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

[Seed22]

On 4/9/2020 at 2:00 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.

 

This is the greatest outlandish suggestion I've seen thus far. Extra points for the unnecessary enlarged words at the top! Now seriously. No. There's no reason this post should exist tbh, please delete. Please.

[Seed22]

On 4/9/2020 at 2:13 PM, Abysmalyxia said:

A pool power that is placed into the build of virtually every high level player in the game is broken.

Fire/Kin corrs are popular, so should we delete the sets? It's popular, so what? plus making it perma is a HUGE PITA(I should know, I have a few with it). Plus it's just recharge, not like it's recharge+end+recov+3rd powerset+God. Just. Recharge.

[Noyjitat]

33 minutes ago, Blastit said:

"That can't be true because if it is then the next thing you'll do is so-and-so" is a bad argument. Maybe it is poor design that everyone takes Tough and Weave, maybe the Leadership pool presents design problems, maybe the IO system itself is a design problem, maybe what power pools are meant to really do should be investigated. You're just assuming that the present system must be kept as it is. Every question of design is best approached with an open mind and an honest examination of your premises and goals.

 

Never mind that humans can in fact just stop at some arbitrary point because they feel like it. The HC team could decide that they want Hasten to function as-is but be a final tier power to reward those who dedicate themselves to Super Speed, they could decide that the Leadership pool is a problem but they don't have a good solution and they could decide that the Fighting pool is fine as it is.

This game, that game, all games; players Find and invest in what makes the characters as powerful, fun and self sufficient as possible. This is true in mmos, and card games like you want the stats that help you win.
 

I’ll continue to point out things like: leadership, speed and the fighting pool have remained unchanged other than new powers added to them to make them even better. Burnout was added to hasten, cross punch was added to fighting, and finally victory rush was added to leadership; all of which was during the last few live issues by the paragon dev team. All of which were added without the nerfs.

 

Still after nearly a decade of no coh; A small group of whiners that dont like how everyone else plays or builds characters want to radically change or remove things you feel are broken or abused because that’s your viewpoint.

 

Continue to nerf and remove things

and eventually people will start moving to the other projects. Thats really the only

way players can vote at this point. All the shinys wont be enough to hold onto players if the pool powers, incarnates and ios are suddenly no longer effective.

[Blastit]

6 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

Fire/Kin corrs are popular, so should we delete the sets? It's popular, so what? plus making it perma is a HUGE PITA(I should know, I have a few with it). Plus it's just recharge, not like it's recharge+end+recov+3rd powerset+God. Just. Recharge.

If every single character of a particular AT was one, single powerset combination then one should look into why. In this case, Fire/Kin is a popular corruptor combo because it's nearly the one thing they do better than defenders due to higher base damage and higher damage cap.

[Bunmaster]

Don't like it? Dont't take it. Not everyone takes it and of all the people who take hasten, not all has it perma.

 

What will be next? Fighting? Leadership?

You do know stacking Leadership is overpowered, right?

 

I'd like to suggest removing Rest, Sprint and Brawl, since 100% of the playerbase has those 3. That's confirmed.

[Blastit]

2 minutes ago, Noyjitat said:

This game, that game, all games; players Find and invest in what makes the characters as powerful, fun and self sufficient as possible. This is true in mmos, and card games like you want the stats that help you win.
 

I’ll continue to point out things like: leadership, speed and the fighting pool have remained unchanged other than new powers added to them to make them even better. Burnout was added to hasten, cross punch was added to fighting, and finally victory rush was added to leadership; all of which was during the last few live issues by the paragon dev team. All of which were added without the nerfs.

 

Still after nearly a decade of no coh; A small group of whiners that dont like how everyone else plays or builds characters want to radically change or remove things you feel are broken or abused because that’s your viewpoint.

 

Continue to nerf and remove things

and eventually people will start moving to the other projects. Thats really the only

way players can vote at this point. All the shinys wont be enough to hold onto players if the pool powers, incarnates and ios are suddenly no longer effective.

Card games and MMOs are absolutely filled with examples of abilities, strategies, etc that were changed to be less powerful because they threatened the health of the game. These are, like, the actual worst game genres to explain to me in an attempt to convince me that things critically must not change. I'm sure that Flash was very fun for some MTG players but since it could win before your opponent even drew their first card while going first the card was banned. More specifically for CoH, the whole "enhancement diversification" deal happened because characters running around with perma-Hasten, six-slotted Stamina, attacks with six damage SOs and Focused Accuracy threw balance so far out of whack that scaling enemies up to threaten this new baseline would utterly demolish everyone who didn't build optimally.

