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Enhancement Diversification


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True, the aggro/target cap didn't stop them from soloing 8 man content. But it did stop them from gathering up every enemy on the map THEN aoeing them to death. And losing the ability to self cap their own defense/resistance outside of an 'oh shit' power caused even that to grind to a halt. Suddenly they realized "Oh, I do need the team if I want to face these odds." And this was a good thing if you ask  me, and the majority of other players at the time. The only ones truly upset at losing this 'play style' were the people who were abusing it.

 

This is a longer restatement of what I said. And, no many didn't need a team to face those odds, they just couldn't tank and kill an entire map all at once.

 

Plus not all tankers were equal. Invulnerability and Stone Armor tankers could more easily handle these things, Fiery Aura tankers could kill things extremely fast with burn patches before that was changed. Ice Armor was fairly vulnerable to -def debuffs, which a ton of enemy groups had. And when the nerfs hit, some powersets were hit far harder than others, especially def-based sets because of the aforementioned debuffs. That was really only resolved with defense debuff resistance and, again, inventions.

 

The issue here that I'm trying to get across isn't that adjustments weren't needed, but rather that they were unevenly applied. Or more accurately, the same adjustments were applied to everyone, whether the defenses they had or provided were strictly def, def+resist, or strictly resist. Some powersets were, as a result, hit much harder than others.

 

The rest of us were panicked because we thought our defenses were getting gutted and we were going to do nothing but die in missions, even solo missions. But teams being needed for group content? This was a good thing, and something most of us praised.

 

Oh sure, we'd still try to solo group content. But this was for the personal challenge of doing so. For the bragging rights of being able to say "I soloed this Giant Monster" or "I beat this Archvillain all on my own". And those of us pulling such feats off acknowledged that we were the outliers, not the standard to be embraced. Even so, the devs didn't like it happening so took steps to try stopping it from happening.

 

Not sure if outliers. A lot of group content was still fairly soloable. There's a reason scrapper dps is measured against Rikti Pylons, for example. Different ATs and different builds and powers within each AT couldn't all handle the same level of challenge, but soloing team content esp after inventions was fairly routine. The only reason my dark/dark defender couldn't solo AVs is that dark blast isn't a great set for damage or endurance management. I could last indefinitely against them, however. Without anything but SOs and a few HOs.

 

What I'm trying to say is that the goals weren't all achieved, the nerfs hit some harder than others and that wasn't in terms of who was actually the most or least powerful. Reducing defenses so melee ATs needed buffing to more easily hit caps was good, and enhancement diversification was ultimately good. I'm not going to argue that things weren't out of hand, but I certainly argue that it could have been handled it better, and presenting it this way I think elides this.

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What I'm trying to say is that the goals weren't all achieved, the nerfs hit some harder than others and that wasn't in terms of who was actually the most or least powerful. Reducing defenses so melee ATs needed buffing to more easily hit caps was good, and enhancement diversification was ultimately good. I'm not going to argue that things weren't out of hand, but I certainly argue that it could have been handled it better, and presenting it this way I think elides this.

 

Okay, true. THings could have been handled differently. And people who wanted to were still soloing group content. But they had to work to get their build to a point where this was possible. It wasn't just "okay, slot standard enhancements in this way (same way everyone else is) and you're immortal." You had to actually plan your build out to pull it off. And while cascading defense failure was a thing, it (mostly) wasn't as bad as you make it out to be. Sure many enemy groups have an attack which can debuff defense. And yet, this wasn't really an issue since those attacks were more likely then not going to miss. And if the first one hit, the 2nd one would probably miss. Thus there wasn't an issue. Enemies with +To-Hit and who could drop an auto hit def debuff aoe were a bigger threat, but still manageable. I found it vary rare that my defenses would collapse due to trash mobs plinking at me with ranged or melee attacks. It was always things which had a to-hit buff or dropped quicksand (I think) that I struggled with. But even then it just meant "priority target" or "get out of the aoe NOW", not "automatic lose".

 

Things could have been handled better, maybe. But the problems were so entrenched that I'm not sure if it was possible to do so without any backlash from those affected. But we did also in general panic and cry DOOM without even testing to see how bad the changes were going to be.

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Things could have been handled better, maybe. But the problems were so entrenched that I'm not sure if it was possible to do so without any backlash from those affected. But we did also in general panic and cry DOOM without even testing to see how bad the changes were going to be.

