Is game balance pointless in MMORPGs?

[ZacKing]

11 minutes ago, Ignatz the Insane said:

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.

I'm not angry at all dude. I'm curious where your response is to people crying for nerfs because someone else gains rewards faster or performs better than they do?  I guess those people aren't selfish or entitled?  just those of us who don't fall in line.  And yeah, Regen is another great example.  How many people did all those nerfs AND ED drive away from the game back in the day?  Had a lot of fun playing my Regen scrapper back in the day until the nerf brigade started crying and look at where the set is now.  I've yet to come across a Regen scrapper or stalker here.  Look around the forums here for the posts talking about their EM characters they loved before the nerfs and how they all got shelved after.  Don't those voices count too?  Or should we just worry about numbers on a spreadsheet?  and at least for me, I've yet to see a cogent reason for caring about balance at this point.  were all this complaining about balance true, all we'd see are people playing TW toons and that's it.  TW brutes or tanks are a rarity on the pugs I've been on for the past year, not the rule.  The game isn't a commercial venture anymore so there's not much need to worry about people getting bored and moving on so they don't pay for stuff.   

[Yomo Kimyata]

56 minutes ago, Xanatos said:

 

 

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?

 

 

I think of it as a function of population maintenance and replayability.  When this was a subscription-based game, it was in the devs' best economic interests to maintain as large a population as possible for as long a time as possible.  MMOs eventually moved away from that business model, but the subscription-based model has become more and more prevalent in other arenas (software, toothbrushes).  Without that economic motive, it becomes more of an issue of behavioral economics.  People like choice (but not too much choice) and people like diversity (but not too much diversity).  And people frame on best-possible outcomes and worst-possible outcomes, so anything new needs to be "better" than the previous best.  And when people get bored, of course, they leave.

 

If this were a single-player RPG, then balance wouldn't matter at all.  You buy the game, play it once, play it a thousand times a thousand ways.  Doesn't matter to anyone else.  I *mostly* play solo, but when I don't, I would like other people around.  I *need* other people around to continue to get enjoyment from the AH.  In my opinion, balance is what keeps people around, keeps people trying new alts for concept that are not 10% as effective as the optimal ones but maybe 80% as effective, attracts new people who just want to make *their* superhero rather than build the strongest class.

[jubakumbi]

30 minutes ago, Ignatz the Insane said:

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.

Balance arguments are certainly some of the most passionate I see, complete with players that think games will die, players will have heart attacks, and the world itself will end if they can no longer play thier OP sets and abilities.

 

However, those glasses you have are rose colored, IMO, about any team being magically better than another, over money.

Just because there is not profit involved, does not make this group any better at taming complex systems and appeasing a diverse playerbase any more than any other group of developers, IME, and, TBH, lowers my expectations, because the only incentive they have is to do what makes them happy, which may or may not be what makes players happy...just like other developers teams with priorities that conflict with the players...

 

This groups has, in fact, chosen to follow some of the most silly and restrictive rules to lord over the playerbase in some guise of protecting the game from the evil coporations, etc. ... they have no more magic than any other group of humans trying to run a game...

Edited September 21, 2020 by jubakumbi
speeling

[Anon4321]

I mainly agree with the OP's point. Unless something is really just an egregious outlier it does feel better to have everything else brought up to it's level rather than have it nerfed down. For example with the latter approach applied to a power set the player already feels like the other sets are "weak" or "weaker". It doesn't really matter if they absolutely are in terms of the original intended game balance because that is the player perception now and nothing will change that. I feel like this is one of the things that really hurt CoH originally and had far lasting consequences when they decided to nerf everything with Enhancement Diversification (I think this is what they called it but it's been like 15 years lol) and then several powersets (Spines and Fire namely). I played the game then and distinctly remember everyone being upset about it and the number of players dropping off shortly thereafter. 

Edited September 21, 2020 by Anon4321

[Luminara]

3 hours ago, Xanatos said:

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.)

 

A non-hypothetical way.  Meaning, you're asking me to look into the future and tell you what's going to happen.  I can't do that.  But I can, and will, use examples of boogiemen from the past.

