"Multi Opponent Combat" Stat, or, How to Handle Players With Runaway Survivability

[oedipus_tex]

Hi all,

 

This suggestion is not a "real" suggestion for the main game in the sense that this is something we could implement in a direct way. IMO the change is too drastic. It's just meant to serve as a theoretical model for how to fix an issue that has cropped up in City of Heroes. If anything, it could be the model for a new zone or series of iTrials. 

 

The question this model hopes to answer is: How do you challenge players with extremely high Defense and Resistance without killing players without high survival statistics? 

 

The solution I am proposing is a statistic called Multi Opponent Combat.

 

 

 

Concept: Multi Opponent Combat Statistic

This idea is not new. In this case, I am borrowing from a series of titles run by the Simutronics corporation called "Dragonrealms" and "Gemstone IV." These online text-based games have been with us since the late 80s (Gemstone) and mid 90s (Dragonrealms). Though little known outside of MUD circles, they are still praised for their excellent game mechanics and attention to detail. (Their combat system includes damage to limbs and healing that involves scars. I won't get into that level of detail in this post but it might be worth checking out if you're curious).

 

These games, in addition to a combat statistic for "Evasion" "Parry" and "Shield Block" (more or less our "Defense") have a statistic called "Multi Opponent" that registers the degradation of the character's defenses when engaged with multiple opponents. The idea is that a player character facing a single opponent should have high survivability, but as more opponents are added, survivability should drop. 

 

 

 

How Multi Opponent Stat Could Work in City of Heroes

In City of Heroes, we have an implicit drop in survivability when more opponents are facing the character. More in coming damage = more chances to take damage.

 

A Multi Opponent Combat statistic penalizes players explicitly for engaging too many opponents. Thus it is possible for there to be no aggro cap. Too many opponents will spell death for any hero, and he or she must actively disengage when overwhelmed.

 

The idea is that with a Multi Opponent Statistic you make it possible for a character to be very survivable against a handful of enemies but for their survivability to plummet when they engage too many.

 

Thus, as content developers, we have a new way to put some controls on runaway Defense and Resistance stats. We can say that a soft capped Blaster is only capped for the first 5 opponents. Then start to drop their defense for each additional opponent.

 

Tankers would naturally have the highest Multi Opponent Skill numbers. They'd suffer the least.

 

 

The Numbers

I don't have any charts for how light or extreme Multi Opponent Combat statistics would work. The existing of a "soft cap" in City of Heroes makes it hard.

 

What I would probably do tho is create a table of values like this:

 

 

Amount of defense and resist a character has for each relative enemy in the list beyond the Start Line:

2) -1 Defense, -2% resist 

3) -2 Defense, -3% resist

4) -2 Defense, -4% resist

5) -3 Defense, -5% resist

6) -3 Defense, -6% resist

7) -4 Defense, -7% resist

 ...

 

Each step on the table represents -Defense and -Resist incurred. These values are then reduced by a factor of the character's Multi Opponent Combat stat. 

 

Note that these values don't mean that at 7 opponents the character has a global -4 Defense -7 resist. It means they have that penalty for the 7th enemy past the Start Line. The enemy at position 2 has the values as Position 2. The enemy at position 4 has the values at Position 4. You'd want to scramble the aggro list every few seconds, so enemies are constantly changing positions in the list. 

 

Also note the concept of a Start Line. The Start Line is the number of enemies developers feel it is "acceptable" for a character to enagage before the combat penalties begin. For a Tanker this may as high as 16 (they're supposed to be engaging lots of enemies) but for a Blaster as low as 1 or 2.

 

Since Multi Opponent Combat is a statistic, it is possible some buffs Defenders/Controllers can cast can help the team out. Dispersion Bubble might make fighting multi opponents easier for example. In this way you make Force Field's defense more meaningful.

 

 

Nutshell Version

In essence, what I'm really saying is that the path forward may lie in adding a "Purple Patch" for the number of enemies engaged similar to how the current patch applies to level differences between character and enemy. As enemies are added to the aggro list, penalties are incurred. 

