Is game balance pointless in MMORPGs?

[Herotu]

Game balance is pointless in PvE games.

 

[ClawsandEffect]

Got .02 influence to throw in. 

 

Balance is important for the powersets within a given AT (specific AT is irrelevant). It is less important to balance across ATs. 

 

I don't think a Scrapper and Defender should be able to achieve the same amount of rewards while playing solo. Mostly because the Scrapper is designed as an AT to be self-sustaining and independent, while a Defender is designed to make a team more effective with their presence. Hence why Defenders have so many buff powers thy cannot use on themselves. Those 2 ATs should not be expected to perform equally in scenarios the other one is designed for. 

 

However, if one Defender makes a team significantly better than another, or one Scrapper deals significantly more damage than another when all variables are taken into account, that is where balance comes in. If you decide that your new character is going to be a Scrapper, you should be able to take it as a given that the specific powersets you choose are largely irrelevant to your gameplay experience. 

[MTeague]

28 minutes ago, Herotu said:

Game balance is pointless in PvE games.

 

Pointless in single-player games. 

Still decently important for PvE co-op games, I think.

[Coyote]

1 hour ago, MTeague said:

Pointless in single-player games. 

Still decently important for PvE co-op games, I think.

 

Of course. If one AT is as effective as 2-3 characters of the next best AT, who would play the other ATs, except for personal fun, in which situation imbalance is irrelevant.
A game that narrows its effective choices by having greater imbalance could still be great fun... but has less replayability potential.

One of the great strengths of CoH is replaying with different powersets and ATs, but to make replaying fun, we should have as many sets and ATs viable compared to others as possible... which means inter-set and inter-AT balance. Doesn't have to be balance in the same situation (scrappers for soloing, defenders for teaming), but if an AT is clearly weaker in a situation (soloing, or AoE) then it should be stronger in another situation (teaming, or single-target, etc).

[Rathulfr]

9 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

How sinister.

“Sinister Nipple”.  You’re welcome.

 

Bad Nipple.costume

Edited September 19, 2020 by Rathulfr

[MunkiLord]

11 hours ago, Rathulfr said:

Is it bad that this comment made me slightly aroused?

(edit) Also: "good nipple"?  Do you also have a "bad nipple"?

It can happen. For example, did you know that nipples can get sunburned? Because I didn't. And that if they're pierced and one of them has healing issues that the sunburn sucks even more? At least that's what I've been told...

[Luminara]

Ah, fame before I hit 50.  All thanks to a nipple.

 

🤨

[jubakumbi]

Is balance pointless?

Depends on the point, I guess, which is the rub.

Is the point to have fun?

Is the point to get more stuff?

Is the point to socialize?

Is the point to trick peoples minds into thinking they are doing something productive while wasting their time and taking their money?

 

For me, this is game is just a character simulator.

You can make what you want, from a street urchin to a god and play it.

 

Finally, as I always ask since it's a comic book based game...

Are Hawkeye and Thor balanced?

Does that matter?

Edited September 19, 2020 by jubakumbi
speeling

[Latex]

Balance is needed in every game imo, but why?

 

Anything over-tuned will be overplayed, people don't Google 'What is the mediocre weapon in game X' or 'What is the most balanced powerset in CoH'. If you are researching those terms prior to picking your class/etc you're the minority.

 

Not many people play League of Legends and main a D class Champion unless they absolutely love the theme/abilities/etc. You main an S+/ S / A or even B tier Champion that if you improve on will start to have results. These tiers are the meta which means established/researched tried and true, the S+ tier are most likely a bit overpowered and expectant of balance tweaks.