 

Tanker and scrapper tier 9 powers.  The recharge times on those used to be so short they were easily made permanent.  Tankers and scrappers didn't need to team.  Teaming began to be seriously affected, so for the sake of balance, those tier 9 powers were changed to have 1000s recharge times.  The balance, in this situation, was in countering player-created homogeny and ensuring that all roles were valid, rather than only two roles being valid and the others being window dressing.

 

Aggro caps.  Prior to the implementation of aggro caps, it was possible for tankers and scrappers to herd an entire map to one location, then wait for someone with AoEs to burn them down.  All of them, potentially a few hundred foes, with 1-3 AoEs.  The balance affected here was two-fold - first, the rate of XP gain was so far out of proportion that it made any other activity pointless, thus affecting both teaming and content experience; and second, single-target powers were beginning to be regarded as utterly useless, because AoEs were capable of defeating entire maps of critters at once.  Creating aggro caps for powers allowed the developers to exert a tighter control over the rate of XP gain (at that time, considered a means of ensuring player retention), give players a reason to team up and play through the content rather than avoid it in favor of one map or zone, and ensure that single-target powers had utility.

 

AoE control power recharge times.  There was a period when players referred to this game as City of Statues, because AoE status effects were so heavily used.  And due to that, there was little need for tankers or defenders.  Why bother with either of those archetypes when controllers could ensure that nothing was capable of moving, much less fighting back?  Consequently, AoE controls were given much longer recharge times and much shorter durations.  The same balance problem that had been addressed by changing tanker and scrapper tier 9 powers had to be addressed again when controllers became the supreme beings.

 

Dumpster herding.  Enhancement Diversification.  Global Defense Nerf.  Purple Patch.  Purple Triangles of Doom.  Co* is rife with examples of the boogieman rearing his head, and having to be shot in the face with a bazooka, sometimes double-tapped with an '88 just to keep him at bay.  Over and over again, we've found oversights, loopholes, bugs, and exploited them to such a degree that the game itself was suffering.  There are a lot of different mechanics which affect balance in Co*, and each of them has been abused in some way over the years.  And different types of balance were affected in different ways, at different times.  Each time, it had to be fixed, for the good of the game and the greater satisfaction of the majority of players.  None of the changes, the nerfs, were fun or leave us with fond memories, but they were all necessary.  They all restored balance in some way.  They made teaming viable by reducing player-created homogeny and ensuring that all archetypes served a function.  They ensured that we were all gaining XP at roughly the same rate, dependent on our own preferences and abilities.  They kept the game from becoming completely pointless due to an absence of content or developer-created challenge.

 

I can't tell you what the boogieman will look like when he reappears.  I can't tell you when he'll reappear.  I'm just a person, like you, with one way to move through time, by putting one foot in front of the other and soldiering on.  But I can tell you that the history of this game alone has shown, conclusively, that we will do everything in our power to break any and every rule, to throw balance into such utter and complete disarray that it will seem like a lost cause.  We're swimming in examples of balance issues and redresses.  It's in our nature to invite the boogieman in, offer him a cup of coffee and bear claw and suggest that he make himself comfortable and stay for a while.  And we will do it again, some day.  The HC team will overlook something, or introduce a bug, or create a new power which leverages a previously unknown bug or under-used mechanic, and we'll go hog wild with it.  It is inevitable.

 

I can't say that he'll show his face tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that.  I can't say that it'll be this year, or next, or within the decade.  What I can say is, we've seen him too many times to believe he's gone forever.  History has taught us to expect him to pop in from time to time.  The question should not be whether or not balance matters, or whether or not nerfs are necessary, but whether or not we've learned from the past.  If you want to know what the future holds, use hindsight, not foresight.

 

[golstat2003]

3 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I think of it as a function of population maintenance and replayability.  When this was a subscription-based game, it was in the devs' best economic interests to maintain as large a population as possible for as long a time as possible.  MMOs eventually moved away from that business model, but the subscription-based model has become more and more prevalent in other arenas (software, toothbrushes).  Without that economic motive, it becomes more of an issue of behavioral economics.  People like choice (but not too much choice) and people like diversity (but not too much diversity).  And people frame on best-possible outcomes and worst-possible outcomes, so anything new needs to be "better" than the previous best.  And when people get bored, of course, they leave.

