An opinion on a sense of balance

[DrRocket]

By now many, for better or worse, have seen posts by me asking for change which could be viewed as good, bad or indifferent.

 

My Systems Engineer's view of a sense of balance can be easily go along Newton's law of physics "For every action there must be a reponse of equal magnitude in the opposite direction"

 

It is not a bad rule of thumb to follow for just abut anything you design and to be mindful of.

 

So when I look at this game there are attacks, which comes in various flavors, and thus under Newtons' law of physics there must be a corresponding defense, resistance, and protection.

 

Why is this important?

 

When I began many, many years ago, I played Dark Age of Camelot which is a very good PvP game at the time, unfortunately the faction distrubution in the server was heavely unbalanced, thus the developers decided to achieve battlefield balance to make up for numbers to give the minority faction especial attacks that came to  given players "I Win" buttons. Of course if you were the player with the I Win button that was great, if you were in the receiving side, it was not so good. The "I Win" buttons were so powerful that no one could conceive a good tactic to overcome them with the exception of a mass surge to the overpowered oponents, within a month, I terminated my account with DAOC and began playing CoH.

 

So if you observe at many of my posts I have been honestly snipping here and there at symptons to a problem I see in my opinion. So in this post what I am trying to do is to establish a context.

 

In the game there are in general three forms of attacks: Damage, Status Effects, and Debuffs

 

So we have have an action: Attack,

 

There must be a reaction just as significant to have balance.

 

In a balanced world the reaction would be composed of Defense (avoid being hit which is balanced by the attack's accuracy which helps you hit), Protection (think of true armor) and resistance (damage mitigation, under armor padding)

 

With the above in mind, lets take a look at the three attacks from an overall all archtypes perspective in the most conservative manner (that is take the hardest requirement, and don't go with the one class exception has it thus there is no problem)

 

Damage:

              1) Defense available except when attack is non-positional in nature thus breaks the Attack accuracy and dodge balance

              2) Protection as in true armor platting concept not available, possibly an unbalance situation, need to look at big picture before making a resolution

             3) Resistance is available against all attacks, yet pragmatic resistance to Psionic and Toxic is not present and thus an unbalance. Past this unbalance the concept that resistance can go as high as 90% can mitigate the lack of protection.

            Note 1: The various archtypes havfe different magnitudes or caps to resistance, which is fine as long as it is not binary (some has it and other does not) and they do make sense from an archtype perspective. Examples based on MIDS analysis for instance Tanks have a 90% resistnce cap, while I noted that Defenders have a 70% resistance cap which is fine, would be nice to see the resistance caps published, to allow further analysis.

 

Status Effects:

               1) Defense available except when attack is non-positional in nature thus breaks the Attack accuracy and doge balance

              2) Protections is binary in nature, thus pragmatically unbalanced in a sense. Tanks for instance enjoy MAG 12 which is rather good, while Brutes and Scrappers enjoy MAG 8, other archtypes have zero; this does not make sense from a balance for those archtypes do not follow Nweton's law, I would suggest a MAG 4 protection to be more in line that follows the numerical sequence (12/8/?) and still observes the differences between the archtypes.

             3) Resistance is available to all archtypes, for some it is easier to raise than others, but it is fine from an archtype differentiation perspective. Psionic and toxic resistance acquisition is much more difficult than the others and could possibly be viewed as unbalanced. Why give PvEs and some Archtype classes "I Win" buttons?

 

Debuffs:

            1) Defense is available except when attack is non-positional in nature thus breaks the Attack accuracy and dodge balance

           2) Protection is unexistent, potentially very unbalanced

           3) Resistance is unexistent, combined with absence of protections, there is a clear unbalance.

         Note: I have noted that some mobs seem to have a resistance or be impervious to debuffs, not positive if this statement is true but it is just a feeling so it does not truly count.

