"Meta" Tweaks

[Galaxy Brain]

51 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

This depends on the level of effort required and the amount of time invested.  As I mentioned earlier, people will take the path of least resistance.  If a person can run 3 speed TFs and gain the same amount of merits they could by running one of these "new and improved with difficulty!" TFs with additional EBs that drop an extra merit or two, in my experience they will always do the former. 

I was thinking they would appear in all content if you choose for them to appear, and lets say they are worth 1-4 merits based on their level vs you or something with an X% chance they appear per spawn. Over time as you run missions or even Task Forces and they crop up it can add up very fast.

[ShardWarrior]

11 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I was thinking they would appear in all content if you choose for them to appear, and lets say they are worth 1-4 merits based on their level vs you or something with an X% chance they appear per spawn. Over time as you run missions or even Task Forces and they crop up it can add up very fast.

Yes they could add up fast, however the increase in the amount of time needed to clear them could/probably would offset those gains.  In general, this is not a bad idea to add some flavor to the existing options.  I do not see it getting used much outside of me soloing though.  People I generally team with are merit farming and have worked out the optimal routine.

Edited June 24, 2020 by ShardWarrior

[Galaxy Brain]

2 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Yes they could add up fast, however the increase in the amount of time needed to clear them could/probably would offset those gains.

Tbh, I had imagined adding difficulty settings (either what we got now or the settings you can do in Flashbacks/TFs proliferated) to also add some form of multiplier to the end merit gains. A +4 TF w/ EB Encounters should be > +4 TF >>> +0 TF.

[Coyotedancer]

7 hours ago, DSorrow said:

Fair enough, I certainly don't have a comprehensive view into the average player base so anything I say on the topic is based off of a hunch. That said, I still think that the spectrum between SOs and optimized IO builds is so wide that an optimized IO build is still miles ahead of a build with set IOs* despite both being much better than SO/common IO only builds. Essentially, if the difficulty options allow us to go from -1/x1 to +4/x8 I'd say an average SO build performance cap is around +1/x3, a build with set IOs* at around +2/x6 and for a fully optimized build it's beyond +4/x8.

 

Note that I use the term "build with set IOs" to mean a character build that slots set IOs, but with little to no regard to an optimized performance goal. This could mean anything from slotting whatever uncommon sets fit into powers just for better enhancement values to a build that just slots "best" sets per power basis without maximizing efficiency in the big picture. Even within this category the performance gap between the low and top end is significant.

 

For what it's worth, I pretty much always run my support characters with mid-level teams... and as I said in the Market forum thread about spending INF, I habitually look at my team-mates info panes when I do that... I'd say that under half have *ANY* set bonuses or procs listed at that level. The rest tend to have a few things listed... Procs and Specials, in particular... But nothing too extensive. A lot of people out there are running on mostly-SOs or mostly-commons in the mid-game.

 

As for the roleplayers, even if they aren't power-gamers they ARE people with a pretty high personal investment in both the game itself and, probably more importantly when it comes to time and resource investment, in their specific roleplayed characters. It only makes sense that they would want nice toys for those favorites, so I'm not sure they can really been looked at as Joe & Jane Average players any more than serious PvPers or the theory-crafting MIDS-Wizards.

 

 

Edited June 24, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[Bionic_Flea]

43 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

theory-crafting MIDS-Wizards.

Midzards?

[aethereal]

Minions and lieutenants get scaling AoE defense to team size.  Minions more than lieutenants.

 

Probably not a good idea, but one that's narrowly about the dominance of AoE.

[MTeague]

9 minutes ago, aethereal said:

Minions and lieutenants get scaling AoE defense to team size.  Minions more than lieutenants.

 

Probably not a good idea, but one that's narrowly about the dominance of AoE.

Given how much +Acc to All Powers, and Tactics/Focused Acc/Targetting Drone/Kismet +Acc people run with, I'm honestly not sure this would be noticed unless it a was a GIANT amount of +Defense to AoE.  I think at most you'd slightly adjust how people slot, and we'd be right back where we started in short order. 

 

I think straight up Damage Resistance To All based on number of nearby mobs is a better bet, with EB's providing more of this than Bosses who provide more than Lieut's who provide more than Minions.  So it becomes a priority to burn down the big guys, or, break their formation and string them apart.  Or, to have support to debuff mobs, Or, to have Controllers to lockdown (idea being that said damage resistance aura gets suppressed when a mob is mezzed)

[Infinitum]

Take a shiel/elec tank as a for instance - its best damage is all aoe - thats all it can do basically.  the best powers are all on a high recharge too - around 20 -30 seconds that varies.  Once you fire off the aoe broadside thats it your other powers are just going to be there to control agro until the broadside is back up.  You arent taking a boss down now without the aoe powers - thats just how that powerset works - and it works well but the acceptable trade off is longer recharge and less single target damage.

