Hasten: Make it Inherent, or get rid of it?

[Blastit]

Just now, ShardWarrior said:

Are you suggesting that people who do not have Hasten in their builds at all are somehow incapable of handling more challenging content?  If that is your assertion, I can quite comfortably say you are dead wrong. 

No, I am referring to the whole IO superbuild situation. Hasten may or may not contribute meaningfully to that but it's certainly not the only thing I'm referring to.

[Haijinx]

2 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Can we stop quoting the giant first post?

They will never see your post until after they replied to that one.

 

So sadly, won't be avoidable.

[Infinitum]

20 minutes ago, Blastit said:

No, I am referring to the whole IO superbuild situation. Hasten may or may not contribute meaningfully to that but it's certainly not the only thing I'm referring to.

Sounds like You arent happy with the game as a whole.  Thats not our fault, or problem.

[Infinitum]

43 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Stealth

I would disagree with that one.

 

Stealth IMO and in practice is just as useful as hasten if not more so because of the stealth and defense aspect to it.

 

I have it on just about all my squishy builds.

[Infinitum]

45 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Stealth

I would disagree with that one.

 

Stealth IMO and in practice is just as useful as hasten if not more so because of the stealth and defense aspect to it.

 

I have it on just about all my squishy builds.

 

I think the pool powers if anything should be left alone from the standpoint of the good ones. But medicine, presence etc should be buffed somehow to give an alternative to the good ones to have more hard choices to make.

 

Medicine is largely useless because other primary secondary or incarnate powers already do it better.

[Galaxy Brain]

3 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

I would disagree with that one.

 

Stealth IMO and in practice is just as useful as hasten if not more so because of the stealth and defense aspect to it.

 

I have it on just about all my squishy builds.

Fair, tho compared to say maneuvers and weave it's a toss up.

[Infinitum]

5 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Fair, tho compared to say maneuvers and weave it's a toss up.

Man I channeled my inner max hedrom up there.  lol.  Don't know what happened with the triple post.

 

Yeah maneuvers usually loses out because stealth + celerity usually gives you a slight advantage.

Edited April 16, 2020 by Infinitum

[Blastit]

2 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

Sounds like You arent happy with the game as a whole.  Thats not our fault, or problem.

You're not a developer, so obviously not. I've even specifically said that players are not at fault. If I am unhappy with anything here it's less the game and more this attitude. I want an honest assessment of the state of the game and what can actually be done in the future. I'm not asking rhetorical questions here, they're all genuine. All you've got is lazy dismissal.

[Chris24601]

36 minutes ago, Outrider_01 said:

Late response.

Shocking, an optional power you don't need to take but the game is "balanced" around it?  

• It never was balanced around having hasten. 
• It being in a power pool....means you don't need it unless you want it. 
• Hasten only picked up often, because the value/utility of  Hasten > Flurry/Jumpkick/Whirlwhind; combined.  What am I saying?  Its desirable because of what it can do vs powers you rarely see, because its really useful.  Flurry and the rest vs hasten, even you got to know those powers are less than useless in utility except for character flavor.

In regard to the bolded part, I wonder what the behavioral change would be if they just swapped Hasten and Burnout in the Speed pool.

 

Would it become like the pre-inherent Stamina of old? The thing you sacrificed two much less useful power picks to obtain?

 

Or would it's utility with the availability of IO recharge set bonuses and the cost of two of Burnout, Flurry and Superspeed be enough that other power pool picks would start to look more attractive?

 

Because I think a big part of how universally Hasten is regarded in many builds stems from the fact that it takes so little investment to get it. It is literally a single power pick to obtain its benefit... you don't need to suffer through the bad picks in Presence to get to the top tier pick of the pool. You don't have to take one of the weak melee attacks first like you do for Tough and Weave. Its as close to FREE as a pool pick can possibly get in terms of its utility.

 

And if it IS still so good that it's still worth taking two rather subpar powers to get it (see Old School Stamina), then I think that would also argue for just how overpowered it is as a tier-1 pool power pick and that the solution either needs to be; A) make it universal like the Inherent Fitness pool, B) make the swap between Burnout and Hasten permanent, or C) scale back the level of recharge bonus Hasten provides.

