Scaling enemy buffs

[Parabola]

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the current balance of the game. It is generally accepted that over time the game became easier, at least since the purple patch/gdn/ed rebalances. The IO system gave players a vast amount of extra power and incarnates have layered more on top of that. In addition newer powersets have tended to outshine their older counterparts pulling the general level of power ever upwards.

 

Now some will say that there isn't a problem with this. This is a superhero game after all and superheroes (and villains of course) are by definition supposed to be superpowered. To an extent I agree with this but there is one important area where it causes a big problem; teaming, particularly at high levels. This is an mmo after all, a genre built around the shared experience. It probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise that it's difficult to have a satisfying teaming experience when individual members of the team would be able to solo the content (albeit possibly a bit slower).

 

There are various places we can point the finger for this (more specifically than just IO's or incarnates). Is defence too freely available? The same for recharge? Are individual incarnate powers too strong? Is the level shift a good idea when the difficulty slider doesn't go any higher and the actual incarnate content is sadly limited? I would say yes, yes, yes pretty much all of them, and no...

 

But, we are where we are and the kind of nerfs that would be necessary to bring these systems back under control would be ... unpopular. So I've been giving a bit of thought to whether there might be alternative ways around the problem and have come up with the following. This is far from the finished article but it might be an approach worth discussing.

 

What if we introduce a global enemy buff that scales to both level and team size. The level side would have the buff kick in at a threshold determined by when IO's start to have a significant effect on peoples builds (32?) and scale upwards to 54. The team size side would scale the buff to the team composition rather than the settings (so solo even set to x8 the buff wouldn't come into effect). The buff would only kick in when both factors were in play; in a team and over the threshold level.

 

The buff itself could be to whatever factors were deemed suitable but to-hit, damage, defence and resist might be the places to start. But in addition as a sweetener the xp/inf/drops could also be buffed alongside these.

 

The idea is to incentivise teaming while making it more challenging at high levels without changing the lower level or solo experiences at all. Crushing +4x8 solo will be exactly the same but take some friends into the same mission and the enemies will be harder and more rewards will be available.

 

This may have the potential to address various issues. There are powersets (and arguably entire AT's) that have been completely sidelined in the high level team environment. Support of all kinds would be more welcomed without making it impossible for those same AT's to solo. There would be more space in the power landscape to bring underperforming powers up to scratch without further weakening the teaming experience. And the best part of all is no-one would actually be nerfed!

 

As I said above this isn't completely thought through. There aren't any numbers in this because I wouldn't know where to start... I suggested this in another thread but thought it might be worth getting it more visibility. As I said there I'm probably going to be told 101 reasons why it wouldn't work, but thank you for taking the time to read all this all the same!

[Haijinx]

Interesting idea.

 

I think there does need to be more challenge, coming from somewhere.

 

And that suggestions on how to do that need to be discussed. 

[boggo2300]

I'm wondering, considering the continual screams of anguish caused by special enemy types like Sappers, maybe at the top end of the 50+ enemy trees adding more special type enemies?

[Galaxy Brain]

9 minutes ago, boggo2300 said:

I'm wondering, considering the continual screams of anguish caused by special enemy types like Sappers, maybe at the top end of the 50+ enemy trees adding more special type enemies?

There was another thread talking about just that, "Advanced Enemies" iirc that had bonus powers or the like.

 

Those two combined would be a ton of fun

[boggo2300]

6 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

There was another thread talking about just that, "Advanced Enemies" iirc that had bonus powers or the like.

 

Those two combined would be a ton of fun

I agree I think a combo of this, with the specialised enemies could completely revitalise high level content

[Parabola]

5 hours ago, boggo2300 said:

I'm wondering, considering the continual screams of anguish caused by special enemy types like Sappers, maybe at the top end of the 50+ enemy trees adding more special type enemies?