 

If this were a single-player RPG, then balance wouldn't matter at all.  You buy the game, play it once, play it a thousand times a thousand ways.  Doesn't matter to anyone else.  I *mostly* play solo, but when I don't, I would like other people around.  I *need* other people around to continue to get enjoyment from the AH.  In my opinion, balance is what keeps people around, keeps people trying new alts for concept that are not 10% as effective as the optimal ones but maybe 80% as effective, attracts new people who just want to make *their* superhero rather than build the strongest class.

Ehhh for me not really. I get your point but if a set is not FUN to play, it doesn't matter if it's overpowered or not. I ain't playing it. Case in point TW. They could buff or nerf it into the ground and it wouldn't matter to me, if they left the momentum mechanic as is. I just find that mechanic unfun so my TW has been shelved for months. Thankfully they intend to do away with the idiocy of that mechanic . . . so it may see me take a run on her again, instead of her collecting dust.

 

This is with me knowing and experiencing how OP TW was. I just  . . . didn't care.

[golstat2003]

35 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

A non-hypothetical way.  Meaning, you're asking me to look into the future and tell you what's going to happen.  I can't do that.  But I can, and will, use examples of boogiemen from the past.

 

Tanker and scrapper tier 9 powers.  The recharge times on those used to be so short they were easily made permanent.  Tankers and scrappers didn't need to team.  Teaming began to be seriously affected, so for the sake of balance, those tier 9 powers were changed to have 1000s recharge times.  The balance, in this situation, was in countering player-created homogeny and ensuring that all roles were valid, rather than only two roles being valid and the others being window dressing.

 

Aggro caps.  Prior to the implementation of aggro caps, it was possible for tankers and scrappers to herd an entire map to one location, then wait for someone with AoEs to burn them down.  All of them, potentially a few hundred foes, with 1-3 AoEs.  The balance affected here was two-fold - first, the rate of XP gain was so far out of proportion that it made any other activity pointless, thus affecting both teaming and content experience; and second, single-target powers were beginning to be regarded as utterly useless, because AoEs were capable of defeating entire maps of critters at once.  Creating aggro caps for powers allowed the developers to exert a tighter control over the rate of XP gain (at that time, considered a means of ensuring player retention), give players a reason to team up and play through the content rather than avoid it in favor of one map or zone, and ensure that single-target powers had utility.

 

AoE control power recharge times.  There was a period when players referred to this game as City of Statues, because AoE status effects were so heavily used.  And due to that, there was little need for tankers or defenders.  Why bother with either of those archetypes when controllers could ensure that nothing was capable of moving, much less fighting back?  Consequently, AoE controls were given much longer recharge times and much shorter durations.  The same balance problem that had been addressed by changing tanker and scrapper tier 9 powers had to be addressed again when controllers became the supreme beings.

 

Dumpster herding.  Enhancement Diversification.  Global Defense Nerf.  Purple Patch.  Purple Triangles of Doom.  Co* is rife with examples of the boogieman rearing his head, and having to be shot in the face with a bazooka, sometimes double-tapped with an '88 just to keep him at bay.  Over and over again, we've found oversights, loopholes, bugs, and exploited them to such a degree that the game itself was suffering.  There are a lot of different mechanics which affect balance in Co*, and each of them has been abused in some way over the years.  And different types of balance were affected in different ways, at different times.  Each time, it had to be fixed, for the good of the game and the greater satisfaction of the majority of players.  None of the changes, the nerfs, were fun or leave us with fond memories, but they were all necessary.  They all restored balance in some way.  They made teaming viable by reducing player-created homogeny and ensuring that all archetypes served a function.  They ensured that we were all gaining XP at roughly the same rate, dependent on our own preferences and abilities.  They kept the game from becoming completely pointless due to an absence of content or developer-created challenge.

 

I can't tell you what the boogieman will look like when he reappears.  I can't tell you when he'll reappear.  I'm just a person, like you, with one way to move through time, by putting one foot in front of the other and soldiering on.  But I can tell you that the history of this game alone has shown, conclusively, that we will do everything in our power to break any and every rule, to throw balance into such utter and complete disarray that it will seem like a lost cause.  We're swimming in examples of balance issues and redresses.  It's in our nature to invite the boogieman in, offer him a cup of coffee and bear claw and suggest that he make himself comfortable and stay for a while.  And we will do it again, some day.  The HC team will overlook something, or introduce a bug, or create a new power which leverages a previously unknown bug or under-used mechanic, and we'll go hog wild with it.  It is inevitable.

