Enhancement Diversification

[wjrasmussen]

I always considered when the original devs instituted Enhancement Diversification a major mistake that caused a lot of heroes to go to other MMO's. Is ED still active or did the new bosses flush it down the toilet where it belongs?

 

Doc

If you really feel that way you should quit the game and never look back.  But we know that you won't do that.

[Pixie_Knight]

As I mentioned, I was one of those people who entered nerd rage both over the great Defense Nerf and Enhancement Diversification. I feared my claw/super reflexes scrapper would become useless, unable to survive anything. I wrote long winded posts about why both were a bad idea. But in the end, once ED went live I realized I was wrong. Only slotting 3 defense enhancements in my powers didn't make my character unplayable. Sure I was now getting hit more often, but I was also having more fun. I realsed that the 'defense nerf' hadn't been the killer I feared it was going to be, and that I had over reacted in my panic.

 

Yes, everyone lost damage, or hold duration, or recharge, or whatever else they were 5 to 6 slotting. But they gained other things. Tankers could start devoting enhancement slots towards fleshing out their attack chain and damage dealing capability, meaning they were no longer *just* a meat shield. Controllers could start adding damage to their control powers that did damage, thus making soloing less painful. Everyone gained more then they really lost. And Inventions didn't change this or 'fix' anything. Sets tend to have lower total values for things like damage and hold/stun duration then you'd get if you slotted 3 damage, hold, or stun enhancements. Especially if you're using lower level sets in order to not lose set bonuses while exemplered or doing flashback missions. And while very useful, many set bonuses are kind of weak when taken on their own. High level generic IO enhancements on the other hand let you get to (or at least near) the soft cap with fewer enhancements needed, thus giving you more options for how to enhance your powers.

 

ED was never the 'game breaker' some people still claim it was. It was just a difficult pill to swallow, even though in retrospect it had been the right decision.

[Prototelis]

ED was a good thing.

 

 

[Zolgar]

The other major problem with Enhancement Dysfunction is that it isn't a progressive "decay curve" of diminishing returns.  It's a {expletive deleted} punitive CLIFF Of Don't Do This™.

 

Because if it had been anything less, pretty much everyone would basically still just .. well maybe now they would 5 slot damage, and use that 1 last slot for accuracy, or save it for some other power.

 

OR, it would have been such a harsh progression that using more than 2 25 IOs/yellow SOs would be a significant reduction that it wouldn't be worth it, and 1 50 IO would cap you.

 

The way they set it up, you can actually diversify your build, as opposed to everyone doing the exact same thing as everyone else.

 

(using SOs as an example, since IOs didn't exist at the time)

 

I can 6 slot my attacks, 3/3 acc/dam I lose some at that point (assuming +3 SOs), but I still get a significant damage boost over 2 +3 SOs, but if I decide to go 2/4 the damage output I gain is greatly diminished.

 

On the other hand, if I slot say 2/2/1/1 acc/dam/end/rech, each hit will do about 20% less damage than the above build, but I'll swing a little more often and run out of endurance less.

 

I can slot 2/2/1 acc/dam/end or rech, and save a slot for another power.. or I can use that 6th slot to improve my secondary effect in my attacks, like Stun for example.

 

I could even 2/2/2 acc/dam/secondary if I wanted focus that way. Or 2/3/1.. There's a lot of OPTIONS, all of which are viable depending on exactly what I want to do, and I am not actively castrating my build by stepping away from the optimized "this is what you do." that it was Pre-ED

 

I will agree that when it came, it came as a shock to the system. It was a massive, across the board nerf to like 90% of players. It made many of us go from powerhouse to squish over night. I remember it well, I was playing a bloody fire tank when it happened. I HATED it when it happened, and I, too, quit for a time.

 

Looking back at it, even if we had never gotten IOs/IO sets, and Incarnates... ED still would have been a net positive for the game. The only real reason it was a problem when we got it, as someone else mentioned earlier in the thread, is that it wasn't in from the start.

 

 

[Jaguaratron]

I always considered when the original devs instituted Enhancement Diversification a major mistake that caused a lot of heroes to go to other MMO's. Is ED still active or did the new bosses flush it down the toilet where it belongs?

 

Doc

 

Without ED there would be no capacity for power augmentation and variation which came with Inventions, it was a correct choice in a long term plan.

[Obsidius]

[Pixie_Knight]

 

You are aware that beating a dead horse, bringing it back to life, beating it to death, then beating the dead horse once more to start the cycle all over again is a long standing CoH forum tradition, right? People were raging about ED and how it would kill the game and make X class unplayable for years after it was first implemented. That this topic has returned? Not surprising in the least.

[Rylas]

You remember the raging over Energy Transfers animation change?  I admit, that kinda sucked.

 

I get the need to adjust ET, but I would still say the animation change was a terrible way to do that, and still is. There are better ways to make the set in line with what they wanted it to be.

