Steampunkette

I'm not saying it being popular is a bad thing. I'm saying it being so powerful is a bad thing and it's popularity is because of how powerful it is. Creating equally powerful contemporaries is close to impossible because there's basically no function of player powers that is as strong as the feedback loop of Recharge Rate improvements. Animation times, for example, unless something has changed that I'm unaware of, are tied to the power itself and are fixed. While we can reduce the animation time of a power (Like Total Focus for Blasters) it's still hard coded into the power once you take it. For something like Titan Weapons and Momentum there's actually multiple power 'cards' that get pulled based on whether you have Momentum or not. Different copies of the same power.; Pool Powers versus Pool Powers is the only way to balance them... And it isn't in a vacuum at all, otherwise a Recharge buff would lose to Kick. If Hasten were in a vacuum it would increase only it's own recharge rate and kick would kick enemies, making it the superior power. It's only in the larger context of the game that Hasten becomes the superior power. As to making a case that it's a negative: It being overpowered compared to it's contemporaries IS a negative from a gameplay design standpoint. It being so popular that it bottlenecks character structure IS a negative from a gameplay design standpoint. It locks people's limited power choices. It locks people's limited power pool choices. It's the basis of the game's meta to the point that not taking it is essentially self-gimping. That Recharge Rate is valued? Not so much a negative. That's just an organic function of gameplay. So keep the organic function and fix the game design problems. The bottlenecky design, the overpowered power, the limiting of player choice. Build Hasten into the base game so that people don't have to choose it. It's just a part of how things work. Kind of like how the GunZ devs incorporated the glitch into the next game. Take the overpowered power, remove it from the player's choice, and incorporate it into the base function.

Citation of what is needed, Bossk? That it's more powerful than it's contemporaries? Okay. Let's go power pool by power pool in alphabetical order: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Power_Pools Concealment: Stealth: Increases defenses slightly and provides 35ft stealth increase. Grant Invisibility: Grants an ally slight defense increase and provides 45ft stealth increase. Neither of these powers increase the relative power of your attack, control, or healing effects. Fighting: Boxing: A minor attack that gains increased damage and chance to stun if you take other powers. Kick: A minor attack that gains increased damage and chance to KB if you take other powers. Neither of these powers increases the relative power of your attack, control, healing, buff, or debuff effects. You can go pool by pool and none of the "One Dip" powers have the same far reaching affects as Hasten does. Not Flight. Not Leadership. Not Leaping. None of them. As to 'appealing against popularity/frequency' that's not a fallacy. That's a datapoint in the 'It is largely viewed as mandatory for builds, demonstrated by how many people take it at 50.'

My level 13 Praetorian Brute is not an incarnate. Neither are all my level 20-40 characters. Granting all of them hasten would alter their power level through normal SO balanced content. Especially if they could slot the new inherent power for recharge.

It would be massively difficult to implement this sort of thing as an option, and would look something like Ninja Run, where the movement animation is changed and there's a different "From Attack to Neutral" animation. It would be -super- time consuming and be a toggle with no speed increase tied to it. Or there could be Emotes that you could bind for when you're standing still, like the "Waiting" emote cycle.

Hasten on it's own is a little on the too powerful side. Compare a cyclic 70% recharge rate buff (Averaging out over it's recharge-cycle to an 18.6% recharge rate buff) to any other pool power and tell me if any are as good? Especially since by slotting it for recharge (And it's recharge affecting itself) you can increase the buff to literally all support, control, heal, and damage powers. There's just nothing that compares at all. And no. My argument isn't that the game is "Too easy with it" in such a myopic perspective that just changing my -own- playstyle or content engagement means anything, Macskull. It's that as a power it's just too strong to be in a power pool where everyone can grab it. I don't get why people keep trying to insist "Well you shouldn't use it, then, problem solved!" The problem isn't whether or not I use it, the problem is that it's too damned strong and popular because of it's strength. This also wouldn't "Make things more difficult for difficulty's sake". The latest suggestion literally keeps the difficulty right around where it is. It changes the game to deal with an outlier without upsetting the status quo 'too much'.