 

Gaming has changed whether people love or hate that prospect, attitudes have changed and City of Heroes is no exception to the rule, case in point; Spines / Fire Aura Brutes absolutely dominate the most popular powerset and archetype combo because they are the best combo to increase how much INF you get p/h. Efficiency has taken over gaming as a whole, the exploration side is very rare as we have resources now (external websites) that allow you to clearly see a community-thought opinion of what is good and bad and it's typically backed up by math and numbers, they're the scientific papers of the gaming world and can't really be disputed unless someone makes a breakthrough with a brand new meta. Sometimes this efficiency might even mean you're unwelcome to high-level play because the class and powerset combo you picked brings nothing and does no damage- be glad City of Heroes doesn't have easy and widely used damage meters or detailed ingame combat logging like World of Warcraft, in Classic WoW you will not be welcome to a lot of content if you play a Retribution Paladin, you will struggle to find PvE groups/raids.

 

Balance is needed to shift the established meta and keep things fresh, to force people to think of other avenues to being efficient. Balance should not come at the cost of fun however, but 'fun' is highly subjective, some peoples fun is finding out these new metas.

Edited September 19, 2020 by Latex

[EmmySky]

If I end up on a team where I am badly outmatched by my allies and I start to feel severely underpowered, I step up my chat game and entertain the masses.  I will be of use to the team in some way or other!  😁

[ShardWarrior]

On 9/18/2020 at 3:59 PM, Bill Z Bubba said:

Nope. Perhaps you should be more careful in what you decide to type. Statement 1: Fun is your reward. You don't care if someone else gets better rewards over time so you don't care if powersets are balanced. Statement 2: You absolutely care about powerset balance because you think I'm capable of screwing up said balance. Statement 3: You insult me because you're annoyed that I called you out on your contradictory statements. If you don't like being called a liar, don't lie. You care. Obviously, since you're so bent out of shape about it. Which is fine. Make a proper argument against correcting bad game design and I'll listen.

I do not think you are being fair here to be honest.  It is more than abundantly clear there are people out there who have little to no interest in how fast others earn rewards so in that regard, balance is not an issue for them.  However when their characters are heavily nerfed  (see Regen, EM etc.) due to the complaints of all those other people about sets being "overpowered" and such, then it can have a detrimental impact to those players.  People can care when the influence of others affects their play without having any impact on rewards. 

 

Calling people liars is not doing anything to strengthen your argument either.  To me, you are coming across as a bully here.  I know that is not your intent, but this is how you are coming across.

[Xeres]

No.  I actually think game balance is rather important and one of the tougher aspects of an MMO for the devs to get right.  That said, I don't think it's as important here as other games - except for PvP.  It's a competition thing, yes, but it's also partially a QoL issue.  I want to keep this short, so I'll sum it up like this - it's a terrible feeling to know you did everything correctly, and still feel like you fall short of other players - whether they're on your team or not - due to lack of balance.  The whole concept of Feature Of The Month builds is based around this, and it stinks.

 

Edited September 19, 2020 by Xeres

[Reiraku]

I'm kinda mad I missed the PvP discussion in that other thread. That said, hey @macskull, I know what that one power is!

As per the current discussion, PvE balance matters to a degree, but not a ton. At least, not to HC where revenue and such are affected. In PvP, it matters more, but that's still not a huge single player priority. The fighting game comparison is even more focused on balance, because that's the entire game as single player competition (except for those few SFxT tag tournaments that ran 2 on 2). Even in the FGC, there's a voice against making things TOO balanced, as it can homogenize a game and make characters feel too "samey". The Tekken community has fears over this and work to keep as many characters viable without over balancing the cast.

[Luminara]

6 hours ago, Reiraku said:

I'm kinda mad I missed the PvP discussion in that other thread. That said, hey @macskull, I know what that one power is!

As per the current discussion, PvE balance matters to a degree, but not a ton. At least, not to HC where revenue and such are affected. In PvP, it matters more, but that's still not a huge single player priority. The fighting game comparison is even more focused on balance, because that's the entire game as single player competition (except for those few SFxT tag tournaments that ran 2 on 2). Even in the FGC, there's a voice against making things TOO balanced, as it can homogenize a game and make characters feel too "samey". The Tekken community has fears over this and work to keep as many characters viable without over balancing the cast.

