DELETE Hasten, SLIGHTLY ALTER all enemies, SLIGHTY ALTER all player powers

[Koopak]

I'm currently not able to go through all the replies here, so I apologies if I'm echoing someone who said it first.

 

I agree that hasten is to common, worse yet is how hard you have to stretch many builds to even come close to justifying dropping it, however these solutions are problematic. There is a reason why fitness was made inherent. I can get behind your second option, basically making hasten less powerful but double stackable to achieve the same effect as now while allow for lower investment versions for other build, but your current 3rd option suffers from several issues.

 

First is time to implement, while the changes you suggest are minor, the implementation of them would be time consuming, while i don't have a firm knowledge of the game's underlying structure I suspect that many values are not simply available in a database you could run a script on, thus in at least some, if not most cases, these small tweaks to enemy health and player ability recharge rates would need to be done by hand, given the number of powers and enemy values in the game, this would be a tedious task at best, and a monumental one at worst. This isn't including the time spent ironing out mistakes and bugs this could implement.

 

Second, while I appreciate your mathematical breakdown of your changes it doesn't cover a wide list of cases where this change would be very disruptive. Your focus on TTK/TTD is unfortunately to reductive. Firstly there is how regeneration works in relation to health, regeneration would need to be tweaked as well in this change because a 9% increase in health is also a 9% increase in regeneration rate as regen is a % of max per second. This becomes especially bad at lvl 35+ as your proposed 30% would drastically improve the durability of many AVs and make many builds unable to solo them when previously they could, even without hasten. This is so drastic a shift that even EBs may become to hard to kill for lower damage classes. This is a problem as a core design tennate of CoH it to make it solo friendly.

 

Another place this health boost becomes an issue is in the TTK itself. While taking your targets health and dividing it by your DPS to them is a quick and dirty method, a more accurate method is to take their health, divide it by the number of attacks you have to use, then add up those attacks cast and recharge times. (this is omitting the additional factor of how much they will regen over the course of the fight) Damage comes in waves, and if previously 5 attacks would kill a mob but only just, a 9% health increase will make it 6 attacks, that is not a 9% increase in time, its a 20% increase.

 

So lets try a hypothetical power with a 1 second cast time and a 5 second recharge time, we will stay at say level 4ish and this is your only attack because admittedly more attacks will smooth this out. The attack does 10 damage and your enemy had 50 health.

 

Normally this would take 5 casts, so ( 1 + 5 + 1 + 5 + 1 + 5 + 1 = 19 second TTK )

 

Under your changes the values become (roughly since i dont have the recharge formula at hand) 4.3 recharge and health of 54.5 (tenths place HP is tracked)

 

This results in 6 casts so ( 1 + 4.3 + 1 + 4.3 + 1 + 4.3 + 1 + 4.3 + 1 + 4.3 + 1 = 27.5 second TTK )

 

This is a 31% increase in actual TTK, at low levels this could easily cost a blaster or other squishy AT their life.

 

Obviously im cherry picking a situation here, but the point is to show how changes to global values like this can have huge ramifications, this is why it has to be approached very carefully since any cure the the woes i just outlined while keeping your proposed changes will require exponentially more work and effort in rebalancing the game.

[Steampunkette]

29 minutes ago, Koopak said:

I'm currently not able to go through all the replies here, so I apologies if I'm echoing someone who said it first.

 

I agree that hasten is to common, worse yet is how hard you have to stretch many builds to even come close to justifying dropping it, however these solutions are problematic. There is a reason why fitness was made inherent. I can get behind your second option, basically making hasten less powerful but double stackable to achieve the same effect as now while allow for lower investment versions for other build, but your current 3rd option suffers from several issues.

 

First is time to implement, while the changes you suggest are minor, the implementation of them would be time consuming, while i don't have a firm knowledge of the game's underlying structure I suspect that many values are not simply available in a database you could run a script on, thus in at least some, if not most cases, these small tweaks to enemy health and player ability recharge rates would need to be done by hand, given the number of powers and enemy values in the game, this would be a tedious task at best, and a monumental one at worst. This isn't including the time spent ironing out mistakes and bugs this could implement.

 

Second, while I appreciate your mathematical breakdown of your changes it doesn't cover a wide list of cases where this change would be very disruptive. Your focus on TTK/TTD is unfortunately to reductive. Firstly there is how regeneration works in relation to health, regeneration would need to be tweaked as well in this change because a 9% increase in health is also a 9% increase in regeneration rate as regen is a % of max per second. This becomes especially bad at lvl 35+ as your proposed 30% would drastically improve the durability of many AVs and make many builds unable to solo them when previously they could, even without hasten. This is so drastic a shift that even EBs may become to hard to kill for lower damage classes. This is a problem as a core design tennate of CoH it to make it solo friendly.

 

Another place this health boost becomes an issue is in the TTK itself. While taking your targets health and dividing it by your DPS to them is a quick and dirty method, a more accurate method is to take their health, divide it by the number of attacks you have to use, then add up those attacks cast and recharge times. (this is omitting the additional factor of how much they will regen over the course of the fight) Damage comes in waves, and if previously 5 attacks would kill a mob but only just, a 9% health increase will make it 6 attacks, that is not a 9% increase in time, its a 20% increase.

