Feedback: Testing Melee Set Performance

[TheAdjustor]

2 minutes ago, Hopeling said:

I know you didn't actually ask me, but I'm gonna answer anyway.

 

I don't think the answer is automatically that you bring down the one overperforming set. It's possible that set is the only one that's where you want it to be, or that the target is somewhere in between. This is what happened to Blaster secondaries in i24: /Mental had Drain Psyche, and all other secondaries gained a Sustain effect to give them a comparable amount of +regen and +recovery. That really was buffing all other sets to match the best one.

 

But this was done because the devs thought that Blasters as a whole were underperforming. I don't think that applies to melee as a whole. So assuming that War Mace, Fiery Melee, Street Justice, etc are in a good place in absolute terms - which I think they are - yeah, you bring down the outlier to around that level.

Going to the whole where should things be. Just how much better should street justice which has a combo level mechanism be than war mace ?  Should it be 10 % better, 30% better, the same, x% worse ?

 

Just what should the skill cap in the game be ?

[Infinitum]

15 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

This is not a specific question to any given scenario, just a counter question to the previous statement. If in average, across many metrics, you find that a set outperforms every other set by a significant margin, but all the other sets have single digit discrepancies, what do you feel is the correct course of action? You presented an example where half the set are above and half the sets are below, but what a case where there is just one drastic outlier?

 

Would you pursue changing every single set to match the one single outlier? Would you tone down the one outlier? Would you introduce new content all over the game to counter that one particular set's tricks, hopefully not disrupting any other set? Would you turn a blind eye?

Can I answer "whatever doesn't get psi melee and brute res caps nerfed and EM buffed?"   lol. Jk.

[SlimPickens]

Im not sure why the fun police would need to come in riot gear to bash down sets that in specific combos at end game overperform other sets in a game that already has a limited population and playerbase, driving away people from their enjoyed ATs just doesnt make any sense to me.

 

the games back, its fun, no need for perfect balance or taking away the things that are enjoyable. If things arent enjoyable, then by all means make them so (dev time permitting), but crying for nerfs just makes no sense in the big picture of where this game is at.

 

 

 

 

[Infinitum]

16 minutes ago, SlimPickens said:

Im not sure why the fun police would need to come in riot gear to bash down sets that in specific combos at end game overperform other sets in a game that already has a limited population and playerbase, driving away people from their enjoyed ATs just doesnt make any sense to me.

 

the games back, its fun, no need for perfect balance or taking away the things that are enjoyable. If things arent enjoyable, then by all means make them so (dev time permitting), but crying for nerfs just makes no sense in the big picture of where this game is at.

 

 

 

 

Agree 100 %

[Galaxy Brain]

Super anecdotal, but this is not an uncommon type of post from people on social media. I have another thread buried now that talks about making the game harder via advanced difficulty options as well which would be a great approach to this from the other side, but what powerhouse said still holds up as a valid question.

 

 

Edited September 16, 2019 by Galaxy Brain

[TheAdjustor]

21 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Super anecdotal, but this is not an uncommon type of post from people on social media. I have another thread buried now that talks about making the game harder via advanced difficulty options as well which would be a great approach to this from the other side, but what powerhouse said still holds up as a valid question.

 

 

The better question is where should balance in the game be ?

 

For the entirety of my time playing the game Risk/Reward for Melee has been entirely out of whack in regard to other ATs . When mechanically more complex sets like Dual Blades, Street Justice, and Titan Weapons were introduced, there was little if any consideration given to where their balance point should be with regard to the other sets. I had a Will Power/ War Mace tank on live, I could literally set clobber on autofire walk away make myself a sandwich come back and find everything hunky dory. Scrappers and stalkers do the best damage in the game have little risk in melee where they do it and in the days of drop farming over inf farming they were top tier at that as well.   Currently by all reasonable measures sentinels underperform by a significant measure  what's more their ranged attacks are gimped for what reason ?

 

So the question is just where are the balance points in the game supposed to be. If you don't know where you want the game to go or be, making adjustments to individual powersets within a group is like being concerned about the arrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic.

 

P.S. If the devs do have an overall vision in place of where things should be, it would be  a great service for everyone who plays the game if it could be articulated to the community. While people might not agree (not at all a bad thing) they could at least look and say yes this is where the game said it was going.

 

Edited September 16, 2019 by TheAdjustor

[Infinitum]

20 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Super anecdotal, but this is not an uncommon type of post from people on social media. I have another thread buried now that talks about making the game harder via advanced difficulty options as well which would be a great approach to this from the other side, but what powerhouse said still holds up as a valid question.

 

 

None of what hes concerned about would be fixed by anything done to TW or the coming tank buffs to make it any worse honestly.

 

Thats more of a min max issue, which if its a huge issue, dont min max. lol you have the power over what you slot and who you team with.

