battlewraith

This is nonsensical. Do I feel that a healthy system should have one dramatically skewed aspect, naturally? You're asking inherently subjective questions while issuing weird, ill-defined platitudes about the survival of systems. It's not that complicated. The game is not a biological organism. It will survive as long as people keep the servers running and people keep playing it. There is no reason to believe that significant balance changes are necessary to keep people on board for these things. Likewise there's no reason to believe that significant balance changes, if that is even possible given the circumstances, will bring in a swath of new players to a 2 decade old MMO. There is reason to suspect that certain changes will prompt people to stop playing--mainly because people are signaling strong dissatisfaction with those changes in their feedback. I think an obsession with abstract ideas of balance and game health is a great way to kill this patient on the operating table.

Yes, but I think the general idea is that it's more efficient so that you spend less time and effort doing it. Apart from something like AFK farming.

Even if the rate or return were the same, I'm guessing most people would prefer to sell the contraband. Or simply move on to another activity. In game terms, the toilet cleaning would be being forced to endlessly repeat the same content you prefer to avoid by farming. This game came out in 2004, was shut down, pirated, and is now being run by a volunteer development team. What does "healthy" look like for this game? Particularly for this playerbase, who are predominantly middle-aged veterans. I think an insanely skewed rate of return for effort invested is a selling point for a lot of people who no longer can afford to spend a lot of time grinding for the things they want. There are people that constantly complain on the forums about the game being too easy or some aspect of it being broken and they push the devs to enact changes to "fix" these things. This fix will somehow recalibrate things so that the game will be.....fun again? Challenging? More engaging for the flood of new players who come in and love this new balance? That is a pipe dream. If the majority of people are farming and outfitting new characters, that means that those activities are the ones that have the most appeal for the current playerbase. Tampering with that dynamic in order to funnel players back into the other content is insane. It's literally inviting players, who are probably doing a lot of game things as part of a routine, to rethink how they are spending their time.

Like clockwork.

Welcome to the suggestions forum! I think the idea would be reasonable if you were buying a one time use power. Stuckmobs happen occasionally. If you have one on hand, you can fix the problem without waiting on GMs. Maybe there's a cooldown on how often you can purchase them as Aida mentioned above. Works for me.

Here's a couple variations to consider: 1 is a small amount. The devs, in the course of a couple years, enact five changes. So: 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5. Five is.....probably still a small amount. 1 is a small amount. 0 is a smaller amount. The devs do zero. No innovation. Loses interest. Goes to play another game.

It's hard to tell whether you just don't get it or are lousy at explaining yourself. Take a certain context, like a farming brute. Obviously certain sets and builds are clearly better for this task than others. So what then does balance mean in this situation? All the brute builds should be equally good at farming? The builds that are good at farming should also be on par doing things like AVs? What? This is a contradiction. If they truly have different characteristics, performance should vary depending on the situation. Otherwise those different effects and whatnot are just superficial surface details. And if those differences in characteristics are actually significant, certain sets and builds might become standard picks for players, not because of imbalance, but because they are most suited to the content that players enjoy running. Or they're just more fun for some reason. "Let's provide everyone with rigorous, standardized mediocrity so that I don't have to worry about another set outperforming mine."

I don't think anybody is arguing that this change couldn't lead to a DPS increase. Obviously if that's your thing, knock yourself out. The question that the naysayers continue to duck is whether that added damage, for those that seek to pursue it, is actually significant. The examples here are silly. Another LotG slot. Oh the humanity. Adding assault on a blaster--with no trade off! Except the added end cost of running assault. Which is probably overkill on a decently built blaster and redundant on a team with buffs that is probably at damage cap already.

Outperforms in what way? Farming? Pvp? Pylon tests? Specific enemy groups? You complain about cookie cutter builds and min maxing, and then turn around and advocate a one size fits all mentality on game balance. Moreover, what he's talking about here isn't nerfing for balance. He wants to roll back global changes to revisit a previous era of development for which he has nostalgia. I didn't say I hate nerfs in general. I said I hate the notion he's pushing. I believe most people still playing the game would.

LOL. Ok Miss Manners lemme address both your original post and the BIG EDIT post: 1. It appears to me that you have an unprecedented level of butthurt over a simple pithy statement. I suspect that this is a distraction from the subjective nature of your statements upon which I and other people have remarked. I do find it amusing. 2. I hate your bad ideas about nerfing. I think that other people, probably most of the player base, would hate them too. I think you should stop hiding in someone else's suggestion thread and post your own thread calling for these broad nerfs and see what kind of response they actually garner. Not that you care what other people think, but there are objective assessments that could be made from the responses. 3. The new tagline is fucking hilarious. Chef's kiss.

Maybe you should stop being so emotionally invested in this exchange, it seems to be hampering your ability to reason. What I wrote is my assessment of your stances on this issue. The fact that you don't like it doesn't make it a lie. It's an opinion. But again, this is consistent with how you've been throughout this discussion. You lack the ability to relate to people that think differently about an issue. As in: Simple answer: Not everyone thinks the same way you do.

