[Beta] Patch Notes for April 4th, 2020

[Replacement]

2 hours ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

Not aimed at you Caboose, just a general question that springs from the tenor of these particular discussions...

Why the near religious fervor to "convert" people to the IO system?  (Especially since at lower levels, IO's are markedly inferior in quality to DO's and SO's?)  Why the constant subtext of "if you aren't using IO's, you're doing it wrong?"

I'd kind of like to take a stab at this.  I don't feel it is exactly one issue... but they all revolve around a singular notion of "false choice."

 

#1: Eventually, IOs do become superior in every way.  I happen to IO at 22, when the benefits outweigh the negatives for me, but any SO purchased above level 30 is objectively a worse decision.

 

#2: The community subtext that the game doesn't tell people about IOs - doesn't specifically tell you when it becomes superior.  Sure, there's a tutorial mission but it doesn't explain a lot, like how to fill Invuln's Psychic hole, let alone the levels where one enhancement is better than another.  I think this creates a lot of the zealotry where people feel they need to bury SOs in a communal overcompensation to make sure no one thinks they're the correct choice.  The notable exception continues to be people who run the numbers themselves.  No one gives them crap, but there has never been a movement to realign community ideals to their observations.  We keep to our general rule of thumbs.

 

#3: I think you may be coming at this question from the angle of "it's up to people to play how they want and they are free to make their own decisions?" Begging your pardon if I'm misreading that.  But the fact is, an RPer who simply slots what seems effective and doesn't want to think about math doesn't deserve to be objectively worse.  If someone wants their character to intentionally be weak, they should eschew enhancements partly or entirely -- not be punished for not knowing the intricacies.  At the most basic level, this means using IOs over SOs.  At the most advanced levels, it means having set bonuses memorized (which is a nightmare of game design).  I think most discussions lack nuance on this point, with people trying to assign moral high ground to playing unoptimized, but it misses this critical point that the player shouldn't have to worry about being optimized, and so the developers should remove "noob traps" when possible.  Failing that, the community will fall back to point #2 and shout it from the rooftops.

 

#4: Early levels and weak IOs.  This is itself a doubled-up item: the first 22 levels are often skipped/sped through, and they also correlate to when Enhancing is not worth the cash.  Even those of us with sugardaddy farm toons sending ourselves gobs of influence don't typically bother enhancing at these levels because it feels like flushing money down the toilet.  We know if we just hold out until level [insert your personal threshold here], everything gets better.  Everything feels like an investment.  It's like asking someone in Business why a mortgage is superior to rent.

 

Personal anecdote on #4: I spend about 80% of my playtime solo, 18% duo, 2% trio.  My PUG experience is so small that it doesn't even register on the pie chart.  I enjoy leveling, I enjoy being middle-level, and even I dash through the first 22 levels as fast as possible.  The game "starts" for me at 22 when my IOs come through, and I happen to be thrilled that these SO changes are going to mean the game might start for me sooner.

 

 

Well crap.  That turned into a wall of text.

Edited April 7, 2020 by Replacement

[Troo]

On 4/5/2020 at 11:03 AM, Rathulfr said:

The enhancement upgrade feature looks neat!  Definitely a boon for new players or players that like to use regular enhancements.  I'll definitely be making use of this feature on some of my alts.

 

One concern though: DFB.  If I run DFB often enough and with the right amount of luck, I could get SOs at levels 1-15 and then just keep upgrading them forever?  That seems like a pretty good deal.  Maybe too good?  Or am I overthinking this?

 

It's the same cost as going to the store to get a new one.

[Rathulfr]

Just now, Troo said:

It's the same cost as going to the store to get a new one.

Yeah, my comments were before I re-read the other notes about SOs dropping pretty much everywhere now, in addition to DFB, which is absolutely cool with me.  I think the sooner we get off the TO train to Nowheresville, the better.  I think I can live with a mix of SOs and DOs for the lower levels.

[Troo]

2 hours ago, Replacement said:

Well crap.  That turned into a wall of text.

and a convoluted mess. Have you been day drinking?

[Myrmidon]

20 minutes ago, Troo said:

and a convoluted mess. Have you been day drinking?

These last few weeks, who hasn’t?

[csr]

47 minutes ago, Troo said:

It's the same cost as going to the store to get a new one.