 

I can't say that he'll show his face tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that.  I can't say that it'll be this year, or next, or within the decade.  What I can say is, we've seen him too many times to believe he's gone forever.  History has taught us to expect him to pop in from time to time.  The question should not be whether or not balance matters, or whether or not nerfs are necessary, but whether or not we've learned from the past.  If you want to know what the future holds, use hindsight, not foresight.

 

Very interesting post!

[Twisted Toon]

5 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

 If you want to know what the future holds, use hindsight, not foresight.

 

Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it.

[ABlueThingy]

 Balance doesn't just mean nerfing or homogenization.  Isn't it impossible to have any kind a game without balancing the systems within it?  Like you have to balance enemy HP vs player DPS even in a single player game.  Things like that.

 

"Too much damage" is not just arbitrary.  It's measured against something.  How many NPCs you can kill, how tough, how long does it take?  The Devs have to make a call somewhere down the line or else you can't... develop anything.

 

How could you add a new enemy group that has high health and low damage that can still kill a player?  If you don't know how much damage players do or how much HP the player should have?

 

How could you add a new high damage single target attack set if you don't know what "High" means?

 

Once you make a decision on any one thing, you've set a standard.  A measuring stick.  Once you decide that X DPS is average for melee sets then you can decide where all the sets fall relative to that.   You can have a strong and slow melee set, a low dmg with a climbing self +dmg set,  a Med dmg set with some ranged attacks thrown in.  But you can't have that until you define what "low" and "med" and "slow" mean. 

 

--

 

I can't speak to Energy Melee but I can speak to Regen.  I mained a Kat/Regen since Beta.  When people say "Roll back the regen nerfs" I flash back to when MoG dealt 90% of your health in damage to you and with slotting gave you max resistance(and I think def?) to everything. It also made you immune to heals but not HP regen. IH was a toggle and relatively I think 4x stronger than it is now?  Keeping in mind this was also before ED, nothing could match that.  I could take multiple giant monsters easily.  (I also recall a time when MoG was a toggle in Beta... that was pure insanity)

 

Regen has always been the hardest to balance armor set.  Every single character in the game has some amount of damage they can survive per second indefinitely.  Beyond that they will slowly have their HP pushed toward 0.  For a def based set that tends to be spiky.  Some times you got a few moments taking no damage, then suddenly three big hits.  For a resistance set it's slower and more predictable.  Every bit of HP regen raises the DPS threshold before you start dying.  Every bit of res raises your effective HP pool.  Every bit of def lowers the incoming DPS.

 

Something like Inv has a lower DPS threshold before it's natural health regen is overwhelmed but with all the stacked def/res it means it will take you hours to whittle away it's HP to 0.  It means that you usually can defeat the foe before they kill you.  With Regen(the set) being pure HP regen it has an extremely high DPS threshold to overcome.  But once you do?  They're dead almost instantly.  That's part of the thrill, imo.   It may not look like that right away because your health bounces up and down with the Recons and DPs but as long as you hit those buttons you're immortal.  Right up until the point that you're not.

 

It does mean that they're VERY hard to balance.  The Devs will never know how much damage is coming at you of course. That depends on what NPC group, what level, add in lvl adjustments, team comp.  And all it takes is one or two more mobs or a lucky crit and you're paste.  Once they overwhelm your regen you die.  But UNTIL they do that you can't be killed. This is an issue other sets don't really have. They have a wider range of "I'm ok" and "I'm in danger" before they get to "I'm dead."

 

The Devs nerfed Regen to shrink the "I'm ok and will never die" to something more manageable.  But that did nothing to boost the "I'm in danger" area.  The Devs saw Regen being unkillable in most content as a bigger issue.  WP came about from experiments to "fix" regen but all they ended up doing was stealing all of it's flavor so it worked better as it's own set.  Personally I think the Absorb mechanic provides a very thematic way to revive Regen.  What they did with the Sent Regen is a good start.