I don't think this is a good idea. The increase in player power would be massive in relation to NPCs in standard content. On it's face, it would be a moderate decrease in difficulty through cyclical recharge benefits for everyone, but you can't adjust the difficulty of an NPC relative to whether or not a player has slotted their inherent Hasten for Recharge, which can drastically increase the overall value of the power. 3 IOs of Recharge puts it at 110 second downtime, further reduced by itself to only a 49 second downtime. That's a rough average increase of +56% recharge rate buff. Do we balance the game around every player having that +56% recharge rate buff or assume they won't slot it and go with an 18% recharge rate buff assumption? Or do we split the difference and assume they 1 slot it for a 33% recharge rate buff assumption or 2 slot it for a 45% recharge rate buff assumption? It's too variable a balancing point.

True. And it shouldn't be. And wouldn't be. Suggestion 3 retains the SO Balance of the game by increasing NPC HP while reducing the recharge times of powers. Allowing players to continue using SOs or IO Sets as they currently do while removing a... let's say 'Problematic' power. It also increases the variety of powers and IO sets that could be added to the game without asking the inevitable question "How does this interact with Hasten?" It's definitely a thing. We'd be looking at a -days- of work just combing through and updating the powers themselves, then the time spent designing a hasten replacement, and then the tables to increase the NPC Health values. It would probably eat up a couple weeks for the Powers Developer.

It is -definitely- annoying that it exists... But if it didn't, we'd have 50% Defense builds that literally nothing could hit without ToHit buffs.

To get back on track: I sincerely believe that Hasten in the game as it stands, today, narrows build variety into a Bottleneck. It creates a serious problem which is best exemplified by the 83% of level 50 characters who use it. The power on it's own was really strong, but not game breaking, before Invention Sets were added back in Issue 9. Once Recharge bonuses became a thing, it's relative value exploded. Due to the way recharge works in the game, with 100% Recharge equating to 1/2 of the current value of the cooldown. That is to say that if a power has a recharge time of 240 seconds and you have a recharge rate increase (from enhancements, set bonuses, or other powers) of +100% the cooldown drops to 120 seconds. If you have 200% it goes from 240 to 60. At +300% recharge that 240 second cooldown takes 30 seconds. And at +400% recharge, the cap, it drops to 15 seconds. This makes 70% Recharge bonus from a single power (Which reaches permanent status at 275% recharge, including it's own 70% value) just massive. I'm not saying people are 'Bad' or 'Doing it Wrong' for choosing Recharge as their path to power. I'm saying Hasten is too good to be a power that anyone can take at any time after level 4. Because it's just -such- a no-brainer power to take. You can still "Beat the Game" without it, obviously, but it outshines literally every other power there is among it's contemporaries. And creating "Equally Strong" contemporaries won't fix anything, it'll just make it worse 'cause you could take Hasten -and- 3 of the Equally Strong Contemporaries. So the 14% baseline recharge time reduction, not a Recharge Rate Buff, would essentially give everyone Permahasten at full power. Commensurately increasing the HP of enemies to offset the lower baseline recharge times keeps the TTK right around the same place it is, now, barring hedge cases like Valkyrie (That is to say EBs and AVs that have Regen Powers) which would need to be balanced in a second pass. Pretty much every high end player gets to keep their badass abilities and optimum attack chains, with a few hedge cases that need to squeeze out a tiny bit more recharge and get another slot or two and another power to try and do it in. Benefits of this change: Keeps the most OP combos still OP, though some require slightly more inf to achieve Raises the capabilities of the lower tier players Retains the majority of the game's challenge Makes Controls in generally marginally more powerful Frees up 1-2 slots for most level 50 builds (Don't we have a thread about people wanting 1 or 2 more slots?) Frees up a power selection for most level 50 builds Frees up Autofire for those who use it (Don't we have 2-3 threads about this?) Frees up a Power Pool Selection for those who choose Hasten (Don't we have 2-3 threads about this?) Cons of this change: Takes a lot of Dev Time to go power by power in the database to change things. Makes AE Player Minions harder (Is that -really- a bad thing? More challenge!) Creates hedge cases (Phantom Army, Domination) where more recharge from sets is required for perma Creates hedge cases (AVs with high Regen) where certain enemies skew more time consuming to defeat

The miss chance is hard coded into the tohit roll mechanic. A Clamp if you will. Removing it would take a massive amount of effort, if it's at all possible.

