Lockpick

Not true at all. Use AE to create Hard Mode content if you don't feel the current content is at the limits you want. Anyone can do it and it has been proven to work. Instead people just want to nerf / rebalance instead of owning their own game experience. Any character in this game can be powerful with the right build. Some will be more powerful than others, but so what? Superman is much more powerful than Spider-Man who is more powerful than Batman. You are going to have power tiers. Everyone should embrace it and own their game experience. Nothing could be more boring than having every AT at the same level of effectiveness. Guess what? Once you rebalance there will absolutely be an AT that is at a higher tier and will then need to be rebalanced. Rebalancing begets rebalancing and it is a no win situation for everyone.

I don't know I would call it a bad game design move. It seems the intent of the Devs was to create incarnate content where incarnate would not be OP. It's not poor game design that the game was shut down before they could do it. It might be poor timing I suppose.

I agree and it is mainly because AE was not given the support required to make it the focus for new content. If I was the lead of this game I would make a number of minor changes to AE and community outreach in the short term to get more focus on it. I don't think the short term changes would be complex and it would certainly be a lot easier than rebalancing all the sets, ATs, etc.

I am really curious how many players can really do +4/8 solo. I don't think it as easy as everyone makes it out to be as evidenced by the Scrapper +4/8 thread. Anyway, I am not opposed to an option to select allow / disallow incarnate powers for TFs like there are options for no deaths or no temps. It seems reasonable and more choices are always better.

So, you think there is a problem with game balance, but you admit you could be wrong about the problem. Other players (of which I seem to be the most vocal) have indicated that you are wrong about the problem, but you believe they are wrong. Therefore you have at least 2 groups of people on opposite ends of the spectrum who both believe they are right. Instead of trying to alleviate your concern by leveraging the existing in game functionality and community outreach to see if it might alleviate your concern you indicate that the Devs should solve the problem by rebalancing, regardless of how many other players that would impact. I will retract the selfish and lazy part of the comment because it was not really nice and I suppose I should be nicer, but I would respectfully suggest you really think about what you are asking for, how many people will be affected, the negative impact to those being impacted, and maybe look at other solutions to the problem you believe exists. My solution to the problem does not affect anyone in a negative fashion, does not require respecs or re-rolls, does not ruin the fun of people that enjoy the game in its current state. I think we should be thinking harder about those types of solutions as opposed to expecting the Devs to solve our challenges. Again, to be clear, I am not talking about not doing rebalancing where required; I am talking about wholesale rebalancing.

Exactly true. There is absolutely no win for the Dev team taking the rebalancing path. Rebalancing merely leads to more rebalancing which never ends. The better path is providing more avenues for player created content that provides the hard mode content people want. I think we already have a good base that can be used today and with a few tweaks and community involvement it would be much more effective than going down the rebalancing path. This is so obvious to me I am wondering why no one else seems to be able to see it. It's like looking at Tesla stock and wondering why all the big shot financial analysts on CNBC are not able to understand that Tesla is not a car company. Now I am having second thoughts and doubts. Is it possible I am wrong? Naw, can't be...

IMO the Devs are (like you) wrong bout the need to rebalance ATs, powers, procs, etc. Their time would be much better spent focusing on fixing bugs and expanding content. You have been cheer leading nerfs because you think the game is to easy. Do you think the vast majority of players think the game is to easy? Or is it a subset of power gamers who plan and optimize their builds that think the game is to easy. I consider myself a power gamer because I play for quite a few more hours a week than I should and I plan / optimize many of my builds to be as effective as possible and I don't consider the game to easy. So, I expect there is a subset of the subset of power gamers that disagree with you. My point is that I believe you are in the extreme minority of players that believe the game needs to be rebalanced. I mentioned previously that there could be exceptions like TW, but that is what they should be - exceptions. I could be wrong, but this is the internet and everyone has an opinion. Have you done any of the things that were suggested to alleviate the challenge you lack? Played 801 AE content? Created your own hard mode content? Play characters with only SO or basic IOs? Do you play characters in incarnate content without incarnates slotted? Done hard mode challenges? Have you developed a player network of like minded players and/or created a SG that imposes the limits you want, so you will feel the challenge you desire? If you have done all of these things and still think the game is to easy for the vast majority of players I will retract my selfish and lazy comment. It means you have at least tried to alleviate your own challenge issues. You didn't respond previously that you have done these things, so my assumption is you have not. I would also make the suggestion that you think about what you are asking for. If the Devs rebalance this game and make things harder for the vast majority of players; many of them will leave and go to another server or game. We don't have the population that we can afford to lose players because of rebalancing that IMO is not needed.