 

Again I don't suggest dropping this mechanic into the existing game. I'm just theorycrafting it and presenting it as an idea for how you can have Defense and Resistance still be valuable but still challenge players.

[Razor Cure]

I think its quite a good theory.

Obviously back when CoX was new, the devs did not intend us to solo AVs and GMs, or fight massive mobs or EBs and not die (fire farms etc). Yet now we can do that, thanks to IOs and Incarnates. Which..to be honest..IS pretty awesome. I mean, it is a game about being a super hero, not just a 'decent kinda fighter guy who can take on 2 people at once.' I guess the trouble is finding a balance between what we can and cant do (such as..why does an AV class baddie have 20 times our hp and damage, when we ARE an incarnate) and to what is still actually fun (and not just turn the game into stomping ebs like minions).

The amount of outcry that would happen, compared to any balance 'fixing' could be crazy! And I guess it depends on what teh dev team wants to do..since anyone can finds one of the super super servers and become unkillable (or unable to solo an AV).

My suggestion, which I wouldnt even LIKE, ha, is to simply put more caps of the Def/Res values of various archtypes. I mean, really..does it make sense that a blaster can get to the defence cap, by themselves?

[oedipus_tex]

19 minutes ago, Razor Cure said:

I think its quite a good theory.

Obviously back when CoX was new, the devs did not intend us to solo AVs and GMs, or fight massive mobs or EBs and not die (fire farms etc). Yet now we can do that, thanks to IOs and Incarnates. Which..to be honest..IS pretty awesome. I mean, it is a game about being a super hero, not just a 'decent kinda fighter guy who can take on 2 people at once.' I guess the trouble is finding a balance between what we can and cant do (such as..why does an AV class baddie have 20 times our hp and damage, when we ARE an incarnate) and to what is still actually fun (and not just turn the game into stomping ebs like minions).

The amount of outcry that would happen, compared to any balance 'fixing' could be crazy! And I guess it depends on what teh dev team wants to do..since anyone can finds one of the super super servers and become unkillable (or unable to solo an AV).

My suggestion, which I wouldnt even LIKE, ha, is to simply put more caps of the Def/Res values of various archtypes. I mean, really..does it make sense that a blaster can get to the defence cap, by themselves?

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

I agree the outcry would be extreme. I wish there were some way to have a "difficult" server with higher difficulty than the main ones. I suspect this server would be extremely popular if the mechanics were done right. 

 

One thing I don't agree with is more defense and resistance caps. I think those are fine. 

 

For example, let's say I'm a Controller. I play on teams, and usually I'm pretty good at not drawing too much aggro. But sometimes I slip up and an enemy comes running up at me. I can get some Defense to make these encounters more survivable. I consider this fine.

 

Where the issue comes in is that the game mechanics for making me survivable to potshots by a single enemy are the same for dealing with full spawns. This is why the soft cap is so effective at making me able to survive. When I dive into a group of 16 enemies, I'm soft capped to all 16 of them.

 

With a Multi Opponent Component in place, I'd be fine dealing with just 1 enemy. But when I tried to engage lots of enemies at once, each successive enemy gets harder to deal with. The enemy in the 16th position may be incredibly dangerous to deal with. The list would shuffle periodically, so I'd never know for sure which enemy was in which position.

 

One thing this also does is "smooth out" the soft cap. Right now if you're at 40% defense you have half as much defense as a character at 45% defense, for the whole spawn. With Multi Opponent stat in place, you're soft capped to some of the enemies, but a couple of them you are not. So the difference is not nearly as stark.

Edited January 6, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Razor Cure]

7 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

When I dive into a group of 16 enemies, I'm soft capped to all 16 of them.

Very true..but it does not quite work out that way, every time. 16 baddies means 16 times MORE likely one will hit you (granted, that chance is still low). I remember seeing things like this in RSF, way back when. Doing the Stone brute/7 corr ones. The brute pops 2 large lucks, taking him to 50?% def to all. Even then, facing 'only' 8 baddies (admittedly, lvl 53 Hero baddies) it was still quite easy to die, from 2 hits getting through at once.

