Are Player Defenses too high

[Coyote]

3 hours ago, Hardboiled Hero said:

So we need to have  our pool powers be either equally impactful, or equally non-impactful so that people can make all of their choices for theme reasons.. we don't have that in pool powers right now.

 

To be accurate, more impactful than any single +Defense powers are Hasten and probably Weaken Resolve. I can't say that there's another pool power seeing major use other than those, Tough (and mostly to mule the unique Resist IOs), and then the +Defense powers. But definitely Hasten is #1, and I'd argue that Weaken Resolve is a strong contender against anything other than maybe the Fighting pool.

[nihilii]

Watching this topic go on for 14 pages, and reading the replies, you'd believe there's an even split in the sentiment. Instead of the overwhelming majority voting "defenses are fine as they are", with a fairly respectable sample size.

 

Not to say the vocal minority can't have fun theorycrafting, but it begs the question: why poll people to know if they feel there is a problem if you're going to disregard their opinion and march on with the assumption there is a problem?

[golstat2003]

11 hours ago, Naraka said:

We can't even do that because people that get too serious start complaining as if we're here petitioning to have the game changed instead of having discussions on our personal perspectives.

 

Do you actually believe we are trying to change the current game?  But I bet that didn't stop you from taking that position and then vilifying their opinions.  People start throwing around their egos more and more, losing the perspective of the thread's intent.

The intent of suggestions is to suggest a change to the game. People saying they don't like a change or agree that change should be made, or offering alternatives is just fine. The reality is most of these suggestions will never make it into the game.

[Infinitum]

1 hour ago, nihilii said:

Watching this topic go on for 14 pages, and reading the replies, you'd believe there's an even split in the sentiment. Instead of the overwhelming majority voting "defenses are fine as they are", with a fairly respectable sample size.

 

Not to say the vocal minority can't have fun theorycrafting, but it begs the question: why poll people to know if they feel there is a problem if you're going to disregard their opinion and march on with the assumption there is a problem?

Agreed

[Haijinx]

1 hour ago, nihilii said:

Watching this topic go on for 14 pages, and reading the replies, you'd believe there's an even split in the sentiment. Instead of the overwhelming majority voting "defenses are fine as they are", with a fairly respectable sample size.

 

Not to say the vocal minority can't have fun theorycrafting, but it begs the question: why poll people to know if they feel there is a problem if you're going to disregard their opinion and march on with the assumption there is a problem?

I'd argue there definitely is a problem.  But the majority of people are fine with the status quo.

 

If you have vast chunks of level 50 characters that live their whole lives at the rails of your entire system, there is a problem..  

[Blastit]

1 hour ago, nihilii said:

Watching this topic go on for 14 pages, and reading the replies, you'd believe there's an even split in the sentiment. Instead of the overwhelming majority voting "defenses are fine as they are", with a fairly respectable sample size.

The question talks about defences in general and all the people who have answered that their characters "die plenty" could very well do so because they don't use any IO sets at all. Someone who plays fourteen DB/Regen scrappers and won't touch incarnate powers or IOs because they're afraid of making a mistake would be very unlikely to feel overpowered. An extreme example, yes, but we don't actually know the play experience of those who answered the poll.

[DougGraves]

2 hours ago, nihilii said:

Watching this topic go on for 14 pages, and reading the replies, you'd believe there's an even split in the sentiment. Instead of the overwhelming majority voting "defenses are fine as they are", with a fairly respectable sample size.

 

Not to say the vocal minority can't have fun theorycrafting, but it begs the question: why poll people to know if they feel there is a problem if you're going to disregard their opinion and march on with the assumption there is a problem?

 

This is a poll of players who post on the forums.  Who skew heavily towards powergamers.  So the results of the poll are meaningless as to what the actual playerbase thinks, it just reflects what forum posters think.

 

I agree that it makes the poll rather pointless. 

[Hardboiled Hero]

4 minutes ago, DougGraves said:

 

This is a poll of players who post on the forums.  Who skew heavily towards powergamers.  So the results of the poll are meaningless as to what the actual playerbase thinks, it just reflects what forum posters think.

 

I agree that it makes the poll rather pointless. 

  Not pointless.  It makes the poll one tool.. I've also asked similar questions in game, but I don't really feel I can get a good sample size in game and I only tend to ask people when I'm grouped with them, so they might know me too well before they answer.. in other words results there would be skewed as well.  In social science you do what you can to keep results from being skewed, but you also have to realize that complete elimination of bias in any one study is impossible, which is why "good" results need to be based on several studies.

[Taboo]

ACK! = starting a poll and having the poll reveal we was wrong.

 

(not saying that is what happened here, just defining the term ACK related to this thread)

[Hardboiled Hero]

2 hours ago, nihilii said:

Watching this topic go on for 14 pages, and reading the replies, you'd believe there's an even split in the sentiment. Instead of the overwhelming majority voting "defenses are fine as they are", with a fairly respectable sample size.

 

Not to say the vocal minority can't have fun theorycrafting, but it begs the question: why poll people to know if they feel there is a problem if you're going to disregard their opinion and march on with the assumption there is a problem?