        Suggestions: Debuffs should have a mag value, just like status effects, and archtypes should have debuff protection as described in status effect section of this post. Would suggest to keep matters simple that "Hold" status protection could be used as the means to protect from both holds and debuffs. Taking this a step forward, use the "Hold" resistance as the means to mitigate the effects of both holds and debuffs

 

A final observation, the use of a band-aid approach is not really acceptable to regain balance, for example using inspirations as a band-aid is not good design and breaks the entire concept that inspirations are there for that emergency moment that seldom happens as opposed to the must have it in order to survive every single battle an archtype may enter in. I have mixed feelings on the use of power pools as a solution to unbalance situations, but coding wise may be the most practical way to go about it, of course this article may result with major reqork or updates of the pool powers.

 

Please think of the concept I am trying to explain, and please contribute constructively to this concept. It is great if proposals on how to solve a problem or two can be made that have easier implementations, etc.

 

Thank you

 

 

 

 

[Uun]

1 hour ago, DrRocket said:

Defense available except when attack is non-positional in nature thus breaks the Attack accuracy and dodge balance

Not true. There are two types of defense in the game, positional and typed. While some attacks are non-positional by design, they are still typed. For example, while there are non-positional psionic attacks that bypass positional defense, they can still be defended by psionic defense. A few armor sets have psionic defense - stone, bio, willpower, the psionic mastery set, plus Arachnos Widows. I believe there are also a handful of toxic attacks that bypass typed defense (as there is no toxic defense), but these are pretty rare.

 

1 hour ago, DrRocket said:

Resistance is available against all attacks, yet pragmatic resistance to Psionic and Toxic is not present and thus an unbalance.

Not true. Several of the armor sets have psionic resistance - dark, elec, rad, willpower, as well as the psionic mastery and psychic mastery sets. I believe all the armor sets have toxic resistance. 

 

2 hours ago, DrRocket said:

Resistance is unexistent, combined with absence of protections, there is a clear unbalance.

Not true, there are definitely resistances to -speed, -defense, -endurance, -resist, -regen, etc.

[DrRocket]

1 minute ago, Uun said:

Not true. There are two types of defense in the game, positional and typed. While some attacks are non-positional by design, they are still typed. For example, while there are non-positional psionic attacks that bypass positional defense, they can still be defended by psionic defense. A few armor sets have psionic defense - stone, bio, willpower, the psionic mastery set, plus Arachnos Widows. I believe there are also a handful of toxic attacks that bypass typed defense (as there is no toxic defense), but these are pretty rare.

 

Not true. Several of the armor sets have psionic resistance - dark, elec, rad, willpower, as well as the psionic mastery and psychic mastery sets. I believe all the armor sets have toxic resistance. 

 

Not true, there are definitely resistances to -speed, -defense, -endurance, -resist, -regen, etc.

I do stand corrected, and you have my appreciation for it. I am also very grateful that you gave me samples and explanations that gives me an opportunity to learn.

 

To expand in the psionic and toxic comment, I noted it as pragmatic, and I also noted that for analysis purposes, that they ability had to be across all archtypes and not where one could fish out a few out of the dozens of available archtypes and be able to check the box. For the resistance to be effective, there should be a relative ease to achive the archtype class cap whatever they may be. For example, I noticed for Scrappers the ability to cap defense in both positional and typed all over, is rather easy, while a bit tough for a defender to achieve and usually they are only positional and nearly impossible to accomplished typed. I do conceed that any archtype could use these IOS but the problem for many is that the only way to get a chance to slot resistance based IOs is through tough and maybe an epic pool power, so they can't build it up to have any significant relevance, lets face it 17% resistance is pointless.

 

With regards to debuff resistance once more you are right, you can buy IOs that help. On the otherr hand there are no powers that provides it. Take a tank or scrapper, they have one or more powers that gives them status effect protections, and resistances, yet debuff goes unacknowledged.

 

Once more thank you for your response, and sharing of yuor knowledge

[Outrider_01]

2 hours ago, DrRocket said:

 

My Systems Engineer's view of a sense of balance can be easily go along Newton's law of physics

Bud, I don't have a fancy degree but there is one problem you need to throw out the window:

 

Its a game, none of its real.