[oedipus_tex]

7 minutes ago, Razor Cure said:

Very true..but it does not quite work out that way, every time. 16 baddies means 16 times MORE likely one will hit you (granted, that chance is still low). I remember seeing things like this in RSF, way back when. Doing the Stone brute/7 corr ones. The brute pops 2 large lucks, taking him to 50?% def to all. Even then, facing 'only' 8 baddies (admittedly, lvl 53 Hero baddies) it was still quite easy to die, from 2 hits getting through at once.

 

Yes, there is currently an implicit penalty when you add another enemy. The proposal is for an explicit penalty that increases with additional enemy past the Start Line for the AT/Power Set.

 

The original developers of CoX felt that an implicit penalty was enough. Not all games do this. Some include an explicit penalty. 

 

The reason it would help City of Heroes is that currently, if you increase your defense from 40% to 45% you reduce all in coming damage by 50%. If each attack had a different chance to hit you, though, you'd smooth out the soft cap. If the Start Line was 3 opponents, the decrease in damage taken would be 50% for the first 3 opponents. But it would be 40% for the fourth opponent, 30% for the fifth, etc. Overall damage taken would not cut in half like it currently does just because a character acquired 5% defense.

 

BTW I forgot to mention one critical thing. Because the intent is to put limits on characters whose Defense and Resists are very high, the penalty would need to be a multiplier and not a hard -1, -2, etc. A character with zero defense wouldn't lose even more Defense when under a Multi Opponent Combat penalty. They'd stay at zero. The penalty represents degredation in your performance and not a new penalty meant to smash unarmored players to bits.

Edited January 6, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[siolfir]

52 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

The original developers of CoX felt that an implicit penalty was enough.

The original developers not only felt that an implicit penalty was enough, they also have many powers - both offensive and defensive - scale based on the number of mobs around you specifically to reduce that implicit penalty or increase their effectiveness due to the greater inherent risk. This proposal seems to ignore and/or overlook those, based on a premise that "too many mobs around you" is the problem, and really just shifts priorities to extra AoE burst damage to trim the fat.

 

Guess what? Everybody already has AoE burst with Incarnates.

[oedipus_tex]

20 minutes ago, siolfir said:

The original developers not only felt that an implicit penalty was enough, they also have many powers - both offensive and defensive - scale based on the number of mobs around you specifically to reduce that implicit penalty or increase their effectiveness due to the greater inherent risk. This proposal seems to ignore and/or overlook those, based on a premise that "too many mobs around you" is the problem, and really just shifts priorities to extra AoE burst damage to trim the fat.

 

Guess what? Everybody already has AoE burst with Incarnates.

 

The existence of powers that gain strength when more enemies are around you has always been counter balanced by the threat those enemies present to you. On squishy characters in particular, most of those powers were actually designed with the idea that entertaining too many enemies at once was risky but by taking the risk you should gain some reward. Nothing changes there, just the degree of the threat they pose when the character is heavily armored in ways the game didn't originally anticipate.

[Outrider_01]

Increase NPC  accuracy so they hit more often, defense/resist, increase resistance to debuff, and have them apply stronger debuffs.  Seems like an easier fix.

[siolfir]

9 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

The existence of powers that gain strength when more enemies are around you has always been counter balanced by the threat those enemies present to you.

And the effect of those powers was theoretically balanced around the amount of threat, so an increase in the amount of threat would disproportionately affect the powersets that use those powers as a significant portion of their mitigation, while not decreasing the relative mitigation of sets that do not change defense/resistance/regeneration values or offensive buffs (to-hit/damage) of powersets based on the number of enemies around you. That's the part you're ignoring.

Edited January 6, 2020 by siolfir
(included offensive effects)

[Saiyajinzoningen]

some super powered chars specialize in fighting multiple foes at once tho

[nihilii]

I'm starting to believe oedipus is Jack's secret account. :P

The playerbase rejoiced when the "1 hero = 3 minions" guideline was slain for good. IMHO, that was for the best.

Dynamic stat changes on mobs ruin immersion, at least for me. It turns every encounter into an Excel spreadsheet. There's better ways to do difficulty, many of which are already in the game.