[Rylas]

ED also led to a lot of tanks being all but useless and having trouble finding teams in the lower to mid levels of the game. As a SS/INV tank back in the day, ED sucked. Before ED, I could get in teams all day long and my SG was always happy to have me tank because I got the job done. After ED, teams didn't need me because the big bug Kheldians could do a better job and I couldn't take the hits anymore.

 

Wouldn't the Kheldian's have been affected by ED as well? Sounds like they were taking your spot on the team because they were just playing better. I didn't start playing tanks until after ED. My first was an Ice/EM, which I made after taking a Peacebringer to 50. I never tanked with my Kheldian as well as I did with that tank or any other tank since then.

[Redlynne]

Wouldn't the Kheldian's have been affected by ED as well?

 

Yes ... but ...

... Kheldians have an Inherent power that gives them extra damage/resistance/etc. based on who else is in the team.  The buffing from the Inherent power is not subject to ED limitations ... therefore Kheldians had a means to sidestep some of the nerfing brought on by ED, so long as the mix of their party was right for that purpose.

[Vanden]

Wouldn't the Kheldian's have been affected by ED as well?

 

Yes ... but ...

... Kheldians have an Inherent power that gives them extra damage/resistance/etc. based on who else is in the team.  The buffing from the Inherent power is not subject to ED limitations ... therefore Kheldians had a means to sidestep some of the nerfing brought on by ED, so long as the mix of their party was right for that purpose.

But he said the "big bug" Kheldians were the ones that could do it better. Dwarf Form Kheldians didn't benefit from their inherents then.

[MunkiLord]

The problem with Enhancement Dysfunction is that the "solution" for it (re: Inventions and Invention Sets) didn't arrive for TWO YEARS after Enhancement Dysfunction was crammed down our throats as a surprise move by Cryptic.

 

It was necessary to make the necessary "room" for Set Bonuses to work the way they do ... but Enhancement Dysfunction was pushed Live TWO YEARS too early.

 

I know.

I was there.

And then I wasn't ... for TWO YEARS ...

And then I came back when Issue 9 launched and Inventions finally (finally!) "fixed" the problem that Enhancement Dysfunction created.

 

You lost this argument and fight years ago, might as well just get overit.

 

 

The other major problem with Enhancement Dysfunction is that it isn't a progressive "decay curve" of diminishing returns.  It's a {expletive deleted} punitive CLIFF Of Don't Do This™.

 

 

 

This is a good thing and the entire point of ED.

[Rylas]

The other major problem with Enhancement Dysfunction is that it isn't a progressive "decay curve" of diminishing returns.  It's a {expletive deleted} punitive CLIFF Of Don't Do This™.

 

 

 

This is a good thing and the entire point of ED.

 

I wonder if the curve had been more gradual but still had the effect of neutering enhancements after 3-slotting, would that have made him content?

[wjrasmussen]

 

You are aware that beating a dead horse, bringing it back to life, beating it to death, then beating the dead horse once more to start the cycle all over again is a long standing CoH forum tradition, right? People were raging about ED and how it would kill the game and make X class unplayable for years after it was first implemented. That this topic has returned? Not surprising in the least.

That's why ED will now be known as Equine Deadification.

[MunkiLord]

The other major problem with Enhancement Dysfunction is that it isn't a progressive "decay curve" of diminishing returns.  It's a {expletive deleted} punitive CLIFF Of Don't Do This™.

 

 

 

This is a good thing and the entire point of ED.

 

I wonder if the curve had been more gradual but still had the effect of neutering enhancements after 3-slotting, would that have made him content?

 

I seriously doubt it.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Its certainly a trip reading the thoughts of others.

 

My memory surrounding this and the upset it caused with the players had far more to do with the sentiment that Jack E had outright lied about plans concerning the changes to balance with the coming of City of  Villains and PvP.

 

Most myself included could handle the numbers changes and adapt to the knew META. It was the feeling that all the discussions, the test server feed back, etc was pointless. And in time we have seen that to become something of an industry standard. From SWG to DDO we see overly emotional devs let their sense of its their game corrupt them.

 

I recall taking a long break after COV came out, in part due to a growing dislike for Jack E. And it was around the time cryptic broke off, and paragon studios was born that I and others I knew came back.

 

Yes when ED came out, the way it came out, and no clear plan for what was to come helped to cause panic in the game community. But thanks to Paragon Studios and their efforts, in the long run ED was a needed experience on the path to maturity into a better game.

[Tony Amore]

Wow! I read a lot of diverse opinions regarding ED and really didn't expect to kick up so much dust. It was not my intention to stir up a poopstorm, and I thank you all for your input!

[Tony Amore]

 

LOL

[EggKookoo]

I reacted badly to ED at the time, largely because I was running a SR Scrapper and I had six-slotted defense. I got over it.

 

I'm running a clone of that SR Scrapper now and he's fine.