 

Homogeny is unavoidable, and it's not caused by developers, it's caused by players.  People want to succeed, to excel in games, and it's not typically easy or fun to succeed or excel when your choice of class or set within a class is fifth rate.  Sure, you can be the best fifth rate <whatever>, but excelling at not being particularly useful, or not being particularly good at killing foes, or not being particularly good at keeping a team alive, isn't really much of an achievement.  As a result of that, players create homogeny when they gravitate to the classes/sets which are seen as "the best".

 

Look at the popular selections players here make in archetype and sets within archetype.  Blasters are a good example.  More than 21% of the blasters being played as of March are Fire/*.  There are, in fact, as many Fire/* blasters as there are of the 5 least popular primaries combined.  Why?  Does Fire/ offer increased survivability over what's available in other blaster primaries?  No.  Is it because Fire/ has special mechanics which make offer additional team support?  No.  Do we have an incredibly high proportion of players who fantasize about being Johnny Storm or Firestorm?  Very unlikely, because if that were the case, /Fire would be as popular as Fire/, and it's actually less popular than /Energy.

 

It's because the secondary effect of Fire/ is "MOAR DAMAGES PLZKTHXLOL".  Fire/ is "the best" in the minds of players who select it, because it fulfills the purpose of the archetype most completely, doing damage and nothing but damage.

 

Side note - this is not a call to nerf Fire/* blasters.  This is an observation, nothing more.  Nor is it a commentary on the mentality or intelligence of people who play Fire/* blasters.  Observation, not attack.  Unknot your knickers.

 

And that's player-created homogeny.  1 in 5 blasters are Fire/*.  There are 13 blaster primaries, with a wide variety of secondary effects, and this one primary comprises 21% of all of the players playing blasters.  That's homogeny.  The natural inclination people have to focus on "the best" has caused the lack of diversity that those same players claim to fear if classes/sets are homogenized.  They say, "Don't change this stuff, it'll just be everyone playing the same thing with different colors and sounds", then they go play the same thing with the same colors and sounds (though we are lucky enough to have different colors here).

 

The development teams didn't do that, that's the players' fault.  They homogenized themselves.  And it highlights an important point - even when people say they don't want homogeny, they pursue it, create it, and subsequently, enforce it by threatening to quit if their homogeny is upset.  The very same people insisting that homogeny is bad for a game are homogenizing the game when they're all playing the same class/set.

 

Diversity is good.  We don't have homogeny complaints in Co* because we have an incredible costume creator, the ability to change the look (and even animations of some) of our powers, and enough archetypes and sets within the archetypes to allow us to create our own diversity.  And the game supports diversity by having a comprehensive array of difficulty settings, so people can opt for less than "the best" and still feel good about what they're playing.  Teaming also allows less than optimal builds and play styles to work well, because they're working in concert with other builds and play styles, and the whole is something greater than the individual parts.  We have a good game, and it can tolerate a great deal of homogeny.

 

Other games aren't so fortunate.  They have fewer options for classes, fewer options within classes, and a stricter approach to how teaming works and what player roles are.  When player-created homogeny rears it's head in those games, the developers have to deal with it because that homogeny actually hurts the game significantly.  If no-one's playing support, if no-one's tanking, no-one can experience the content.  If players aren't experiencing the content, they're not going to keep paying subscription fees or buying gacha boxes.  Player-created homogeny has to be countered, even if it means nerfs or developer-created homogeny to equalize classes and abilities, or the game dies.  The only other option is to reinforce the homogeny, which means flipping the bird to the majority of players and praying that those remaining don't grow bored, or worse, irate because the game's too homogenous.

 

[Reiska]

The question of whether balance matters in MMORPGs as a whole is a complex one, and I think is strongly correlated to how intense the difficulty of the "endgame" is intended to be and how onerous it is for a player to change classes/power sets/etc.