  I'm the one who made the poll and I assure you I'm not disregarding them.   I don't personally want to acknowledge the numbers too much in this thread, because talking about poll results while a poll is taking place can skew the results of the poll.  There's already been several votes and replies (Thank you everyone!), so I'm not that worried about it now, I've mentioned the results in some other discussions I was having, but I don't want to dwell on them here in case anyone else still wants to vote.  So I assure you I'm aware of the results and they've been helpful in other discussions, which was the intent. So "no", people aren't be "disregarded".

 

  Also please note that the last couple of posts have been about explaining my thought process when I posted the poll.  Some people have seemed to think I wanted to "pull some down so others could feel better" (no..  I had thoughts to lift people back up as well).  Some people complained the poll was supporting a "Blanket untargeted nerf".. No..  The poll in itself doesn't support anything..  I think the fact that one of the options mentioned a nerf but never specified what the nerf would be was taken out of context by some, so I felt the need to clarify that I was thinking about targeted nerfs along with targeted buffs in order to achieve a specific effect. 

 

 Basically, I'm trying to answer questions about why the poll exists in the first place, why it is as it is etc..  I'm giving my thought process for asking the question, not making any new arguments..  everything that I mentioned in the last 3 posts or so is about what I was thinking, not about what I am thinking or what I think others should be thinking..  stuff like that should be beyond the scope of this discussion, at least for me. (as the "neutral interviewer")

 

 

[macskull]

8 hours ago, Hardboiled Hero said:

  SR still has the thing where the res gets higher as their health drops.. one reason I decided to go ahead and make the SR tankers tp begin with.. it simply doesn't help enough at low levels.  How could SR be a "late bloomer" though, when it's the late/end game in which SR loses much of the advantage they would have in tanking.. when defense becomes soft-capped by everyone and SR is still lacking the resistance that other armor sets have?

SR was historically considered a "late bloomer" because Scrappers and Stalkers don't get the AoE defense toggle until level 35. When the set was ported to Brutes the power order was changed a bit to address this (Brutes get the AoE defense/taunt toggle at 20 and Tankers get it at 12). SR has the potential to be exceptionally powerful on a Tanker because as other posters have said you can softcap to all three positions relatively early in the game without any IOs, and the sliding resistance passives combined with Tanker AT scales mean you get some impressive damage resistance as your health dips low. This sometimes ends up in a weird situation where you are more survivable at 20-30% HP than you are at 100% HP, but at low HP an SR Tanker with all 3 scaling resistance passives is nigh unkillable outside of psi damage.

 

You are correct that the majority of SR's mitigation is defense and other sets can get that as well - but SR is the only one that can easily reach and maintain capped defense debuff resistance, so other sets that just happen to build for defense have difficulty when subjected to cascading defense failure. SR shrugs it off and keeps on going. SR's real weaknesses are multiple rapid attacks getting lucky and landing, no self-heal, and no +max HP power but since SR is so trivially easy to softcap (especially on a Tanker) that frees you up to chase whatever other set bonuses you want.

[Bill Z Bubba]

29 minutes ago, macskull said:

and the sliding resistance passives combined with Tanker AT scales mean you get some impressive damage resistance as your health dips low

As in *capped damres to all but psi, incarnate softcapped defense and capped DDR to keep it from failing.* You don't even have to get all the way down to 30% health to get there.

[macskull]

9 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

As in *capped damres to all but psi, incarnate softcapped defense and capped DDR to keep it from failing.* You don't even have to get all the way down to 30% health to get there.

From what I can tell based on City of Data info, each scaling resist power gives 2% resistance for each % HP below 60%, so at 24% HP you'd be looking at capped resistance. That's assuming no resistance from any other sources, but if I'm on an SR there's no way I'm not slotting the Shield Wall and Reactive Defenses uniques, and you're probably also running Tough because why not. The resistances take a little bit to kick in so you could still potentially be two-shot in rapid succession but it's not likely and as a Tanker you're looking at about 2250HP at level 50 with only the +HP accolades and no other set bonuses, or about 2390HP with the accolades and the Unbreakable Guard unique.

Edited May 22, 2020 by macskull

[Naraka]

5 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

The intent of suggestions is to suggest a change to the game. People saying they don't like a change or agree that change should be made, or offering alternatives is just fine. The reality is most of these suggestions will never make it into the game.

I have no issue with stating criticism of a suggested idea or offering alternatives.  The problem is, some people take things way too personally (both the people who make suggestions and those that criticize them).  I like to level with people who seem to have more knowledge or experience in a subject too, but I also don't like to be condescended to.

 

As for the reality of suggestions, that's often why I can take a contrarian position on things, because I realize most aren't going anywhere.  With suggestions that are going somewhere, that's likely when you'll see the most personalized attacks going on if you take into consideration the ration of *moving ideas to not.

 

*Clarification: example of moving ideas are feedback and suggestions for changes being tested.

