Accuracy at lower levels is painful

[ShardWarrior]

Trick or treating with my son and daughter tonight on our low level characters (both level 10) reminded me just how horribly bad accuracy at low levels is.  Tricks at the door would sometimes spawn 3 Vampire or Sorceress bosses that killed us in 2 hits while we sat there flailing away.  We were lucky to land maybe 1 hit in 5.

 

At lower levels, we're barely doing any damage anyway as we simply don't have the slots or enhancements to make any difference.  Is there any harm in improving the accuracy at these levels?  My personal take here, but nothing sucks the life out of a game then flailing away and hitting nothing.  At least from my experience, this is a major reason people DFB or farm their way into higher levels - accuracy (and endurance) at lower levels is embarrassingly bad.

 

There is a lot of room for improvement here - is this something that can be improved pre-SO level?

 

Thanks.

[Mr. Vee]

Go buy 8 hours of offensive amplifier for 1k/hour on a level 1. Shouldn't be too pricey on level 10 either.

[biostem]

You already get a tohit bonus while your character is below level 20.  You are fighting multiple enemies that are applying tohit debuffs to you.  Were these enemies even-con to you, or higher level?  You could buy yellow inspirations for about 40-50 inf, which should cap your tohit vs even-level enemies.  Even slotting an acc TO gives ~8% more to your acc.  There are already multiple ways of dealing with the issues you are describing...

[ShardWarrior]

Or accuracy can be improved.

[Snakebit]

1 hour ago, ShardWarrior said:

Or accuracy can be improved.

It's already improved. Without any buffs or bonuses, you have a 63% chance to hit a +2 mob at level 10. A level 50 toon only has a 56% chance to hit a +2.  If that's not good enough for you get IOs. 

 

[ShardWarrior]

14 minutes ago, cejmp said:

It's already improved. Without any buffs or bonuses, you have a 63% chance to hit a +2 mob at level 10. A level 50 toon only has a 56% chance to hit a +2.  If that's not good enough for you get IOs. 

Yes, I understand the math of it.  My post isn't about math though.  It's about constant missing due to poor accuracy not being fun at low level.  This isn't something new. 

[Snakebit]

You aren't constantly missing though.

 

You're under the effects of selection bias caused in part by higher accuracy on high level toons kicking the streakbreaker into action. Your miss limit at level 10 on +2 mobs is 3. Your miss limit with over .9 acc is 1. 

[DSorrow]

I agree that the accuracy mechanics can be very frustrating at times. I'll never remember the cases where I win a fight because I was lucky and hit 3 attacks in a row at 40% hit chance, but I can easily recall at least two instances from last week only where I ate dirt after missing several attacks at 70% hit chance. This is probably why enemies using Elude seem much more annoying that those using Unstoppable because against the latter you can usually make small but steady progress instead of having 95% of your attacks do nothing. Just having better animations / sound effects for misses would do a lot because randomly having my character shoot a beam 90 degrees off target feels much less immersive than having the same blast deflect off the target, but implementing this would be a huge effort to take care of an ultimately minor annoyance.

 

The clamped 95% max hit chance is also, to me, an annoying relic of old times because it basically never works to change the outcome of any situation but just adds an unnecessary bit of irritation. There was a discussion about this point already a few months ago, though.

[Uun]

Run DFB and pick up the acc bonus power, which is good through lvl 22. Rinse and repeat with the acc bonus power from DiB at lvl 15, which is good through lvl 30.

[ShardWarrior]

11 hours ago, cejmp said:

You aren't constantly missing though.

 

You're under the effects of selection bias caused in part by higher accuracy on high level toons kicking the streakbreaker into action. Your miss limit at level 10 on +2 mobs is 3. Your miss limit with over .9 acc is 1. 