[Infinitum]

4 minutes ago, Blastit said:

You're not a developer, so obviously not. I've even specifically said that players are not at fault. If I am unhappy with anything here it's less the game and more this attitude. I want an honest assessment of the state of the game and what can actually be done in the future. I'm not asking rhetorical questions here, they're all genuine. All you've got is lazy dismissal.

What attitude?   You are only getting pushback becausr you are attributing something negative to what most people enjoy.

 

And to one of your previous posts, is it far fetched for homecoming to create new content?

 

No not any more far fetched than keeping the game popular after rewriting it from the ground up so old challenges we have done hundreds of times are harder.

 

That won't be a good selling point.

 

That's what you do if you want to kill homecoming.

[Galaxy Brain]

3 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

What attitude?   You are only getting pushback becausr you are attributing something negative to what most people enjoy.

 

And to one of your previous posts, is it far fetched for homecoming to create new content?

 

No not any more far fetched than keeping the game popular after rewriting it from the ground up so old challenges we have done hundreds of times are harder.

 

That won't be a good selling point.

 

That's what you do if you want to kill homecoming.

To his point Infinitum, what lvl of character are they supposed to challenge? In my difficulty thread this is sort of where it has hit a standstill as well despite everyone agreeing we want "harder content"

[Infinitum]

Just now, Galaxy Brain said:

To his point Infinitum, what lvl of character are they supposed to challenge? In my difficulty thread this is sort of where it has hit a standstill as well despite everyone agreeing we want "harder content"

As in level 1-50?  Or post 50?

[skoryy]

1 hour ago, Blastit said:

Every AT and powerset combo feeling different is important for the kind of game this is. The sheer difference in feeling between just swapping set combos around on the same AT, nevermind different ATs, is perfect for CoH. If there are things that diminish this then those things should be looked at.

If they don't feel different to you that's not a game problem.  I mean, I run content consistently at 50 and lower and its definitely not a City of Brutes.  I consistently see a variety of archetypes when I'm puggin'.  Everyone plays their own style, everyone has their own favorite ATs and powersets and characters, everyone is having fun their own way.

 

There's close to 3000 players online right now as of Thursday dinner time EST.  The game is doing something right enough that a private server for a sixteen year old game can pull in that kind of numbers.  And I don't see how broad nerfs will make any of them feel more special.

[Joshex]

On 4/9/2020 at 8:00 PM, Abysmalyxia said:

No reasonable person thinks Hasten should be kept as is and anyone who argues to do so is merely arguing to keep their current *build* as is, indifferent to the damage it causes to the game itself.

 

Let's examine the reality of Hasten: Every single power in the entire game that utilizes recharge must be balanced around the existence of this single pool power. Read that sentence again.

 

Now tell me you think that is sane. That it qualifies as good game design. Tell me you're going to argue in favor of that status quo.

 

You're going to tell me that a player in "the know" who knows how to make a single power permanent, giving themselves a SEVENTY PERCENT universal reduction in recharge time for every single power they have isn't at a significant advantage over one who does not? There's no other ability in the game that carries that kind of influence, certainly not any pool power.

 

There's no reasonable case to be made for keeping hasten as it is. None.

 

SOLUTION 1:

Reduce recharge times across the board by 70%, essentially granting everyone the perma haste they already want. It won't significantly alter game balance because arguably the majority of players do this already anyway and those who don't will be happy to see the change. In essence those who depend on hasten will see no real loss (and will gain a few slots and a power back) while those who don't have it will be brought more up to par.

 

SOLUTION 2:

Change the Swiftness inherent power to accept recharge reduction enhancements that reduce recharge globally. This would demand greater fine tuning on the part of the developers as well as requiring some kind of investment on the part of the player while not leaving those unaware of the situation so far behind as to create an unbreachable gulf.

 

ok, you started a war here, so I doubt you'll even be able to read my post due to 6 pages of flames (not saying each person replying was flaming but.. 6 pages since April 9th? I guess it's not that short a time..

 

ok while your point about the power of Hasten is noted, the fact is they wanted it to be easy for players to boost their recharge. Primarily due to recharge Debuffs existing in the game but also a major factor was SERVER BANDWIDTH. they probably would have liked to make hasten a multipower ability, but the rest of the game was built around it being a single power. so changing it now would require significant changes to the rest of the whole game.