 

Just enjoy it as is.  Your suggestion and yes I skimmed it was too in depth,  would require an entire over haul of the game.  CoHV is dead officially,  there is no developer team behind it; its in a care home run by what is essentially a volunteers who ask for donations to keep it going so we can enjoy the nostalgic feeling.

 

2 hours ago, DrRocket said:

Protections is binary in nature, thus pragmatically unbalanced in a sense. Tanks for instance enjoy MAG 12 which is rather good, while Brutes and Scrappers enjoy MAG 8, other archtypes have zero; this does not make sense from a balance for those archtypes do not follow Nweton's law

The game is not binary, surprising to know.  This is your opinion as you see it being linear and binary but Newtons laws don't apply, for 1 action there is another anf I don't mean physical force.  Melee have status protection with defence or resist and squishes don't have it.

 

The game is variable, look at all the AT and their analog for both factions; they are massively different from each other

 

Melee faceroll baddies like a champ squishes go down. They have very little control aside stuns and knocks, very little range.

 

Melee lack the buffs and debuffs the control/support classes have.  One prevents the enemy from acting or weaken the baddie/buff the team mate. Basically you don't need status protection, these classes work fine if you understand them or just take an alpha attack to the chin.

 

And then you get oddballs like sentinel or squids that do a bunch of everything but don't excel at anything. Range or status protection or both.

 

And then you got blasters, the black sheep.  Bit of everything, self buffs or very soft control, no actual inherent status protection and resists.  One thing they excel at is just killing things or die trying, hopefully in a blaze of glory and not a comical death.

[Uun]

2 hours ago, DrRocket said:

With regards to debuff resistance once more you are right, you can buy IOs that help. On the otherr hand there are no powers that provides it. Take a tank or scrapper, they have one or more powers that gives them status effect protections, and resistances, yet debuff goes unacknowledged.

I'm not referring to IOs. There are absolutely powers that provide debuff resistance. All defense-based sets resist defense debuffs. All resistance-based sets resist resistance debuffs. Super Reflexes has resistance to recharge and speed debuffs. Dark Armor has resistance to endurance debuffs. Electric Armor has resistance to endurance, recovery, recharge and speed debuffs. Radiation Armor, Willpower and Regeneration have resistance to regeneration debuffs. This is not an exhaustive list - there's a lot of debuff resistance out there.

[Haijinx]

Some ideas fit in the category of .. they would have been good ideas when COH was in alpha.

 

But its an established game now, and you aren't going to radically change how it plays at this point. 

[Sura]

7 hours ago, DrRocket said:

Take a tank or scrapper, they have one or more powers that gives them status effect protections, and resistances, yet debuff goes unacknowledged.

 

 

Just as a sample: Ice Armor resists -recharge and -movement in Permafrost, Energy Absorption, and Wet Ice, and defense debuffs in Frozen Armor, Glacial Armor, and Wet Ice.

A quick look at Invulnerability also shows resistances to defense debuffs, endurance debuffs, recovery debuffs, -recharge, and -movement.

 

If you load up a character in MIDS and take all of their armor powers you should be able to then click "View Totals" and then go to the bottom part of the Status tab to see debuffs that the armor set is providing resistance to.

Edited December 20, 2019 by Sura
misspelling

[Riverdusk]

13 hours ago, DrRocket said:

 

            Note 1: The various archtypes havfe different magnitudes or caps to resistance, which is fine as long as it is not binary (some has it and other does not) and they do make sense from an archtype perspective. Examples based on MIDS analysis for instance Tanks have a 90% resistnce cap, while I noted that Defenders have a 70% resistance cap which is fine, would be nice to see the resistance caps published, to allow further analysis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Defender's resistance cap is 75%.  I agree it being more clear in game would be nice, but you'll find a good resource here for a lot of the games caps: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Limits

 

Overall that wiki has a lot of good info for you and is worth taking a look through.  It isn't being updated anymore for changes Homecoming is making, but the vast majority of it is still good.

 

[DrRocket]

Hey folks, really thank you for all the responses and documentation that came with them, it truly helps me understand the game beter and to adapt to the various sitations as well.

 

Once more my gratitude.