 

Some sets are just set up that way - yeah they will wipe minions and lieutenants, and hurt the bosses, but what you dont get in that first salvo - you are going to be waiting a bit.

 

So characters like that i dont see these changes working to well for because if it makes Lieu and bosses harder to kill the whole set would need to be re-balanced for more single target at some place in the set.

 

Not to mention Lightning rod being the best power in the set - if it did less damage to offset more ST damage elsewhere in the set or couldnt be devastating - then whats the point of such a pretty power turning into a feather tickler to anything other than minions?

 

I get the desire for changes like this - but i do think they need to be as an added setting and completely optional, because my mind keeps going horrifyingly back to the Khan TF that i was on with this shield elec set and I just didnt bring enough to the table as it was because of the limitations of not enough ST damage - and it wasnt all my fault either that TF was jinxed from the get go, but it didnt help i couldnt throw reliable ST dps at Reichtsman.

[marcussmythe]

On 6/24/2020 at 3:50 PM, Bionic_Flea said:

Midzards?

I'll own that one.

[marcussmythe]

2 hours ago, Infinitum said:

So characters like that i dont see these changes working to well for because if it makes Lieu and bosses harder to kill the whole set would need to be re-balanced for more single target at some place in the set.

I agree that these things should be optional.  OTOH, Its been 'City of AOE' for so incredibly long that giving single-target damage some value seems just delightful.

[Infinitum]

22 minutes ago, marcussmythe said:

I agree that these things should be optional.  OTOH, Its been 'City of AOE' for so incredibly long that giving single-target damage some value seems just delightful.

Thats the illusion though, ST has value, so do debuffs and buffs and such especially when taking down AVs, the problem is those encounters either arent favored or have been done to death and people are bored with them.

 

I think the problem is more of a content thing as with a lot of the issues with a 12+year old resurrected game.  AoE blasts are more dynamic and feels more satisfying because of seeing whole spawns drop in front of you.

 

Ill tell you a way to make ST more satisfying.....   Ready.... Revert the EM nerf and proliferate it to scrappers  **big eyes**    ***runs away now***

 

Thats why it never made sense to nerf the main ST set that shined when you had aoe capability out the wazoo even back then - i was always like    really?  this is what you pick on??

[marcussmythe]

When the return on investment (xps, etc.) for killing AVs balances with that for killing mass spawns of minions, you may see some interest in single target performance.   When a mission spawns 3 Elite Bosses and no Bosses, Minions, or LTs, you may see some interest in single target performance.

At the same time, you HAVE to look at villian regen.  You cant have meaningful hard targets if hard targets regen so fast that noone but the tweakiest of DPS builds and the random Regen Debuffing Powerset can fight them.

[golstat2003]

28 minutes ago, marcussmythe said:

When the return on investment (xps, etc.) for killing AVs balances with that for killing mass spawns of minions, you may see some interest in single target performance.   When a mission spawns 3 Elite Bosses and no Bosses, Minions, or LTs, you may see some interest in single target performance.

At the same time, you HAVE to look at villian regen.  You cant have meaningful hard targets if hard targets regen so fast that noone but the tweakiest of DPS builds and the random Regen Debuffing Powerset can fight them.

Hmmm. At 50 though thanks to incarnate abilities teams have stacking debuffs, so burning down hp/health and regen hasn’t been an issue there. At lower levels you have a point. But then I would not expect low level teams to use any such OPTIONAL difficulty settings. The plan ol +4/x8 and below will still exist. 😝

[MTeague]

31 minutes ago, marcussmythe said:

At the same time, you HAVE to look at villian regen.  You cant have meaningful hard targets if hard targets regen so fast that noone but the tweakiest of DPS builds and the random Regen Debuffing Powerset can fight them.

Hey!  There's no call to nerf /Regen again, much less only nerf regen ONLY for those players who play on Redside!!

 

Oh... you mean, only for ArchVillian NPC's?  Well... that's different.

 

[Replacement]

I'm glad this thread slowed down some, I was only like an hour late and there were already 6 pages! I'm gonna dump some thoughts.

 

@Redlynne your write-up on page 1 was a great read. If nothing else, it's good to have something like that to spell out why we prioritize damage enhancements.  As I thought about it though, it seems to me it mostly accomplishes the same thing as simply nerfing aoe damage numbers slightly across the board, except it returns to the same levels in high buff situations (when damage capped, the window between ST and AoE would disappear). But I think the big advantage is clearly that changing the damage schedules like you pointed out would probably be less Dev time than going through literally every aoe power to adjust the numbers.

 

@Galaxy Brain interesting as always. I find it a bit curious that you went to buffing bosses but not the already-molten minions. 