You keep trying to apply math to a post about subjective feedback.  No, we don't miss 100% of the time and I never suggested that - but consistently missing 3 and 4 times in a row at lower levels where you have 2 or 3 attacks (including brawl) in your chain is simply not fun for me.  It's especially worse when going against Bosses and enemy NPCs with plentiful -ToHit debuffs, or NPCs spawning at a higher level like those mentioned in the thread about the Save Manticore arc. 

 

From other posts I've seen on here, it would appear I'm not the only one who feels this way and it is not that much fun for others either.  @Vanden made a thread and posed a rather good idea on the topic of missing.  He is absolutely spot on why Cryptic totally reworked accuracy and the annoying whiff mechanics when they built Champions Online.  I have to agree, it's a far better system in CO especially at the lower levels.  Again, nothing sucks the fun out of playing when you hit Build Up then proceed to miss 3 times in row. 

 

I won't even go into missing held/immobilized targets.

[ShardWarrior]

12 minutes ago, Uun said:

Run DFB and pick up the acc bonus power, which is good through lvl 22. Rinse and repeat with the acc bonus power from DiB at lvl 15, which is good through lvl 30.

Ok but then by the time you do this, you've leveled past the early level content.  I could PL all my characters via AE farm until 50+3 and fully IO them out too, but that's skipping the content completely.

[Steampunkette]

Turn off your XP.

 

Or just buy the accuracy booster.

 

Or some Inspirations.

[Uun]

13 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Ok but then by the time you do this, you've leveled past the early level content.  I could PL all my characters via AE farm until 50+3 and fully IO them out too, but that's skipping the content completely.

If you only run each once, you're not skipping much.

[ShardWarrior]

Not skipping much is still skipping content. 😉

[Snakebit]

1 hour ago, ShardWarrior said:

You keep trying to apply math to a post about subjective feedback

The game is driven by math. The math works. I cant get behind a suggestion to break what works because of feelings. There are in-game solutions to your issue. You have been given multiple resolutions, but you insist on changing everything else to accommodate what you want.

 

/jranger

[ShardWarrior]

1 minute ago, cejmp said:

The game is driven by math.

What is the mathematical equation for "fun"? 

 

I have not insisted on anything.  All I made is an observation and a suggestion.  Please don't put words in my mouth.

[kenlon]

19 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

At lower levels, we're barely doing any damage anyway as we simply don't have the slots or enhancements to make any difference.  Is there any harm in improving the accuracy at these levels?  My personal take here, but nothing sucks the life out of a game then flailing away and hitting nothing.  At least from my experience, this is a major reason people DFB or farm their way into higher levels - accuracy (and endurance) at lower levels is embarrassingly bad.

 

There's a simple fix for this - remove TOs and DOs entirely and have SOs drop/be sold instead, at the same prices.

 

People will freak out about it, like they did the last time I suggested it, but it's still a better bet for making the low levels fun.

[Heraclea]

42 minutes ago, kenlon said:

There's a simple fix for this - remove TOs and DOs entirely and have SOs drop/be sold instead, at the same prices.

 

People will freak out about it, like they did the last time I suggested it, but it's still a better bet for making the low levels fun.

One of the main reasons I only run DfB once or twice is that it encourages you to slot SOs that drop from the 'archvillain' fights.  These are quite temporary, and wither and die and can't be replaced as you proceed further.  This means that your character becomes weaker as they gain levels, slots, and powers, which tends to make me lose interest in them. 

 

I street sweep to 5, head to KR, run radios for the temps.  By then I should be around 8 and ready for Posi 1.  When I get to 12 I pause and run the inventions tutorial for a free 15 accuracy IO that will never wimp out.  On to Posi 2 and Synapse.  By then the character will be around 20-24ish and I can decide whether I want to invest more time and effort or not. 

 

Halloween event is a golden time to start lowbies; plenty of XP to be had trick or treating. 

[Troo]

Awesome playing with your kids!

 

Accuracy at low levels, I hear ya.. though at low levels, maybe we should be scared of things. I'm okay with flying or jumping over buildings while firing lasers out of my eyes letting me feel super.