Well, a whole build of new ones at +3 to your current level.

 

Making it so that you had the option to only upgrade red enhancements would avoid a potential noob trap of upgrading too often, which eats a lot of INF.

 

I think it looks worthwhile to keep yourself at +3 into the low-to-mid teens, since it's still cheap, then switch to only upgrading when everything goes red.  It does seem to move the "time to IO" level from 22 to 27 when you can start buying almost all sets.  Otherwise the big boon is to level 1-11 with a lesser bonus to 12-21 that is probably evened out by the number of slots available so that it is a pretty significant and smooth upgrade to low level play.

 

For those who don't PL all their alts to 50+3, or even 22, this is a nice improvement.

Edited April 7, 2020 by csr

[Replacement]

31 minutes ago, Troo said:

and a convoluted mess. Have you been day drinking?

I'm definitely a work in progress.  In my meager defense, i typed that during multiple "hurry up and wait" phases of a work catastrophe.  The short versions of my TED talks are already peppered throughout this site but it's basically me trying to explain:

• You shouldn't need system mastery to make a decent character.
• "Intentionally weaker choices" aren't actually choices.
• As a community, we are bad at discussing this.

[justicebeliever]

1 hour ago, Replacement said:

• You shouldn't need system mastery to make a decent character.
• "Intentionally weaker choices" aren't actually choices.
• As a community, we are bad at discussing this.

I'd love for you to expand on the 2nd bullet.  I agree 100% on the 1st and 3rd bullet.

[Doc_Scorpion]

1 hour ago, Replacement said:

You shouldn't need system mastery to make a decent character.

You don't need system mastery.  You can make a decent character by the seat of your pants down at the local origin store.  You want a top end fully tuned build, yeah, you're going to have to get into the nuts and bolts.  But that's not the same spot on the spectrum as decent.

And I find the creeping standards here disturbing...  A couple of hours ago IO's were for optimized (by your definition of optimized) builds, and now they're prerequisite for a merely decent character.
 

15 minutes ago, justicebeliever said:

As a community, we are bad at discussing this.

And we aren't going to get any better so long as you toss around terms like "n00b traps" and "false choices" and otherwise look askance at anyone who doesn't follow the One True Path.

[Replacement]

1 hour ago, justicebeliever said:

I'd love for you to expand on the 2nd bullet.  I agree 100% on the 1st and 3rd bullet.

Sure.  NOTE: I'm not talking about something convoluted like "debuff spec is overall less beneficial to a party than tank spec" or something mired in mathematics like "+2 STR is worth more than +30 Attack under the following conditions" that we would see in some MMOs.

 

Simply: +30% is less than +39%.  This is a @Doc_Scorpion Noob trap and a @Doc_Scorpion False Choice because the only reason to choose the +30% is to not know about the +39%.  This is the situation with SOs.  If someone is slotting SOs because "I don't want to think about it" then that's not fair to that very player.  This is strictly development-level -- NOT RP-level.  RPing an intentionally-weak character is far simpler: you use few/no Enhancements at all.

 

32 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

You don't need system mastery.  You can make a decent character by the seat of your pants down at the local origin store.  You want a top end fully tuned build, yeah, you're going to have to get into the nuts and bolts.  But that's not the same spot on the spectrum as decent.

And I find the creeping standards here disturbing...  A couple of hours ago IO's were for optimized (by your definition of optimized) builds, and now they're prerequisite for a merely decent character.

 

And we aren't going to get any better so long as you toss around terms like "n00b traps" and "false choices" and otherwise look askance at anyone who doesn't follow the One True Path.

(you may want to check your attribution on your 2nd quote, that was me; not justicebeliever)

 

First off: prime example - Fiery Aura Knockback hole. 

 

But second and more importantly: Just stop.  I am using game terms and game theory terminology to talk about system design and you are trying to throw them in my face as moral judgements.

 

Any time the game says "here's +small number" and hides the fact that there's an easily reachable +large number version of the exact same stat, that game has failed its novice and casual users.  Note how literally none of this previous sentence is targeted at said players.  I'm not telling them they're playing it wrong.  I'm telling you the designers of 20 years ago built it wrong.

 

I promise you this isn't controversial.  If you still insist on being offended; that I'm making suppositions about how optimized is optimized enough, I will be left with no choice but to think you want to misrepresent me.