 

Sometimes it seems that people were so happy to adopt the terminology "nerfed" for any downwards adjustment, even sensible ones, that they appear to believe that anyone raising concerns over the centralisation of some pool powers and some kinds of IO sets is inherently arguing that those things must be made useless.

[Crysis]

On 4/9/2020 at 3:00 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.

 

How about you just don’t take Hasten on any of your builds and convince everyone you meet in game to do likewise?  
 

I will continue to take it and encourage everyone I meet to do likewise.

 

No need for code changes.  Those who want it can have it and those that don’t skip it.

 

Win-Win?

[Galaxy Brain]

Can we stop quoting the giant first post?

[Blastit]

8 minutes ago, Crysis said:

How about you just don’t take Hasten on any of your builds and convince everyone you meet in game to do likewise?  
 

I will continue to take it and encourage everyone I meet to do likewise.

 

No need for code changes.  Those who want it can have it and those that don’t skip it.

 

Win-Win?

If Hasten turns out to help create an unhealthy game environment, no. Players policing themselves on matters of power level are not a workable solution to game imbalance. Imagine taking the same attitude to Fire Tankers being able to herd entire maps by themselves.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Let me ask a question of the anti hasten/anti global recharge faction members. What is the end result your hoping to see as the outcome should your wants come to pass? Do you want to see all powers that are able to be permafied no longer able to be? Do you want those powers recharges shortened so hasten/global recharge isnt needed to perma them? Do you want offensive powers like nukes able to be used less often, indirectly buffing judgement in end game play as rotating between them would become far more common place to compensate for the lack of nuking from the ATs like blaster which would suffer a huge loss in dps not being able to nuke in the 30ish second range? What about the support powers like healing and buffing?

 

Describe the game play you are trying to see come to pass as clearly and detailed as you can please. For example is your desire to see players being able to with a heavy investment in their build no longer able to solo +4X8, and make teaming more a must, and for teams to be forced to stick tightly together at all times during group play rather then being able to spread out and finish objectives more timely by dividing up.

[Infinitum]

9 minutes ago, Blastit said:

If Hasten turns out to help create an unhealthy game environment, no. Players policing themselves on matters of power level are not a workable solution to game imbalance. Imagine taking the same attitude to Fire Tankers being able to herd entire maps by themselves.

Thats all very subjective, seriously, unhealthy to you and 5 other people may be one thing but fun to 1000 others.

 

You don't get to decide that, the fact is its a superhero game with a myriad of options to build to OP levels if you choose to do that.  Or you dont have to do that.  Play however you want and let others do the same,or if that isnt good enough go to another server, these nerf threads have gotten a little crazy lately.

 

If you make it so hard its not fun and change literally thousands of builds over night it will not be fun anymore, and people will leave. Then you can sit here and discuss the merits of things being perfectly balanced to your terms while the game ceases to exist.

[Saikochoro]

On 4/9/2020 at 11:19 AM, Abysmalyxia said:

Which would be a perfectly workable solution. I don't oppose keeping the current recharge times because the game is already balanced around the reality of everyone having hasten. My issue is that it creates a staggering gulf in power output between those who have it and those who do not. No pool power should have that kind of impact.

Then take the power if you don’t like not having extra recharge. It’s the same as when people didn’t take stamina before it became inherent. Or how about tough, weave, and maneuvers? Those also have very high pick rates because they make soft capping much much easier (or possible in a lot of cases). Should we nerf those too because some people don’t take them?

 

The argument that there is a power gulf between those who take the power and those who don’t is illogical. Everyone has the choice to take it. Thus it is fair. Some people don’t take it because they find value elsewhere. There is opportunity cost with any power pick. 

Edited April 16, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

6 minutes ago, Saikochoro said:

Then take the power if you don’t like not having extra recharge. It’s the same as when people didn’t take stamina before it became inherent. Or how about tough, weave, and maneuvers? Those also have very high pick rates because they make soft capping much much easier (or possible in a lot of cases). Should we nerf those too because some people don’t take them?

 

The argument that there is a power gulf between those who take the power and those who don’t is a illogical. Everyone has the choice to take it. Thus it is fair. Some people don’t take it because they find value elsewhere. There is opportunity cost with any power pick. 