 

In a game like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV or most MMOs in general, where you have very carefully tuned endgame content intended to be a punishing challenge for large groups of fully kitted out characters (i.e. "raiding"), I would say balance is very important, because there is a strong pattern in MMO social communities where a character class that underperforms by a measurable amount - even if that amount is small - finds itself effectively blacklisted from all of that content.  Some examples I'm aware of just off the top of my head would be Retribution Paladins in WoW during vanilla and Burning Crusade; Dragoons in FFXIV during A Realm Reborn; and Paladins in FFXIV during Heavensward.  Oftentimes, the stigma of that bad performance far outlives the actual bad performance (people *still* make jokes about FFXIV Dragoons floor-tanking, and they've been one of the better DPS classes for a while now).  

 

City of Heroes, even in the era of Incarnate Trials, has never been that game, though.  Homogeny is also harder to measure meaningfully in CoH because, I think, the correlation between powerset performance and, as Luminara termed it, player-created homogeneity, while strong, is not absolute; for some of the power sets that happen to be the most powerful, it's probably impossible to figure out precisely how many picked those sets because of their power level versus how many picked those sets because they're broadly applicable to a wide range of character concepts.  (For instance, I think the overrepresentation of Titan Weapons on melee ATs that get it can be chiefly blamed on its extreme outlier status; however, I think it's harder to make that argument for Fire Blast, which I think would be a very commonly chosen set even if were less outlying, just because "throwing fire" is such a mainstream concept.)

 

On the whole, I don't think perfect balance is necessary or desirable for City of Heroes.  I do think, however, that extreme outliers on both sides need to be addressed, just leaving the question of how extreme is too extreme.  (For my part, I think the only extreme outlier set we have on the "too good" side of the equation is Titan Weapons.)

[XaoGarrent]

I've been through this discussion so many times that I really don't have the energy to do more than give the summarized version, which goes as follows:

 

"Yes, it matters, but it's not a very high priority."

 

This isn't just true for MMOs, either, it's true for pretty much all games. Balance is very rarely if ever the point of a game, whereas design and mechanics, story, atmosphere, etc, command a lot more direct player engagement. Balance can make a game better or worse, but it can never make a game, if that makes sense. This is the thing that Emmert and Cryptic on a whole didn't seem to comprehend in the early days of the game, and it's why they almost killed the game.

 

I will say this, though: The dynamics of balancing games vary incredibly widely, just as the design of games does. Balancing a fighting game and an MMO or any sort of other primarily PvE game is VERY different, for one key reason: You completely control one side of the equation in a PvE game, whereas you don't completely control either side in a PvP game. Players can only drive the bus on one end of a PvE game and thus you have a lot more room to play with numbers, mechanics, AI, etc without ever touching the things players share control of.

 

It's always far less risky to make adjustments on the E side of things than the P side of things, and the fact you even have two completely distinct sides to begin with, means you can balance them both separately and across the aisle to accomplish whatever you're trying to accomplish.

 

Everything in that Core-A gaming video is actually more true of PvE games than PvP games because of this.

Edited September 20, 2020 by XaoGarrent

[Reiraku]

4 hours ago, Luminara said:

Homogeny is unavoidable, and it's not caused by developers, it's caused by players.  People want to succeed, to excel in games, and it's not typically easy or fun to succeed or excel when your choice of class or set within a class is fifth rate.  Sure, you can be the best fifth rate <whatever>, but excelling at not being particularly useful, or not being particularly good at killing foes, or not being particularly good at keeping a team alive, isn't really much of an achievement.  As a result of that, players create homogeny when they gravitate to the classes/sets which are seen as "the best".

Just clipping this part as opposed to quoting the whole thing for space purposes. What you're talking about is often referred to as "tiering" in the FGC. People will always gravitate to the "best" or most effective, that's just the nature of the game. What we mean by homogeny in this case is every set playing the exact same. Same damage, cool down, and same properties with almost no variation. Similar to how Champions' does their power sets. To that, I agree with your overall point. We are very fortunate for the diversity in gameplay that we have in the sets. Popularity or not, we have to choice of other playstyles if we so choose.

