sentinel doesn’t do much for protecting the Defender, whose self-protection is often minimal. Scrappers and Tankers are not significantly assisted by the presence of a Sentinel over any other AT, because Sentinels are incapable of peeling away aggro from either of them. Despite having very good armor, Sentinels rarely take anything like Scrapper or Tanker levels of aggro. The most aggro Sentinels take is when paired with Controllers or Defenders who can offer even more protection to them. If these calculations hold up when debuffs are accounted for, then it doesn’t seem like most ATs benefit (in the survivability/aggro sense) from having a Sentinel around. Only a Blaster does better with a Sentinel, but is still splitting the aggro evenly with an armored ally, despite having no armor themselves. So, you might ask, what happens if we increase the damage scale for Sentinels? You could scale Sentinel damage as high as 1.08 before it matches Blaster aggro generation (at least by this crude calculation). This would mean the Blaster gets 49.9% of aggro when paired with a Sentinel (and still has no armor, so a modest improvement at best). This is the break even point, at which Sentinels become as good as Blasters at dealing damage and siphoning aggro from teammates, while being much more durable. That, to me, is the problem with Sentinels. They can withstand more damage than they naturally attract, so their team presence is a wash at best. Now to do actual in-game testing to see if this model is borne out by the data.

Most of my characters are ready with a quip — not always joking about the same things, but definitely trying to be funny on purpose. Most of my characters are intelligent (or at least they’d like to think they are). Most of my characters are polite to others, good teammates, and non-confrontational. I don’t want to be unpleasant to other people, even in character. I’ve got characters that are male, female, and in between; I have characters that are rich and poor, confident and hesitant, extroverted and introverted, egotistical and humble. But they nearly all have an obsession that is the core of their banter, the lens through which they see Paragon City.

I just wrote a basic combat log parser in Python that will track incoming damage (and % hit) along with outgoing damage (and % hit). I'm going to try to run control tests in teams of two as follows: blaster-controller blaster-defender blaster-scrapper blaster-tanker controller-defender controller-scrapper controller-tanker defender-scrapper defender-tanker scrapper-tanker sentinel-sentinel (in theory, each should get about 50% of the incoming threat) Then I will run tests pairing like this: blaster-sentinel controller-sentinel defender-sentinel scrapper-sentinel tanker-sentinel This should tell me a little bit about how each of the blue-side ATs attracts aggro in comparison with the Sentinel. Yes, a more thorough analysis would involve every AT in combination, like Brutes and Dominators; and it would include multiple powersets for each one, to smooth out results due to secondary effects (like Slow and KB). This is a start.

Professor Snipe Snipe, Crackle and Pop Snipes and Snails No Snipe For You

Well said. I should clarify that I am not opposed to raising damage output by Sentinels. The question is how this should be done. Tankers were given a buff to the radius of their AOEs and to the max number of targets. That is a way to buff total damage while, at the same time, encouraging a play style — use AOEs when surrounded by a whole bunch of enemies. Blasters were given a damage buff that enabled them to continue using Tier 1 and 2 blast powers during mezzes. Slapping an across-the-board damage increase onto Sentinels seems unlikely, in this light, especially If it doesn’t (as I suspect it won’t) solve the problem of the under-utilized secondary set. In short, figure out what Sentinels are supposed to be doing, and give them a damage buff when they do it. In my proposed Bodyguard scenario, you could give a damage bonus to the Sentinel that reflects how much aggro they’re peeling away from an ally. Or maybe a damage bonus based on that ally’s health bar. Or both. If I understand it correctly, in your proposed stacking debuff scenario, the Sentinel would be gaining the same damage bonus as everyone else (through -Def and -Res on the enemy), but only if he attacked. I suppose in theory you could just hang out and face the fight without engaging and passively indirectly buff your team — probably not a gameplay style you want to encourage. It would also not increase Sentinel damage relative to others on the team. P.S. I could write a combat log parser for this purpose in Python.

Other games have open-world PVP (including, yes, the ability to assassinate people during online weddings). Asking for auto-leveling isn’t a surprise, no. I am not opposed to the idea in principle, as I have said. The cost for doing so should reflect the severity of the real-world consequences of such a policy (eg, potentially 1000 max-level characters tying up names on every server). I already proposed an exchange: delete two existing 50s in exchange for the token to create a 50. No, they haven’t, but that isn’t my point. When someone throws out the freedom argument — that they should be able to play any way they want — I don’t want to commit to that as a design philosophy. They can play any way that they are allowed to.