Take unresistable damage for example. The Apex TF is a prime example of content forcing "faceroll-keyboard" melee players, without trivializing them completely. Incarnate trials in general tend to make melee work harder, without obliterating squishier characters.

 

Debuffs and buffs also work great in limiting the ability for a single character to be thoughtless. +4/x8 Awakened are far above and beyond any fire farm.

It's tempting to reinvent the wheel when we see a problem, but is the problem properly defined? Given that we have numerous options for higher difficulty content yet players prefer to run easier content, it suggests the problem may not lie with difficulty, but rather with attracting players to harder content.

Rebalancing risk/reward by buffing rewards of harder mob groups or harder difficulty options might achieve more than introducing complex mechanics that will push players to abuse the new rules in a way it stays as easy as before.

[oedipus_tex]

4 hours ago, nihilii said:

I'm starting to believe oedipus is Jack's secret account. 😛
 

 

Busted. 😛

 

 

In full disclosure, I was a developer on a game that had this mechanic and I think the system would work well for City of Heroes. I would not actually implement it in the main game for reasons described in the original post. It would be a way to make end-game content more exciting without destroying characters who haven't been armored.

Edited January 6, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[oedipus_tex]

4 hours ago, Saiyajinzoningen said:

some super powered chars specialize in fighting multiple foes at once tho

 

 

Yes, that is part of the design. In this sort of system, there is a Stat that explicitly makes some characters better at dealing with multiple opponents. 

 

I think there is an optional rules of this sort for Dungeons and Dragons. I haven't played the most recent versions. The rule is that an attacker gets a bonus based on whether they are attacking from the flank or behind. D&D uses the same 95% chance to hit system as City of Heroes (a roll of 1 on a 1d20 = auto miss, 20= auto hit). In that optional system, a player faced with 6 enemies would face one enemy at full defense, some at reduced defense, others at extreme disadvantage.

 

The reason for rules like this goes back to the way soft capping works:

• In a non-penalizes system, if you can be hit on a roll of 19 or 20, and you increase your defense by 1, you've reduced all in coming damage by 50%
• In a penalized system, if you can be hit on a roll of 19 or 20, and you increase your defense by 1, you've reduced in coming damage for the first enemy by 50%, but not as much for all other enemies

The rule is common on a lot of tactical RPGs to avoid issues like City of Heroes has with binary defense, where the developer gives the players a spell that increases defense a nudge but it ends up cutting all in coming damage in half.

 

[Infinitum]

51 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

 

Yes, that is part of the design. In this sort of system, there is a Stat that explicitly makes some characters better at dealing with multiple opponents. 

 

I think there is an optional rules of this sort for Dungeons and Dragons. I haven't played the most recent versions. The rule is that an attacker gets a bonus based on whether they are attacking from the flank or behind. D&D uses the same 95% chance to hit system as City of Heroes (a roll of 1 on a 1d20 = auto miss, 20= auto hit). In that optional system, a player faced with 6 enemies would face one enemy at full defense, some at reduced defense, others at extreme disadvantage.

 

The reason for rules like this goes back to the way soft capping works:

• In a non-penalizes system, if you can be hit on a roll of 19 or 20, and you increase your defense by 1, you've reduced all in coming damage by 50%
• In a penalized system, if you can be hit on a roll of 19 or 20, and you increase your defense by 1, you've reduced in coming damage for the first enemy by 50%, but not as much for all other enemies

The rule is common on a lot of tactical RPGs to avoid issues like City of Heroes has with binary defense, where the developer gives the players a spell that increases defense a nudge but it ends up cutting all in coming damage in half.

 

I think it would defeat the purpose for sets like SR and Ninjitsu being set up like they are and eliminate their use on a team for the end game content you are suggesting.

 

Like others have mentioned, what you are suggesting already exists in the forms of various resistance, defense, to hit, and recharge debuffs for the end game.

 

Could you add more difficulty levels? sure, but adding this could grenade some sets usefulness because of the debuffs that are already present.

 

There was also a suggestion in another thread to have the enemies call for help to increase difficulty which I thought sounded pretty cool.