 

So lets try a hypothetical power with a 1 second cast time and a 5 second recharge time, we will stay at say level 4ish and this is your only attack because admittedly more attacks will smooth this out. The attack does 10 damage and your enemy had 50 health.

 

Normally this would take 5 casts, so ( 1 + 5 + 1 + 5 + 1 + 5 + 1 = 19 second TTK )

 

Under your changes the values become (roughly since i dont have the recharge formula at hand) 4.3 recharge and health of 54.5 (tenths place HP is tracked)

 

This results in 6 casts so ( 1 + 4.3 + 1 + 4.3 + 1 + 4.3 + 1 + 4.3 + 1 + 4.3 + 1 = 27.5 second TTK )

 

This is a 31% increase in actual TTK, at low levels this could easily cost a blaster or other squishy AT their life.

 

Obviously im cherry picking a situation here, but the point is to show how changes to global values like this can have huge ramifications, this is why it has to be approached very carefully since any cure the the woes i just outlined while keeping your proposed changes will require exponentially more work and effort in rebalancing the game.

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.

Edited September 27, 2019 by Steampunkette

[Snakebit]

52 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

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?

I am against the 1st, 2cnd and 3rd and 4th etc changes. There needs to be no change made. At all. 

[Steampunkette]

11 minutes ago, cejmp said:

I am against the 1st, 2cnd and 3rd and 4th etc changes. There needs to be no change made. At all. 

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

[Koopak]

3 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

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.

I believe i didn't make my point clear so to use your example (thank you for providing in game data, i don't have access to currently)

 

at base 35.8 health divided by 9.42 damage is 3.8 casts, however you cant cast .8 of an aquad bolt, so we must round up to 4

 

Aqua bolt, as you said does 9.42 damage to this enemy, it has a recharge time of 3 seconds and a cast time of 1 second. We can thus express it in the following way.

 

Cast time x number of hits needed + recharge time x number of hits needed minus 1

(1 x 4) + (3 x 3) = 13 seconds

 

Now with your proposed changes, 39hp divided by 9.42 damage is 4.14 casts but again we must round up, thus 5 attacks.

Your new recharge time is 2.58 seconds thus we get.

 

(1 x 5) + (2.58 x 4) = 15.31 seconds

 

quick comparison shows that's a 15% increase in the TTK time

 

Obviously much less than my example where i pulled numbers out of thin air, but still significant

 

[Waypoint]

There are 134,076+ Brutes. It is clearly the most picked archetype. We should delete brutes from the game.

Additionally, please get rid of Arachnos Widows and Warshades as the one is the the least picked archetype and the other is a plague on this game.

[Starforge]

2 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

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

Just because you don’t like the answers doesn’t mean they aren’t adding to the conversation.

[AerialAssault]

Oh boy oh BOY, i'd get the ability to take a different pool power. What, oh what, shall I take????

 

Maybe I'll take Teleport Foe?

 

Or maybe I'll take Invoke Panic?

 

I know! Maybe i'll take Jump Kick!

 

Oh wait, no I won't, because those powers suck. 

[Snakebit]

2 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

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

 

So you don't want to hear from people who not only disagree with you but will point out the reasons why...'kay.

 

Hey everyone, no talking unless you support the idea!

[Moka]

"Delete Hasten" "SLIGHTLY ALTER Hasten" "DELETE Hasten, SLIGHTLY ALTER all enemies, SLIGHTLY ALTER all player power pools" is my new godfather trilogy.

[AerialAssault]

4 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

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

tbf it's one of the most popular suggestions in this thread so y'know

[Steampunkette]

Just now, Koopak said:

I believe i didn't make my point clear so to use your example (thank you for providing in game data, i don't have access to currently)

 

at base 35.8 health divided by 9.42 damage is 3.8 casts, however you cant cast .8 of an aquad bolt, so we must round up to 4

 

Aqua bolt, as you said does 9.42 damage to this enemy, it has a recharge time of 3 seconds and a cast time of 1 second. We can thus express it in the following way.

 

Cast time x number of hits needed + recharge time x number of hits needed minus 1

(1 x 4) + (3 x 3) = 13 seconds

 

Now with your proposed changes, 39hp divided by 9.42 damage is 4.14 casts but again we must round up, thus 5 attacks.

Your new recharge time is 2.58 seconds thus we get.

 

(1 x 5) + (2.58 x 4) = 15.31 seconds

 

quick comparison shows that's a 15% increase in the TTK time

 

Obviously much less than my example where i pulled numbers out of thin air, but still significant

 

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.

 

6 minutes ago, Waypoint said:

There are 134,076+ Brutes. It is clearly the most picked archetype. We should delete brutes from the game.

Additionally, please get rid of Arachnos Widows and Warshades as the one is the the least picked archetype and the other is a plague on this game.

Strawmen not welcome. 