[Naraka]

4 hours ago, DougGraves said:

 

This is a poll of players who post on the forums.  Who skew heavily towards powergamers.  So the results of the poll are meaningless as to what the actual playerbase thinks, it just reflects what forum posters think.

 

I agree that it makes the poll rather pointless. 

All polls are rather pointless, especially those that aren't regulated, because how data is interpreted can be at the whim of the bias of the interpreter.  Your post can be an example of that.

 

Not criticizing your opinion, just stating the realization.  People get paid good money to skew polls and surveys.

[America's Angel]

Defenses are fine as they are.

 

I don't die because this game is a MMORPG and MMORPGs are not hard.

Edited May 22, 2020 by America's Angel

[Haijinx]

2 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

Defenses are fine as they are.

 

I don't die because this game is a MMORPG and MMORPGs are not hard.

Anymore

[America's Angel]

1 hour ago, Haijinx said:

Anymore

City of Heroes has never been hard. The pace is too slow.

 

Compare it to something like Street Fighter or a FPS.

[Naraka]

2 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

City of Heroes has never been hard. The pace is too slow.

 

Compare it to something like Street Fighter or a FPS.

Well, you said MMORPGs aren't hard.  All those MMORPGs that laid the ground work over decades of play for the more modern MMOs usually had encounters/situations/mechanics many of the new era would consider "quite unfair".

[America's Angel]

From its inception until now, City of Heroes has not been a hard game. Other MMORPGs, contextually within that same timeframe are also easy. The implication here being that CoH is operating fine at the difficulty level it has, for what it is, in the wider world it lives in.

 

I'm sure that old MMORPGs from back in the day were hard. I'm sure that MMORPG's from millions of years ago in distant, pre-human, civilisations, were also hard (And, in the infiniteness of time and space: easier, the same, and somehow a mixture of all three possible relations.) But no matter how difficult the people of the X'Oti Empire found City of Zarkon, City of Heroes is, and always will be, easy.

 

And defenses are fine.

Edited May 23, 2020 by America's Angel

[Yoru-hime]

13 hours ago, America's Angel said:

I'm sure that old MMORPGs from back in the day were hard. I'm sure that MMORPG's from millions of years ago in distant, pre-human, civilisations, were also hard (And, in the infiniteness of time and space: easier, the same, and somehow a mixture of all three possible relations.) But no matter how difficult the people of the X'Oti Empire found City of Zarkon, City of Heroes is, and always will be, easy.

Man... it's like no one even remembers Kelzits even exist. Everyone just plays Zarkon-side these days. 

[Heraclea]

22 hours ago, Haijinx said:

I'd argue there definitely is a problem.  But the majority of people are fine with the status quo.

 

If you have vast chunks of level 50 characters that live their whole lives at the rails of your entire system, there is a problem..  

Truth is, a MAJOR reason why I like this game is that it's much easier and less frustrating than other MMOs.   It specifically lacks misfeatures that send people to online voice chats to play because the boss fights need that much catherding.  You can solo on a tanker or defender if you want to; it will be a bit slower but you'll get the missions done. 

 

Anyone who wants to take that away is going to get an argument from me. 

[EmmySky]

18 minutes ago, Heraclea said:

Truth is, a MAJOR reason why I like this game is that it's much easier and less frustrating than other MMOs.   It specifically lacks misfeatures that send people to online voice chats to play because the boss fights need that much catherding.  You can solo on a tanker or defender if you want to; it will be a bit slower but you'll get the missions done. 

 

Anyone who wants to take that away is going to get an argument from me. 

My primary server is Indom, and being such I decided to roll a toon to test out PvP.  Then someone said you need to discord voice chat your team for effective PvP.  I am out.  Way too shy and introverted to talk to people.  I like to read discord as much as I like to read the forums, but I think the game should be playable/enjoyable with what it offers without needing outside applications.  

 

Sorry back to the matter at hand.  I am trying to update my Mids so maybe my blasters will have a smidgen of defense.  If you had seen how many floors I've licked in the last 3 or 4 days you would know the answer to the title question.  

 

Happy hunting y'all!

 

Edit: yes I see the irony of not liking discord voice chat for game play but still (trying to) use Mids and vidiotmaps 😁

Edited May 23, 2020 by EmmySky

[macskull]

5 hours ago, EmmySky said:

My primary server is Indom, and being such I decided to roll a toon to test out PvP.  Then someone said you need to discord voice chat your team for effective PvP.  I am out.  Way too shy and introverted to talk to people.  I like to read discord as much as I like to read the forums, but I think the game should be playable/enjoyable with what it offers without needing outside applications. 

I mean, this isn't entirely true. If you're just messing around in zone PvP you definitely don't need voice chat and I don't remember the last time I was actually in voice while zone PvPing. Team arena stuff is a little different but even then as long as you're at least listening to the other players you can use game chat to communicate.

[Hero_of_Light]

I don't see a 'in pvp' option on the vote 😞 [answer= def is crap in pvp]

 

In PvE I think it's fine as is, unless incarnate abilities are used, but that's everything and not just def.

 

I like the idea but I feel like incarnate abilities should maybe offer scaled benifits when not doing incarnate stuff.