 

One thing I saw mentioned a few times in this thread but hasn't really seemed to "stick" is this notion that no damage dealer is bad at ST.  I have this sense that much of the intended drawback of aoe attacks was intended to be endurance management. You know, that stat that stops mattering between 22 and 35.

But maybe those aoe-heavy sets have much lower ST DPS than I'm giving them credit for.

 

AoE suggestion: +10% aoe defense on bosses, increase all mob HP by 10% (except AVs and GMs). Increase ST damage attacks by 10%. No one will stand for an aoe damage nerf, so we'll just buff enemy HP and flag ST to ignore it!

 

And buff energy melee.

 

Ok this was rambly enough. I'll leave off my half-baked thoughts on mez for now.

 

 

Edited June 25, 2020 by Replacement

[Redlynne]

9 minutes ago, Replacement said:

@Redlynne your write-up on page 1 was a great read. If nothing else, it's good to have something like that to spell out why we prioritize damage enhancements.  As I thought about it though, it seems to me it mostly accomplishes the same thing as simply nerfing aoe damage numbers slightly across the board, except it returns to the same levels in high buff situations (when damage capped, the window between ST and AoE would disappear). But I think the big advantage is clearly that changing the damage schedules like you pointed out would probably be less Dev time than going through literally every aoe power to adjust the numbers.

This is a somewhat common fallacy that crops up sometimes, thinking that all you have to do is nerf base damage instead of nerfing enhancements via Schedule switching.  Here, let me show you what I mean.

 

Let's say for the sake of argument and illustration purposes that an AoE power (conveniently) does 100 damage ... just to keep the math simple and obvious.

Let's also say that we're going to ignore ED for the moment and talk about damage enhancement in terms of +100% for Schedule A and +60% for Schedule B (3x SO worth).

 

Schedule A (no enhancement): 100 damage

Schedule A (+100% damage): 200 damage

Schedule B (+60% damage): 160 damage

 

So what happens if you nerf the base damage instead of shifting the enhancement Schedule to achieve the same outcome as the shift to Schedule B?

 

Schedule A (nerfed, no enhancement): 80 damage

Schedule A (nerfed, +100% damage): 160 damage

 

So what do you get out of that?

100-200 damage

100-160 damage

80-160 damage

 

By shifting to Schedule B, you retain the minimum but nerf the maximum ... which is the intended result here.

By keeping Schedule A and nerfing the base damage, you nerf the minimum AND the maximum ... which is an UNintended side effect, since the lower minimum will punish builds that aren't slotted yet or can't afford slots in a way that is not desired or useful/advantageous to our purposes.

 

Only by shifting to Schedule B in order to nerf only the maximum performance while holding the minimum performance harmless is the desired outcome achieved.  Builds that haven't been fully slotted yet shouldn't have to be "punished by the backswing" of the nerfbat that really ought to be aimed at lowering only maximum performance (in this context).

 

Hope that helps you understand why I was structuring my suggestion/proposal THAT way rather than the alternative of an (indiscriminate) across the board nerf that hits everything.

 

To put it mildly, ever since playing Diablo II and writing the Speedazon Guide (20 years ago now) I've been very sensitive to the differences that can result from buffing/nerfing minimums and maximums of performance independently of each other.

[Haijinx]

Why bother? 

 

Difficulty or lack thereof seems to only matter to a tiny subset of players.

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, MTeague said:

Hey!  There's no call to nerf /Regen again, much less only nerf regen ONLY for those players who play on Redside!!

 

 

Nerf it from orbit.  It's the only way to be sure.

[Replacement]

17 hours ago, Redlynne said:

This is a somewhat common fallacy that crops up sometimes, thinking that all you have to do is nerf base damage instead of nerfing enhancements via Schedule switching.  Here, let me show you what I mean.

 

Let's say for the sake of argument and illustration purposes that an AoE power (conveniently) does 100 damage ... just to keep the math simple and obvious.

Let's also say that we're going to ignore ED for the moment and talk about damage enhancement in terms of +100% for Schedule A and +60% for Schedule B (3x SO worth).

 

Schedule A (no enhancement): 100 damage

Schedule A (+100% damage): 200 damage

Schedule B (+60% damage): 160 damage

 

So what happens if you nerf the base damage instead of shifting the enhancement Schedule to achieve the same outcome as the shift to Schedule B?

 

Schedule A (nerfed, no enhancement): 80 damage

Schedule A (nerfed, +100% damage): 160 damage

 

So what do you get out of that?

100-200 damage

100-160 damage

80-160 damage

 

By shifting to Schedule B, you retain the minimum but nerf the maximum ... which is the intended result here.

By keeping Schedule A and nerfing the base damage, you nerf the minimum AND the maximum ... which is an UNintended side effect, since the lower minimum will punish builds that aren't slotted yet or can't afford slots in a way that is not desired or useful/advantageous to our purposes.

