Suggestion: Allow access to legacy sets

[Yomo Kimyata]

Over the last year, many sets and individual powers have gotten overhauls.  Almost all of these have been buffs, although there have been some nerfs for balance reasons.

 

Unless the code for the old sets was thrown away, might it be possible to allow access to the pre-buffed sets as a set option at character creation?

 

My specific example:  I recently rolled out a Dark Melee character after the changes to Shadow Maul, and I personally can't stand the changes.  I realize I had my chance to give my input during beta testing, and that my opinion is only one of hundreds or thousands.  I am definitely not asking that the changes be reverted.

 

What I AM asking is that  characters have access to certain legacy sets, in this case "Legacy Dark Melee".  Since the intention to rework the set was to make it "better" and "easier", anyone who chooses to run a legacy set would be essentially choosing to play an "inferior" version, and thus would not be gaining any advantage over anyone else.  In fact, they would be at a disadvantage, which is just fine with me.

 

Happy hunting!

[Greycat]

I don't know if they can revert. Part would depend on just how far back you wanted to go - if someone wanted to experience "I can only run one armor at a time," that code would be *long* gone, for instance. (I would assume.)

[Yomo Kimyata]

I'd be happy with the changes that have been made since HC launched being legacied, and I have to assume that the code is still around.  If not, the original code is still floating around out there!

 

I also realize that certain things cannot be reintroduced, since they would affect everyone, like tanker changes and sniper changes.  But I think Dark Melee would be a very easy fix!

[Rathulfr]

Given limited dev time and resources, I'd rather have new power sets than old ones resurrected.  Resurrecting an old set might be easier to re-introduce, but it would take as much time and effort to maintain as a new one.  Old sets would still have to go through all of the same QC, testing, and balance passes as new sets. 

 

And not all old sets would "be at a disadvantage", if the old set included something that was changed to fix an exploit or nerf an over-performance.  Perhaps there was something in the old Dark Melee that needed to be put down/changed, for a good reason?  Resurrecting a "legacy" version would be a backdoor "de-nerf", defeating the purpose in the first place.  I'd love to have the original Regen or Energy Melee back, but I doubt that'll ever happen. 

 

I think it's all too much work/effort for too little gain/appeal.  Yes, there's a niche of people (like the OP) who would like this, but that's probably a smaller group than those would prefer shiny new sets, instead.  I think that has a wider appeal than simply re-hashing old stuff.

 

TL;DR: "That's a no from me, dawg."

 

[Grouchybeast]

I think this could end up horribly muddying character creation.  It sounds fine until you start thinking about how many changes there have been to powersets over the years, There will probably be people who will be nostalgic for all of them.  Even if there was a toggle to hide them all off in the CC interface, I can see it becoming both a very messy interface, and deeply confusing for new or returning players who find multiple versions of powersets.  Presumably the powersets would all need text explanations in the CC interface, since I don't think many people in a couple of years' time will go ah, yes, the pre-March 2020 Dark Melee!  I remember it well!

 

In fact, the main issue is that it puts a huge ongoing burden of extra work on the devs who are trying to clean up the tangled mess of code that is CoX.  For example, the clean-up of powers that use pseudopets, so that from now on they will correctly inherit AT values.  Every duplicate version of a powerset containing a pseudopet would also duplicate the effort needed to check, modify and test those changes.  And ongoing balancing -- what if an old version of a power turns out to have an unbalanced interaction with a new powerset or IO, so instead of being a nice nostalgia trip it's suddenly the default best choice?  Will there then need to be a revised 'old' version balanced for the new circumstances?

 

This seems like a giant can of highly complicated worms.

[Yomo Kimyata]

Both valid rebuttals.  To be clear, I am in no way asking for every single legacy set to be rolled out.  Just those that HC has "improved" and that they presumably still have the code for.  And those that, in the eyes of the HC devs, were changed in order to make them easier, more powerful, or more user friendly.

 

In the specific example of Dark Melee, it should be pretty simple.  Add a category, change the name, cut and paste.  Maintenance of the set should be minimal.  Now, if there were aspects of DM that were overpowered in the current game environment, that's fine and I'm happy to nerf it.  But I don't think that was the case.  To me it looks like a cut and dried example of power creep and boosting "underperforming" powers.  I think the same was true of, say, the overhauls to the Concealment Pool.

 

I don't envy the devs, either of HC or the original Live version.  People always want new shinies that are superior to everything they have ever had before, and when they get them they want their old shinies to be improved so that they are superiorer.  I love the idea of incredibly strong powers with serious drawbacks, like Stone Armor or Titan Weapons, but rather than people embracing that, they are all, "This power sucks because it has serious drawbacks.  I'm going to need to have you come in on Saturday and fix that."  It looks like I'm a very small minority on that.

 

[Haijinx]

This is just what happens in MMOs.  

 

Not every change will be what you personally want. 

 

They can't realistically support both changes and not making changes in some kind of progression matrix.

 

So I'm gonna have to vote for my friend jranger on this one. 

[Burnt Toast]

21 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Both valid rebuttals.  To be clear, I am in no way asking for every single legacy set to be rolled out.  Just those that HC has "improved" and that they presumably still have the code for.  And those that, in the eyes of the HC devs, were changed in order to make them easier, more powerful, or more user friendly.

 

In the specific example of Dark Melee, it should be pretty simple.  Add a category, change the name, cut and paste.  Maintenance of the set should be minimal.  Now, if there were aspects of DM that were overpowered in the current game environment, that's fine and I'm happy to nerf it.  But I don't think that was the case.  To me it looks like a cut and dried example of power creep and boosting "underperforming" powers.  I think the same was true of, say, the overhauls to the Concealment Pool.

 

I don't envy the devs, either of HC or the original Live version.  People always want new shinies that are superior to everything they have ever had before, and when they get them they want their old shinies to be improved so that they are superiorer.  I love the idea of incredibly strong powers with serious drawbacks, like Stone Armor or Titan Weapons, but rather than people embracing that, they are all, "This power sucks because it has serious drawbacks.  I'm going to need to have you come in on Saturday and fix that."  It looks like I'm a very small minority on that.

 

LOL.. "it should be pretty simple..." 

[Zeraphia]

I don't know, I'm not going to say every single change was done in this such way, but I am going to say that certain aspects of a set may no longer be feasible. There were things that were inherently "too good" in the past, and that may be true even today. I think the HC devs have done so far a pretty great job with preservation vs. modification. This is again, a generalized statement, there are many reasons why certain powers were changed, some were very well-reasoned for modification, others were not as well-justified IMO, but that is all a part of game balancing. 

[tidge]

ENERGY MELEE votes YES!

 

But I must vote NO. Better to balance the power sets, or offer new sets.