Homecoming Statistics: March 2020

[Coyotedancer]

It's not necessarily *only* a matter of raw AT power and team efficacy driving those numbers, though. People enjoying different things also plays a part, I think...

 

As effective as they may be, not everyone WANTS to play a Brute with its go-go-go style of Constant Smash.

Not everyone wants to stand back and do crowd control instead of blowing the goons sky high. 

Some players may not feel comfortable constantly juggling powers between three different forms.  

Not everyone is into the idea of micro-managing five nutball Ninjas or a pack of wolves.

 

Also, not everyone plays with an eye towards running on an 8-player smash team...

 

Stalkers and Sentinels are very good soloists and small-team characters. Those of us who prefer that playstyle aren't as common here as full-team and league players, so it makes a certain amount of sense that the ATs that really shine in that setting might not be as common as the Blasters and Scraps and Tanks that are great in larger groups. That doesn't mean that a Stalker sucks or that a Sentinel is useless just because there are fewer of them, or because they don't shine in every single situation. It just means they're a different kind of fun.

[seresibyl2]

9 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

It's not necessarily *only* a matter of raw AT power and team efficacy driving those numbers, though. People enjoying different things also plays a part, I think...

 

As effective as they may be, not everyone WANTS to play a Brute with its go-go-go style of Constant Smash.

Not everyone wants to stand back and do crowd control instead of blowing the goons sky high. 

Some players may not feel comfortable constantly juggling powers between three different forms.  

Not everyone is into the idea of micro-managing five nutball Ninjas or a pack of wolves.

 

Also, not everyone plays with an eye towards running on an 8-player smash team...

 

Stalkers and Sentinels are very good soloists and small-team characters. Those of us who prefer that playstyle aren't as common here as full-team and league players, so it makes a certain amount of sense that the ATs that really shine in that setting might not be as common as the Blasters and Scraps and Tanks that are great in larger groups. That doesn't mean that a Stalker sucks or that a Sentinel is useless just because there are fewer of them, or because they don't shine in every single situation. It just means they're a different kind of fun.

Noted; but underperformance is notable in the core of the game. You can bring up their other aspects (with team scaling etc) without affecting their soloing lifestyle, which ultimately doesn't affect them at all should they choose.

 

 

[Blastit]

23 hours ago, seresibyl2 said:

While fun is subjective, being weak is not necessarily fun for a large majority of people. Do I think a Defender should solo as fast as a brute? Nah, that can be a strength of the brute -- but it shouldn't be 100-0... 😛 Anyone with a defensive set 50 (FF, Sonic, etc) feels the drop off in usefulness in groups that are already def/res capped without them.... 😕 

Which would mean that the IO system needs to be overhauled before tackling AT balance can be done in seriousness.

[Dz131]

Sentinals are terribly balanced.  They need at a minimum to go up to blaster dmg coefficent.

[Apparition]

13 minutes ago, Dz131 said:

Sentinals are terribly balanced.  They need at a minimum to go up to blaster dmg coefficent.

 

No one is arguing that Sentinels aren't terrible, but making their damage equivalent to Blasters is not the answer as they are safer than Blasters thanks to their armor. 

[Dz131]

1 hour ago, Apparition said:

 

No one is arguing that Sentinels aren't terrible, but making their damage equivalent to Blasters is not the answer as they are safer than Blasters thanks to their armor. 

Well their damage are not the same as blasters.  The whole idea is that they give up the 2nd offensive line for defence.  So already, if all numbers were equal they are way behind blasters, no need for them to take another numbers nerf on top.

[Coyotedancer]

As someone who actually spends a lot of time playing Sentinels... I *am* going to argue that they aren't terrible.

Not all of them, anyway.

 

What I will say is that the damage sets are really uneven. Some of them absolutely need a balance pass. (Play a Fire Sent and an Archery Sent back to back, or a DP and then a Psi and you'll see what I'm talking about. As it stands now, some of them are in much better shape than others. That's without even mentioning the special hell that poor AR is in... That set, I'd agree, needs more than just a damage update. o_0) If they all handled as well as Fire? That would help. 

 

That said, they don't need to be Blasters. It's fine to trade some damage for extra survivability. Maybe not as MUCH damage as some of the sets have... But some is fair. I don't feel like my Sents *need* to be rockstars in that respect. They're more generalists. That means they'll probably never appeal to min/maxers and power-gamers... But, again, I'm not sure they really need to. That's what soft-capped Blasters are for. XD

 

 

Edited March 19, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[KC4800]

I only play one sentinel, he is beam rifle/ninjitsu, and I always thought he was quite robust. Got to 50 easily. Got his incarnate powers easily. Was always welcome on teams, and could also solo tough content. I wish he had more range, but other than that...he is near perfection. Can he survive a +3/8 moon farm? No. But he doesn't need to do that to be powerful. He knows his niche.

[Bill Z Bubba]

Still cracks me up that SR and Claws are bottom of the pack for tanks. Mine's awesome.

[Tugzug]

I always find it amusing how the most popular sets are dominated not just by what people consider high-power, but also the flashy or "typical superhero" stuff like Martial Arts and Dual Pistols. I guess function and form are both attractive choices in a game like this, which is neat.

[Galaxy Brain]

I posted this in another thread, but I re-formatted some of the numbers as percentages, which may be easier to gauge proportionally:

 

 

 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Galaxy Brain

[Troo]

On 3/2/2020 at 3:45 PM, Veracor said:

 

Hello there.

 

Well done! How many badges on that character?

 

Edited April 1, 2020 by Troo

[Veracor]

2 hours ago, Troo said:

 

Well done! How many badges on that character?

 

1530 now that the Nemesis event is happening!