[oedipus_tex]

13 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

I think it would defeat the purpose for sets like SR and Ninjitsu being set up like they are and eliminate their use on a team for the end game content you are suggesting.

 

Like others have mentioned, what you are suggesting already exists in the forms of various resistance, defense, to hit, and recharge debuffs for the end game.

 

Could you add more difficulty levels? sure, but adding this could grenade some sets usefulness because of the debuffs that are already present.

 

There was also a suggestion in another thread to have the enemies call for help to increase difficulty which I thought sounded pretty cool.

 

 

Fair points. Super Reflexes is a set I assume in this imaginary system would have a high Multi Opponent modifier. That is the reason Multi Opponent is a stat. Some sets would be better at it than others and Super Reflexes, both conceptually and because it would need to do well with multiple opponents, would be one such set.

 

As far as this system existing in the current game, it doesn't in the form I'm explaining. You have some cascading systems like Defense Debuff that can simulate the effect to an extent and I think were well used. Some games uses an explicit flanking system. City of Heroes does not. Instead we have an aggro cap where we forcefully cut off the number of attackers at 16. This is because the nature of the combat system makes it possible to survive inbound damage from any number of opponents, since adding each additional opponent does not penalize you beyond having to roll against a new opponent.

 

As a math problem, the conundrum facing any developer hoping to make challenging content is that if a player currently has 40 defense and they increase that to 45, they cut the damage they take in half to all attackers. The only  (EDIT: I'll use softer language, Let's just say "a possible") way to deal with that is to give some of the attackers an accuracy roll that differs from the other attackers. 

There are other potential ways to deal with it, but the next consideration is how do you do that fairly without destroying players who haven't armored heavily? That's part of the challenge with using Defense Debuff or other systems. Right now we tend to end up with characters who are either extremely survivable or dead in seconds. The math makes it hard to find an in between.

Edited January 6, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

On 1/5/2020 at 5:42 PM, oedipus_tex said:

 

The existence of powers that gain strength when more enemies are around you has always been counter balanced by the threat those enemies present to you. On squishy characters in particular, most of those powers were actually designed with the idea that entertaining too many enemies at once was risky but by taking the risk you should gain some reward. Nothing changes there, just the degree of the threat they pose when the character is heavily armored in ways the game didn't originally anticipate.

This is just simply false, and very much against the nature of some power sets. Some power sets by design thrive when facing many enemies, and suffer against just a couple. These are power sets by design meant to face and defeat numbers that would overwhelm other sets.

 

A great example would be regen vs will power. Will powers rise to the challenge is dependent upon mobs It is not uncommon for the sudden depletion of mobs around a will power user to actually get sucker punched and dropped because their regen factor vanishes out from under them. Meanwhile a regen thrives against a single AV and will be able to go toe to toe with that lone AV in a way a will power cant.

 

These solo vs group designs are not accidents. They are options to build specialists that do specific tasks better.

 

This entire thread is frankly talking about a terrible idea for the kind of setting we are playing in a super power game. I can recall back in D&D there was a mechanic added in a campaign setting to allow massive numbers of weak creatures like kobolds to become real threats even to guys with max AC. It was called Overwhelming numbers, and while on paper and in theory it sounded logical and a good idea so the masses of kobold minions of the dragon could actually hinder and hurt the high level party the adventure was designed for.

 

I ran that campaign over the years for many groups, it was called Dragon Mountain and is one of the older iconic boxed sets. And not one player of any of the warrior classes ever did other then complain and in some cases outright quit the game if such a BS mechanic was being added just to make trash mobs become a threat.

 

There is also a lot of talk about adding challenge to the game. We dont need to. You want challenge you make a challenge build, not a meta build. You make a poor man build not a half a bil build. There is plenty of challenge in CoH for challenge gamers. Power gamers are not actually challenge gamers, as the point of being a power gamer is to reduce challenge and stack the game in your favor negating as much threat to your character as possible. I understand this as I have and can be both types depending on my mood. I have a stalker that I took no heal powers with, did not take the end defensive power, built to run with teams and has vengeance, ignored the ever useful body mastery for weapon mastery because he is a batman homage. I made him as human as I can. I even refuse to give him an incarnate lvl shift and yet he still performs very well running lvl 50+ content because I know how to use what I have. However I wont claim for a 2nd he is on par with a different stalker I built to be a super natural god like entity, nor my dark/bio RP character that still ended up so powerful because of the concept I was after with him that he ended up a pretty good farm build even though I dont really like farming at all.