I play sentinels too. They don’t draw nearly the same aggro on teams. I’m often the last one standing even when I’m trying to die. So yes, I get that your experience with Sentinels is valid for you, as mine is for me, but why don’t we gather data instead of anecdotes? How much aggro are they taking? If it is proportionately too low, then what consequence does their diminished aggro have on their teammates’ viability? If a Sentinel could do 95% of blaster damage but the Blaster is taking 80% of the aggro, could we agree that’s an imbalance, given that Sents have arnor? At what level would we say things are fair? If the developers are going to do a pass on Sentinels, I don’t want to throw a damage buff at them and call it a day, especially not if that means we can expect it to be re-nerfed down the line.

If armor for Sentinels is under-utilized because their aggro is too low, as I suspect is the case, you’d potentially end up with an entire archetype where every secondary power was skippable, and you could super-slot for all damage and power pools. Sentinels could team with most any other high-damage AT and they wouldn’t need to even turn armor on. I’d call that a balance issue. If Sentinels are generating insufficient aggro that they are rarely attacked, that’s a balance problem that must be solved. That’s one thing I would want to test for, to see if that is the case. Obviously that’s a worst-case scenario. I will make some Sentinels and try to run with and without armor on teams for comparison.

What? No, I’m not saying that Sentinels have a problem with only having one damage-oriented set. I’m saying that the anemic damage they do does not justify the amount of self-defense they are designed with. I’m also saying that upping the damage alone won’t solve the problem without also simultaneously breaking Blasters. That’s why I want to run some missions and gather combat log data. Are Sentinels generating enough aggro to justify their armor? If not, then how do we justify it?

Making the Sentinel’s armor even more overkill is not a good design direction. If you have to tune up Sentinel damage (with a single damage primary) to compete with a Blaster (who has damage primary and secondary), you’re not really fixing the design flaw. You’re just turning up the radio real loud so you can’t hear the rattle in the engine. Sentinel armor will be redundant unless they can generate aggro sufficient to draw some fire. And you can’t go so far with damage buffs as to eliminate the utility of Blasters, so more direct damage is not the solution.

But are they? Sentinels don’t have any way to hold aggro if the Tanker or Brute or Mastermind pets go down. I’m serious. We should gather up some groups and run an AE mission a few times over with different configurations, and calculate what % of team aggro the Sentinels get. I’d go with 8-person team, level 20-25 or so: 2 Sent, 1 Tanker, 1 Scrapper, 1 Defender, 1 Controller, 2 Blasters 2 Sent, 1 Brute, 1 Stalker, 1 MM, 1 Dominator, 2 Corruptors 2 Sent, 6 Cont/Dom/Def 2 Sent (armor turned off), 6 Tanker/Brute/Scrapper/Stalker 8 Sentinels (control group) Should be interesting to see how much damage is directed their way.

Given how often Scrappers and Stalkers die on teams compared to Sentinels, no. (At least in my experience.) Scrappers and Stalkers have armor and they need it to withstand the aggro they generate. When I play an Empath, I throw Clear Mind on the squishies, Fortitude on the melee artists, and leave the Sentinels alone — they’re rarely in serious danger. I almost never have to run over and heal a Sentinel. Tanks, Brutes, Stalkers, Scrappers? Heals. Blasters, Dominators, Controllers? Big time heals. Masterminds, Defenders? Sure, sometimes. Sentinels? Meh, they’re okay most of the time. To me, this is an indicator of bad design, not of an AT that is clearly contributing and working as intended.

This wasn’t directed at me, but I’ll go on record saying it’s not okay for players to be able to play any way they want. Playing by the rules of the engine? Sure. Adhering to the code of conduct (eg, no spamming, no griefing, etc)? Fine. But that’s not the same as saving “the devs should create mechanisms that enable any behavior that a player asks to do.” What players want isn’t always a good idea, or is disallowed by the game for a reason. I’m sure some players would enjoy being able to disrupt costume contests with a team of Stalkers stabbing everyone in Atlas Park, or steal other people’s influence, or mind-control other PCs, or whatever. In another game these might be possible or even encouraged, but not here. Just because a player wants it isn’t a good reason to make it possible. Nobody is entitled to that.

Sentinels are banana hats. It’s a bad and confusing design with no purpose. Giving them more damage is just giving the banana a bigger hat. It might look better but it doesn’t fix anything. My intuition says the problem is the armor set. It’s useless except while solo. If the Sentinel’s damage (a principal factor in aggro generation) doesn’t compete with that of teammates, he doesn’t need armor at all because he’ll rarely get any meaningful aggro. If his damage is on par with a Blaster or Scrapper, such that the armor set becomes meaningful, then you don’t need those guys. The solution to Sentinels, I feel, is to give them a reason to have that armor without just making them a bigger banana hat. I propose we gather some data on team dynamics: how much damage is directed at a sentinel on a team with other archetypes. Probably at around level 20-25, before teams are running +4/x8 with impunity. This might shed light on what’s going wrong.