Hell at that point they may as well ban players like me because even on my gimp builds made for flavor concept reasons there tends to be a large gulf between me and most of those on my teams. If the issue is power gap sometimes its a behind the keyboard issue more then anything else ime.

[Noyjitat]

1 hour ago, Blastit said:

Card games and MMOs are absolutely filled with examples of abilities, strategies, etc that were changed to be less powerful because they threatened the health of the game. These are, like, the actual worst game genres to explain to me in an attempt to convince me that things critically must not change. I'm sure that Flash was very fun for some MTG players but since it could win before your opponent even drew their first card while going first the card was banned. More specifically for CoH, the whole "enhancement diversification" deal happened because characters running around with perma-Hasten, six-slotted Stamina, attacks with six damage SOs and Focused Accuracy threw balance so far out of whack that scaling enemies up to threaten this new baseline would utterly demolish everyone who didn't build optimally.

 

Sometimes it seems that people were so happy to adopt the terminology "nerfed" for any downwards adjustment, even sensible ones, that they appear to believe that anyone raising concerns over the centralisation of some pool powers and some kinds of IO sets is inherently arguing that those things must be made useless.

Maybe thats because most nerfs are not sensible and are the  result of bitchy whiners. you’re never going to convince me its unhealthy for the game just because most people use it. It only makes sense to maximize your characters with the tools given to you.

[Saikochoro]

On 4/10/2020 at 8:03 AM, Burnt Toast said:

No.

I know I didn't increase my font size, but my statements still have merit. 

You know what they say about people with large font sizes...

[Blastit]

8 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

Thats all very subjective, seriously, unhealthy to you and 5 other people may be one thing but fun to 1000 others.

 

You don't get to decide that, the fact is its a superhero game with a myriad of options to build to OP levels if you choose to do that.  Or you dont have to do that.  Play however you want and let others do the same,or if that isnt good enough go to another server, these nerf threads have gotten a little crazy lately.

 

If you make it so hard its not fun and change literally thousands of builds over night it will not be fun anymore, and people will leave. Then you can sit here and discuss the merits of things being perfectly balanced to your terms while the game ceases to exist.

"Unhealthy" isn't necessarily that subjective, though. Being able to farm two billion inf in a minute might be hilarious to do (I've played cookie clicker, I know that huge numbers are funny) but it would ruin the economy. A resistance-based character that also has softcapped defences as well as enough +tohit, +regen and +recovery to make anything but damage buffs unnecessary might be harmless in practice if there's only ever one or two people per server but would create a bad environment if it's an easy target for everyone to build towards. Crowd control and support ATs becoming effectively worse, by design, as you move along the game's progression path is not very fun for like a third of the ATs. If every melee character could achieve the same defensive stats regardless of which armour set they pick then that defeats the point of having different armour sets in the first place. For the developers, overpowered characters are an issue if you want to develop new content.

 

Are we at that point? IO sets are easier to acquire than they ever were before, but are they so easy to acquire that the amount of bonuses they can give creates a major problem? I don't know! I would like it investigated and for the matter to be discussed with honesty. The thing I take issue with isn't people who like things the way they are, it's the refusal to consider that things legitimately could be otherwise.

[Blastit]

14 minutes ago, Noyjitat said:

Maybe thats because most nerfs are not sensible and are the  result of bitchy whiners. you’re never going to convince me its unhealthy for the game just because most people use it. It only makes sense to maximize your characters with the tools given to you.

You are confusing the choices that a player makes with the choices that a designer should make. Of course a player of a challenge-based game makes choices based at least in part on what will make them more likely to complete the challenge. This is the nature of the game and most players engage in this behaviour to varying degrees. But these aren't the goals of a designer. They have to decide which behaviours should be rewarded, which degree of power differential is acceptable and all the other things that together make up the shape of the metagame. If Scrappers could tank everything well enough, why have Brutes and Tankers? If AE farms are the only things people ever do 1-50, why have the entire rest of the game? If one AT, strategy or activity obsoletes the existing dozen others then that devastates a previously diverse game.

[Infinitum]

18 minutes ago, Blastit said:

"Unhealthy" isn't necessarily that subjective, though. Being able to farm two billion inf in a minute might be hilarious to do (I've played cookie clicker, I know that huge numbers are funny) but it would ruin the economy. A resistance-based character that also has softcapped defences as well as enough +tohit, +regen and +recovery to make anything but damage buffs unnecessary might be harmless in practice if there's only ever one or two people per server but would create a bad environment if it's an easy target for everyone to build towards. Crowd control and support ATs becoming effectively worse, by design, as you move along the game's progression path is not very fun for like a third of the ATs. If every melee character could achieve the same defensive stats regardless of which armour set they pick then that defeats the point of having different armour sets in the first place. For the developers, overpowered characters are an issue if you want to develop new content.