 

I personally oppose any attempt to push for content designed for top tier builds and players. I do not want content that I have to be picky about who joins, and will make casuals feel like dead weight on.

[Galaxy Brain]

@Bentley Berkeley, issue is that if a top tier player joins a team they can reasonably solo it while the team sits back

 

Edit: and as other threads pointed out, a seperate but relevant issue is that easy mobs (like Council) give the exact same reward a hard mobs (like Carnies / Malta)

Edited January 7, 2020 by Galaxy Brain

[oedipus_tex]

 

2 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

This is just simply false, and very much against the nature of some power sets. Some power sets by design thrive when facing many enemies, and suffer against just a couple. These are power sets by design meant to face and defeat numbers that would overwhelm other sets.

 

We are in agreement and that is what this proposal is about. That's what't this model is, a system to add a combat statistic that makes some archetypes and power sets better at handling multiple opponents than others. 

 

You seem to believe this is about finding a way to kill players unfairly. Maybe that's a problem with how I worded it In fact its about a way to kill them less often and in ways that are fairer.

 

Here's a math question. If a player is at 45% defense and against 16 enemies and I reduce his defense by just 5%, how much extra damage does that character take?

 

The answer right now is double damage against every single enemy. What that means in effect is that even the tiniest reduction in a character's defense will squash them in seconds. That puts a content developer in a real quagmire.

 

The source of this math problem goes back to what was actually originally an oversight in City of Heroe's dodge chances. The oversight is so embedded in the game now that addressing it would require a City of Heroes 2. To put the problem into old school tabletop terms, all of the enemies are kobolds swinging axes that will hit on a natural 20 and miss on a 1. 

 

So the way you address this is the way you deal with it in a 1d20 system. You add flanking so that each individual enemy has a somewhat different chance to hit. Then, to make sure characters who are supposed to be good at dealing with multiple opponents do so, you use a Multi Opponent skill or statistic to offset the disadvantage. The result is some characters who deal better with Multiple Opponents. And a system where adding or taking away 1 point of defense (5% in City of Heroes terms) doesn't destroy a character instantly.

 

The system isn't something I invented. It's widely used in the gaming industry to address the curse of the "miss on 1."

Edited January 7, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Leogunner]

On 1/6/2020 at 8:48 AM, nihilii said:

I'm starting to believe oedipus is Jack's secret account. 😛

The playerbase rejoiced when the "1 hero = 3 minions" guideline was slain for good. IMHO, that was for the best.

Dynamic stat changes on mobs ruin immersion, at least for me. It turns every encounter into an Excel spreadsheet. There's better ways to do difficulty, many of which are already in the game. 

 

I'd argue the opposite. When you cap those stats and get a certain level of survivability, the fight is a spreadsheet of how long you can survive and how fast the mobs drop. Dynamic is unpredictability. Guess what else is unpredictable. 

[Leogunner]

7 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

This is just simply false, and very much against the nature of some power sets. Some power sets by design thrive when facing many enemies, and suffer against just a couple. These are power sets by design meant to face and defeat numbers that would overwhelm other sets.

 

A great example would be regen vs will power. Will powers rise to the challenge is dependent upon mobs It is not uncommon for the sudden depletion of mobs around a will power user to actually get sucker punched and dropped because their regen factor vanishes out from under them. Meanwhile a regen thrives against a single AV and will be able to go toe to toe with that lone AV in a way a will power cant.

 

These solo vs group designs are not accidents. They are options to build specialists that do specific tasks better.

 

This entire thread is frankly talking about a terrible idea for the kind of setting we are playing in a super power game. I can recall back in D&D there was a mechanic added in a campaign setting to allow massive numbers of weak creatures like kobolds to become real threats even to guys with max AC. It was called Overwhelming numbers, and while on paper and in theory it sounded logical and a good idea so the masses of kobold minions of the dragon could actually hinder and hurt the high level party the adventure was designed for.