[Troo]

That's so awesome!

(sorry if that was in you sig and I was distracted by the pic)

[Lockpick]

On 3/4/2020 at 8:47 AM, Shred Monkey said:

Looking at level 50s isn't a good measure of what people stick to considering how easy it is to farm up a toon to 50 and then put them on a shelf, never to be played. 

 

I'd like to see the data sliced to eliminate those chars.   Maybe look at chars with over 25 hours of playtime?  25 hours may be the wrong number, but if you look at a graph of count vs hours played, you could probably identify a drop-off point between the "real" chars and the "abandoned" chars.

 Good point.

[VV]

This is awesome, as always. Next month's stats, including March are going to be verrrrrrry iiiiiinterestink.

 

Is it possible to get a graph of "Archetype Time Played no in AE"? I don't know if you can pull out what zone someone is in, and disclude the time in AE. 

 

Come to think of it, a chart of time played by zone would also be fun. 

[VV]

On 3/2/2020 at 7:48 PM, MunkiLord said:

War Mace is really underrepresented on Scrappers. It's awesome. 

I have a WM/Ninja scrap that rocks!

[VV]

On 3/3/2020 at 3:55 AM, summers said:

TANKER

There's no 50 for Stone Armour/Claws

DIBS

[Razor Cure]

Those numbers for time spent playing 50s...with and without Fire Brutes. It jumps from like 2.5 mil to 14 with Fire included. Seriously. If that isnt a sad sad metric about how many of they are farming, I dont know what is.

[warlyx]

i like PB but dislike all the KBs and the whole crosspunch or feel empty.

 

i like my stalker but the builds on stalker are "limited" , in COH u need aoe if u want to feel usefull or solo at "normal" pace , is no wonder elec is top

 

i enjoy my blasters , but dislike that if i dont play fire/ i feel like im missing something , yeah other powersets bring something -tohit , -rech and some cool debuffs but u play blaster for its raw dmg....i have a water/ enjoy the tidal mechanic still...

 

i like dom because every primary has something interesting (some more than others)

 

 

[carroto]

On 3/17/2020 at 9:15 AM, seresibyl2 said:

I'm betting the data shows Corrupters and Defenders start to lose steam in the 30s, where being able to insta-kill things just starts to see them fall off

I wonder how much the mez situation is a factor as well.  It certainly is for me.  It's one of the biggest design flaws of this game in my opinion.  It's in the 30s that mez really starts to ramp up and become an issue, which sucks a lot of the fun out of the game.  Too binary.  The thing that makes me suspect that this is not a big issue for most people is the popularity of Blasters.  Then again, although I'm not a big Blaster player, when I do play them the ability to fire the basic attacks through mez actually helps quite a lot, so it may be that the changes to Blasters way back when really did address that issue for enough people.

 

On 3/17/2020 at 9:15 AM, seresibyl2 said:

As for the Soldiers/Widows/PBs/Warshades… well, PBs and warshades are a bit too complex for the every-day player

It's been a long time since I looked at the hero epic ATs, but the last time I did my impression was that it was just too tough to put together a build I'd be satisfied with.  Too many powers I felt I needed and not enough slots to go around.  Maybe I was focused on tri-form and that was my problem.  However as I recall human form is vulnerable to the mez issue.

 

On 3/17/2020 at 9:15 AM, seresibyl2 said:

Soldiers and Widows... are very niche in their fun aspects.

It is surprising that Fortunatas and Night Widows are not more popular, but it's more understandable for things like Banes.  There was a thread recently asking for thoughts on the villain epic ATs and the most common feedback was that Banes are too slow and clunky.  Fortunatas are fun though and in many was come close to a tank-mage.  I suspect the issue with all of the epic ATs is that they don't easily fit into a theme or existing comic hero/villain mold.  As others have said in this thread, a lot of power set choices seem to be driven by theme.  What theme would be served by the epic ATs?  They have their own fixed back-stories.

[Peacemoon]

These numbers are interesting. The most interesting one is how many Masterminds don't go all the way to 50. Maybe once you get all the pets and upgrades it lacks stuff to aim towards. Maybe if their APPs were more personalised it would be better?

[seresibyl2]

On 4/9/2020 at 5:14 PM, carroto said:

  As others have said in this thread, a lot of power set choices seem to be driven by theme.  What theme would be served by the epic ATs?  They have their own fixed back-stories.

Not to resurrect this, but I have to question this -- if this were true, we would see both primary/secondaries of a similar theme of similar popularity. Sonic blast and Sonic shields wouldn't be on such opposite ends of the spectrum (aside from 'debuff themes'). We also know people will mold their theme if it is powerful enough - which I agree, it's hard to bend fortunatas. etc... however, my fortunate is a 'blood bender', so there are some thematic opportunities.

[PartyKake]

Will these statistic charts be a monthly/quarterly thing? They're kinda cool to study.

[Blastit]

On 4/18/2020 at 6:18 AM, seresibyl2 said:

Not to resurrect this, but I have to question this -- if this were true, we would see both primary/secondaries of a similar theme of similar popularity. Sonic blast and Sonic shields wouldn't be on such opposite ends of the spectrum (aside from 'debuff themes'). We also know people will mold their theme if it is powerful enough - which I agree, it's hard to bend fortunatas. etc... however, my fortunate is a 'blood bender', so there are some thematic opportunities.

Sonic blast is a much more straightforward sonic set, though. Most people who think of a character that superscreams thinks of one that directly blows stuff up by doing so, not one that makes a scream bubble for another person to wear as a suit of armour. Additionally I'm not sure if the sonic buff set ever got rid of that whole "giving people migraines" deal and that has stopped me from making anything with it.