 

Only by shifting to Schedule B in order to nerf only the maximum performance while holding the minimum performance harmless is the desired outcome achieved.  Builds that haven't been fully slotted yet shouldn't have to be "punished by the backswing" of the nerfbat that really ought to be aimed at lowering only maximum performance (in this context).

 

Hope that helps you understand why I was structuring my suggestion/proposal THAT way rather than the alternative of an (indiscriminate) across the board nerf that hits everything.

 

To put it mildly, ever since playing Diablo II and writing the Speedazon Guide (20 years ago now) I've been very sensitive to the differences that can result from buffing/nerfing minimums and maximums of performance independently of each other.

Well, that's not a fallacy on my part; that's straight up disagreement.

 

The problem I'm highlighting is that it's not actually min and max damage you're attempting to curb -- the difference between baseline to ED is 100% for ST and 60% for AoE in your example.... but critically, that's before other damage increases.

 

My concern is creating unhealthy incentives.  Fortitude should now always prefer allies with the most aoe, because the proportionate damage boost is much larger for them.  

 

It also allows Kins to completely disregard your adjustment, since when all damage is capped, the reduced enhancement schedules evaporate.

[Redlynne]

22 minutes ago, Replacement said:

It also allows Kins to completely disregard your adjustment, since when all damage is capped, the reduced enhancement schedules evaporate.

In which case ... obviously ... what you should be advocating in favor of is a lower damage cap on AoE attacks, rather than an across the board nerf to the base damage of AoE attack powers.

[golstat2003]

2 minutes ago, Redlynne said:

In which case ... obviously ... what you should be advocating in favor of is a lower damage cap on AoE attacks, rather than an across the board nerf to the base damage of AoE attack powers.

Well no. These new options we are discussing are supposed to be OPTIONAL difficulty settings. If you can do it as part of the difficulty settings for those who want to play the new “OMGBBQHaaardMode” sure.

 

As an overall change to the base game, no.
 

i think both of you are discussing such changes in regards to the first option-aka optional difficulty. Just want to make it clear yet again that the base game should stay as is. Most players don’t care for making the game harder just to make it harder.

[Replacement]

16 minutes ago, Redlynne said:

In which case ... obviously ... what you should be advocating in favor of is a lower damage cap on AoE attacks, rather than an across the board nerf to the base damage of AoE attack powers.

Errr lower base damage lowers how far damage boosts can multiply.

 

I am all for nerfs when their impact is invisible (which a 5-10% knock would be), but I don't see the obvious value of making aoes feel less aoe, which is the impact of lowered target caps.

 

@golstat2003 this is more of a sidebar conversation, more interested in the actual-play effects and differences between nerfing enhancement schedules instead of base damage.

[Omega-202]

52 minutes ago, Redlynne said:

In which case ... obviously ... what you should be advocating in favor of is a lower damage cap on AoE attacks, rather than an across the board nerf to the base damage of AoE attack powers.

You're advocating for a non-universal damage cap AND a non-universal damage enhancement schedule?  

 

I think you're really stretching there just to try and make your pet idea work. 

 

EDIT:  I in no way endorse this, because I think the whole idea is really terrible, but the workable version of your suggestion would be to convert all applicable AoE attacks to be split into 2 damage applications: a 60% enhanceable portion and a 40% unenhanceable portion.  Keeps the base damage the same, lowers enhancement effect and lowers cap damage.  

 

But again, its a bad idea because its a non optional universal nerf.

Edited June 26, 2020 by Omega-202

[Galaxy Brain]

19 hours ago, Haijinx said:

Why bother? 

 

Difficulty or lack thereof seems to only matter to a tiny subset of players.

It matters for a large amount of powersets to feel "effective" in normal gameplay. The normal gameplay loop heavily favors AoEs mowing through hoards of enemies for the majority of interactions which in turn favors certain powersets and playstyles over others. Each of those could (and honestly should) be looked at individually, but the flipside would be to introduce gameplay that favors the "forgotten" playstyles instead to give them new value. The latter being more economic as many sets suffer from similar issues when judged against what we observe as the norm.

[Redlynne]

13 minutes ago, Replacement said:

Errr lower base damage lowers how far damage boosts can multiply.

You're conflating two separate problems into a single problem and prescribing a One Size Fits All for both problems when only one of the problems IS a problem (maximum performance) when the other problem ISN'T a problem (minimum performance).

 

That's kind of like saying ... the millionaires are earning too much money, so we need to lower the minimum wage!

 

To which my reply is ... why are you trying to hurt the people at the bottom in order to apply a corrective to the people at the top?  Especially when it's only the top end that needs that corrective, while the bottom end doesn't.