I could see there being mileage in adding extra capability to boss class enemies at the top end certainly. I think it's important that any changes do not limit the ability of even the weaker AT's to solo (hence the scaling to team size aspect of my idea above). As facing bosses is entirely optional solo it would seem safe enough to give them more capability.

 

We could give boss class enemies versions of the leadership toggles or a version of the mastermind supremacy inherent? Make them truely able to inspire greater performance out of their minions.

[DrRocket]

 

While I applaud the concept of greater challenge...

 

Note nurf can be achieved by reducing what a player can do, or increasing what a mob can do.

 

I do not support nurfing players, usually the nurfing tends to hit certain archtypes much harder than others, so the nurfing thing is just not a good idea.

 

I do not support mobs that essentially either breaks the rules or exploits game imposed vulnerabilities.

 

I do not support increase on challenge by taking it out on the support classes, for instance in the old days, the introduction of mez was that in the then days developers concept of challenge. This challenge was very uneven, especially for support classes that were left totally vulnerable/helpless to these attacks.

 

Scaling the mobs, seems interesting, but the problem is the mixed composition of player levels, experience, and slotting evolution. Also how the scaling works or buff? Suddenly the mobs have better accuracy? Does condemming the support classes whose only practical survival mechanism is not getting hit? and yet have no impact at all on the resistance based classes?

 

I believe trying to do this kind of adjustments to be very difficult, if not downright impossible in such a complex game.

 

I would suggest difficulty could be done by actually having more different maps, so people have to figure their way thru. Another way to make things more complex are the uses of ambushes whose prevention requires careful planning to avoid (ITF) for example, instead of having defense debuffers, maybe having resistance debuffers may give a few archtypes something to fear, etc. 

 

[VileTerror]

I may be wrong, but I believe Galaxy was speaking about:  https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/11876-new-difficulty-mechanic-advanced-enemies/

[Galaxy Brain]

40 minutes ago, DrRocket said:

This challenge was very uneven, especially for support classes that were left totally vulnerable/helpless to these attacks.

This is still sort of the case. Mez in CoH is one of the things I feel was poorly handled overall. Your character essentially either gets wrecked by everything, or is essentially immune to everything depending on the AT, with the very occasional exotic mez like confuse getting through that only a handful of enemies have period.

 

48 minutes ago, DrRocket said:

Suddenly the mobs have better accuracy? Does condemming the support classes whose only practical survival mechanism is not getting hit? and yet have no impact at all on the resistance based classes?

This will impact everyone more or less equally since mobs have a base 50% chance to hit you anyways, compared to a player's 75% base hit chance. A Resistance character still benefits from not being hit by 50% of incoming damage, and with more enemy accuracy a defense character will still benefit greatly from avoiding more hits than the resist based guy.

 

50 minutes ago, DrRocket said:

I would suggest difficulty could be done by actually having more different maps, so people have to figure their way thru.

This... wouldn't be that hard given all the movement capabilities. Unless you mean like you have to do more stuff in the map like bust through walls / find hidden stuff or something?

 

51 minutes ago, DrRocket said:

Another way to make things more complex are the uses of ambushes whose prevention requires careful planning to avoid (ITF) for example, instead of having defense debuffers, maybe having resistance debuffers may give a few archtypes something to fear, etc. 

 

Resistance based ATs already fear more due to those debuffs. A Defense character avoids *everything* when they dodge an attack, while a Resist character still eats whatever debuffs were attached to the attack they tanked. This is what makes Defense way more valuable than Resistances even if it appears that resists are more stable.

 

48 minutes ago, VileTerror said:

I may be wrong, but I believe Galaxy was speaking about:  https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/11876-new-difficulty-mechanic-advanced-enemies/

Yep! Thats the one 🙂 

[Parabola]

2 hours ago, DrRocket said:

Scaling the mobs, seems interesting, but the problem is the mixed composition of player levels, experience, and slotting evolution. Also how the scaling works or buff? Suddenly the mobs have better accuracy? Does condemming the support classes whose only practical survival mechanism is not getting hit? and yet have no impact at all on the resistance based classes?