Standard Aqua Bolt has a 1 second activation time and a 4 second recharge time. So the Combat's duration, assuming 4 hits it goes: Combat starts at Second 0: 9.42 damage, Aqua Bolt goes on Recharge At 4 seconds the animation time for Aqua Bolt begins. It ends at the start of second 5. 9.42 damage. At 9 seconds the animation time of Aqua Bolt begins. It ends at the start of second 10. 9.42 damage At 14 seconds the animation time of Aqua Bolt begins. It ends at the start of second 15. 9.42 Damage and combat ends. Alternate Aqua Bolt has a 1 second activation time and a 3.44 second recharge time. So the combat's duration goes: Combat Starts at Second 0: 9.42 damage, Aqua Bolt goes on Recharge At 3.44 seconds the animation time for Aqua Bolt begins. It ends at 4.44 seconds. 9.42 damage. At 7.88 seconds the animation time for Aqua Bolt begins. It ends at 8.88 seconds. 9.42 damage. At 12.32 seconds the animation time for Aqua Bolt begins. it ends at 13.32 seconds. 9.42 damage At 15.76 seconds the animation time for Aqua Bolt begins. It ends at 16.76 seconds. So you're right. It increases the combat time by 1.76 seconds. Strawmen not welcome. That's not an answer. It's not a discussion. It's "Shut up and stop." It doesn't add to the conversation by saying "These are the reasons I don't think it'll work" or "These are the reasons it shouldn't be done" or literally -anything- to the conversation. It's just "Stop talking" Strawmen not welcome.

So you have nothing to actually -add- to the conversation, you'd just rather it not happen... 'kay.

There is no case in which a level 4 character has access to only one attack. Even a Defender has 2 attacks available at level 2. But let's say, for the sake of argument, a Defender -decided- to take only one attack and is level 4. There is no first tier attack a Defender gets that is higher than 4 seconds of recharge, baseline. Fire and Archery have a 2 second recharge, Radiation has a 1.5 second recharge, everything else has a 4 second recharge. A level 4 enemy has 35.8HP base, and the additional 3.2HP from the 9% increase. For the sake of argument let's look at Aqua Bolt, a 4 second recharge power with 9.42 damage for a level 4 Defender. 2.44 seconds Activation time of 1 second means that it deals it's 9.42 damage every 3.44 seconds. Normally the combat would require 3.8 casts of Aqua Bolt to reach the TTK. Roughly 15 seconds (Combat starts with the first attack) Under the suggested variation it takes 4.14 casts to kill the thing. Which takes 14.24 seconds. So... No. The TTK doesn't increase by 30% under normal circumstances. It decreases by over half a second. Roughly a 6% decrease in TTK. Maybe I wasn't generous enough with my health buff at low levels... Thanks, Koopak! And yeah. At high end it would result in the "AV Beating Value" 131dps or higher. But with faster high damage attacks across the board it should be easier for everyone to reach. As to the HP Increase: SUPER EASY. Baseline HP for all NPCs is based on a series of leveling charts (One for each tier of NPC) Here's the Minion one. https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Minion It functions as a spread-sheet inside the CoH engine with references to specific cells based on the NPC call involved. So changing all the NPCs is fairly simple, all things considered. It's changing each power's recharge rate that would be time-consuming as heck. But the actual changing of them is moderately easy because you're altering a single value.

I mean... Except that the cooldowns of all powers are reduced by 14% which is equivalent to a 70% recharge rate increase when regular slotting is taken into account... Like... Did y'all read the third suggestion, yet, or are you still arguing against the first one?

Bonus: Option 3 frees up Autocast for all the current Hasten-Brigade. That means no more "Bind Juggling" for Dominators, Humanform PBs can just put Lightform on Autocast, etc etc etc.