[Replacement]

This back-and-forth feels off-topic.  Just to put my actual opinion somewhere: I like the Upgrade button.  I wasn't sure it was worth the effort at first, but now 1-2 punch has been revealed of getting us SOs sooner, I think HC has found a really elegant solution to all of this.  We aren't going to get past "tribal knowledge" for making the jump to IOs, but at least this a) makes my teens life a lot easier with some investment and b) gives some purpose to SOs even for people who enjoy the IO system.  I am still going to need to email myself influence on a lot of characters to get started, I'm sure, but I look forward to this a lot.  Thank you Homecoming for being awesome!

[BigGotter]

So this feature will allow me to click one button to upgrade my out-leveled enhancements, thus saving precious time so I can get back to doing missions.  Wont this end up allowing me to level up faster?    Less time enhancing = More time spent gaining xp

[Doc_Scorpion]

8 minutes ago, BigGotter said:

So this feature will allow me to click one button to upgrade my out-leveled enhancements, thus saving precious time so I can get back to doing missions.  Wont this end up allowing me to level up faster?    Less time enhancing = More time spent gaining xp

I don't think saving 10-15 minutes (or less) will make that much difference in leveling speed unless you're already powerleveling.  At which point the difference is moot anyhow.

[BigGotter]

1 hour ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

I don't think saving 10-15 minutes (or less) will make that much difference in leveling speed unless you're already powerleveling.  At which point the difference is moot anyhow.

Yeah, Doing regular content was the focus of my question, I should have stated that in my previous post.  I had read a lot of posts about people out-leveling regular content and wasn't certain if this would affect it is some way.  As far as powerleveling, i'll leave that up to the professionals, I never was any good at it.  Besides, farming has been banned now.   I usually run regular IO's or attuned of the most popular types. Long ago I made a one time purchase of these to use on my lowbee as it was progressing. When I reached 50, I would do a respec to it's final build and  place the "one time purchase IO's" back into base storage, ready for the next lowbee. The time it took to enhance really never bothered me. Most teams I see will run about 3-4 missions together, then split up anyways.  Ok, I've rambled enough for now.  Big G

[Faultline]

Some random thoughts in no particular order.

 

An upgrade option to +5 all crafted IOs is not happening alongside this update for many reasons; one that might not be obvious is that proc effects are not improved by boosts, so a mass-upgrade button would waste boosters for no benefit. At the very least, it needs to be able to filter those out from the mass upgrading, which is a lot more work than the current feature does: anything that has a sell price in stores is upgraded. If you can't sell it to a vendor, you can't upgrade it with this feature. I'm not saying never, just not now.

 

I am wondering if it's better to remove DOs from the low level vendors in order to prevent players from wasting their early influence. By presenting only SOs at the basic stores, it sends players a firm and clear message that SOs is what they should be aiming to slot, with DOs being "low quality" drops that are better used as a source of influence than enhancement. DO drops would remain in the Supergroup Base and Origin stores (Subgenetics, Cooke's Electronics, etc) for those who want to collect them.

 

The auction house is very much expected to be a source of influence for low level characters; it's the reason why recipes and salvage are grouped across level ranges. At level 7, if you receive a Rare Salvage drop, you really should go straight to the market and drop it there for a nice chunk of influence to purchase all the enhancements you need for the early game. I have been pondering adding an extra step to the Invention tutorial which rewards 20 Brainstorm Ideas and tells you to craft it into a Rare and sell it in the market, to introduce players to the Conversion tab and the Market in one step.

 

From a balance standpoint, the Upgrade Enhancements feature is mostly useless to players who start in Primal Earth and skip the early levels by running DFB groups or radio missions. It's not aimed at them. Soloers and Praetorians, on the other hand, need all the help they can get in those early levels where they have only a couple of powers and slots. Try to solo the Preatorian content on a Controller; that's where early SOs and +3 upgrades is the most helpful.

 

Once players have enough slots to put 3x SOs in a power, it is a lot less beneficial to hit the Upgrade button every turn due to the ED caps; 3x white SOs provide 95% enhancement, while 3x +3  SOs provide 97% enhancement for Schedule A. So the point where the feature starts becoming expensive is also the point where not using it for a while is a valid choice. If you have influence to burn, then sure, keep hitting that button.