 

I was going to link these two sections together somehow when I started writing but now it's 1am and I'm tired.

 

 

[Rathulfr]

22 hours ago, Luminara said:

But I can tell you that the history of this game alone has shown, conclusively, that we will do everything in our power to break any and every rule, to throw balance into such utter and complete disarray that it will seem like a lost cause.  We're swimming in examples of balance issues and redresses.  It's in our nature to invite the boogieman in, offer him a cup of coffee and bear claw and suggest that he make himself comfortable and stay for a while.  And we will do it again, some day.  The HC team will overlook something, or introduce a bug, or create a new power which leverages a previously unknown bug or under-used mechanic, and we'll go hog wild with it.  It is inevitable.

 

Well written, @Luminara.  This is a great summary of basic human nature and the metagaming problem.  Humans are always inclined to optimize whatever circumstances they can control for their own benefit.  Once players discover and/or understand how to manipulate a game's mechanics to maximize accomplishment or rewards -- even if that violates either the letter or spirit of the game's rules -- they will do so.

 

AE is a perfect example of this, and has been since it was first introduced.  Even after repeated nerfs and adjustments, AE still offers significant rewards for exploiting flaws in the game's design, such as being able to create targets that either deal only one type of damage or are vulnerable to only one type of damage.  We've grown so accustomed to this that we've rationalized it as an acceptable method of gameplay, even though the game's creators clearly never intended it for that purpose.  [Note: I'm not asking for more AE nerfs, just using it as an example of metagaming.]

 

Every game suffers from this, and every game developer has to deal it with it.  This is why every game has a "meta" in the first place.  It's also why there are "flavor of the month" (FOTM) builds, and why people always ask for the "best" builds, even when other builds are viable. 

 

It's also why "Proc Monster" builds are the new hotness in this most recent revival of CoX.  Figuring out how to exploit the mechanics of PPM is distorting the original intent and design of proc enhancements.  It's also fundamentally altering the intended function of some ATs and power sets (most specifically Defenders).

 

Currently, both CoH and WoW are experiencing this problem with procs, which is why Blizzard plans to apply a sliding scale of diminishing returns in Shadowlands (ED finally comes to WoW -- ironic!).  I hope that the HC devs can address the problems with proc enhancements and PPM before it becomes as enshrined as AE: "broken but tolerated".

 

So what does that have to do with "balance"?  In my opinion, "balance" is achieved (which I doubt is objectively possible, perfectly) when folks don't feel compelled to create the "best" builds in order to have fun playing the game (as others have pointed out), or to rationalize obviously broken things as tolerable (as we have with AE). 

 

I think that trying to achieve balance is a noble goal, even if it's objectively unattainable, because it improves things for everybody, not just those who are the best at metagaming.  As onerous as it was, ED actually helped accomplish this to some degree in CoX.  Full disclosure: I was so mad that ED killed my Invuln Tanker, I actually unsubbed for a few months, back in the day.

 

Strip away all the rhetoric, look at the numbers (as @Bopper pointed out), and it's plain to see that TW is OP: it needs to be nerfed.  I also agree that Fire Blast probably needs a bit of a trim, as well.  But it's also plain to see that a few of the other primaries need some love.  So a balanced approach would be to nerf TW and Fire, but also buff the weaker sets, too. 

 

I'm also looking forward to a bit of love for my second favorite AT: Sentinels.  Let's hope that happens Soon™.

 

Edited September 22, 2020 by Rathulfr

[ClawsandEffect]

Personally, I feel like changing procs from a percentage chance to a procs per minute system was a mistake. 

 

It eliminated the "buzzsaw" builds of the past, but created builds just as skewed to replace them. And it had a negative effect on certain procs overall. My Dark Armor Scrapper would sometimes GAIN endurance from the Theft of Essence proc. The best I can hope for now is for it to break even with the power's cost. 

[jubakumbi]

26 minutes ago, ClawsandEffect said:

Personally, I feel like changing procs from a percentage chance to a procs per minute system was a mistake. 

 

It eliminated the "buzzsaw" builds of the past, but created builds just as skewed to replace them. And it had a negative effect on certain procs overall. My Dark Armor Scrapper would sometimes GAIN endurance from the Theft of Essence proc. The best I can hope for now is for it to break even with the power's cost. 