6 minutes ago, Starforge said:

Just because you don’t like the answers doesn’t mean they aren’t adding to the conversation.

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"

5 minutes ago, cejmp said:

So you don't want to hear from people who not only disagree with you but will point out the reasons why...'kay.

 

Hey everyone, no talking unless you support the idea!

Strawmen not welcome. 

[Koopak]

My 2 cents are largly added now, the main point just being how messing with global parameters can have significant shifts, because again this was a very controled environment, its hard to predict what else this would effect, such as the minimum dps needed to defeat certain AVs.

 

To everyone else replying. I get that is is a touchy discussion and one that often veers toward the combative in nature, but please, if you have something to add make it constructive, atleast propose a reason for your views.

[Snakebit]

1 minute ago, Steampunkette said:

Strawmen not welcome. 

But you brought a bucket full of non sequitor...

[Infinitum]

1 hour ago, Steampunkette said:

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?

Nope not arguing any more, however I am reasonably sure we are at the point of dismissing any suggestion in this thread completely.

Edited September 27, 2019 by Infinitum

[Widower]

This is your last chance. Cease attacking each other or I'll close the thread.

[Steampunkette]

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

 

Edited September 27, 2019 by Steampunkette

[Purrfekshawn]

6 minutes ago, Moka said:

"Delete Hasten" "SLIGHTLY ALTER Hasten" "DELETE Hasten, SLIGHTLY ALTER all enemies, SLIGHTLY ALTER all player power pools" is my new godfather trilogy.

DELETE ALL ENEMIES, DELETE ALL PLAYER POWER POOLS

 

Oh wait, this had already been made by NCSoft 6 years ago. Hell no sumfin liek tha"s gonna happen egeyne 👹👺

[macskull]

13 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

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.

Once again, the game is not balanced around the IO system.

[Koopak]

If the devs could find a way to implement these changes in a timely fashion for testing, even in a hacky way, id be happy to dive into the the test server and really try to see how it works, my biggest concern currently though is definitely the development time, we have to consider the best places to use limited resources, even more so than a studio would have to.

[Steampunkette]

8 minutes ago, macskull said:

Once again, the game is not balanced around the IO system.

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?"

 

8 minutes ago, Koopak said:

If the devs could find a way to implement these changes in a timely fashion for testing, even in a hacky way, id be happy to dive into the the test server and really try to see how it works, my biggest concern currently though is definitely the development time, we have to consider the best places to use limited resources, even more so than a studio would have to.

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.

[macskull]

Just now, Steampunkette said:

Allowing players to continue using SOs or IO Sets as they currently do while removing a... let's say 'Problematic' power.

Hasten really only becomes "problematic" in edge cases involving high-recharge builds. With SOs it makes sense that people want Hasten. Sure, 83% of level 50s take Hasten. So what? Your proposed changes have merit, I will give them that, but as proposed you basically nerf everyone at worst, and maintain the status quo at best (except for nerfing a few high-end edge cases) at the expense of potentially weeks of developer time.

 

If your argument is that the game is too easy with Hasten, and too many people pick it, then so be it... there are plenty of ways to make the game more challenging without completely overhauling power recharge and NPC hit points. You can ignore the IO system, you can run flashbacks and TFs with player debuff/enemy buff, you can run incarnate content, the list goes on. It should be obvious that the majority of the players of this game aren't necessarily looking for a challenge and that's not a bad thing. We no longer have shareholders or a company to appease - there's no reason to make things more difficult for difficulty's sake.

[quixoteprog]

I think all the pool powers should be changed to feed off of one another and give a greater bonus to each the more other powers you have from the same pool. Similar to how Boxing, Kick and Cross Punch buff one another.

 

Therefore, I will suggest altering Hasten so that it gives a +30% recharge buff on its own +10% for each other power in the speed pool you take So, to get the same +70% bonus you get now all you need to do is take Flurry, Whirlwind, Burnout and Super Speed, the way same way most optimized builds do today.

 

 

 

 

[macskull]

2 minutes ago, quixoteprog said:

So, to get the same +70% bonus you get now all you need to do is take Flurry, Whirlwind, Burnout and Super Speed, the way same way most optimized builds do today.

What

[Steampunkette]

1 minute ago, macskull said:

Hasten really only becomes "problematic" in edge cases involving high-recharge builds. With SOs it makes sense that people want Hasten. Sure, 83% of level 50s take Hasten. So what? Your proposed changes have merit, I will give them that, but as proposed you basically nerf everyone at worst, and maintain the status quo at best (except for nerfing a few high-end edge cases) at the expense of potentially weeks of developer time.

 

If your argument is that the game is too easy with Hasten, and too many people pick it, then so be it... there are plenty of ways to make the game more challenging without completely overhauling power recharge and NPC hit points. You can ignore the IO system, you can run flashbacks and TFs with player debuff/enemy buff, you can run incarnate content, the list goes on. It should be obvious that the majority of the players of this game aren't necessarily looking for a challenge and that's not a bad thing. We no longer have shareholders or a company to appease - there's no reason to make things more difficult for difficulty's sake.

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'.