Restrict Judgment powers during regular play.

[ZacKing]

2 minutes ago, Chris24601 said:

What the Incarnate system really needs is a hard look at how to balance it out with the rest of the game so that as much of the already completed work as possible can be employed without disrupting the core 1-50 part of the game that makes up 99% of the content.

Incarnates don't come into play exemping below 45.  No need to balance anything.  Make more content designed for it.

[SwitchFade]

Sigh. Look, steamrolling content has nothing to do with judgement. 2 blasters at lvl 50 with no incarnates is just as effective.

 

We build to 50 to become superheroes, which we get to be. Changing judgement will have exactly zero effect on that, rightly so.

 

50 is where we get to be superER, and if you plan your build to exemplar, as I do most of mine, you can join any team and enjoy the fun there too.

 

Also, this "I can't contribute I get carried" is persective, honestly. Every team I'm on, without judgement and regardless of AT, I'm first or second in and killing stuff even before any incarnate goes off. And then on the next spawn it's the same, I'm already winning. Most all teams I join the issue the OP is exaggerating is not an issue.

 

Sorry, still no vote.

 

Make more tougher incarnate content? Yes vote.

[Lines]

1 minute ago, Blackfeather said:

The discussion about 'whether or not this is hard or not' is probably going to be just a back and forth of 'yes' and 'no' unless a dev chimes in, and so by its nature isn't really going to go anywhere.

I dunno if that really is the discussion. It seems like people mostly agree that it is easy.

 

The trickiness of the question is how easy or hard it should be and what exactly does difficulty look like.

 

For me, the fact that the game suddenly becomes on average trivially easy at 45 (with very few but very notable exceptions) when it should spike, is a big problem. I really struggle to feel inspired to get characters past 40 since soloing slows down so much and grouping goes way too fast.

 

I'm in two camps, one being that Judgement and Lore are clumsy additions to the incarnate tree. The other that the cat is out of the bag and things shouldn't be taken away from players. Nerfs, eh, maybe, I dunno. But I also don't think that they're the main contributors to the easiness of level 50 content and also that solutions don't necessarily have to affect player character's progression. I'm with Galaxy Brain, that looking into how options for raising the difficulty of existing level 50 content could be put into place, is the best path. I love his suggestions from a few posts ago - that's a game with dynamics that I'd want to play.

[Blackfeather]

Just now, Lines said:

I dunno if that really is the discussion. It seems like people mostly agree that it is easy.

 

The trickiness of the question is how easy or hard it should be and what exactly does difficulty look like.

 

For me, the fact that the game suddenly becomes on average trivially easy at 45 (with very few but very notable exceptions) when it should spike, is a big problem. I really struggle to feel inspired to get characters past 40 since soloing slows down so much and grouping goes way too fast.

 

I'm in two camps, one being that Judgement and Lore are clumsy additions to the incarnate tree. The other that the cat is out of the bag and things shouldn't be taken away from players. Nerfs, eh, maybe, I dunno. But I also don't think that they're the main contributors to the easiness of level 50 content and also that solutions don't necessarily have to affect player character's progression. I'm with Galaxy Brain, that looking into how options for raising the difficulty of existing level 50 content could be put into place, is the best path. I love his suggestions from a few posts ago - that's a game with dynamics that I'd want to play.

By 'hard or not', I was referring to changing the game code, Lines.

[Lines]

Just now, Blackfeather said:

By 'hard or not', I was referring to changing the game code, Lines.

Oh right. Fair.

[Galaxy Brain]

8 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

It very well could be.  Then again, it may not.  I only speak for myself, but we tend to see a lot of people unfamiliar with programming and working with complex legacy code guessing at what is or is not feasible or easy to do.   We just do not know and I personally would rather hear from someone who knows what they are doing.

 

At least to me, if the game is to survive and prosper going forward, new content will be needed to keep people interested and playing.  There is a substantial amount of pre-50, pre-incarnate level content in the game.  Post 50 incarnate level is where content is lacking. 

Oh I'm aware. I'm one half of a 2 man development team that recreated Borderlands 2 and revolutionized that entire game's modding community. Borderlands 2.5 has well over 20k unique downloads even during Borderlands 3's current reign and our discord is constantly buzzing with active players.

 

I know what it's like to dive into a game and rework it. I did it for 6 characters each with 3 skill trees loaded with about 60 total (powers) in total per character that had to be balanced against each other. Redid textures of thousands of weapons and items, rebalance them too and reworked their mechanics and even added brand new ones not in the base game. These also had to be balanced against the characters who wielded them with their unique skills. We were able to redo NPCs, add new enemies and content, list goes on.