Honestly,  I think you scratch another itch with this subject  in your post - Random vs. Reliable.

I vastly, completely, totally, without remorse prefer Random over Reliable.

IME, the Reliable group for COH has pretty much always won out in the battle, based on the code changes I saw made.

 

IMO/IME, it is a fundamental difference on how people like to play games and build characters.

I have never personally understood why some people hate Random as much as they do, I have read all the arguments, my brain is just not built to think Reliable is more Fun than Random.

 

For me, getting suprises while playing games is a huge portion of the fun, I am not out to solve a math equation by pressing buttons in a prescrobed order and timing - I never much liked playing the piano, I prefer Whack-a-Mole.

Edited September 22, 2020 by jubakumbi
speeling

[Rathulfr]

2 minutes ago, jubakumbi said:

Honestly,  I think you scratch another itch with this subject  in your post - Random vs. Reliable.

I vastly, completely, totally, without remorse prefer Random over Reliable.

IME, the Reliable group for COH has pretty much always won out in the battle, based on the code changes I saw made.

 

IMO/IME, it is a fundamental difference on how people like to play games and build characters.

I have never personally understood why some people hate Random as much as they do, I have read all the arguments, my brain is just not built to think Reliable is more Fun than Random.

 

For me, getting suprises while playing games is a huge portion of the fun, I am not out to solve a math equation by pressing buttons in a prescrobed order and timing - I never much liked playing the piano, I prefer Whack-a-Mole.

 

I think it depends on how/where random or reliable is used.  For me, I think that random procs are fun, because of the satisfying surprise of triggering something cool from time to time.  To me, I think that random procs in powers is fun and useful.

 

But I definitely prefer reliable when I'm working towards some goal or objective, like specific gear.  Randomizing everything about gear was the worst "feature" of WoW: BfA.  It's extremely unfun to grind away at some world quest or dungeon or raid for some desired piece of gear, only to get nothing -- or worse yet, something useless -- after investing hours of limited play time.  I can handle working hard on something, even grinding it, if I know that I'll get a reliable reward for doing so.

 

Fortunately, random gear drops are less of a problem with CoX, because gear isn't as essential to game play.  I only mention it as an example of where reliable is better than random in one set of circumstances.

 

[Lines]

^^ Agreed with both posts.

 

I think random in the sense of 'this could either go to plan or backfire, and we have no way of controlling which' is where the fun is, rather than 'according to the bell curve, it will take me an average of 15 runs of the same content to get the reward I want'.

Edited September 22, 2020 by Lines

[jubakumbi]

1 minute ago, Rathulfr said:

 

I think it depends on how/where random or reliable is used.  For me, I think that random procs are fun, because of the satisfying surprise of triggering something cool from time to time.  To me, I think that random procs in powers is fun and useful.

 

But I definitely prefer reliable when I'm working towards some goal or objective, like specific gear.  Randomizing everything about gear was the worst "feature" of WoW: BfA.  It's extremely unfun to grind away at some world quest or dungeon or raid for some desired piece of gear, only to get nothing -- or worse yet, something useless -- after investing hours of limited play time.  I can handle working hard on something, even grinding it, if I know that I'll get a reliable reward for doing so.

 

Fortunately, random gear drops are less of a problem with CoX, because gear isn't as essential to game play.  I only mention it as an example of where reliable is better than random in one set of circumstances.

 

I hear you, I do, and I still prefer Random.

 

I do not, however, hate things like converters to solve some issues with Random, I think that's a fine idea, there are many ways to implement it to curb the 'terrible luck runs'.

Not a fan of RNG code that 'insures' a good roll every so often though - I am a PnP gamer at heart, the dice rule the game - but ways to get 'points' toward the thing you need is cool.

 

I really do look at it from the POV that 'if this character gets that rare thing then they do, it's part of thier story' and if another does not, then it's just not part of thiers...

 

IMO, the state of HC CoH is that of a character simulator since it's so easy to get the resources to build anything you want, over a game at this point, for the gearing of characters - truly interactive entertainment for me.