 

Oh crud there's a RED. -or- Run it's a PURPLE.

 

The descriptions for con (Consideration System) levels are:

Yellow = "A bit ahead of your power level. Combat-oriented characters should engage solo with caution, avoiding them when they’re in large groups."

Orange = "Substantially ahead of your power level. Only characters skilled in combat should attempt to engage solo, and then only with extreme caution."

Red = "Significantly ahead of your power level. Should not be engaged one-on-one."

Purple = " Far ahead of your power level. Do not engage one-on-one. Purples near your level may be successfully engaged in groups."

 

I don't think we need to feel like the most powerful force in the universe early in the game. I'll disagree with " There is a lot of room for improvement here ".

 

Edited October 2, 2019 by Troo
missed a 's'

[kenlon]

19 minutes ago, Troo said:

I don't think we need to feel like the most powerful force in the universe early in the game. I'll disagree with " There is a lot of room for improvement here ".

 

There is no good reason for lower level players to be so much weaker versus even level enemies than higher level players are. At higher levels, you have more powers and more enhancement slots, why double-punish lower level characters by saddling them with enhancements that don't enhance worth a damn?

 

At this point, I either DFB or AE farm characters to 22 because trying to play the low level arcs is just too damn painful with how terrible our characters are at that level. And that sucks. 

[Troo]

As you can see in my post, Yellow and up are not even level enemies.

[biostem]

5 minutes ago, kenlon said:

There is no good reason for lower level players to be so much weaker versus even level enemies than higher level players are. At higher levels, you have more powers and more enhancement slots, why double-punish lower level characters by saddling them with enhancements that don't enhance worth a damn?

 

At this point, I either DFB or AE farm characters to 22 because trying to play the low level arcs is just too damn painful with how terrible our characters are at that level. And that sucks. 

You have a base 75% chance to hit even-level enemies.  Further, below level 20, you have up to an additional 15% extra bonus to acc, so that brings that up a lot more, (up to a 90% chance to hit).  Lower level enemies have lower defenses of their own, and are less likely to have powers that debuff your chance to hit.  The maximum chance to hit you can ever get is 95%, so a low level character, with no enhancements at all, is nearly at the same level at someone who is all IO'd out...

[kenlon]

8 minutes ago, Troo said:

As you can see in my post, Yellow and up are not even level enemies.

 

Meanwhile, over here in the game that people are actually playing rather than Jack Emmert's ancient fever dreams, LTs and Bosses of the same level as the player are easy meat once you're past 22 and have SO level enhancements in. 

 

1 minute ago, biostem said:

You have a base 75% chance to hit even-level enemies.  Further, below level 20, you have up to an additional 15% extra bonus to acc, so that brings that up a lot more, (up to a 90% chance to hit).  Lower level enemies have lower defenses of their own, and are less likely to have powers that debuff your chance to hit.  The maximum chance to hit you can ever get is 95%, so a low level character, with no enhancements at all, is nearly at the same level at someone who is all IO'd out...

The pathetic nature of TOs/DOs affects a lot more than just accuracy. Damage, endurance, recharge time, all of these things add up to make pre-SO levels an utter slog for no good reason. 

[biostem]

7 minutes ago, kenlon said:

The pathetic nature of TOs/DOs affects a lot more than just accuracy. Damage, endurance, recharge time, all of these things add up to make pre-SO levels an utter slog for no good reason. 

No, it really doesn't.  It takes a couple of hits to bring down minions and LTs, and you won't under normal circumstances, be running up against bosses at that level, (unless you either seek them out or up your notoriety).

[Troo]

I remember hording DOs for later use. Of course that's when I was new to the game and at the time they were beneficial. There is a lot of game before level 22.

 

FYI - SOs are available at lower levels. I think Mr. Yin's even sells some that you can get at 10.