Focused Feedback: Pets & Henchmen Updates for December 6, 2019

[esotericist]

finally got game working in 32-bit (64-bit is a problem for another day).

 

freebie-leveled a mercs/time to 40 (similar to my build on live). went to peregrine island. proceeded to be more *substantially* effective than anticipated, considering I had not a single enhancement slotted (not even TO/DO/SOs).

 

will do a more proper test later (once I can dig out the plan for my build), but I am very optimistic about this.

Edited December 25, 2019 by esotericist
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[Haijinx]

I can't believe that lolpvp would be allowed to hold something lile this up. 

[esotericist]

On 12/24/2019 at 10:46 AM, Haijinx said:

I can't believe that lolpvp would be allowed to hold something lile this up. 

I'm confident pvp-only concerns will not hold back an initial deployment of tech that has been begged for literally over a decade.

 

I'm also confident pvp-only concerns will not be completely disregarded for subsequent iteration, where those concerns have merit.

 

I'm further confident that concerns which are not pvp-only but have general merit will not be disregarded simply because they are coming from a pvp-focused player, because pvpers are players too.

 

(and while I am definitely not a pvp player, I think tagging the "lolpvp" label on things is pointlessly demeaning, so I would beg you not to do that)

Edited December 25, 2019 by esotericist
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[golstat2003]

The focus of this patch isn’t on pvp concerns. I would prefer if those were addressed in a subsequent patch, instead of this turning into tanker changes 2.0, where things are discussed to death and a patch never actually gets released. The changes as presented minus a few things here or there are good enough to release

now. Items like those mentioned that have to do with the warshade essences issue (and I say this as someone who spends at least 10 hours each week on my shade) and anything pvp focused, can simply wait until the next patch.

[esotericist]

2 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

The focus of this patch isn’t on pvp concerns. I would prefer if those were addressed in a subsequent patch, instead of this turning into tanker changes 2.0, where things are discussed to death and a patch never actually gets released. The changes as presented minus a few things here or there are good enough to release

now. Items like those mentioned that have to do with the warshade essences issue (and I say this as someone who spends at least 10 hours each week on my shade) and anything pvp focused, can simply wait until the next patch.

I would like to again point out that the tanker changes were always marked as experimental, meaning they were always going to be tinkered with for a while before the team decided what they wanted to do with them. And they still are marked experimental. I don't believe the holdup there is really the bickering; I think there really is a lot of evaluation for what the desired result will or won't be still happening.

 

The pet changes are not marked experimental. My expectation is they're checking for whether or not the changes work as expected for a larger populace, and whether or not there are actual implementation errors, and that this will happen much faster than the tanker changes regardless of other factors.

 

 

Now, for actual feedback on the actual changes:

 

I've gotten most of my final Mercs/Time build in-game (only 'most' because I was getting bored with slotting and wanted to play) and just went touring some 50 content at higher difficulty than I normally would play mercs on (even as a time manip character).

 

There's a new learning curve here, trying to ... well, unlearn expectations for how my minions behave. The strength of "go to" with an all-ranged squad is.. really, really phenomenal, now that I have a team that actually can be set up in a firing line while I go play around with the enemies in melee for debuff purposes.

 

Knowing that I can, at any moment, fall back to the rally point to drop a temporal mending or refresh farsight, and know for a fact I will hit my entire squad, absent knockback concerns?

 

Priceless. Absolutely priceless.

 

Admittedly I haven't set up a demon summoning character yet*, but I do think that having the "ranged only" property applied to demons would be a mistake, now that I've felt the AI changes in action.

 

It would be greatly mitigated if we could issue appropriate "goto" commands (all, or specific pets) using the new positioning tools that "powexec_location" gives us, but I haven't seen anything to that effect anywhere. if for example, I could tell the whole squad to "goto" my current target with a macro/binding, that would help greatly with that kind of scenario (as well as others).

 

but I definitely wouldn't hold the extant changes up to add such tooling. I just question the demonlings/ember demon being included.

 

_{*I don't have a build on-hand for that, so I'd need to do a bunch of research before i could test it properly since it's been actual years since I played the powerset}

[Haijinx]

3 hours ago, esotericist said:

 

 

(and while I am definitely not a pvp player, I think tagging the "lolpvp" label on things is pointlessly demeaning, so I would beg you not to do that)

 

Im just putting a name to it.

 

The sentiment has already existed since pvp for COH was itself in beta testing. 

 

 

[esotericist]

15 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

 

Im just putting a name to it.

 

The sentiment has already existed since pvp for COH was itself in beta testing. 

 

 

being hateful doesn't stop being hateful just because people have hated before the moment in which you're being hateful.