[csr]

3 hours ago, Faultline said:

The auction house is very much expected to be a source of influence for low level characters; it's the reason why recipes and salvage are grouped across level ranges. At level 7, if you receive a Rare Salvage drop, you really should go straight to the market and drop it there for a nice chunk of influence to purchase all the enhancements you need for the early game. I have been pondering adding an extra step to the Invention tutorial which rewards 20 Brainstorm Ideas and tells you to craft it into a Rare and sell it in the market, to introduce players to the Conversion tab and the Market in one step.

The tutorial addition certainly wouldn't hurt.  Though I'd rather give players who don't want to use the AH a better option instead of just making it a tiny bit easier for them to learn to do something that they'd rather not do at all.  Something such as converting 1 Reward Merit at a Merit Vendor to 200k INF.  That's about the same as selling Converters at 74k or Boosters at 1.11M.

[Erydanus]

On ‎4‎/‎4‎/‎2020 at 1:43 AM, Faultline said:

Because until level 30, SOs are better than basic IOs (level 40 if you keep your SOs at +3).

Well I … had a huge post and bumped the spacebar and somehow purged it.  So please excuse the very brief bullet point response I just can't type it all over.

 

* better is kind of subjective. Yes a 25 IO is 32% and an even SO is 33% but so what. That's not really significant, and if you have ED kicking in, hardly different

* a couple percent difference that gets flattened by ED anyway is leading to overly broad statements just like this and encouraging people to not do anything with IOs until 50

* IOs were actually balanced to be a viable choice to SOs at 25. If you take the value of an SO from +3 to when it is about to go red and average that's 32% That's how the level 25 IOs were set at that point.

* invention sets are even more powerful at lower levels, those 3 and 2 parters add up to more enhancement than even +3 SOs a lot earlier, but again this is lost on many people

* I'm worried there's a cart before the horse situation going on here. If you assume everyone rushes to 20 then you start balancing/advising around that and then you make it happen

* It does happen some, of course, and this means people are often missing the invention tutorial at level 10. Rather than enable people to cling to an old system I think you should put effort into making more people aware of the invention system

* It's about time that crafting tables were made more accessible. Stick a couple in the tech contact area of City Hall and some in the Arachnos building in Mercy (or plop down another Abandoned Lab)

 

* Overall I think this system is a bad idea

 

[Nanolathe]

7 hours ago, Faultline said:

<snip>

I am wondering if it's better to remove DOs from the low level vendors in order to prevent players from wasting their early influence. By presenting only SOs at the basic stores, it sends players a firm and clear message that SOs is what they should be aiming to slot, with DOs being "low quality" drops that are better used as a source of influence than enhancement. DO drops would remain in the Supergroup Base and Origin stores (Subgenetics, Cooke's Electronics, etc) for those who want to collect them.

</snip>

If the DO is going to be relegated to "low quality" drops that are just there to be sold, rather than providing something desirable, then they really serve no purpose. They're not even a teaching tool for the market as no one is going to be purchasing them. They're now a holdover from an earlier time where SOs and Hami-Os were the end goal. If the goal is to give minuscule indirect INF gains in the service of actually kitting your character out with SOs and TOs, then why the middleman?

 

To teach players that the SO vendors exist? Is that now their intended function; a junk item only worth something to NPCs and the most avid of hoarders / collectors?

 

Edit:

In addition, if DO's are slotted by a newbie who doesn't know that the DO is vender junk, then pushes the "upgrade" button they actually become a drain on INF for that player, directly counter to the DO's supposed intended purpose.

Edited April 8, 2020 by Nanolathe

[justicebeliever]

10 minutes ago, Erydanus said:

invention sets are even more powerful at lower levels, those 3 and 2 parters add up to more enhancement than even +3 SOs a lot earlier, but again this is lost on many people

Can you expand on this thought?  I'm not seeing the value in IO's before lvl 22, but it depends on your definition of lower levels

[Troo]

8 hours ago, Faultline said:

I am wondering if it's better to remove DOs from the low level vendors in order to prevent players from wasting their early influence. By presenting only SOs at the basic stores, it sends players a firm and clear message that SOs is what they should be aiming to slot, with DOs being "low quality" drops that are better used as a source of influence than enhancement. DO drops would remain in the Supergroup Base and Origin stores (Subgenetics, Cooke's Electronics, etc) for those who want to collect them.