Permadom, under Suggestion 3, would require a total of 92% Global Recharge from all sources instead of 123%. Possible, but expensive. Here's an example build with 100% recharge rate without hasten:

Suggestion number 3: Step 1: Delete Hasten. Replace with a new power which does not affect recharge. Possibly a Burst of Speed type ability with lower damage, or perhaps an enemy-targeted teleport-to in the same vein as Savage Leap. Step 2: Reduce cooldown of all player powers by a flat 14% across the board. This is not a Recharge Rate bonus, and Diminishing Returns does not apply. Exclude powers that are unaffected by recharge rate. (Though what I'd do with them is a whole other thread, entirely...) Step 3: Increase all NPC Health Values by 9% at level 1-20, 19% from 20-27, 24% from 27-34, and 30% after 35. This applies Hasten at full power (I.E. Permahasten) to all builds, and rebalances enemies accordingly... essentially. Keyword: ESSENTIALLY. At low levels it offsets the attack rate increase of a few fast-recharging powers (The biggest outliers would be KO Blow and TWs, but TW needs a balancing pass as it is). At higher levels the heavier attacks with the longer cooldowns require further HP increases to retain the current TTK<TTD ratio. Take Aim for example. Aim has a cooldown of 90 seconds. With an 14% reduction in cooldown it slips down to 77.4 seconds. Two slotting Aim for Recharge Rate brings the cooldown a further 83% (Roughly 41% cooldown reduction) to 31.7 seconds. With Aim under the Hasten Model, 2 slotting for Recharge brings it to 49 seconds and then Hasten takes it to 35.53. However it doesn't -stack- with further Recharge Rate changes. As a static reduction in cooldown it benefits them in a nonlinear manner. This becomes important at the most extreme ends of recharge, as demonstrated by Phantom Army: Phantom Army normally slotted exactly like people slot it now with Hasten removed you'd have a 230% recharge rate. The cooldown would drop from 240 to 206, and that 230% recharge rate bonus (including slotting PA) would bring the cooldown to 62 seconds. But you'd get another pool power choice (Or a different power pool) for your trouble. MAAAAAAATH

That was the original idea. Only transferred into an autopower rather than a slottable full-form, so as to avoid recharge-looping itself and MASSIVE global power boost in favor of a smaller one. Which, of course, would wind up being a Nerf to recharge-centric builds. There's no reasonable way to make Hasten an auto-grant in the form that it's currently in, sadly. Though... fun note about Fitness becoming Inherent? That happened in i19. It came about when the IDF became a thing. So it's not like "Happening late in the game's life" is a real issue for power pool rebalancing. But I am formulating a new idea for a different suggestion, here, it's just requiring a ton of math (Which is why I didn't post, yesterday)

Why bother? I've explained. Why now? Because it wasn't done on Live. What if people leave to the other servers? Any change to any system that isn't a flat buff is going to risk that. Any power that gets removed, or severely altered. Any Archetype that gets short-shifted by some alteration. Sentinel's getting a massive rework. People who love Sentinel as it is, now, are going to get angry and leave. But you don't make the game better or healthier by leaving in massive feedback loops of power and pretending it'll either go away or somehow be fine. You're wrong. And the fact that you're wrong was covered in the first page of this thread. 155,593 players had Hasten between levels 4 and 50. The only Pool Power that is more popular is Flight at 182,678. Third place is Superjump with 129,071. Then Combat Jumping at 93k and Superspeed at 84k. In the "Add Recharge to Swift" thread I initially used that data to try and deflate the idea that Hasten was overrepresented, because while it was the second most used power pool there was, it still represented around 1/8th of the playerbase which wasn't a majority. TheAdjustor pointed out that 83% of level 50s use it. So players who aren't 50 who use Hasten? 102,013. Which still puts them ahead of the total number of Combat Jumpers including 50s. And Superspeeders including 50. And all other power pools at all level ranges except Flight and Superjump. It's a massive outlier in popularity. "Hasten is always taken because it alone is a MUST HAVE" And there it is, folks. That's the problem. The power is simply too damned good. Tell me, Cooltastic, what could we do to, say, the Stealth power that would make you choose it -over- Hasten? What buffs, what changes, what overwhelming power would Stealth need that you choose Stealth but -not- Hasten? Because that's what it would take to make "Buff the other pool powers" a reasonable suggestion. A massive power increase across the board to all the power pools so that Hasten is no longer a "Must Have" You wanna talk about Power Creep? That shit would be Power Dash. Power Mach 1.