[seebs]

2 hours ago, esotericist said:

being hateful doesn't stop being hateful just because people have hated before the moment in which you're being hateful.

Agreed. Look, I am probably the Least PvP Oriented Player Ever, if a game makes it physically possible within the engine for another player to attack mine without me opting in, I'll probably just quit. But come on. City has always been a game about letting you play the game differently if you want to. I've found people trying to implement progression raiding in AE, creating content that they literally can't beat at +1 difficulty. And that's okay! And that's valid! (And that may be adversely affected by the MM changes, because one of the mechanics they rely on is that NPC mastermind pets can exceed the aggro cap, creating strategic problems for players.)

 

PvP isn't important to me, but the PvPers are part of the community, so they're important to me.

[Haijinx]

The game was never designed with pvp in mind.  Its been a hack job from the start.  And any balancing involved around it has never worked.

 

I don't think hateful is the right word.

 

But if that's the one you prefer, whatever.

[nihilii]

On 12/26/2019 at 4:06 AM, esotericist said:

being hateful doesn't stop being hateful just because people have hated before the moment in which you're being hateful.

Beyond appeals to emotion being bad for conversation in general, this is such a harmful way to look at your fellow man. For yourself more than others. Dismiss any opinion that makes you uncomfortable as "hateful", soon enough you end up in a closed inner loop of your own.

We're on a video game board and all, but this kind of thinking has gotten too pervasive in other aspects of society.

[ryuplaneswalker]

That is an acceptable start, they are some nice Quality of life changes. However they don't really fix Mastermind's main problem in high level(as in actual levels not skill levels)

 

Either the pet level differences need Eliminated with a re-balancing of Pet IO Auras to keep pets from becoming near immortal, or all six of the Pet IO auras need to be baseline. It is unacceptable that the class requires 6 enhancements just to compensate for what happens when you go +1 and your first tier pets automatically hit the purple patch, which only gets worse as you crank the levels up.

[Galaxy Brain]

I'd be behind enhancing Supremacy to include the general pet aura effects and reworking those procs 👍

[Sovera]

*vibrates harder still*

[Myrmidon]

On 12/25/2019 at 8:50 PM, Haijinx said:

 

Im just putting a name to it.

 

The sentiment has already existed since pvp for COH was itself in beta testing. 

 

 

 The only PvP worth anything in this game was base raiding, however, I am more than willing to let the lolpvp fraction have their illusions.

[Myrmidon]

On 12/25/2019 at 9:06 PM, esotericist said:

being hateful doesn't stop being hateful just because people have hated before the moment in which you're being hateful.

This is the very first Yondu scene in Guardians, right?

[Myrmidon]

On 12/25/2019 at 8:35 PM, esotericist said:

I would like to again point out that the tanker changes were always marked as experimental, meaning they were always going to be tinkered with for a while before the team decided what they wanted to do with them. And they still are marked experimental. I don't believe the holdup there is really the bickering; I think there really is a lot of evaluation for what the desired result will or won't be still happening.

While I would love to see different options on test be able to go live at their own pace, I completely see these Mastermind changes as yet another thing getting in the way of the Tanker changes going live.

 

Its nothing personal, just business.😁

[Crysis]

Tested and now that Bots will reliably engage from range I no longer have to use TP Self to hyper-engage the spawns in a tankermind sort of way.  
 

Loving this change!

[GM Miss]

Hey guys! Lets keep chat on topic please - and be kind with our responses. 🙂

 

[Sovera]

5 hours ago, GM Miss said:

Hey guys! Lets keep chat on topic please - and be kind with our responses. 🙂

 

It's not the tanker thread. The overwhelming response has been 'yes please, can we have it yesterday?'.

[boggo2300]

22 hours ago, Sovera said:

It's not the tanker thread. The overwhelming response has been 'yes please, can we have it yesterday?'.

Is it live yet?

 

what about now?

 

yet?

 

how about now?

 

should I log off to patch?

 

ready?

 

 

[Sovera]

33 minutes ago, boggo2300 said:

Is it live yet?

 

what about now?

 

yet?

 

how about now?

 

should I log off to patch?

 

ready?

 

 

x10 😄

[Galaxy Brain]

[Sovera]

We have a patch, maybe it is out today!

[Force Redux]

Not on my PC... Did we in fact get a patch for MMs this morning?

[Apparition]

There is indeed a patch this morning, but it doesn't sound like it involves the MM AI fixes.  Note that Homecoming accidentally did not update the beta manifest, so you need to use the regular manifest for the time being until the beta manifest is updated.  Hopefully soon.