 

I have to agree with Belles recollection for the most part. While I feel ED was a good thing, the way Jack handled it was abysmal. The video, the statements, and the dishonest way it was handled, that Belle mentioned, dramatically increased the damage. On at least one occasion Jack/Statesman posted misinformation, in an ED thread to try to downplay the effect, then when called on it he deleted the post.

 

Once he lost credability with a portion of the player base any attempts by Cryptic or the supporters of the change to legitimately explain or justify all the changes from that time period were met with disbelief and disappointment.

 

On the whole it would have been far less damaging if they had simply been upfront and honest with the player base or at the very least declined to comment.

 

 

 

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Okay, true. THings could have been handled differently. And people who wanted to were still soloing group content. But they had to work to get their build to a point where this was possible. It wasn't just "okay, slot standard enhancements in this way (same way everyone else is) and you're immortal." You had to actually plan your build out to pull it off. And while cascading defense failure was a thing, it (mostly) wasn't as bad as you make it out to be. Sure many enemy groups have an attack which can debuff defense. And yet, this wasn't really an issue since those attacks were more likely then not going to miss. And if the first one hit, the 2nd one would probably miss. Thus there wasn't an issue. Enemies with +To-Hit and who could drop an auto hit def debuff aoe were a bigger threat, but still manageable. I found it vary rare that my defenses would collapse due to trash mobs plinking at me with ranged or melee attacks. It was always things which had a to-hit buff or dropped quicksand (I think) that I struggled with. But even then it just meant "priority target" or "get out of the aoe NOW", not "automatic lose".

 

Things could have been handled better, maybe. But the problems were so entrenched that I'm not sure if it was possible to do so without any backlash from those affected. But we did also in general panic and cry DOOM without even testing to see how bad the changes were going to be.

 

I used to play an ice armor tank on eight person teams from issues 2-4. I think I have a good idea of how often cascading defense failure would happen under those conditions.

 

I never cried doom on ED. I knew it wasn't that bad when it was announced. I also knew the impact on player morale caused by the fifth issue in a row with something that was or appeared to be a significant nerf.

 

I think Jack could have handled things much better and in ways that were significantly more honest. The dishonesty is what really pissed off a lot of people. "Concern = small tweak." "Mobs can't crit." "Scrappers can beat a full spawn of +10 mobs." Uneven balance changes to powersets that impacted some more harshly than others. I know you say that everyone you knew was grateful for the nerfs, but I didn't know many people at all who were positive about any of the nerfs. People were less concerned about whether tankers were herding entire maps than they were about whether their characters would continue to be functional. And this wasn't because of ED or GDR or the regen nerf or any one particular thing. It was the sense that every issue would bring dramatic nerfs undermining people's trust that the game they were playing would continue to be fun or if more and more stuff would be taken away to meet Jack's ideal of "one hero = three equal level minions." There was also a tendency to apply multiple reductions to a single problem when any one of those adjustments would be sufficient, as well as a general unwillingness to revisit such changes after they turned out to be less than ideal for player experience and quality of life.

 

It's easy to take one single event (ED) outside of the context and history in which it occurred and talk about how necessary it was, and I won't disagree with you. But I would also ask that the history and context be kept in mind, and that people were not strictly upset because they wanted to be overpowered, but because they did not trust that the dev team wouldn't cut the legs out from underneath whatever they were playing.

 

This is why people reacted so badly to ED, and why some even hold grudges about it now.

 

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I wont deny that things were handled badly. The changes were needed, but did they need to be in a string of 4 or 5 issues back to back one after another? Ol' Jack dropped the ball when trying to explain things. But then again considering his Stupid Blaster Tricks blog on how to 'take advantage' of the new Blaster inherent after heroes got inherent abilities, it's quite possible that he didn't actually play the game much. He was too much of a Big Picture kind of person. Which is why Matt 'Positron' Miller was a much better face for the devs.

 

But for those who weren't there, to understand the reasons for the hated changes you also need to understand what things were like before those changes, both good and bad. The Anti-ED and Anti-GDR people will talk your ears off about how those changes 'stole' their power and ability. But they wont mention why the developers at the time felt such drastic changes were needed. They wont mention how harmful the tanker afk farms were to the community, because that would undermine their own narrative. They wont mention the outright hostility you could face if you dared slot anything other then Damage, Accuracy, or Defenses (or debuff if you were a defender). Nor will they mention how people would leave the game for something different because the Tanker Farm teams were so common and boring.