[JusticeBowler]

I think I'll post one more time about this and then I'm done. Redlynne is, of course, right again (stop being so darned correct all the time). ED was a punishment. It wasn't about balance or uber characters or make way for Inventions. It was a part of a series of major overhauls to the engine to stop people playing in certain ways. Some of those changes (Purple Patch) were reasonably well received, changes like Taunt and AoE limits were debated, and ED was a trainwreck.

 

Now it doesn't really matter in the end because everyone assumes you'll be playing your main for months-years to get it to crazy purple set IO and Incarnate unlimited awesome anyway, which is fine, but the current devs can still go back and unbork powers that are explicitly game balanced around crazy expensive global recharge rates that aren't otherwise necessary for a specific AT/build.

 

My Grav/Storm Controller doesn't need any recharge at all (how fast do I need to litter a room with forklifts anyway), but my Traps/Duel Pistols defender, yeah, I'm going to have to save up all my dough because without some serious global recharge (and IO set defense bonuses) even high end play will be gimped, especially against big bads in long fights since none of my powers are going to up more than half the time.

 

It is fun to play Traps, but if PUGs weren't generally generous and not all that picky about my actual contribution to most of the fights, I'd never get invited to a team because I'm far less effective (even now that I'm carefully slotted with SOs at 22) than almost anyone else on the team who hasn't wrecked their build because they don't know what they are doing.

[THEDarkTyger]

I think I'll post one more time about this and then I'm done. Redlynne is, of course, right again (stop being so darned correct all the time). ED was a punishment. It wasn't about balance or uber characters or make way for Inventions.

 

Calling it a "punishment" is dishonest and, frankly, unnecessarily hostile. It absolutely was about the cookie cutter 6-slotting being too powerful. The old way left no room for customization. One accuracy, 5 damage or you were crap. Yes, there were actual player complaints about that. Enhancement types made totally useless because there was literally no point to using them when it removed a slot for damage.

 

So, yes, it was about balance. It was not, however, a personal attack against you. Or anyone else.

[JusticeBowler]

Calling it a "punishment" is dishonest and, frankly, unnecessarily hostile. It absolutely was about the cookie cutter 6-slotting being too powerful. The old way left no room for customization. One accuracy, 5 damage or you were crap. Yes, there were actual player complaints about that. Enhancement types made totally useless because there was literally no point to using them when it removed a slot for damage.

 

So, yes, it was about balance. It was not, however, a personal attack against you. Or anyone else.

 

Well, I remember the posts by Statesman. It wasn't about making powers better without needing to overslot them or rebalancing the game. He and the other devs explicitly said it (like the Purple Patch, Taunt and AoE target limits) was to change the way people were playing the game. That's a punishment to people who wanted to play the game that way.

 

Then, long after the fact (and after Statesman left) the DEVs retconned the change as a necessary step, not to fix gameplay at the time, but to prepare for the Inventions system that would let hardcore players get OP in a different way.

 

You can claim the word punishment is over the top, but it was "you guys were naughty so we are changing the rules so you can't break them in ways we don't want you to."

[Without_Pause]

ED was a necessary evil with a poor PR handling.

[Blastit]

Well, I remember the posts by Statesman. It wasn't about making powers better without needing to overslot them or rebalancing the game. He and the other devs explicitly said it (like the Purple Patch, Taunt and AoE target limits) was to change the way people were playing the game. That's a punishment to people who wanted to play the game that way.

 

 

By the same reasoning, anything that rebalances the game is a punishment to the people who wanted to play it that way. It's the kind of thing that could well be technically true but if interpreted that way is absolutely bonkers. You can't cap out at level 40 anymore, Devices can't render enemies unable to notice that they're attacked, the Fitness pool is now an inherent. Are these changes punishments for players who liked the way things were?

[Vanden]

Calling it a "punishment" is dishonest and, frankly, unnecessarily hostile. It absolutely was about the cookie cutter 6-slotting being too powerful. The old way left no room for customization. One accuracy, 5 damage or you were crap. Yes, there were actual player complaints about that. Enhancement types made totally useless because there was literally no point to using them when it removed a slot for damage.

 

So, yes, it was about balance. It was not, however, a personal attack against you. Or anyone else.

 

Well, I remember the posts by Statesman. It wasn't about making powers better without needing to overslot them or rebalancing the game. He and the other devs explicitly said it (like the Purple Patch, Taunt and AoE target limits) was to change the way people were playing the game. That's a punishment to people who wanted to play the game that way.

 

Then, long after the fact (and after Statesman left) the DEVs retconned the change as a necessary step, not to fix gameplay at the time, but to prepare for the Inventions system that would let hardcore players get OP in a different way.

 

You can claim the word punishment is over the top, but it was "you guys were naughty so we are changing the rules so you can't break them in ways we don't want you to."

This is completely untrue. Statesman made several comments that ED was necessary to make way for other progression systems. I remember he gave an example that they couldn't, for example, add an enhancement that enhanced for 50% because without ED it would simply be too good.