It is with the support classes firmly in mind that I make this suggestion. The core issue as I see it is that too often in the late game the need for support is diminished by the general power level of their teammates. Often +damage is the only worthwhile buff because that's not something that can be built up with IO's and incarnates. The idea of buffing the enemies specifically in the team environment is that it would bring more buffs and debuffs into relevance. Bear in mind also that as this would only kick in while teaming the same support character would still be able to solo as well as before, all that would change is that they would be more useful on teams.

 

The point about slotting evolution is true. This idea is making an assumption that people are slotting IO's and the level threshold for the buff to start kicking in would be set based on when on average IO's start to have an impact on the power of characters. Bear in mind though that the buff would be scaling up from nothing so it would have a small effect initially.

 

I would argue that even for a character that only slots SO's and doesn't incarnate this would still be of benefit to their game experience. They will still be able to solo as well as before and on teams they will be likely to have more to do than just standing back watching everyone else faceroll with nukes and judgements. Sure, if someone was dead set on running an SO only, no incarnates tank in teams of 8 people and they didn't have much support with them then this would make life a little rougher, but I doubt many choose to play that way.

[oedipus_tex]

I like these ideas. Personally I wish we raise the aggro cap significantly and then base a penalty based on the number of enemies engaged.

 

Currently we have an "implicit" penalty in that more enemies = more in coming damage which in theory makes survival harder.

 

An explicit penalty would actually lower your stats as the number of engaged enemies crept too high. No longer can you assume after 16 enemies everything stands around ignoring you. It not only attacks, it attacks for more damage than it normally would, and your defenses, resistance, and other values continue to deplete as additional enemies are added.

 

This mechanic exists in some other RPGs. It makes it possible to have an armorer class that functions well when squaring off with a single enemy (a Stalker, say) but falters when surrounded.

 

 

Edited January 3, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Galaxy Brain]

Increasing the aggro cap to 20 or so would be interesting, and technically increase the incoming damage by 25%

[Riverdusk]

@parabola's idea of leadership buffs is a good one. 

 

Honestly enemy groups could do with an overall balancing pass.  I find it kinda sad that groups never want to fight carnies or malta for instance.  I see way too often in LFG channel things like "Level 50 PI team LFM, doing council missions only!"  So, the "harder" groups need better rewards and/or the easier groups do some more challenge.  At the same I wouldn't want to make the game any harder for those that aren't optimized and just want to do the game at +0/x1 so maybe have the tougher mobs only kick in when the difficulty is upped to a certain point (again maybe with a reward bump to make it worth it).

[boggo2300]

39 minutes ago, Riverdusk said:

@parabola's idea of leadership buffs is a good one. 

 

Honestly enemy groups could do with an overall balancing pass.  I find it kinda sad that groups never want to fight carnies or malta for instance.  I see way too often in LFG channel things like "Level 50 PI team LFM, doing council missions only!"  So, the "harder" groups need better rewards and/or the easier groups do some more challenge.  At the same I wouldn't want to make the game any harder for those that aren't optimized and just want to do the game at +0/x1 so maybe have the tougher mobs only kick in when the difficulty is upped to a certain point (again maybe with a reward bump to make it worth it).

Alternatively the faceroll groups like council need additional difficulty bumps to bring them to the level of carnies or malta,  I think that city already over rewards, but rather than nerf, I think we can balance by equalising enemy difficulty at the higher end rather than the lower

[Haijinx]

2 hours ago, boggo2300 said:

Alternatively the faceroll groups like council need additional difficulty bumps to bring them to the level of carnies or malta,  I think that city already over rewards, but rather than nerf, I think we can balance by equalising enemy difficulty at the higher end rather than the lower

Its definitely a level 35+ progressively worse situation. 

 

You aren't facerolling stuff at max difficulty at level 25, even on a decent team.

 

And some groups are def harder.  Like longbow and their freaking grav controller singularity death squads. 

[Haijinx]

So yeah maybe one idea would be to buff certain enemy groups.