 

solution 1: your first solution wouldn't work for 2 reasons, 1: bandwidth, this is probably the major reason why hasten is as powerful as it is and a single power. if you reduced the casting time of all powers by 42.4% permanently it'd actually mean a lot more powers being cast a lot more frequently. this costs server bandwidth. and would eventaully lead to so much bandwidth being necessary that merely runnign the server would be a pain. it'd also lead to #2: Low reaction time, not just players would have faster attack times, but NPCs as well, but to be fair even if it is just players, 2 to 3 seconds is all it takes in PVP or a really tough mob to die. that said if you speed that up there isn;t enough speed possible in the internet to allow players to send a message to the server to react swiftly enough to survive such situations. in short it'd lead to "pwning" were you could just take out someone in seemly an instant with no chance of response.

 

Solution 1 would only work if they got rid of all recharge buffs and debuffs in the game, even then I think it'd still be too fast.

 

Solution 2: that would make swiftness the all powerful power you are saying hasten is, the only catch is you get swiftness for free so it costs you nothing. in essence you'd be making it even easier to buff recharge. second it'd demand the creation of a type of enhancement that doesn't even exist in game "recharge buff" as a category. while that would be welcomed, we'd basically need to make all powers able to accept this category, and include it in existing sets. technically LOTG is the only set that has such a thing.

 

at the end of the day, there is no clear solution to the situation. and to be honest there may be no way to ever fix it due to scientific laws of physics, unless we get lightspeed internet. so right now, even though it is very powerful for a pool power, the fact remains it's the only viable way to make the game work it really couldn't be achieved any other way at present.

 

I'm sure the devs considered adding a recharge buff into build-up and rage self buff powers but that would make those powers way over powered. people would definitely complain about an unfair balance because rage can be applied multiple times and build-up cannot.

 

So there is a viable reason this was included as a pool power. they decided players should have to spend extra by sacrificing another power to get the recharge boost.

 

It is also a difficult power type to name, not a lot of options of vocabulary to describe it, so making one power for every primary or secondary set to have it's own recharge power also became kinda hard to do. not to say it couldn't be done, but it'd take a lot of pondering. it'd also create a possible unfair situation where some primaries don't have it and others do where as some secondaries have it and some don't, this would mean there'd be some unlucky people who have none and some who have double recharge buffs.

 

recharge buffs are necessary for dealing with very high level enemy groups such as arachnos, but an inherent auto recharge buff is just too powerful. hasten being a timed click type with recharge time of it's own seems to work well.

[Greycat]

1 hour ago, Outrider_01 said:

Late response.

 

Shocking, an optional power you don't need to take but the game is "balanced" around it?  

• It never was balanced around having hasten. 
• It being in a power pool....means you don't need it unless you want it. 
• Hasten only picked up often, because the value/utility of  Hasten > Flurry/Jumpkick/Whirlwhind; combined.  What am I saying?  Its desirable because of what it can do vs powers you rarely see, because its really useful.  Flurry and the rest vs hasten, even you got to know those powers are less than useless in utility except for character flavor.

 

 

I am curious where this "Powers were balanced around having hasten" popped up from, myself, as I've been hearing it more and more and frankly my face is sore from all the facepalming.

[Joshex]

16 minutes ago, Greycat said:

I am curious where this "Powers were balanced around having hasten" popped up from, myself, as I've been hearing it more and more and frankly my face is sore from all the facepalming.

not arguing, adding to your point, maybe certain builds or certain powerset combinations can benefit from hasten. others could benefit more from the extra slot or an extra primary or secondary power + recharge IOs more.

 

so if I had to guess maybe some powerset combos need hasten?

 

I would also guess some ATs need hasten a lot more than others. for example my dominator back on the old servers probably didn;t need hasten, nothing got near him even without it, kill everything at a distance hold, sleep, mez, confuse and immobilize style. tankers? yeah.. most tank builds I've made require hasten. without it you're just too up close and personal to too much agro and debuff, gotta kill the thing that debuffs you fast.

 

but yeah I do not agree that all builds NEED hasten.

Edited April 16, 2020 by Joshex

[Blastit]

30 minutes ago, skoryy said:

If they don't feel different to you that's not a game problem.  I mean, I run content consistently at 50 and lower and its definitely not a City of Brutes.  I consistently see a variety of archetypes when I'm puggin'.  Everyone plays their own style, everyone has their own favorite ATs and powersets and characters, everyone is having fun their own way.