PSA Tesla had battery day yesterday and had some crazy news. I am not providing stock advice. Everyone should make their own choices and decisions, but I would recommend that people look at Tesla and envision where they will be in 10 years. You are welcome.

I never said there was sufficient challenging content for people like you that want challenging content or incarnate levels of challenging content. I agree to a certain extent. If the game had stayed Live I am sure the Devs would have added challenging content for Incarnates. They were doing so with the iTrials, so this seems a given. Obviously, they didn't finish because the game shut down, so there are limitations. What I have said is that there are mechanisms that exist in game today to fix the gap as a community without relying on the Devs to make wholesale changes to powers, ATs, procs, incarnate levels, etc. It seems that if you really interested in hard mode content you would explore this side before calling for changes that will impact a lot of other players. Have you run the 801 content? Have you tried creating AE hard mode content? You might be surprised if you tried it and you might find that things are not as bad as you think. We have an incredibly powerful tool in AE and it is a shame it is just being used for farming and power leveling. As has been stated in this thread (and I agree with it) many of the forum readers are power gamers in the sense they create and optimize builds to make the content trivial. I do this on many of my builds as well. I also have basic IO builds to simulate natural heroes. That is the beauty of this game. You can have it all if you want to try different ideas and content. I don't generally pick FotM builds and then complain the content is to easy. I look for ways to challenge myself. In addition, I already use the existing functionality to scale the content to my character's wants/needs. If I have a character that I want to run at 0/1 then I do it. If I have a character I want to try at +4/8 then I do it. If I have a godlike character I'll do challenges (take a look at @Werner or @nihilii for some of the crazy stuff they have done). Challenges or lack of challenges are there for the taking. If you want hard mode go do it. No one is stopping you. I can't quite grasp the idea of asking a volunteer Dev team to make wholesale changes to powers to try and rebalance the game for a few hard mode players especially when there are mechanisms in place to provide that hard mode content. Frankly it smacks of being lazy and selfish.

What is the problem you are trying to solve? The reason this thread has gone off the rails is that it seems everyone has a different perspective of what the problem seems to be. Some believe some power sets are OP, some believe Procs are OP, some believe the game content is to easy, some want to get rid of or limit incarnate powers, some don't see any major issues (I fall into this camp). Once you figure out the problem we should look at solutions that can be managed in game by the community. Leveraging Devs should be a last resort.

I don't believe this to be true. I think many people are not using the existing resources to get the challenge they want. Instead they want the Devs to do all the work for them as opposed to taking ownership of their playing experience. A semi-quote from the thread about the AE missions: 801 is a Series: 801.0 Easy, 801.1 Intermediate, 801.2 Hard (My Benchmark), 801.3 Harder 801.2 is the Standard I judge my builds by, and was the original. If you can solo 801.2 +4x8 with-in the 2 hour timer or less, you are officially Linea Approved. 801.3 is because I had some teams just stomping 801.2. 801.3 departs from the "Soloable +0x0 on an SO build" benchmark. It was rare to have a team steamroll 801.2 like that, but it does happen. 801.0 and 801.1 are for the teams that were struggling too much in 801.2. If there's need I may or may not work on an 801.4 in the future. There are ways to get the challenge you desire without nerfing everyone else into the ground to satisfy your need for harder content. If you use the existing functionality you can create challenging content and invite similar minded people to do it with you. I don't think we should we be relying on the Devs to solve these types of problems that players have when there are ways of solving the problems yourself. Create your own hard mode content Play characters with only SO or basic IOs Don't go the incarnate route Develop a player network of like minded players and create a SG that imposes the limits you want, so you will feel the challenge you desire I meant to reply to a quote earlier where someone said everyone was Superman and no one was Batman. You can easily make a Batman character and I have done so. I limit my power selections to powers that are thematic and I play appropriate content for that character.