 

I like the extreme power though.

[Megajoule]

Can we just go ahead and close this thread?  It's been made abundantly clear that a few posters (whether representative of all TW users or not) will never accept any nerfs to their power fantasy, and if any adjustments are to be made to the powerset for the sake of balance, it will have to be despite them.

[Infinitum]

4 minutes ago, Megajoule said:

Can we just go ahead and close this thread?  It's been made abundantly clear that a few posters (whether representative of all TW users or not) will never accept any nerfs to their power fantasy, and if any adjustments are to be made to the powerset for the sake of balance, it will have to be despite them.

Well this is a game based on super heroes which is a fantasy about super powers last time I checked. 

 

I wanted to be a weak overly sarcastic salesman I would just get back to work right now....

 

Speaking of.....

Edited September 16, 2019 by Infinitum

[MunkiLord]

3 minutes ago, Megajoule said:

Can we just go ahead and close this thread?  It's been made abundantly clear that a few posters (whether representative of all TW users or not) will never accept any nerfs to their power fantasy, and if any adjustments are to be made to the powerset for the sake of balance, it will have to be despite them.

Don't be a busybody that hates fun. If you're not wanting to continue the conversation, cool, then don't.

[Galaxy Brain]

4 minutes ago, Megajoule said:

Can we just go ahead and close this thread?  It's been made abundantly clear that a few posters (whether representative of all TW users or not) will never accept any nerfs to their power fantasy, and if any adjustments are to be made to the powerset for the sake of balance, it will have to be despite them.

I think that a lot of good has come from the discussion despite the arguing, though I do think what has come to light is that the measuring sticks need to be looked at again which could either be it's own thread.... or I could rename this one and refocus on that.

[Hopeling]

1 hour ago, TheAdjustor said:

Going to the whole where should things be. Just how much better should street justice which has a combo level mechanism be than war mace ?  Should it be 10 % better, 30% better, the same, x% worse ?

 

Just what should the skill cap in the game be ?

I honestly don't find that any of the melee sets have mechanics that are difficult enough to make it useful to think about a skill cap. Using three builders before a finisher is no harder than lining up a pencil cone. Merely playing a minigame shouldn't automatically be an advantage, IMO, not when the minigames are as simple as the ones we currently have.

 

Powers that have actual drawbacks or limitations deserve corresponding advantages. For a non-melee example, Storm Summoning has some ridiculously powerful things like Hurricane, Tornado, or Lightning Storm, but this is counterbalanced by the fact that it's very difficult to get full use out of them: Hurricane scatters enemies out of its own debuff area, and Tornado and Lightning Storm can only get their full effect if something stands in that specific location for the entire duration of the power. Or back on topic, the two TW powers that require Momentum really should get some kind of corresponding bonus for that limitation.

 

If eg TW does better than War Mace on a perfectly static target, that should be balanced out by the fact that it does worse on moving targets, so that these roughly cancel out in practice. Then if the player finds a clever way to remove movement from more fights, great for them, let them do it.

2 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I think that a lot of good has come from the discussion despite the arguing, though I do think what has come to light is that the measuring sticks need to be looked at again which could either be it's own thread.... or I could rename this one and refocus on that.

Since we're 27 pages in, a new thread is probably a good idea once we're collecting data. The "Archetypes" parent board is barely used, but seems like a good place for general powers discussion.

[TheAdjustor]

5 minutes ago, Megajoule said:

Can we just go ahead and close this thread?  It's been made abundantly clear that a few posters (whether representative of all TW users or not) will never accept any nerfs to their power fantasy, and if any adjustments are to be made to the powerset for the sake of balance, it will have to be despite them.

Sorry to use your quote in this manner but it's exactly why threads like this are so problematic.  They always degenerate into a nasty form of PVP where people for whatever reason dig a hole into their positions and refuse to accept the idea they don't have the whole picture. It gets worse if the powers that be actually act on the issue whether or not the action was prompted by the topic. The people who wind up being affected rightly see themselves as having been dragged into a forum game they didn't want any part of to begin with.

 

It's especially bad with the level of selective focus that has happened in this thread.  Titan Weapons may or may not need a nerf but that question's answer does not exist in a vacuum.  Trying to frame it as something isolated is just plain wrong.    The game has for a very long time in both calendar years and years of operation needed a serious look at where things should be balanced.  As long as that's the case making little tweaks is like treating cancer with Dramamine

[Haijinx]

Thread has degenerated exactly as the moderator said it would. 

 

 

[Steampunkette]

There will always be people who aren't willing to argue in good faith.

 

They'll throw logical fallacies or sea lion about 'til the entire point is lost in so many irrelevant questions that digging it out requires a backhoe.