 

Reworking old code can be tricky to say the least. Most of our time was spent just working backwards and plotting out what could be done, the actual changes took up very little time comparatively. 

 

With this in my mind, I know that if the choice was made to make a specific change to an existing variable in the scope of only a (relative) handful of abilities, vs plotting and creating brand new content that was not in the game before, the former takes far less time and effort.

[Blackfeather]

20 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

Sigh. Look, steamrolling content has nothing to do with judgement. 2 blasters at lvl 50 with no incarnates is just as effective.

 

We build to 50 to become superheroes, which we get to be. Changing judgement will have exactly zero effect on that, rightly so.

 

50 is where we get to be superER, and if you plan your build to exemplar, as I do most of mine, you can join any team and enjoy the fun there too.

 

Also, this "I can't contribute I get carried" is persective, honestly. Every team I'm on, without judgement and regardless of AT, I'm first or second in and killing stuff even before any incarnate goes off. And then on the next spawn it's the same, I'm already winning. Most all teams I join the issue the OP is exaggerating is not an issue.

 

Sorry, still no vote.

 

Make more tougher incarnate content? Yes vote.

On the one hand, I don't think anybody agrees that "feeling powerful" is something people don't want to have, especially at maximum level. On the other, people have different definitions of "feeling powerful" that can run counter to different personal interpretations of what this means.

 

For example, when a team steamrolls through content without much help (let's use the 2 Blasters example), is there much need for a Defender's support powers? They can certainly provide some damage of their own, but if they were there to do damage, they'd have rolled up a different archetype. I'd argue that "feeling powerful" for a lot of Defenders comes from "empowering others". And that's not always necessary at the higher levels.

Edited March 26, 2020 by Blackfeather

[skoryy]

1 hour ago, Blackfeather said:

On the one hand, I don't think anybody agrees that "feeling powerful" is something people don't want to have, especially at maximum level. On the other, people have different definitions of "feeling powerful" that can run counter to different personal interpretations of what this means.

 

For example, when a team steamrolls through content without much help (let's use the 2 Blasters example), is there much need for a Defender's support powers? They can certainly provide some damage of their own, but if they were there to do damage, they'd have rolled up a different archetype. I'd argue that "feeling powerful" for a lot of Defenders comes from "empowering others". And that's not always necessary at the higher levels.

I'm always happy to have a defender aboard with my 50s.  Especially with my blaster.  She's a fragile little nuke machine.

[Greycat]

Skimmed a little.

 

Personally, my reactions to this are:

1. Ship's sailed. Ship's saIled, docked elsewhere, picked up more passengers, been around the world several times over and had major maintenance twice.

2. If it had been up to me, yes, Alpha would be at full power regardless, the other powers only at "full" power in Incarnate content and still-there-but-less-powerful in 45-50 (more recharge, lower damage, etc.) so you still have *something* but it's not as nuts as it became.

3. Any changes now would have to be done *very* carefully and I think would still result in an increase in pitchfork sales.

 

I'm also, as I've mentioned before, part of the probably small crowd that misses crashing Tier9s and the like. I *like* "Extreme power comes with a cost" versus "Perma all the things!" I don't have a permadom, perma-lightform, perma-anything, and didn't on live. I remember a bunch of the stuff speed-run now actually being challenges, and kind of miss it. But the game now is the way it is, I play the way I play, and if others are playing a way I don't find enjoyable, I'll thank 'em for the team and move on.

[TechbotAlpha]

Simply put;

Nah.

[Galaxy Brain]

If we're cool with it, would we like to instead push Incarnates down even further so you start grabbing them when you get epic pools? 

 

We can exemp down with them anyways and this allows for more Incarnate content by proxy by letting you run 4/8 solo even earlier.

[PSLAnimal]

/jranger

[Apparition]

23 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

If we're cool with it, would we like to instead push Incarnates down even further so you start grabbing them when you get epic pools? 

 

We can exemp down with them anyways and this allows for more Incarnate content by proxy by letting you run 4/8 solo even earlier.

 

Not necessary.  As I have posted above, attuned IOs are pretty much functionally equivalent at pre-level 45 as Incarnate abilities level 45+.

[ZacKing]

46 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

If we're cool with it, would we like to instead push Incarnates down even further so you start grabbing them when you get epic pools? 

 

We can exemp down with them anyways and this allows for more Incarnate content by proxy by letting you run 4/8 solo even earlier.

Why stop there?  Why not make them available at the P2W vendor in Outbreak?  No thank you.

20 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

Not necessary.  As I have posted above, attuned IOs are pretty much functionally equivalent at pre-level 45 as Incarnate abilities level 45+.

^ That

[Galaxy Brain]

1 hour ago, ZacKing said:

Why stop there?  Why not make them available at the P2W vendor in Outbreak?  No thank you.