Dude, do you know what lying actually means? I think your argument is bad and self-serving. I explained why. And I'm not the only one in this thread that disagrees with you. It all boils down to opinion and you're not handling it well for some reason. The actually lying is here: If you actually took that to heart, you wouldn't be agitating for nerfs and complaining about changes that other people want. This change would only affect you if you decided to change your build. But ya think you know better and you gotta have people do it your way.

Ok so it's power creep when it's something you don't want. Gotcha. Quit being a baby about it. You baby. lol.

FFS, just stop. You're smarter than that. Everyone one of my characters could be doing more damage right now if I wanted to skip on something else that I think is important--like buffing teammates or something. You want nerfs. Overall. And you don't care what other people think is fun or what motivates them to play--you've made that clear in this thread. The devs would be foolish at this stage of the game to follow your lead. They should be offering things to different types of players and those things don't have to follow this hardline ethic you got going which isn't the case and wouldn't add anything to the experience if you had your way.

Well put. The power creep crowd in this thread is fixated on a general view of balance that ignores variations in player knowledge, interests, and the long and varied history of the development of this game. Bill's big rebuttal here is a presumed increase of dps on a specific character's pylon performance. A very niche (vague) example extrapolated to address the entire breadth of the issue. The objection is that power creep makes things too easy. People who feel this way are a subset of the population. The devs are introducing content for them. Easing off on the mandates that result in wasted power picks is likely to be a plus for more casual players for a variety of reasons.

Well you haven't actually given the facts. He asked you what the decrease in time would be and if it was appreciable. You haven't given a number for how much dps would go up under these circumstances. I think you're probably right that you could raise your dps. Does that fact mean that, because of somebody's slight improvement under controlled circumstances in a very specific context, everyone should be saddled with the requirements that prevent you from achieving this marginal gain? IMO no. It's probably irrelevant to most players. Certainly is to me. You could make some gimpy build that skips aoe attacks and movement powers to do the same thing under the current system.

Yeah it's really damning if we hold single target damage against a pylon as the gold standard for how everyone should build. Using a build that heavily leverages IOs and incarnates to probably result in a minor damage buff.

Meaning that, for the sake of this particular metric, you are going to sacrifice the defensive benefit of barrier in order to cover the added end cost of running the 1 slotted end hog that is focused accuracy. Not that you would run this configuration in general. Or am I misunderstanding you here?

They shouldn't give up. But this change isn't "going in the other direction." Viewing this as making things easier is a lens that orthodox players use to view the issue. Don't like it? Don't do it. Is it making lower level content easier? Turn up your mission difficulty. The issue (for me) is that your obligated to a fee, in what are pretty standard builds, to take powers that are either trash or irrelevant to what you're trying to make. They did away with the fee in some pools and it didn't break the game. They could try it with the others and put it on test to see if it ruins everything. It's the slippery slope argument. The same argument can be used about pretty much any change. If you're going to change (x), what's next? When will it end? The answer to that question is that it will end when the developers want it to end. As to how long it would keep me happy, keep in mind that this is a global change that removes a pain in the ass from any build that uses pool powers. Almost all players are already benefitting from this change when it comes to travel powers. So if they add new powersets or ATs, those additions will benefit as well. A more serious problem, IMO, is simply lack of change. Lack of development. I think that's a driving force in people leaving and it's aggravated by people who extremely change averse on the forums. Yep. Cheers.

Sad that your moment of self-awareness passed so quickly.

They just added tough content meant to be challenging. It hasn't been a resounding success. If challenge is what you want, you can set your own parameters--impose your own limitations if you want. This isn't a new game. Part of the reason it's so easy is that the majority of the playerbase are veterans who have been playing it for years. That familiarity and knowledge bleeds through everything . When I started, it took me months of steady playing to get my first 50. Looking back, I didn't understand the mechanics. Now you can get help and information and seasoned veterans are available to guide you through anything. I don't think challenge is the issue for most players. People like being badass. The real issue imo is literally running variations on the same content for years. Eventually the novelty wears off. There are different types of players. I'm blase about the content, I'm probably more interested in building. Changes that open up build possibilities give me a reason to roll a new character. The people who moralize about this are out of touch. Really strong builds already exist. Maybe this change will make them easier somehow--so what? The players who want that kind of build already have it. They will have it regardless of whether a change like this goes forward or not. And maybe alternatives that don't currently exist will emerge. At least its something new under the sun.

I don't think it would be substantially easier. I don't think it would really make that much different to be honest. I think people just go full blown Chicken Little over the idea of change. When you factor in power choices for mules and whatnot, minor changes. But could be interesting.

Yeah, it's declining. Wonder if it has anything to do with the game being from 2004? hmmm. Better make it MORE like it was in 2004. That's the ticket.

The game is easy. It has been easy for a long time. People were complaining about it being easy back on live. They did everything they could to make it city of soloists. Which is something you liked because you fancy soloing ITFs no? Why don't you make you're rollback suggestion in another thread and see how it goes over? Everyone can lose their early travel powers and all of their Iwin buttons and it will all be great again right? You are fixated on a pipe dream. And the idea that it needs to be harder is farfetched when the hard content they introduced doesn't seem to be that popular. Some people like to farm, some like to build, some roleplay, etc.

Or people are playing something new. How many people leave because it's the same old thing for years? You can't look at the population numbers and just assume it's whatever you want.