 

And oftentimes those people will try to take over the thread. Dominating any discussion through flurries of posts that derail and accuse, mislead and waste time, seemingly intent on wearing the people actually discussing the matter down to the point that the discussion just dies off.

 

From page 1 it was appeals to emotion, slippery slopes, and ad hominem by page 3. Degenerate is probably the wrong term for what this thread has done.

 

But hey. At least we reached the idea of testing sets in the AE using OBS to monitor times for direct comparison. Because the balance of the game has always, invariably, come down to a single simple metric:

 

Time to Kill < Time to Die

[Heraclea]

4 hours ago, Infinitum said:

Question though, what if you have 4 or 5 melee sets at the top and 4 or 5 at the bottom with not much in the middle?  Will you propose bringing the top down or bringing the bottom up?  My cincern is you will say bring the top sets down, and I dont think that is the correct course of action.  Or the right thing to do.

Melee generally had been in a bad place for a couple years of the old game.  Too much of the newer content was specifically designed to bypass defense sets:

 

- sending hordes of floating mobs immune to knockdown to spam psi attacks from range,

- draining endurance,

- giving all the minions kinetic debuffs,

- using unresisted mez like Confuse, or

- just giving Holds to every mob to the extent that even a tanker would be quickly overwhelmed. 

 

If you want to run this stuff, don't team.  It's all solo only at +0/1.  More mobs is bad.  Having a team just makes it unplayable for whoever is taking point.  The nature of the new material is probably the chief reason why I didn't play much for a couple years before shutdown.  I could see the writing on the wall when the Trapdoor mission was made impossible to finish on a tanker.  The message of the late added content seemed to be Shut Up and Play Your Controller.  The EM nerf was just salt in the wound at that point.  And Imperial Defense Forces are as tiresome at 50 as Longbow and Arachnos were redside. 

 

This is why melee ATs generally do not need nerfs.  Melee DPS needs to be competitive with blasters at minimum. 

 

But if anybody really wants to test Titan Weapons on a scrapper or brute, make Invulnerability your test defense kit rather than Willpower.  Willpower has too much sustain built in to show what TW is actually balanced around.  Playing TW requires build choices you might not ordinarily make to overcome its inherent difficulty. 

[Infinitum]

11 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

There will always be people who aren't willing to argue in good faith.

 

They'll throw logical fallacies or sea lion about 'til the entire point is lost in so many irrelevant questions that digging it out requires a backhoe.

 

And oftentimes those people will try to take over the thread. Dominating any discussion through flurries of posts that derail and accuse, mislead and waste time, seemingly intent on wearing the people actually discussing the matter down to the point that the discussion just dies off.

 

From page 1 it was appeals to emotion, slippery slopes, and ad hominem by page 3. Degenerate is probably the wrong term for what this thread has done.

 

But hey. At least we reached the idea of testing sets in the AE using OBS to monitor times for direct comparison. Because the balance of the game has always, invariably, come down to a single simple metric:

 

Time to Kill < Time to Die

Look you are giving me way too much credit... lol. I'm not nearly clever or intelligent enough to accomplish what you are trying to give me credit for.

 

I have no idea what all the logical fallicies are, let alone how to use them.  Nor do I care I'm not nor have I ever been on a debate team.  What I say on here is based on my feelings and experiences in both dealing with people and playing the game.

 

Thats all, nothing more.

Edited September 16, 2019 by Infinitum

[Infinitum]

7 minutes ago, Heraclea said:

Melee generally had been in a bad place for a couple years of the old game.  Too much of the newer content was specifically designed to bypass defense sets:

 

- sending hordes of floating mobs immune to knockdown to spam psi attacks from range,

- draining endurance,

- giving all the minions kinetic debuffs,

- using unresisted mez like Confuse, or

- just giving Holds to every mob to the extent that even a tanker would be quickly overwhelmed. 

 

If you want to run this stuff, don't team.  It's all solo only at +0/1.  More mobs is bad.  Having a team just makes it unplayable for whoever is taking point.  The nature of the new material is probably the chief reason why I didn't play much for a couple years before shutdown.  I could see the writing on the wall when the Trapdoor mission was made impossible to finish on a tanker.  The message of the late added content seemed to be Shut Up and Play Your Controller.  The EM nerf was just salt in the wound at that point.  And Imperial Defense Forces are as tiresome at 50 as Longbow and Arachnos were redside. 

 

This is why melee ATs generally do not need nerfs.  Melee DPS needs to be competitive with blasters at minimum. 

 

But if anybody really wants to test Titan Weapons on a scrapper or brute, make Invulnerability your test defense kit rather than Willpower.  Willpower has too much sustain built in to show what TW is actually balanced around.  Playing TW requires build choices you might not ordinarily make to overcome its inherent difficulty. 

all of what you said was my experience as well, that's how I remembered it to the letter, and also why I left.