 

There's close to 3000 players online right now as of Thursday dinner time EST.  The game is doing something right enough that a private server for a sixteen year old game can pull in that kind of numbers.  And I don't see how broad nerfs will make any of them feel more special.

If this is the case then there's no problem. After all, what I want is an honest assessment of the game's framework. If the framework is fine and dandy then there's no major hurdle for making future stuff and there's nothing to particularly worry about.

 

55 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

What attitude?   You are only getting pushback becausr you are attributing something negative to what most people enjoy.

The attitude that you aren't prepared to take a step back and objectively assess what the game does and if this could be counterproductive for the long-term playability of the game. Critical analysis of assumed good things is very valuable. Otherwise you won't have a good model for what is good and won't know how and why something is good. That would leave a designer without very important information.

[Chris24601]

45 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

To his point Infinitum, what lvl of character are they supposed to challenge? In my difficulty thread this is sort of where it has hit a standstill as well despite everyone agreeing we want "harder content"

Indeed, this is kinda where all of these various discussions ultimately break down... there is a truly massive gulf between;

 

- a fresh 50 slotted with SO’s and has “normal” thematic power picks (i.e. picks pool powers based on theme rather than mechanical strength).

 

and

 

- a 50 that’s taken all the “power” pool picks (hasten, tough, weave, etc.) that’s been fully IO’d with purple sets and all six incarnate slots filled with tier-4s.

 

-Throw in a well-slotted 49 IO build into that evaluation as well, because it probably outperforms the SO-slotted 50.

 

So where exactly do you balance a theoretical level 50 piece of content?

 

Because what will be a challenge for the SO’d 50 at +0/x1 would be a cakewalk even at +4/x8 for the purple IO’d perma-hastened full t4 incarnate and what would be a challenge for that uber-50 would utterly destroy the SO-only 50.

 

THAT is the perspective that many of these “nerf” threads are coming from... that the state of the late game due to the combination of IO’s, incarnates and powers like hasten create such a disparity in performance that creating content that can challenge without being either overwhelming or a cakewalk to non-trivial portions of the playerbase is virtually impossible.

[Galaxy Brain]

1 hour ago, Infinitum said:

As in level 1-50?  Or post 50?

Itd have to be like lvl 35+ due to exemplars and how that's when most builds sorta click.

[Infinitum]

1 hour ago, Blastit said:

The attitude that you aren't prepared to take a step back and objectively assess what the game does and if this could be counterproductive for the long-term playability of the game. Critical analysis of assumed good things is very valuable. Otherwise you won't have a good model for what is good and won't know how and why something is good. That would leave a designer without very important information.

NONE of that is necessary for a power like hasten.  Its wasted energy for something that is ultimately not breaking the game.

 

Its a power choice, just like all the IOs you slot, just like what powers you choose in primary and secondary.

 

You are talking about redesigning parts of the game to make the current content of the game that has been rehashed to death just to make it more challenging.  I guarantee you nobody will play that for long because its already avoided content - not because its easy but because most of us have played it 10+ times over and over again.  Why would we want to try to grind something we are already bored with?

 

It should also be a designers imperative to introduce new challenges and content otherwise we will be having the same discussion 6 months from now when the same old content has grown more stale because its too grindy now.

 

Why would you take a step back? the correct form would be to take a step forward with new content so all these tricked out builds have real threats other than the 10% or so content that can currently test them.  and Yes it does exist.

 

A step forward would be a difficulty setting that allows for exotic damage like EBs and located damage thats unresistable like in the APex TF only this difficulty setting is optional and could transpose across all current content.  That would give it all a different look and challenge the OP builds better.

 

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Itd have to be like lvl 35+ due to exemplars and how that's when most builds sorta click.

yeah i see what you are saying, thats honestly hard for me to answer because i have only ran normal content 1-50 on my first 2 characters back on homecoming.  LIke i said I did it so much on live thats honestly kind of stale and i like the Post 50 content much better.  there just needs to be more of it.

 

And maybe more leveling 1-50 content also.  theres only so many times you can beat the council in the same office building, or CoT in the colonoscopy caves.

[Foxfyre]

On 4/9/2020 at 2:00 PM, Abysmalyxia said:

giving themselves a SEVENTY PERCENT universal reduction in recharge time for every single power they have isn't at a significant advantage over one who does not?