I mean why not? If we are 100% against nerfing or changing them, why have them gated?

 

 

Edited March 27, 2020 by Galaxy Brain

[ShardWarrior]

32 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I mean why not? If we are 100% against nerfing or changing them, why have them gated?

You mean other than they are meant to be post 50 content?  If there is content designed with them in mind, there is no need to nerf anything. 

[Galaxy Brain]

24 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

You mean other than they are meant to be post 50 content?  If there is content designed with them in mind, there is no need to nerf anything. 

So, what if they can be used in 45-50 content that isnt for them?

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Let me make it as plain as I can. My blasters, sentinals, even my PB have nukes with CDs or around 35 seconds or less. The nukes are far better and up more often then any judgement choice. Lore Pets have a good amoung of CD between uses, meanwhile my sentinal has a nasty widow who is perma'd. So my dark/regen sent who can just float around laying waste, and always has a strong pet is supposed to feel surpassed by peoples incarnate powers? Because that seems to be what those hating on incarnate powers and judgement seem to be saying I should feel like. However I dont. Because news flash nuke up every 27 seconds is what matters to my mass murder power, not a only at 45-50 long cd nuke.

 

This isnt whataboutism. Power set nukes are clearly a superior power to judgement nukes in every way. Ive seen plenty of brutes bitch about the power of blasters and sentinals in actual game play for the very reasy that such high recharge nuke builds can indeed single handedly go from room to room nuking and leaving the bosses who are half dead to be cleaned up by the stalkers and scrappers. When  a Brute cant get their fury meter up I notice they get very moody.

 

OP do you main a brute by chance?;)

[ZacKing]

1 minute ago, Galaxy Brain said:

So, what if they can be used in 45-50 content that isnt for them?

Honestly that's a very dumb question.  they don't need to be plain and simple.  Repeat it 50 more times it won't make the suggestion any better.  You seem to want to lock the game down and never add anything new.  Hopefully HC goes legit and can start recruiting all the people volunteering on the forums and start making actual content.  There's plenty of pre-50 pre-incarnate content already and none of it was designed or balanced for incarnates.  

[Galaxy Brain]

Just now, ZacKing said:

Honestly that's a very dumb question.  they don't need to be plain and simple.  Repeat it 50 more times it won't make the suggestion any better.  You seem to want to lock the game down and never add anything new.  Hopefully HC goes legit and can start recruiting all the people volunteering on the forums and start making actual content.  There's plenty of pre-50 pre-incarnate content already and none of it was designed or balanced for incarnates.  

So, you would be in favor of not having Incarnates in missions that arent lvl 50

[Chris24601]

18 hours ago, ZacKing said:

Incarnates don't come into play exemping below 45.  No need to balance anything.  Make more content designed for it.

When you have a small volunteer staff capable of only limited new content, you want that content to be as useful to as broad a segment of the players as possible.

 

The problem with “just make more incarnate content” is that every bit of incarnate exclusive content is content that’s of no use to non-incarnates and non-incarnates are, depending how you count the statistics, well over 90+% of the active characters.

 

Arcs that can be accessed starting in the level 20-30 range can be enjoyed by the entire player base. An incarnate-balanced arc can only be enjoyed by the tiny percentage of incarnate toons.*

 

In essence, while it gets a lot of talk on the forums among the same couple dozen who regularly post on the matter, the incarnate population is really only on par with the PVP community in terms of numbers and needs to be regarded as such in terms of priorities in creating new content and balancing its effects on other content.

 

I remember the days back on live when powers were constantly being changed around because of their effects on PVP (which was 5% or less of the player base at the time) and how it created problems for the PVE players as a result.

 

Ultimately, the live Devs split the mechanics up so they behaved differently in PVP than PVE and allow PVP to be what it needed to be while not continuing to wreak havoc on the rest of the game.

 

This proposal is presented in a similar vein.

 

Incarnate powers were originally created to enable an endgame grind requiring a paid subscription where those with incarnate powers would need to spend the majority of their time grinding out incarnate content to get the next tier of “gear” or to unlock the newest “gear” slot.

 

Due to its low population, SCoRE altered how incarnate powers could be earned, but, also likely due to its low population, didn’t fully account for the effects that gaining incarnate powers through normal content would have on the 45-50 play environment... just as the live devs rarely considered the impact of how their changes for PVP affected the PVE environment.

 

Ultimately, the only viable fix for the issues the tiny chunk that was PVP was inflicting on PVE was to silo it off so that game used an entirely different set of numbers for PVP than PVE. The suggestion here is that a similar siloing for a similarly small percentage of the content (that is unlikely to get significant attention because the return on time invested is so low relative to a new level 20-30 arc) would be healthier for the game.