 

Instead they often will try to spin a narritive of "we were lied to, the devs stole our abilities, and everything was great before (unwanted change here) went live!"

 

Even with the major nerfs such as GDR and ED, those same patches would do other things which were clear positives. Introducing entire new zones or power sets, tweaking powers to improve them, there were often as many buffs as there were nerfs. Granted, the nerfs are what got the most attention. And the developers at Cryptic did try to explain why they were doing things. It's just that Jack sucked at doing so in a way that didn't come across as disinformation or outright lies.

 

Again, the Stupid Blaster Tricks dev blog he did.

 

EDIT: Even back in the day, the people campaigning the hardest and loudest for GDR and ED to be repealed did so by refusing to even acknowledge that there had been problems which the patches were aimed at fixing. After all, admitting that the 'golden age' had been made out of tarnished bronze undermined their own narrative. You need to take in both sides, the problems the patches were meant to address and the ones caused by the patches. But the problems caused by the patches by and large were by no means as great as some people make them out to be.

 

As I recall, one of the reasons for ED was the fact that villain classes had been designed with this lower limit on capabilities in mind already due to lessons learned in the year or two since CoH had gone live. And since CoH and CoV had Player vs Player crossover right out of the gate, this meant that the playing field needed to be leveled between the two factions.

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Then a dev recorded a demo of a something/regen scrapper handily defeating +10 enemies, which was frankly impossible on live servers

 

I remember my MA/Regen scrapper on live. I could plant myself in front of a +10 Rikti Lt, go AFK for half an hour, and come back to find myself still at full health while it wailed on me. I may not have been able to "handily" defeat it, but the difficulty would be the tedium of whittling it down with the severe hit and damage penalties, not the risk of losing. That was absolutely overpowered, sorry.

 

Uh huh.

 

The dev demo had multiple +10 mobs taken down at once. And regen was still not as powerful as Invulnerability. I'm not sure what you think I was arguing, but it wasn't that regen wasn't overpowered. Just that the devs' justification for nerfing it as hard as they did was actually dishonest.

 

Except nerfing it as hard as they did brought it in line with the majority of other defensive sets. Yeah, the test build they used gave an exaggerated figure over how powerful it actually was, but it was still pretty damn broken. Hence when it was brought down to reasonable levels, people felt it was useless. But wasn't anywhere near useless. I don't think the final nerf was based off that test build. It just needed a harder hit than people are willing to admit and they're using that flub to say it was over nerfed.

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The only power set to get over nerfed was Trick Arrow. And that occurred between taking down the Test server and releasing the powerset on Live servers. Yes, everyone on the test server realized Trick Arrow was going to be nerfed, but none of us expected it to be nerfed into near unplayability without some extreme recharge slotting. The current unenhanced state of Trick Arrow was the "six slotted for recharge in every debuff" state you had to do when the power set first came out just to make it playable.

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The second best thing that ever happened to CoH (after ED) was Jack leaving.

 

Didn't he get moved over to working on Champions or Star Trek Online? One of the two, I think.

 

"Moved over" as in sold off CoH to NCSoft and took HIS company to make Champions?

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The second best thing that ever happened to CoH (after ED) was Jack leaving.

 

Didn't he get moved over to working on Champions or Star Trek Online? One of the two, I think.

 

"Moved over" as in sold off CoH to NCSoft and took HIS company to make Champions?

 

My take on Cryptic selling off the IP was that Jack didn't want to compete with his own company, and thought he could do better with Champions using lessons learned from making/running City of Heroes. And in some respects, he was right. Champions does some things far better then CoH ever did. Unfortunately, the game also relied far more heavily on public area hunt missions then CoH, so ends up coming across as shallow. I mean, sure. It's fun. But there is little depth to the villain groups. Even the low level only villain groups such as Lost, Skulls, and Hellions have backstory and lore which intertwines with the rest of City of Heroes. Vahzilok get their own overarching plot which concludes around level 20, if you stick with the Science based contacts. Hell, entire zones such as The Hollows have overarching story lines. Unlike Champions Online. It's hard to take it's stories seriously when there's such a distinct and sharp difference in villain group just by crossing a street. Not when CoH would have all the zone's villain groups intermingling, and sometimes even fighting each other in the streets.

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The second best thing that ever happened to CoH (after ED) was Jack leaving.

 

Didn't he get moved over to working on Champions or Star Trek Online? One of the two, I think.