And that’s why it’s hard to know why one should take a Sentinel; nobody knows what they’re for. They’re not especially good at anything. Heck, with their weaker damage they couldn’t pull aggro off a Blaster if they wanted to. A Sentinel is basically a guy with tons of protection he’ll never need because his attacks are too weak to get much notice. Even with extra debuffs, that’s not much of a role. i play a Pistols/Dark Sentinel whose RP shtick is that it’s a pair of cursed magic pistols. Every time the wearer dies, I change costumes as if somebody new picked up the guns. I only do this on teams, lest I burn through a ton of pre-made costumes. But it’s hard to die on teams. He doesn’t do enough damage to peel away any aggro from a Brute or a Blaster. The armor … isn’t much use, most of the time. And I play him with reckless disregard for danger. I agree with you on the Taunt thing, but it is the chosen mechanism to attract aggro when granting yuuuge damage numbers would upset the balance of things. Also, calling it a Taunt makes use of existing IO sets. Making it unique would give Sentinels a purpose to their being on a team and incentivize the kind of play they would be designed for (more orangey numbers if you help your teammates!). It would make use of their armor set by actually drawing aggro instead of being used “maybe in case there’s splash damage.” Again, I’m not saying your idea is bad or wrong. It would certainly help. I’m just not sure it redefines the role. I agree that ally-targeted Aggro Redirect would be easiest to play, versus finding the specific guy wailing on that poor Dominator in the heat of battle. I don’t think the original devs knew when they made it. They knew what it wouldn’t do — it wouldn’t overshadow anything that existed. They did less well at deciding what it would do. I think what this idea does best is define why I would take a Sentinel. I have a lot of squishies on my team and no Defender, and the Mastermind is too busy managing pets to protect the team — but this Sentinel can tear some part of that aggro away and give my team some breathing space.

The proposed idea isn’t bad. It answers the question of how to play a Sentinel. What it doesn’t do, at least for me, is answer the question of why I should take one over any other AT. What does a Sentinel do better at? If I wanted someone to be a meatshield I would take a Tanker or a Mastermind first; a Brute second; or a Scrapper last. If I wanted someone to defend the team, a Defender, Controller or Corruptor. When would I want a Sentinel? I feel the best way to leverage the damage and personal defenses of the Sentinel is to make them a team bodyguard. Their attacks do not have an all-purpose Taunt, but they should redirect aggro from a single target: if someone is beating up on that Blaster, the Sentinel should target one of those guys and zap him. It would produce an AOE Taunt for all targets aggro’d to that Blaster. Peel away those attackers and redirect them onto the Sentinel. It’s the “why don’t you pick on someone else?” effect. You could even give the Sentinel a damage bonus on every target not already aggro’d on the Sentinel. This would give a Sentinel a clear team role (and benefit) without making them a ranged Tanker or a boss-killer or a bargain-basement Defender. It would truly be a hybrid role: protect your teammates through blasting. It’d also give them preference for delivering alpha strikes, while not changing their gameplay solo.

Named costume slots would help a lot. It would also help if we could tell which costumes had auras, especially path auras. Sometimes I just need to pick a costume that doesn’t visually distract.

Taking the idea seriously for a moment: a level 50 ticket would greatly increase the rate at which characters could be created with bulletproof names — that is, never targeted by the culling of idle names. Any cost for this idea would have to offset the cost of filling up server space and taking up name space. Proposal 1: a level 50 ticket will cost you the deletion of two level 50 characters. Deleting a level 50 will produce a token that is emailed to your account; it takes 2 to buy a ticket. Proposal 2: a level 50 ticket will cost 100 million … on all your characters. The more characters you have, the more it costs. If your character doesn’t have 100 mil, you go into the red — you earn nothing, not even through trades or the auction house, until the debt is paid.

There are some good ideas here. One thing that I feel should be addressed is that FF has so many ways of drawing aggro without a proportional way to mitigate it. Force Bubble, Repulsion Field and Repulsion Bomb draw considerable aggro to the defenseless bubbler when compared to, say, a Rad defender throwing down Enervating Field or a Dark defender using Tar Patch — and both can heal themselves. Maybe I’m using it “wrong,” but I only ever use Repulsion Field as a last resort because I know it’s likely to get my defender face-planted on the floor. Edit: Also, RES does not scale unfavorably by level. If the bad guy is +0 and does 100 damage, a 20% resistance mitigates 20 points. If the bad guy is +4 and does 160 damage, the same resistance mitigates 32 points of damage. By contrast, the entire level-scaling algorithm is based on neutralizing DEF by modifying to-hit scores. If they made FF’s defenses somehow immune to the enemy’s to-hit buffs, that’d help a lot.