Emmert was big on the holy Quintet. Tank, Glass Cannon, Lancer, Support, Control DPS is a thing, absolutely, but it was broken into two segments. The Lancer or Melee DPS and the Glass Cannon or Ranged DPS. With the idea that Casters would have controls to keep themselves alive while Lancers had lesser defenses than Tanks. Meanwhile the Support character could provide heals but also buff you to the nines or ruin the enemies by making it harder for them to hit. And of course Control is all about battlefield denial and locking them down completely. And if you look at those character roles you can certainly see the seeds of the Holy Trinity of WoW or the Holy Quartet of EQ. But it's really, at it's core.... The 5 Man Band of D&D. The Five Man Band is a series of gaming roles that can be fulfilled in different ways by different classes. Sometimes the Tank is the Paladin or the Fighter or the Barbarian or the Wildshaped Druid. Sometimes the Glass Canon is a Sorcerer, a Warlock, or a Wizard. The Lancer can be a Ranger, a Rogue, or a Light Fighter. Clerics, Druids, Wizards, and Bards can play the Support Role. And of course Druids, Wizards, Sorcerers, and some Warlocks can play the Control role. Five Man Banding was the surest way to survive GenCon One-Shots because you covered specific roles that synergized well. Of course it was -absolutely- useless when Gygax pulled out Tomb of Horrors... but still.

Far more likely is: After ED they knew they wouldn't be able to take Hasten apart without a maaaaaaassive backlash.

Incarnate Enemies are designed to have enough ToHit to punch through Softcapped defenses and require 56% to be softcapped to them rather than the typical 45. So it's disingenuous to say that balance went out the window with IOs, since outside of SR using all toggles, autos, and their Tier 9 it's pretty much impossible for an SO-only character to hit 56% defense. Are you done? If you are we can talk like adults. If not I'll just put you on ignore, it's healthier for both of us.

I'm certain it seems like very little gain... to you. If it were determined that "Perma Phantom" and "Perma Dom" were something healthy for the game, those specific powers could be looked at and have their recharge lowered. To rebalance everything around everyone having inherent hasten would be much harder. You'd be rebalancing all the NPCs, leveling values, and then look at the powers and determine if you want to/need to increase the recharge time of essentially every single power to push them out to be harder to get up fast. If we did the delete and add version, a few specific powers would need to be revamped. Inherent Hasten would require a -game- revamp.

You're -way- back in the timeline. Also She, not he. I figured the name and the avatar gave it away, but whatevs. And yes. City of Heroes is a Balanced Game. Not entirely balance between powersets or balance between archetypes, but a rough balance between players and NPCs. That's where the whole "Challenge" aspect of gameplay comes in. However due to certain decisions, the challenge has been stomped into the mud. We can either dig it out and clean it up, which is healthy for a game, or we can just keep walking all over it, which is not healthy for a game. There's a reason DOOM gets -really- boring after you type in IDKFA and IDDQD. It's fun to blast through the levels invincible and with all the ammo and weapons, but it cheapens the victories and when you're finished instantly one-shotting everything you're left bored as hell.

1) Cramming more recharge is futile 'cause you'd be losing 50% recharge if we removed it. You could -try- to make up the loss, but you'd never be able to obtain the same level of optimization... If we removed it entirely. 2) Does kill Perma lots of stuff, yup. Unless there's a rebalance pass around the increased presence and lowered availability of +Recharge. It's something discussed on page 2, I think? Maybe 3... 3) Any change is going to require more balancing work when it involves a power that LITERALLY AFFECTS EVERY OTHER POWER IN THE ENTIRE GAME. Except the handful that are immune to recharge rates, obviousl. I think there are 3?