 

* Side-bar: Dark Astoria also proves there is an additional layer of difficulty in terms of incarnate balancing... what level of incarnate do you balance it for?

 

Alpha slot only? Full level shifted, but not t4’d? Full t4 slotting in all incarnate powers?

 

There’s a MASSIVE difference in performance between an alpha-only with a t1-2 slotted and having all six incarnate powers slotted with t4s.

 

- The Starting Alpha is still level 50 in Dark Astoria and has 33% buff to one enhancement category where 27.55% of that is still subject to ED (i.e. a scrapper slotting the t1 musculature will only increase their damage by 3% or so). 

 

- The fully unlocked with all t4s Incarnate is instead level 50+3 in Dark Astoria, has a +20-30% enhancement buff to multiple categories that ignores ED. They also have an extra nuke, summoned pets, a massive aoe buff, an extra proc effect on virtually every hit, and the hybrid toggle and passive buffs.

 

So where will this new incarnate content be balanced? Of the population of incarnates, I guarantee there are more closer to the alpha only end of the spectrum than the fully t4’d variety.

 

That means the further up the scale you get, the smaller the number of players who can actually use the content to the point we’re probably at fractions of 1% at the top end.

 

This is why devising reasonable siloing of incarnate powers for non-incarnate content coupled with story arcs designed for a wide spread of levels instead of the usual 5 (ex. a post-Praetorian War Council arc could be set to be accessible from level 15-50) is probably the most viable path for future content.

[ShardWarrior]

9 minutes ago, Chris24601 said:

When you have a small volunteer staff capable of only limited new content, you want that content to be as useful to as broad a segment of the players as possible.

I keep seeing this repeated and quite frankly, I think it shows a lack of imagination.  Homecoming is a small volunteer staff at this point in time.  That may not always be true. 

[Troo]

19 hours ago, ZacKing said:

Incarnates don't come into play exemping below 45.  No need to balance anything.  Make more content designed for it.

I agree with this.

I'd also agree some adjustments could be made.

 

Examples of minimal code changes that could have a desired effect:

• Slide the line from 45 to 49.
• On top of that, and allow the use of incarnates as an option for Flashback content at all levels.

 

50 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

You seem to want to lock the game down and never add anything new. 

Someone is against more content? I don't think anyone is against more content, especially high level content.

 

Edited March 27, 2020 by Troo

[Chris24601]

1 hour ago, ShardWarrior said:

I keep seeing this repeated and quite frankly, I think it shows a lack of imagination.  Homecoming is a small volunteer staff at this point in time.  That may not always be true. 

I think you're taking pie-in-the-sky dreams and assuming they're the most likely result in the real world.

 

There's a truism in terms of projects; You can only have two of; fast, cheap and high-quality. Meaning, if you want high quality fast, it will not be cheap. If you want to be cheap you either have to accept lower quality or longer delays.

 

Homecoming has already chosen "Cheap" (everyone involved is a volunteer and they've indicated that will not change even if legitimized by NCSoft) and "High Quality" (the reason why they don't have all the flashy content of some of the other servers, but do have the only 64-bit client out there).

 

You presume massive numbers of people will just donate their time to write, design art assets, code and review and test for bugs down the line... and accept oversight over their creative endeavors by the HC team; i.e. the majority of said volunteers won't just quit when the team says their particular ideas aren't as good as they think they are and need to be redone. If you're a paid employee, you suck up the criticism and make the changes because its your job... when its your hobby? The percentage will be MUCH much smaller due to basic human nature.

 

That means new content will not arrive quickly nor in large amounts. Even if you get a slew of writers for content who won't quit at the first non-grammatical edit, that content can't just be uploaded the next day. Its got to be coded, reviewed, tested for bugs and all the other things we've seen throughout HCs various betas of their released updates. There's a lot of coordination that will be needed to produce a finished project when people have different interests. For example, you need an artist willing to use their free time to model art assets for a story arc that might not actually interest or inspire them.

[ZacKing]

28 minutes ago, Chris24601 said:

You presume massive numbers of people will just donate their time to write, design art assets, code and review and test for bugs down the line

You're assuming people aren't going to volunteer.  maybe might want to check this thread out

Seems to me there are lots of people looking to volunteer. 

 

30 minutes ago, Chris24601 said:

There's a truism in terms of projects; You can only have two of; fast, cheap and high-quality. Meaning, if you want high quality fast, it will not be cheap. If you want to be cheap you either have to accept lower quality or longer delays.

Same stupid comment applies to rebalancing pre 50 content, so this doesn't fly from either end of the spectrum.  No one asked for quick solutions either.