We do have that. The hardest content are the iTrials and Hami. In general, you need groups to do that content.

You are right, my apologies. That being said, I think the rest of the argument is legit.

The key phrase is This does not explain the variety of ATs and power sets being created and played though. Were this absolutely true, we would see nothing but tanks, brutes and scrappers and no one would team for anything. Reality and posted metrics say otherwise. " I would guess that most of the Brutes with Fiery Aura as a secondary were not played through; i.e. they played non-AE content and leveled through story arcs, task forces, etc.. My guess is that the vast majority were played in AE in Fire farms. I don't want to be rude, but your arguments are not very strong. Fiery Aura Brutes are well known to be AE Fire farmers, so if you are trying to see what ATs / power sets are logically the most popular it is perfectly reasonable to restrict Fiery Aura. Obviously the best way would be to have the entire data set, but we don't have that, so the option to remove Fiery Aura is reasonable.

I would create a new category beyond Dev Choice (maybe call it Canon Content) and add rewards that are the same as the in game rewards (Badges, Reward Merits, Incarnate Components, etc.). If you do that then I would bet you get more traction. You would also need to add more tags and filtering options to find the content. It would be no different than running Flashbacks, which I would guess a lot of people do. I know I do a lot of flashbacks. People can't complain about not having content when there is a ton of content available that provides the same canon experience and the same Live rewards. Also, you could make the player created Task Force part of the WST to get more people to use it. A ton of ways to get great content of varying levels of time commitment and difficulty. It would just need to be planned out and tested properly.

When you look at this data it does seem to indicate that the ATs are in general pretty close. I'm not surprised to see PB, WS, and SoAs at the bottom. As VEATs they may not have been played much on Live because you had to have a 50 to open them up, so probably less experience overall playing them. In addition, their build mechanics are a bit more complex. I'm also not surprised to see Stalkers so low when thinking back to how they were on Live. Here though I think people are missing the boat. I was a Scrapper on Live and here I play mainly Stalker for melee classes. It is a completely different experience from Live.

I'm not sure what you are trying to show with the chart. What does this data mean really? If you parse the data between AE content and non-AE content I would guess you will find a significant amount of the time played on Brutes is AE and more specifically AE farming. If you throw out the Brute numbers I would say that looking at the numbers seems logical to me. They seems to correspond with the number of posts in the AT sections (somewhat) which might indicate a level of popularity. I'm actually surprised Controllers are higher than Scrappers and Masterminds are as high as they are.

You have your opinion, ShardWarrior has his, I have mine, and many others have their opinion. You will likely have a hard time getting consensus on what should be the number of mobs a player can take on. And that's okay because everyone should play the way they want. That is why it is more important to focus on varying levels of content with varying levels of difficulty as opposed to focusing on buffinf/nerfing. If you have enough content with varying levels of difficulty then everyone can play the mode they find fun.

This is exactly why I stated to use AE to create new content. I really don't think people (The Live Devs, the current Dev team, or the players) are realizing how powerful AE can be for the game. Probably because it has a reputation for being mainly for farming. We have a great community of people that are very creative. We could use AE to do things like: Story arc of the month with titles and badge awards Create incarnate content with incarnate rewards Create story missions with merit rewards Create new task forces Create hard mode content Create new badges to go along with the created content All of these things can be done with some minor tweaks and some time commitment by volunteers. Maybe some people feel this way, but I have a hard time worrying about someone else. I am interested in what I find fun. When I first came back I was on a DP tear playing DP on various characters to find one to be my main. No one is going to say DP is OP. Now I am on a stalker kick. I could care less if a TW/Bio scrapper can clear mobs before I can in a mission. I can find ways to benefit a team no matter what AT I am playing and at the end of the day it is about enjoying the experience. On another note, I did want to mention that I really appreciate the Dev team bringing back this game. It was a horrible experience when it shut down and I could never find a replacement. Extremely happy it is back and wanted to express my gratitude.