Edited September 16, 2019 by Infinitum

[TheAdjustor]

8 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

There will always be people who aren't willing to argue in good faith.

 

They'll throw logical fallacies or sea lion about 'til the entire point is lost in so many irrelevant questions that digging it out requires a backhoe.

 

And oftentimes those people will try to take over the thread. Dominating any discussion through flurries of posts that derail and accuse, mislead and waste time, seemingly intent on wearing the people actually discussing the matter down to the point that the discussion just dies off.

 

From page 1 it was appeals to emotion, slippery slopes, and ad hominem by page 3. Degenerate is probably the wrong term for what this thread has done.

 

But hey. At least we reached the idea of testing sets in the AE using OBS to monitor times for direct comparison. Because the balance of the game has always, invariably, come down to a single simple metric:

 

Time to Kill < Time to Die

That's actually been the greatest problem with how this game has been balanced. A set with potential would get in the hands of good players that would really enjoy it and perfect the heck out of it, and then people who didn't want to put in the effort or couldn't perform at that level would be upset about how they were doing.

 

Always ignored was the fact that self selection is a very real thing and people who weren't able to squeeze performance out of sets would remove themselves from the sample pool.

 

I really wish I could view things with the simplicity you are putting forward but a lifetime of experience prevents that.

 

I know full well that just because the glove doesn't fit, it hardly means I have to acquit.

[Galaxy Brain]

7 minutes ago, Heraclea said:

Melee generally had been in a bad place for a couple years of the old game.  Too much of the newer content was specifically designed to bypass defense sets:

 

- sending hordes of floating mobs immune to knockdown to spam psi attacks from range,

- draining endurance,

- giving all the minions kinetic debuffs,

- using unresisted mez like Confuse, or

- just giving Holds to every mob to the extent that even a tanker would be quickly overwhelmed. 

 

If you want to run this stuff, don't team.  It's all solo only at +0/1.  More mobs is bad.  Having a team just makes it unplayable for whoever is taking point.  The nature of the new material is probably the chief reason why I didn't play much for a couple years before shutdown.  I could see the writing on the wall when the Trapdoor mission was made impossible to finish on a tanker.  The message of the late added content seemed to be Shut Up and Play Your Controller.  The EM nerf was just salt in the wound at that point.  And Imperial Defense Forces are as tiresome at 50 as Longbow and Arachnos were redside. 

 

This is why melee ATs generally do not need nerfs.  Melee DPS needs to be competitive with blasters at minimum. 

 

But if anybody really wants to test Titan Weapons on a scrapper or brute, make Invulnerability your test defense kit rather than Willpower.  Willpower has too much sustain built in to show what TW is actually balanced around.  Playing TW requires build choices you might not ordinarily make to overcome its inherent difficulty. 

 

While the last point is true, 9/13 scrapper secondaries have some sort of endurance tool making it far more common to mitigate the end issues than not...

[Hopeling]

4 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

all of what you said was my experience as well, that's how I remembered it to the letter, and also why I left.

The content she's talking about (Praetoria, mostly) happened during the time period you didn't play the game: the last couple years before shutdown.

[Infinitum]

5 minutes ago, Hopeling said:

The content she's talking about (Praetoria, mostly) happened during the time period you didn't play the game: the last couple years before shutdown.

Did you read all of what she said? She mentioned the time during the EM nerf, and ITF, plus I wad back for 1 month before shutdown when I played a troller almost exclusively.

[Hopeling]

Yes, and everything else she mentioned was during Going Rogue. EM certainly was in a bad place from i12 on, but many other sets were not. She did not mention the ITF, but the IDF, a Praetorian enemy group.

Edited September 16, 2019 by Hopeling

[Haijinx]

When i took a philosophy course in college.  The first day the professor told us we weren't qualified  to argue with him on anything.

 

The point of logical fallacies is they are an outgrowth of cognitive bias, and are fundamentally human nature.

 

You don't so much learn how to use them when trying to make an argument as much as learn how to not use them. 

[Infinitum]

11 minutes ago, Hopeling said:

Yes, and everything else she mentioned was during Going Rogue. EM certainly was in a bad place from i12 on, but many other sets were not. She did not mention the ITF, but the IDF, a Praetorian enemy group.

Yeah I misread that part, but I know what she was talking about, there was only Invul, fire, ice, and stone I think for tank armor choices and brutes hadnt been proliferated yet for blue side.

 

So the game was already hard on those sets just dealing with carnies and Malta and the original praetorian, the itf wasnt easy either because they had a stacking defense debuff that was murder on an invul, thats from a tanks perspective which is all I played for the longest time. 

 

I can only imagine what the idf would have done because IOset builds were more on a budget also.