[Bill Z Bubba]

22 minutes ago, jubakumbi said:

Honestly,  I think you scratch another itch with this subject  in your post - Random vs. Reliable.

I vastly, completely, totally, without remorse prefer Random over Reliable.

IME, the Reliable group for COH has pretty much always won out in the battle, based on the code changes I saw made.

 

IMO/IME, it is a fundamental difference on how people like to play games and build characters.

I have never personally understood why some people hate Random as much as they do, I have read all the arguments, my brain is just not built to think Reliable is more Fun than Random.

 

For me, getting suprises while playing games is a huge portion of the fun, I am not out to solve a math equation by pressing buttons in a prescrobed order and timing - I never much liked playing the piano, I prefer Whack-a-Mole.

Random over time becomes not random at all. Still doesn't mean I want to deal with energy transfer sometimes taking half as long as the rest of the time.

[jubakumbi]

2 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Random over time becomes not random at all. Still doesn't mean I want to deal with energy transfer sometimes taking half as long as the rest of the time.

I get it.

Those types of things just don't bother me, it makes me have to have a backup plan, an alternative skill, w/e, making things more interesting to me, not less.

 

Even if the RNG 'evens out' over a long enough period, playing through the lows and the highs is the fun for me - not a set of test results at the end if multiple specific runs on specifiic characters to compare the minutiae in a spreadsheet - I play for the head cannon and the mindless pixel explosions, not the math.

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, jubakumbi said:

I get it.

Those types of things just don't bother me, it makes me have to have a backup plan, an alternative skill, w/e, making things more interesting to me, not less.

 

Even if the RNG 'evens out' over a long enough period, playing through the lows and the highs is the fun for me - not a set of test results at the end if multiple specific runs on specifiic characters to compare the minutiae in a spreadsheet - I play for the head cannon and the mindless pixel explosions, not the math.

I play for the piles of murdered bodies. I get enough randomness from crits and procs and the RNG.

[Doomguide2005]

21 hours ago, ABlueThingy said:

 

Balance doesn't just mean nerfing or homogenization.  Isn't it impossible to have any kind a game without balancing the systems within it?  Like you have to balance enemy HP vs player DPS even in a single player game.  Things like that.

 

"Too much damage" is not just arbitrary.  It's measured against something.  How many NPCs you can kill, how tough, how long does it take?  The Devs have to make a call somewhere down the line or else you can't... develop anything.

 

How could you add a new enemy group that has high health and low damage that can still kill a player?  If you don't know how much damage players do or how much HP the player should have?

 

How could you add a new high damage single target attack set if you don't know what "High" means?

 

Once you make a decision on any one thing, you've set a standard.  A measuring stick.  Once you decide that X DPS is average for melee sets then you can decide where all the sets fall relative to that.   You can have a strong and slow melee set, a low dmg with a climbing self +dmg set,  a Med dmg set with some ranged attacks thrown in.  But you can't have that until you define what "low" and "med" and "slow" mean. 

 

--

 

I can't speak to Energy Melee but I can speak to Regen.  I mained a Kat/Regen since Beta.  When people say "Roll back the regen nerfs" I flash back to when MoG dealt 90% of your health in damage to you and with slotting gave you max resistance(and I think def?) to everything. It also made you immune to heals but not HP regen. IH was a toggle and relatively I think 4x stronger than it is now?  Keeping in mind this was also before ED, nothing could match that.  I could take multiple giant monsters easily.  (I also recall a time when MoG was a toggle in Beta... that was pure insanity)

 

Regen has always been the hardest to balance armor set.  Every single character in the game has some amount of damage they can survive per second indefinitely.  Beyond that they will slowly have their HP pushed toward 0.  For a def based set that tends to be spiky.  Some times you got a few moments taking no damage, then suddenly three big hits.  For a resistance set it's slower and more predictable.  Every bit of HP regen raises the DPS threshold before you start dying.  Every bit of res raises your effective HP pool.  Every bit of def lowers the incoming DPS.