 

Are we at that point? IO sets are easier to acquire than they ever were before, but are they so easy to acquire that the amount of bonuses they can give creates a major problem? I don't know! I would like it investigated and for the matter to be discussed with honesty. The thing I take issue with isn't people who like things the way they are, it's the refusal to consider that things legitimately could be otherwise.

All you are describing is the need for new content thats outside of the box from the original content.  Not many I know want to repeat that or extend it.  We want to test our OP builds.

 

None of the current metrics invalidates having OP builds.

 

There is also no rule that says you build every character to the nines then council stomp all the way to 50.  For me and many more, im not looking for a grind, I did that on live.  I'm not interested in grinding every single character to 50 anymore as I have already done that many many times.

 

I still think it may be fun to occasionally level up the grind way with SOs and such, in fact I think I'm going to embark on that journey soon.

 

For the most part I like to try to see how OP in can make a toon and see what can challenge me.

 

Frequently I find it - the other night running pandoras box for instance, i dont know if we got sideways or the enemy had the right mix to test me, but on my best tank I had the best fight of my career and it lasted about 5 min I suppose, it was exhilarating.

 

The challenge is out there, there just needs to be more of it.

 

But no, nothing should invalidate an OP build just because people cant take the time to seek out challenge or make their own.

[Infinitum]

45 minutes ago, Noyjitat said:

Maybe thats because most nerfs are not sensible and are the  result of bitchy whiners. you’re never going to convince me its unhealthy for the game just because most people use it. It only makes sense to maximize your characters with the tools given to you.

If anything other pools and powers need to be looked at so they arent so horrible so we may have a choice to challenge good powers like hasten.

[Blastit]

26 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

All you are describing is the need for new content thats outside of the box from the original content.  Not many I know want to repeat that or extend it.  We want to test our OP builds.

Can the HC team feasibly do that? What level of IO'd out character should be targeted? If enemies are created that threaten resistance- and defence-capped Tankers and Brutes, what will they do to other ATs? What kinds of mechanics can be used to threaten overpowered characters? Auto-hit damage? Unresistable endurance drain? -400% resistance debuffs? Mag80 mez effects with minute-long durations? Should rewards be increased in proportion to the difficulty of the content? If so, how do you make sure this doesn't just become the new baseline that everyone "should" build towards?

 

Why is it more sensible to create a small amount of extremely hard content that can only be accessed by overpowered characters than it is to depower these characters to sensible levels and create content that a far broader range of level 50 characters can engage with?

[skoryy]

6 minutes ago, Blastit said:

Why is it more sensible to create a small amount of extremely hard content that can only be accessed by overpowered characters than it is to depower these characters to sensible levels and create content that a far broader range of level 50 characters can engage with?

When no one is special, everyone is?

[Galaxy Brain]

1 hour ago, Saikochoro said:

The argument that there is a power gulf between those who take the power and those who don’t is illogical. Everyone has the choice to take it. Thus it is fair. Some people don’t take it because they find value elsewhere. There is opportunity cost with any power pick. 

I think a big thing people are dancing around is... well, what other options are there?

 

Hasten is godlike for a pool power, Tough resists the two most common damage type's you'll find thrown at you period. Leadership is leadership, etc etc...

 

Stuff like presence, Stealth, and so on all pale in comparison. If there were other legit options that could stand up top the popular pool picks that'd be a different story all together.

[Outrider_01]

On 4/9/2020 at 12:19 PM, Abysmalyxia said:

I don't oppose keeping the current recharge times because the game is already balanced around the reality of everyone having hasten

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.

 

 

[Blastit]

5 minutes ago, skoryy said:

When no one is special, everyone is?

More that when everyone is overpowered, no one is special. Anyone remember the Champions Online comparison thread? How one of the big things in favour of CoH was that while the freeform powers were cool it led to homogenisitation and CoH's AT system just had way more crunchy variety? That sort of thing is what I'm getting at. 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.

[ShardWarrior]

27 minutes ago, Blastit said:

Why is it more sensible to create a small amount of extremely hard content that can only be accessed by overpowered characters than it is to depower these characters to sensible levels and create content that a far broader range of level 50 characters can engage with?

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.