 

Council have def debufs with their assault rifles?  What if you gave them aim so they could actually hit you?  

[boggo2300]

19 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Its definitely a level 35+ progressively worse situation. 

 

You aren't facerolling stuff at max difficulty at level 25, even on a decent team.

 

And some groups are def harder.  Like longbow and their freaking grav controller singularity death squads. 

oh sorry wasn't clear I was talking about 40+ stuff specifically about the PI selective enemy phenomenon 

[boggo2300]

16 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

So yeah maybe one idea would be to buff certain enemy groups.

 

Council have def debufs with their assault rifles?  What if you gave them aim so they could actually hit you?  

exactly that sort of thing would help a LOT I think

[Haijinx]

Just now, boggo2300 said:

oh sorry wasn't clear I was talking about 40+ stuff specifically about the PI selective enemy phenomenon 

I think all the underperforming baddies should get fixed though.

[boggo2300]

5 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

I think all the underperforming baddies should get fixed though.

Oh I agree, though gotta start somewhere and I think starting at the top of the level range gives us more bang for our buck so to speak

[Haijinx]

Just now, boggo2300 said:

Oh I agree, though gotta start somewhere and I think starting at the top of the level range gives us more bang for our buck so to speak

Also, player power is low enough at low levels.

 

Level 50-54 Council would be best place to start, since they are the preferred target to faceroll.

 

Suggesting that people know they are wimps.

[boggo2300]

Just now, Haijinx said:

Also, player power is low enough at low levels.

 

Level 50-54 Council would be best place to start, since they are the preferred target to faceroll.

 

Suggesting that people know they are wimps.

I don't get it myself, I really LOVE fighting Carnies and Malta at 40+ I LIKE having to use tactics and low animal cunning (my speciality) people are weird :nod: giving nosferatu and warwolves sniper detection at higher levels could be nice as well

[oedipus_tex]

Well if you can deal with the complaints, find more ways for enemies to cut through player mezz protection. That will jack the difficulty up real quick. 

 

One of the biggest mistakes I always felt like CoX developers made was making melee characters functionally immune to most mezzes. This is partly related to the sheer harshness of mezz itself.

 

I'd rather a system where most enemy mezzes are in the 0.33 to 0.5 Magnitude range, and players start with 1.0 mezz protection. The mezzes therefor would only take hold if you got a few of them stacked on you. With very difficult enemies having some mezzes that can truly grab you in one shot.

 

The huge number of enemies that can instantly hold an unprotected character makes Carnies/Malta etc pure hell. If their intensity was lowered for unprotected characters but they had some possibility to mezz protected characters there'd be a better balance.

 

 

Edited January 4, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[boggo2300]

32 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

Well if you can deal with the complaints, find more ways for enemies to cut through player mezz protection. That will jack the difficulty up real quick. 

 

One of the biggest mistakes I always felt like CoX developers made was making melee characters functionally immune to most mezzes. This is partly related to the sheer harshness of mezz itself.

 

I'd rather a system where most enemy mezzes are in the 0.33 to 0.5 Magnitude range, and players start with 1.0 mezz protection. The mezzes therefor would only take hold if you got a few of them stacked on you. With very difficult enemies having some mezzes that can truly grab you in one shot.

 

The huge number of enemies that can instantly hold an unprotected character makes Carnies/Malta etc pure hell. If their intensity was lowered for unprotected characters but they had some possibility to mezz protected characters there'd be a better balance.

 

 

I play a blaster not built for any extra mez protection  Mezz isn't the big monster under the bed it's built up to be

[Myrmidon]

2 hours ago, boggo2300 said:

I don't get it myself, I really LOVE fighting Carnies and Malta at 40+ I LIKE having to use tactics and low animal cunning (my speciality) people are weird :nod: giving nosferatu and warwolves sniper detection at higher levels could be nice as well

 The only thing I dislike about Carnies is the phasing annoyance,  however, I do love me some Malta.