[Lines]

I feel like I do see variation more often than I notice a high population of a few well performing sets. In fact, I'm not even that sure I know which are the high performing ones. I don't hang out in AE, though, which might count for something.

 

I feel like I'm reading a fear that balanced sets lead to homogeny. This would be true if the aim is to balance sets against each other. But I don't think that's the right approach (except in PvP, but that's a whole other thicket). In PvE, the aim should be to balance sets against the content. That means that sets should be able to engage with the content by their own virtues but without trivialising it. When you look at it that way, there's no need for them to become the same.

 

Similarly, content can be buffed or nerfed against the set. The nice thing about that is those adjustments are optional to the players. I'd love to see those options expanded, especially if NPC AI could get more sophisticated.

[Neiska]

My two cents, for what its worth.

 

Firstly, yes balance is important in any multiplayer game, in both PVE or PVE. However, I would like to highlight that everyone's definition of balance wont align. If PVE balance doesn't matter, then what does anything matter? Why would Purple IOs matter, why would incarnate matter, why would level matter, why would incarnates matter, why would the game matter? I mean, if one AT was so absurdly stronger than any other, why have different classes whatsoever at that point? 

 

A lot of people seem to focus on just damage as the "metric" to compare things too. Well, what about defenses? Team support? Buffs/debuffs? CC? It's a tricky balancing act, but I don't think damage should be the main focus that everything is balanced from, particularly in a game like this where a few changes with Powers and Slotting can make a big difference even on the X power/X power AT. Some powersets really only shine at high levels, others require a ton of cooldown reduction to make viable. Some are very expensive while others are cheap. But there is more -

 

One thing that I think people forget about is where the "goalpost" is. What exactly are we using as the finish line to compare ATs? Are we comparing them all on +4/8 difficulty? Are we speaking solo? Or team play? Are we talking AoE? or are we talking single targets? Perhaps some people can sometimes compare apples to oranges when talking about balancing. I mean lets take Mastermind for example. They are still sort of the solo specialists, some being able to kill AVs and more on the regular. I would say the majority of AT's aren't capable of that. But I don't think anyone thinks that Masterminds need to be nerfed. Indeed, sometimes Masterminds are on the lower end of things if we are only talking about "damage" here. It's the Masterminds "total package" that allows it to do that.

 

As far as comparing ATs go, I do feel like every AT sort of has their role and place with regards to each other. Not all will perform as well as others on the same content, same difficulty, or even same team makeup.

 

Basically here's how I see them. I know its a lot more involved than this, because some powerset choices can mean you're a buffer or debuffer and so on, only posting this for a rough idea. - 

The Tough ATs - Tankers, Brutes, and (some) Masterminds

The Damage Doers - Scrappers, blasters, corruptors, stalkers

The Control Specalists - Dominators, Controllers,

The Buffers/debuffers - Defenders, Sentinels, (some) Masterminds, 

The Oddballs - SoA's, Widows, Warshades, Peacebringers

 

I mean, not everyone plays on +3 or 4/8. I don't think every build is even capable of that. If it were up to me, I would focus on balancing things around the 2/8 difficulty, and treat higher difficulties as a "bonus" difficulty for people who like to redline builds.

 

With regards to powersets on the same ATs, I feel there are definitely some that outperform others, so that could be looked at perhaps.

 

What's bothered me though as far as ATs and builds are concerned, is that some pools are considered near mandatory for a majority of builds, such as Haste, or Boxing/Tough/Weave from the fighting secondary pool. That's 4 powerslots that are close to must haves for a lot of builds out there.