 

"Moved over" as in sold off CoH to NCSoft and took HIS company to make Champions?

 

My take on Cryptic selling off the IP was that Jack didn't want to compete with his own company, and thought he could do better with Champions using lessons learned from making/running City of Heroes. And in some respects, he was right. Champions does some things far better then CoH ever did. Unfortunately, the game also relied far more heavily on public area hunt missions then CoH, so ends up coming across as shallow. I mean, sure. It's fun. But there is little depth to the villain groups. Even the low level only villain groups such as Lost, Skulls, and Hellions have backstory and lore which intertwines with the rest of City of Heroes. Vahzilok get their own overarching plot which concludes around level 20, if you stick with the Science based contacts. Hell, entire zones such as The Hollows have overarching story lines. Unlike Champions Online. It's hard to take it's stories seriously when there's such a distinct and sharp difference in villain group just by crossing a street. Not when CoH would have all the zone's villain groups intermingling, and sometimes even fighting each other in the streets.

 

No he wasn't and no, it doesn't. Champions is horrible.

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My take on Cryptic selling off the IP was that Jack didn't want to compete with his own company, and thought he could do better with Champions using lessons learned from making/running City of Heroes. And in some respects, he was right. Champions does some things far better then CoH ever did. Unfortunately, the game also relied far more heavily on public area hunt missions then CoH, so ends up coming across as shallow. I mean, sure. It's fun. But there is little depth to the villain groups. Even the low level only villain groups such as Lost, Skulls, and Hellions have backstory and lore which intertwines with the rest of City of Heroes. Vahzilok get their own overarching plot which concludes around level 20, if you stick with the Science based contacts. Hell, entire zones such as The Hollows have overarching story lines. Unlike Champions Online. It's hard to take it's stories seriously when there's such a distinct and sharp difference in villain group just by crossing a street. Not when CoH would have all the zone's villain groups intermingling, and sometimes even fighting each other in the streets.

 

No he wasn't and no, it doesn't. Champions is horrible.

 

I know that ragging on the man is considered great fun and has been for years. But while the game is shallow and gets boring fast, Champions did do several things right. The costume creator is just as good as the one in City of Heroes, and in some ways superior. Combat it's self can be fun and engaging. And the leveling system (if you have freeform builds) is a lot deeper then you'd initially expect. Travel powers are also something that was gotten right. I mean, sure it seems a bit weird for someone with a grapple line to attach it to the air and swing. But then again it wasn't that long ago that such 'swinging' mechanics were praised when used in games. The (original) crafting system was also interesting and useful.

 

The game is fun, just shallow. And before you start claiming that everything the man touches is horrible, remember that he was the lead developer for City of Heroes too. If you enjoy City of Heroes, then you have to acknowledge that Jack is able to make good games. After all, the game at it's core now is still the same as it was before Jack left to make Champions Online.

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Except nerfing it as hard as they did brought it in line with the majority of other defensive sets. Yeah, the test build they used gave an exaggerated figure over how powerful it actually was, but it was still pretty damn broken. Hence when it was brought down to reasonable levels, people felt it was useless. But wasn't anywhere near useless. I don't think the final nerf was based off that test build. It just needed a harder hit than people are willing to admit and they're using that flub to say it was over nerfed.

 

It was perhaps brought in line with pre-stacking Dark Armor. Invulnerability and Super Reflexes still outclassed it post-nerf. Even after the GDR, they outclassed regen. It wasn't useless, but you're either drastically misrepresenting the scope of the changes or you don't actually remember how deep those cuts were. Either way, you've been shifting the goalposts in this exchange and I don't see any point to engaging you further.

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oh hey if we're pointing out logical fallacies now

 

reminder that it is a logical fallacy to imply that, because an argument contains a logical fallacy, it is therefore invalid

 

How about implying that I don't want to talk to someone who keeps changing the argument?

 

Although it would be interesting to see someone slowly defeat a +10 mob while working with a 97% reduction to everything (accuracy, damage, duration, debuff strength, etc).

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The only problem with ED was that it was introduced before inventions. It should have been implemented alongside them. The period between ED and inventions was when I stopped playing coh. Once inventions rolled around I came back and it was good to go since. Removing ED is a non-starter and requests for it should cease imo.