 

Something like Inv has a lower DPS threshold before it's natural health regen is overwhelmed but with all the stacked def/res it means it will take you hours to whittle away it's HP to 0.  It means that you usually can defeat the foe before they kill you.  With Regen(the set) being pure HP regen it has an extremely high DPS threshold to overcome.  But once you do?  They're dead almost instantly.  That's part of the thrill, imo.   It may not look like that right away because your health bounces up and down with the Recons and DPs but as long as you hit those buttons you're immortal.  Right up until the point that you're not.

 

It does mean that they're VERY hard to balance.  The Devs will never know how much damage is coming at you of course. That depends on what NPC group, what level, add in lvl adjustments, team comp.  And all it takes is one or two more mobs or a lucky crit and you're paste.  Once they overwhelm your regen you die.  But UNTIL they do that you can't be killed. This is an issue other sets don't really have. They have a wider range of "I'm ok" and "I'm in danger" before they get to "I'm dead."

 

The Devs nerfed Regen to shrink the "I'm ok and will never die" to something more manageable.  But that did nothing to boost the "I'm in danger" area.  The Devs saw Regen being unkillable in most content as a bigger issue.  WP came about from experiments to "fix" regen but all they ended up doing was stealing all of it's flavor so it worked better as it's own set.  Personally I think the Absorb mechanic provides a very thematic way to revive Regen.  What they did with the Sent Regen is a good start.

 

I was going to link these two sections together somehow when I started writing but now it's 1am and I'm tired.

 

 

I think you hit on the head.  

 

  As to /Regen being fairly unique to the 'doing great' or sudden death condition other mitigation sets only get glimpses of the issue, usually involving more exotic damage (psi, toxic, etc.) .  Regen doesn't have a 'hole', all damage types are basically holes to Regen.

[Troo]

12 hours ago, jubakumbi said:

I get it.

Those types of things just don't bother me, it makes me have to have a backup plan, an alternative skill, w/e, making things more interesting to me, not less.

 

Even if the RNG 'evens out' over a long enough period, playing through the lows and the highs is the fun for me - not a set of test results at the end if multiple specific runs on specifiic characters to compare the minutiae in a spreadsheet - I play for the head cannon and the mindless pixel explosions, not the math.

..but should assassin strike miss more than other attacks?

Randomness is great, but somethings should work.

Super jump should not just fail. nor buildup, nor toggles, nor personal force field.. at least not without some additional input to the formula.

it's all math even if we don't like math

[jubakumbi]

7 hours ago, Troo said:

..but should assassin strike miss more than other attacks?

Randomness is great, but somethings should work.

Super jump should not just fail. nor buildup, nor toggles, nor personal force field.. at least not without some additional input to the formula.

it's all math even if we don't like math

"Should", one of the most loaded words in English...

 

Why should the most basic things not break sometimes? "Even monkeys fall from trees" is the right wisdom bit here.

In so many forms of comic-book based entertainment, the failure of a mundane power or gadget can lead to really fun encounters, for example, fumbles, IMO, are the very essence of fun playtime and Random.

 

In a world with all of the reality changing and physics defying that CoH contains, why should it all just work right all the time?

Things break.

Powers fail.

Accidents happen.

 

I see these things as nothing more then the Universe trying to screw with us.

[Troo]

Hehe. I get what you are saying. And I imagine you get what I'm saying too.

 

If Super Jump did fail sometimes or Fly just stopped working mid flight. That would be hilarious. (but there might be torches and pitchfolks)

[jubakumbi]

12 minutes ago, Troo said:

Hehe. I get what you are saying. And I imagine you get what I'm saying too.

 

If Super Jump did fail sometimes or Fly just stopped working mid flight. That would be hilarious. (but there might be torches and pitchfolks)

While agree, I also think that further removing Random lessens a games fun, while those that like to time thier maps runs down to the second will be overjoyed.

 

I have long ago realized online gamers as a whole, the masses, have absolutely no patience or desire for the kinds of game mechanics I prefer.

[Bill Z Bubba]

Regardless of my other feelings on randomness in the game, I think it would do us all a grave disservice to remove the foundational fact of rolling a 1 on a 20 sided die is a fumble.

[fitzsimmons]

Haven't read any significant portion of the thread but I think it'd be funny, if after rolling a 1, you do damage to yourself or a teammate.  If I'm holding a pistol, sword or whatever, I could see a scenario where I'd accidentally shoot or chop myself or a teammate.