 

As far as "balancing" goes, I would try to urge people to picture in what scenario would a specific AT be the best at what its meant to do - Heal, AOE damage, Kill a ST quickly, buff, debuff, and so on. Every AT should have its own situation where it shines "more" than the rest. Though this sort of excepts the Warshades and Peacebringers, as they are "stance" based. They can do a lot all in one AT, just not as well as other ATs. But I would think that ability to do different things/roles is sort of a special note in itself, as they can tank, damage, buff and so on, just not all at once.

 

Just my thoughts on it.

 

TLDR - Yes, balance is important. But there's more than just "damage done" to balance around. It also matters on what sort of content as well as difficulty setting to consider.

[Hew]

I still feel the game works balanced against SOs. Right now, I have a character that has a bunch of incarnates t3s, some t1s and some t2s. He currently has slotted _1_ set io (perf shifter +end); everything else is some variation of a level 25 generic io. I have no problems playing him in team settings, run a LOT of apex/tm combos, and have a lot of fun solo (even if that means farming who will die mishs for my 20*X, where x is the number of arcs I feel like running that week).

 

I really don't think we should move away from SOs as a metric. 

 

 

[ZacKing]

On ‎9‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 3:59 PM, Bill Z Bubba said:

Nope. Perhaps you should be more careful in what you decide to type. Statement 1: Fun is your reward. You don't care if someone else gets better rewards over time so you don't care if powersets are balanced. Statement 2: You absolutely care about powerset balance because you think I'm capable of screwing up said balance. Statement 3: You insult me because you're annoyed that I called you out on your contradictory statements. If you don't like being called a liar, don't lie. You care. Obviously, since you're so bent out of shape about it. Which is fine. Make a proper argument against correcting bad game design and I'll listen.

LMAO!  nice try again, but no you didn't call me out on anything and I'm not bent out of shape over anything.  Having fun playing a character is not the same thing as being worried about balance.  I liked the animations and flow in EM before the jealous math nerd busy bodies who were overwhelmed with care concern just had to cry nerf nerf nerf!  because someone played better than they did, so they screwed it for everyone.  The set didn't flow the way I liked anymore.  That has jack to do with caring about reward speed.  I'll repeat, I could give a crap how fast you or anyone else earn rewards.  So long as I'm having fun, you go have fun your way.  What you do isn't important to me in the least until whiners out there start crying about nerfs that screw up my fun, then yeah I'm going to voice my opinion.  and LMAO like you're the authority on any kind of game design.  Far from it.  You go right on trying to cancel me though. 

Edited September 21, 2020 by ZacKing

[DSorrow]

In my opinion the importance of balance in games is basically set by a couple of development choices: the existence of PvP and what kind of difficulty the PvE part should have. If PvP is a big focus, then I think it's quite obvious that outside of specific rock - paper - scissor pairings, whatever character / equipment / powers the players can choose, the combinations should be closely balanced.

 

As far as PvE goes, balancing should depend on the level of difficulty at different stages in the game. The more difficult the game is supposed to be, the more important balance becomes because content balancing has to be done against top-end performance in order to keep things challenging, and if certain classes / powers / specs can't get anywhere near the required performance, they'll simply be blacklisted. When it comes to games like CoH, which are by most metrics very easy and casual, I still think it's important to keep balance to a level where everything is at least in the same ballpark. My reasoning for this is pretty simple: it is definitely an issue if some powersets feel noticeably weaker than others even if numerically they'd be "good enough".

 

The unfortunate truth is that good balance is pretty much impossible to achieve through buffs only, so nerfs have to happen every now and then. Currently, though, I'd say CoH is in a pretty good place balance wise and, excluding TW, I'd say all of the outliers could be fixed with a couple of buffs.

[Xanatos]

On 9/18/2020 at 5:46 PM, Luminara said:

We ignore the lack of balance, but it's still there, and it threatens to come back and bite us on the ass some day.

 

And this is why balance is necessary, even if it means making some players unhappy.  Yes, we have it easy here.  Now.  What happens when we don't have it easy? 