Training Origin or Dual Origin probably need to go.

Removing TOs would be a boost to lower level characters. (maybe TOs are limited to below level 5 or only to the tutorial)

 

8 hours ago, Faultline said:

The auction house is very much expected to be a source of influence for low level characters; it's the reason why recipes and salvage are grouped across level ranges. At level 7, if you receive a Rare Salvage drop, you really should go straight to the market and drop it there for a nice chunk of influence to purchase all the enhancements you need for the early game. I have been pondering adding an extra step to the Invention tutorial which rewards 20 Brainstorm Ideas and tells you to craft it into a Rare and sell it in the market, to introduce players to the Conversion tab and the Market in one step.

Information made available with the first Rare Salvage drop (end mission reward?) could direct a player. (popup notify and acknowledgement)

Using a Brainstorm to convert the Origin for an Single Origin might be an opportunity and inline with recent changes. (popup notify and acknowledgement)

 

8 hours ago, Faultline said:

An upgrade option to +5 all crafted IOs is not happening alongside this update for many reasons; one that might not be obvious is that proc effects are not improved by boosts, so a mass-upgrade button would waste boosters for no benefit. At the very least, it needs to be able to filter those out from the mass upgrading, which is a lot more work than the current feature does: anything that has a sell price in stores is upgraded. If you can't sell it to a vendor, you can't upgrade it with this feature. I'm not saying never, just not now.

Removing the combine screen and click would be plenty. Click boost, highlight eligible slotted enhancements, click enhancement to boost. This could allow faster boosting and minimize issues associated with entire build edits.

[Doc_Scorpion]

8 hours ago, BigGotter said:

Yeah, Doing regular content was the focus of my question, I should have stated that in my previous post.  I had read a lot of posts about people out-leveling regular content and wasn't certain if this would affect it is some way. 

It probably won't really have an effect...  And if you're getting close to outleveling something, that's what the XP lock is there for.

Personally, I usually fast level (radios, PUGs) to the max level -1 (I.E. 24 or 29), lock XP and then go back an run the content in that level band.

[Erydanus]

4 hours ago, justicebeliever said:

Can you expand on this thought?  I'm not seeing the value in IO's before lvl 22, but it depends on your definition of lower levels

Multipart enhancements do not divide the value of a generic IO. A two-part enhancement is 60% +60%. A three-part enhancement is 50% +50% +50%. Numerically this means that multipart enhancements are drastically more powerful than generics even at lower levels. A three parter is literally one and a half times the total enhancement value of a single parter. 

[justicebeliever]

37 minutes ago, Erydanus said:

Multipart enhancements do not divide the value of a generic IO. A two-part enhancement is 60% +60%. A three-part enhancement is 50% +50% +50%. Numerically this means that multipart enhancements are drastically more powerful than generics even at lower levels. A three parter is literally one and a half times the total enhancement value of a single parter. 

You'll need to provide some math for this becuase I don't see it.

 

For example- 

Punding Slugfest, a 3 part Melee Damage set IO @ lvl 20 gets me:
16% Acc, 16% End Red, 16% Recharge 
16% Dam + 16% Dam + 16% Dam = 48% Damage

 

While 2 Dam, 1 Acc +3 lvl SOs give me:
77% Dam, 38.3% Acc

 

I don't get the End Red or Recharge Bonus, but if I am slotting for Damage @ lvl 20, just 2 SO's at +3 beat out a 3 part IO set.

 

[TraumaTrain]

18 hours ago, Faultline said:

I have been pondering adding an extra step to the Invention tutorial which rewards 20 Brainstorm Ideas and tells you to craft it into a Rare and sell it in the market, to introduce players to the Conversion tab and the Market in one step.

I really like this idea. In general I think the tutorials could be more comprehensive. But, this is a really good idea.

[DR_Mechano]

I agreed with the idea of doing away with TOs and DOs as vendor items and instead selling SOs purely through them. However judging by the costs it's still going to be MUCH cheaper to do the standard drop of IOs at level 32. That's the major draw of generic IOs once you hit that level, they're an initial big expenditure but a much less 'upkeep' costs.