Surprisingly enough, I agree with some of the comments @Noyjitat is saying, although I would suggest the tone is aggressive, which dilutes the message. Agreed, same with SWTOR. Buff, buff, nerf, nerf, buff, nerf, ad infiitum. Game balance is extremely tricky and you will eventually find yourself doing nothing but game balance. We have so many combinations with ATs, primary/secondary power sets, and epic/pool powers that there are an enormous number of combinations. On the TW front, who cares if it over performs? The set plays horribly from my perspective, so I assume people are playing it for the extra damage despite the quirky mechanics and if it is nerfed, you will see fewer players playing it. If everyone was playing a TW/Bio character my opinion might change a bit, but they don't. I see very few TWs when playing. I agree that the focus should be on "new powers or proliferating npcs powers, making new powers for incarnate and tf bosses to make them more challenging in hard mode trials. You could be giving us more difficulty options and those mentioned hard mode trials and that would give us the challenge we need instead of breaking everything." Many people optimize their builds, then complain about how easy the game is. Once buffs/nerfs are done they will do the same. There is no stopping this element, so I would suggest more options for power sets and new difficulty modes are the way to go. I would also like to see more rationalization of rewards and the ability to propagate content from AE to Live or at least provide rewards. Example - There is some AE arc that is supposed to be extremely challenging, but I have not played it. If it is hard as everyone is saying, why not make it a new type of Dev Choice that provides merit or incarnate rewards? Shift the burden of story content to the community and focus on the easy wins like bug fixes and new power sets. Of course, this doesn't mean to not buff or nerf where warranted, but it should be rare and shouldn't be a core focus. If 90% of the population is playing TW/Bio Scrappers, ok maybe a nerf is needed. That is not the case.

Currently working on a KM/EA and I'm not really sure how to slot Energy Drain and Energize. I am planning on: Energy Drain: 3 End/Recharge Set IOs 1 Energy Manipulator - Stun Proc Energize: 3 Heal/Recharge Set IOs Absorb Proc I saw some posts stating that Energy Drain is great for defense, but I looked at putting defense IOs in Energy Drain and it didn't seem all that great. What am I missing? Build:

I would be okay with that if the recharge was lower.

I would be fine with that. It would be an interesting challenge...

When looking at Tier 9 crash powers like Elude and Overload it seems many people skip these powers because they believe the powers only add to already existing attributes (such as defense) so the use is limited and the crash at the end is a pain. It seems many people skip these powers (I generally do as well). My suggestions is to add a minor accuracy and damage buff to these powers. This might incentivize people to take them because they are not just getting endurance and defense (for example) but some extra accuracy and damage to help with hard targets. It might also lead to more build options because you may be able to skip Assault and Tactics in the leadership pool.

I like rewards! I like having a goal to chase and getting a reward that feels worthwhile. I always pursue the 4 passive accolades because the rewards are nice and the journey to get them seems just about right to me from a standpoint of time investment, risk, and reward. I was thinking last night that it would be nice to get a passive accolade for finishing the 4 shadow shard task forces. I don't think I have ever completed all 4 task forces on a character due to their length and the pains of traveling the shard, so it seems to me a reward would incentivize the TFs. The 4 TFs are: Explorers and Exploiters: Dr. Quaterfield The Legend of Ruladak: Sara Moore The Saga of Faathim: Justin Augustine The Saga of Lanaru: Faathim the Kind For rewards I was thinking about several options: A passive that reduces the recharge time of the Team Transporter and Mission Transporter prestige powers by 50% A passive that increases movement speed by 7.5% A passive that increases defense by 1.5% A passive that increases resistance by 1.5% In addition to the accolade passive there there should be a title and badge for completing all TFs. Any thoughts?