And there it is.

 

The crux of the argument.  Not that the power is bad.  Not that it's unbalanced.  But because you view it as an unfair advantage to those who didn't take/chose not to take the power.

Yet.....nothing is stopping you from taking the power.  Nothing is stopping you from building your toon in a way that it's still uber powerful even without hasten.

[Blastit]

6 hours ago, Infinitum said:

Why would you take a step back? the correct form would be to take a step forward with new content so all these tricked out builds have real threats other than the 10% or so content that can currently test them.  and Yes it does exist.

 

A step forward would be a difficulty setting that allows for exotic damage like EBs and located damage thats unresistable like in the APex TF only this difficulty setting is optional and could transpose across all current content.  That would give it all a different look and challenge the OP builds better.

By "a step back" I of course mean in the sense of metaphorically taking a step back to gain some wider perspective on a thing.

 

So again I ask: why is it more sensible for the designers to jump through hoops to accomodate overpowered characters than it is to retune the IO system? Why is it more sensible to create and maintain two different difficulty modes?

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

2 hours ago, Blastit said:

By "a step back" I of course mean in the sense of metaphorically taking a step back to gain some wider perspective on a thing.

 

So again I ask: why is it more sensible for the designers to jump through hoops to accomodate overpowered characters than it is to retune the IO system? Why is it more sensible to create and maintain two different difficulty modes?

Actually we have a great many more difficulty modes. Did you not notice the 1-8 and -1to +4 scale slider? Or that its a simple fact that some ATs by design will always have an easier time due to being front line dps dealers rather then support and CC? Or that we as players have great control over how challenged we want by choosing if we want to invest heavily in a build, or just by deciding to value you flavor more then META when choosing powers?

 

Being OP in CoH isnt even really a thing, Its just being a cosmic class build vs a street soldier build which is ideal for a game in the comic genre. There is a reason some choose not to even slot incarnate abilities on certain characters even if they run post 50 content heavily like the shard TFs, ITF, or LGTF alongside incarnate friends. Because they value the ability to be able to create the character they want rather then feel forced into even the incarnate system and the very limited content out there only for them.

 

When Batman and Superman team up, there is no equality in their power scale. In fact Kal El even on a intellectual level surpasses mere mortal Bruce Wayne because a kryptonian has a photographic memory with perfect recall, and can read the entire works of human history in less time then it takes Alfred to make Bruce a cuppa. Superman literally role plays an idiot to not make the entire JL feel pointless. Something I frankly can relate to in CoH on teams even with my mere mortal Batman homage just because well, people are gonna be people, and many people are not all that effective at attack rotations, managing different clicks and their cooldowns etc.

 

As I said before you would have to ban players like me outright if the goal is to reduce the peak down to a hill everyone can reach. Because people like me will just build a tower out of the corpses of our foes and remain above the masses.

 

"Take my love, take my land, take me where I can not stand. Burn the land and boil the sea, but you wont take the sky from me!"

[Galaxy Brain]

>implying batman doesnt get the most powerful buff in the form of writer bias

[Roderick]

On 4/9/2020 at 12:00 PM, Abysmalyxia said:

You're going to tell me that a player in "the know" who knows how to make a single power permanent, giving themselves a SEVENTY PERCENT universal reduction in recharge time for every single power they have isn't at a significant advantage over one who does not? There's no other ability in the game that carries that kind of influence, certainly not any pool power.

Someone else has probably mentioned this in the slew of replies I haven't read yet, but making Hasten permanent requires a LOT more than 70% bonus recharge, ON TOP OF Hasten's bonus.

 

Based on your justifications given, it would be more reasonable to ask for the removal of Set Bonuses; after all, most players can easily find room for five Luck of the Gambler +7.5% Global Recharge IOs (+37.5% recharge) and three purple sets (+10% recharge at 5 pieces in many sets). Literally any other +recharge set bonus pushes you over 70% global recharge, and you don't even need to worry about activating a power, or the endurance cost of Hasten; it's just always there. Prior to set bonuses, it was impossible to make Hasten permanent without relying on outside buffs from teammates, so obviously, the problem isn't Hasten, right? It's set bonuses. Or teammates. We should probably remove both from the game, just to be safe.