 

I ran that campaign over the years for many groups, it was called Dragon Mountain and is one of the older iconic boxed sets. And not one player of any of the warrior classes ever did other then complain and in some cases outright quit the game if such a BS mechanic was being added just to make trash mobs become a threat.

 

There is also a lot of talk about adding challenge to the game. We dont need to. You want challenge you make a challenge build, not a meta build. You make a poor man build not a half a bil build. There is plenty of challenge in CoH for challenge gamers. Power gamers are not actually challenge gamers, as the point of being a power gamer is to reduce challenge and stack the game in your favor negating as much threat to your character as possible. I understand this as I have and can be both types depending on my mood. I have a stalker that I took no heal powers with, did not take the end defensive power, built to run with teams and has vengeance, ignored the ever useful body mastery for weapon mastery because he is a batman homage. I made him as human as I can. I even refuse to give him an incarnate lvl shift and yet he still performs very well running lvl 50+ content because I know how to use what I have. However I wont claim for a 2nd he is on par with a different stalker I built to be a super natural god like entity, nor my dark/bio RP character that still ended up so powerful because of the concept I was after with him that he ended up a pretty good farm build even though I dont really like farming at all.

 

I personally oppose any attempt to push for content designed for top tier builds and players. I do not want content that I have to be picky about who joins, and will make casuals feel like dead weight on.

For all your past talk about expressing pride in overcoming difficult challenges, you copped out of this discussion pretty cowardly. Not saying you don't like challenge but at least entertain a hypothetical to present some argument besides feelings. 

 

To me, I can see this suggestion having some merit if choosing to take on more foes came at a cost of a certain level of potency. As is, there is no give and take therefore more is better. Always. There's no variety in tactics. 

 

I'd go on but I'm on my phone. I think if handled right, people would be angry about it but you could still accomplish solo at x8 just not as quickly, safely or high level. 

 

That all being said, a lot of the blow back you'd get isn't because the game would suddenly be tougher. Lots of players are more ego driven and not being able to do something they once could is the crux, even if team dynamics, tactics and more challenge is the positive the change brings. 

Edited January 7, 2020 by Leogunner

[nihilii]

15 hours ago, Leogunner said:

Dynamic is unpredictability

As a deterministic scaling -def -res per added mob, you should have perfect predictability on what happens to you according to the size of the encounter. Hence the Excel spreadsheet in my perspective, you're down to minmaxing the number of mobs you want to engage.

In a larger sense, if you meant to argue unpredictability makes for difficulty, I can't disagree with that. But getting oneshot also makes for difficulty. Having 19 chances out of 20 to miss also makes for difficulty. Difficulty in itself isn't inherently interesting. It's no surprise computer RPGs eventually moved away from their dice roll tabletop roots. Winning through random events (whether true randomness or something you can't control in practical terms) just isn't as satisfying as winning through deliberate choices.

Global mob buff through dynamic stat change is likely to result in everyone sticking to the same fire farms or council radio missions, maybe taking a little more pain, probably bitching at other players more often. The game used to be harder by virtue of player characters being weaker, and that didn't encourage better behavior. If anything, we had more healbots and tauntbots then than we do now.

Enhancing rewards for harder mob groups stands a greater chance to push players towards harder content. TFs are highly popular thanks to the merit system. Mothership raids went bananas when Homecoming had fantastic Vanguard Merits -> Merits conversion rates.

Even with say, -20% def and -30% res, a Council map isn't remotely as threatening as an Awakened or Praetorian mission.

[Galaxy Brain]

(In b4 people realize that video games are actually databases / spreadsheets in disguise)

[Haijinx]

This just seems so complicated.  However I support the goal.  

 

 

[boggo2300]

18 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

(In b4 people realize that video games are actually databases / spreadsheets in disguise)

tooooo laaaate!

[summers]

Part of the thrill of this game is fighting hordes of enemies at once, and for a Superhero game it is fitting to fight off packs of henchmen or against impossible odds. So sadly I can't say I like this idea at all...