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Kyriani-Nic-Jem

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Except nerfing it as hard as they did brought it in line with the majority of other defensive sets. Yeah, the test build they used gave an exaggerated figure over how powerful it actually was, but it was still pretty damn broken. Hence when it was brought down to reasonable levels, people felt it was useless. But wasn't anywhere near useless. I don't think the final nerf was based off that test build. It just needed a harder hit than people are willing to admit and they're using that flub to say it was over nerfed.

 

It was perhaps brought in line with pre-stacking Dark Armor. Invulnerability and Super Reflexes still outclassed it post-nerf. Even after the GDR, they outclassed regen. It wasn't useless, but you're either drastically misrepresenting the scope of the changes or you don't actually remember how deep those cuts were.

 

No, I remember exactly how deep they were. Not as deep as you're making it out.

 

Either way, you've been shifting the goalposts in this exchange and I don't see any point to engaging you further.

 

Where have I done this even once?

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oh hey if we're pointing out logical fallacies now

 

reminder that it is a logical fallacy to imply that, because an argument contains a logical fallacy, it is therefore invalid

 

How about implying that I don't want to talk to someone who keeps changing the argument?

 

If you think I've changed my argument at ANY point, then you grossly misunderstood my argument at the start.

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And before you start claiming that everything the man touches is horrible, remember that he was the lead developer for City of Heroes too. If you enjoy City of Heroes, then you have to acknowledge that Jack is able to make good games. After all, the game at it's core now is still the same as it was before Jack left to make Champions Online.

 

This is the guy who told us we didn't need, or really even want, combat statistics and numbers because he declared we would have less fun if we knew how the systems worked.

 

Just...to hell with that guy. Also, I like fighting statues. ;D

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The only problem with ED was that it was introduced before inventions. It should have been implemented alongside them. The period between ED and inventions was when I stopped playing coh. Once inventions rolled around I came back and it was good to go since. Removing ED is a non-starter and requests for it should cease imo.

ED was a bandaid that needed to be ripped off sooner rather than later. We played without ED for a year and a half, and people still gripe about it to this day. How much worse do you think it would’ve been if the game had had no ED for four years?

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The only problem with ED was that it was introduced before inventions. It should have been implemented alongside them. The period between ED and inventions was when I stopped playing coh. Once inventions rolled around I came back and it was good to go since. Removing ED is a non-starter and requests for it should cease imo.

ED was a bandaid that needed to be ripped off sooner rather than later. We played without ED for a year and a half, and people still gripe about it to this day. How much worse do you think it would’ve been if the game had had no ED for four years?

 

It would have been better if inventions had been implemented, but you're right that it needed to be done.

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I just don't really understand why some people are so up in arms about the GDR patch, ED, and other early game balance patches. I mean, they happened within the first year and a half of the game. The game ran longer with the changes then it ever had without them. So why are people still clamoring for their removal?!

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I just don't really understand why some people are so up in arms about the GDR patch, ED, and other early game balance patches. I mean, they happened within the first year and a half of the game. The game ran longer with the changes then it ever had without them. So why are people still clamoring for their removal?!

 

WIth that question, you can, IMO, launch a career in psychology.

It is facinating to me, the brain chemistry of people that cannot let these things go.

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I just don't really understand why some people are so up in arms about the GDR patch, ED, and other early game balance patches. I mean, they happened within the first year and a half of the game. The game ran longer with the changes then it ever had without them. So why are people still clamoring for their removal?!

 

WIth that question, you can, IMO, launch a career in psychology.

It is facinating to me, the brain chemistry of people that cannot let these things go.

 

It's just... You know the saying. There's no use crying over spilled milk. When GDR hit, I was annoyed, but adapted. Actually I probably over compensated. When ED was announced I raged, ranted about how it was a bad idea. I tried using logic and reasoning (based on the incomplete information I had) about why this was detrimental. And when ED finally hit I tested, realized it wasn't as bad as I feared it would be, and adapted. Same with every other change I was worried about. I'd complain (if we had advanced notice), test things out when it went live, then move on. After all, there was nothing I could do to repeal the changes i didn't like, and they were never as detrimental as I feared they would be. It was almost like (gasp) the devs extensively tested the changes to make sure they weren't breaking things.

 

Okay, patches did usually break something. But it was rarely anything directly related to what the patch was changing. It was things like the entrance/exit doors to Lord Recluse's tower vanishing. or server stability getting shot to heck till a hotfix patch was released. I remember after one patch (think the one that added Grandville and raised the villain level cap to 50) for a few days the game would crash after five minutes or five steps, whichever came first.

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