Good post. Plenty of valid stuff. Plenty I agree and disagree with.

 

But I just wanted to zoom in on the bit I quoted above, because I think that's the crux of us not seeing eye-to-eye on this.

 

Specifically in the context of City of Heroes - what's this boogieman that's going to bite us in the ass if the game doesn't get balanced anymore?

 

Because establishing what that boogieman is, in a pragmatic rather than hypothetical sense, allows us to do one of two things:

1. Either we realize the boogieman doesn't exist, that game balance is pointless in PVE, and we ignore it.
2. Or we establish how the boogieman behaves in practice, and that allows us to cost/benefit "overcoming boogie man vs versus player unhappiness at nerfs" in a specific, measured, way.

 

When it comes to City of Heroes, I'm currently in camp #1. But am happy to move into camp #2 if the boogieman can be demonstrated in a non-hypothetical way. I've read a lot of posts in this thread, and I haven't seen anyone do that yet. (If i missed anyone who did, sorry. Wasn't expecting this thread to blow up so much.)

Edited September 21, 2020 by Xanatos

[Lines]

20 minutes ago, Xanatos said:

When it comes to City of Heroes, I'm currently in camp #1. But am happy to move into camp #2 if the boogieman can be demonstrated in a non-hypothetical way.

I'm not sure we have any way of demonstrating it other than hypothetically. Even a mathematical comparison of nerf would be hypothetical until implemented. With upcoming nerfs and buffs, it'll be interesting to see the results.

 

I think the question of balance being pointless isn't quite the right question if you want things modelled - it's too binary and the absolute answer is obvious. If there were a melee set where each attack was ST only did 1 damage and had 2% accuracy and another where every attack was a 0.2sec recharge, 0.1 sec cast, 500pt damage Ranged AoE, I think it'd be hard to argue against some balancing needing to happen, up and down respectively. 

 

The question really is what is a acceptable tolerance for misbalance. That's where things can get debatey.

 

From Bopper in the recent balance thread:

Quote

Popularity does not matter. Performance does. As for TW, all single target attacks do 10% more damage than the design formula dictates, all cones do 18% more damage, and WS does 44% more damage. Everything overperforms. Not to mention the DoTs that FT and WS gets.

 

Add to that, it is an outlier in both clear time tests and single target damage tests. It beasts. And it outperforms the next best sets by a considerable margin... I'm talking the gap between #1 and #2 is similar to the gap between #2 and an average set.

We could debate if that threshold is acceptable. It seems HC think it isn't. I don't have a horse in that race, though, so can't really comment.

[Wobegone]

2 hours ago, ZacKing said:

LMAO!  nice try again, but no you didn't call me out on anything and I'm not bent out of shape over anything.  Having fun playing a character is not the same thing as being worried about balance.  I liked the animations and flow in EM before the jealous math nerd busy bodies who were overwhelmed with care concern just had to cry nerf nerf nerf!  because someone played better than they did, so they screwed it for everyone.  The set didn't flow the way I liked anymore.  That has jack to do with caring about reward speed.  I'll repeat, I could give a crap how fast you or anyone else earn rewards.  So long as I'm having fun, you go have fun your way.  What you do isn't important to me in the least until whiners out there start crying about nerfs that screw up my fun, then yeah I'm going to voice my opinion.  and LMAO like you're the authority on any kind of game design.  Far from it.  You go right on trying to cancel me though. 

Whether intended or not, your posts come across as angry, selfish, and entitled.  And I think you mean 'I couldn't give a crap....'  

 

 

I can understand that some players have concerns about nerfs.  The original Regen nerfs and the Energy Melee nerfs were heavy handed.  But those remain outliers, and there is no question that Regen was extraordinarily overpowered.  

 

I don't understand the vitriol and rage when balance is suggested.  I have yet to see a cogent reason against balancing powersets.  Besides, I trust this Dev team more than the previous one.  There isn't a profit margin on the line.