Is game balance pointless in MMORPGs?

[Hew]

People don't need each other to complete mishs necessarily. However, people do need each other for social bits.

 

Set IOs just let loners do their things, noobs do their things, social people do their things, at no real cost to anyone.

 

You don't have to play with set ios if on you dont want to. I went from 50 to 50+3 on GENERIC IOs through LOTS of Apex/Tm runs. I run them every morning, like clockwork. I grab noobs, experts, people in the middle, doesn't matter.  I play, with my GENERIC IOs, to have fun and socialize. I have since moved on to some set ios to get by, but all my vet levels largely have been from team runs of ApexTM combos with complete random PUGs.

 

Don't let the game make you, you make the game!

[ClawsandEffect]

Removing Set IOs from the game would have the same end result as removing gear in other MMOs. 

 

Sure, you'd make the legacy content challenging again like it used to be. But you'd also make the content that was designed with IOs in mind nearly impossible, or only possible with a narrow set of ATs and powersets. I don't know about you, but I personally enjoy the fact that in this game you don't need any particular thing on your team to succeed at a task. Do certain ATs make some things easier to accomplish? Sure. Having a dedicated Tanker built for survivability to tank Aeon and Recluse in the MLTF makes it loads easier on everyone else, but you don't need one to succeed. I'd rather not see CoH follow the same path that other MMOs trod and have things be pretty much impossible without a specific team composition. Especially when you consider the fact that not following that model is one of the things that made it stand out in the first place. 

[SableShrike]

I understand that argument @Hew, and it’s a valid point.

 

I guess all I’m saying is how can we possibly balance a game where softcapping Defense and maxing Resistance is possible?  Most of the game content is not built to account for this.

The very power sets and ATs were designed to have weaknesses to encourage us to team.   There was huge dev pushback against ever allowing tankmages.  With IO sets tankmages are exactly what we’ve got.

 

There’s such a gulf in power between someone on SOs versus a fully purpled AT that to balance the game around either end of the spectrum seems impossible.

 

In closing, any big balancing of difficulty would need to be optional similar to Ouro or Notoriety settings, as I’ve heard other folks mention.  I just don’t see how with set IOs in the game it can be balanced around their level of OP without frustrating new players.

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, SableShrike said:

In closing, any big balancing of difficulty would need to be optional similar to Ouro or Notoriety settings, as I’ve heard other folks mention.  I just don’t see how with set IOs in the game it can be balanced around their level of OP without frustrating new players.

How about let the game decide the difficulty? It sees you're fully IOed out and T4ed it automatically throws in extra buff/debuffers to the enemy in question? It automatically adds EBs where they didn't exist before? Random AVs with missions suddenly set to Kill All?

 

But if you've got nothing but TOs in your build and running at +0/x1 it adds nothing.

[SableShrike]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

How about let the game decide the difficulty? It sees you're fully IOed out and T4ed it automatically throws in extra buff/debuffers to the enemy in question? It automatically adds EBs where they didn't exist before? Random AVs with missions suddenly set to Kill All?

 

But if you've got nothing but TOs in your build and running at +0/x1 it adds nothing.

Yeah that'd be neat if we could figure out a dynamic difficulty coding or the like!

 

The above posts are just my opinion, mind.  And there’s tons of ways the game has significantly improved.

 

My first Ice tanker on Live was only allowed to run one armor toggle at a time, say.  That was ridiculous and needed to be changed.

 

I understand why Paragon put in set IOs; they needed some way to give the game a longer term goal than just level 53 SOs and HOs.  The server populations were getting smaller as well, and so they had to deal with the fact that people may not be able to find a team to do some content.

 

Given those pressures I can understand why they rolled out set IOs.  Someone made the call that having a gear treadmill to extend the game’s profitable life was better than risking NCSoft axing the game due to stagnation.

 

Given that we are no longer profit driven, however, it’s a good time to revisit how power creep is negatively affecting the teaming that initially made this game so compelling.

 

Super interested to hear everyone’s ideas on this.  I’m very glad the HC team are paying real attention to it.

[Hexquisite]

I'm positive that if Regen was nerfed, everything would reach a state of perfect equilibrium.

[SableShrike]

And if we finally got Carp Melee.

[Spaghetti Betty]

2 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

How about let the game decide the difficulty? It sees you're fully IOed out and T4ed it automatically throws in extra buff/debuffers to the enemy in question? It automatically adds EBs where they didn't exist before? Random AVs with missions suddenly set to Kill All?

 

But if you've got nothing but TOs in your build and running at +0/x1 it adds nothing.

I really really like this idea. It would probably just be easier to bake this sort of stuff into the difficulty adjuster though. Remember how the difficulties used to be named? Under "Invincible", they could add "Godlike". I like the dynamic difficulty scaling idea way better.

 

@ClawsandEffect has a good point, though. If you remove the set IOs now, you'd have to scale back a lot of the newer content in return, and I don't think that's the answer.

 

On a side note, I do like the ATOs for what it's worth. I like that they enhance your character in a way that is unique to the AT you are playing. I feel like if there was more stuff like that and less stuff that benefits every character across the board like Purple sets the ATs themselves wouldn't suffer as much of an identity loss. I hope I conveyed that the way I intended.

[Chris24601]

I’ve got a really easy way to up the difficulty; even with IO’s.

 

Step 0) Set diff to +4/x8 w. Bosses and AVs.

Step 1) Start in Praetoria.

Step 2) at 20 go directly to First Ward.

Step 3) when First Ward is done go directly to Night Ward.

Step 4) go to Primal Earth and run the Praetorian Portal Corps arcs.

Step 5) run the New Praetorians arcs.

Step 6) run Dark Astoria and Agent Six (Last Bastion in Praetoria). Do NOT take assistance when it’s offered... Solo them.

 

There is a rather sizable difference in difficulty between Praetorian content/mobs and hitting the Council again and again.

 

The easiest fix for 50+ content is to rebuild the level 50-54 mobs to run like the Talons of Vengeance, Awakened, IDF, etc.

 

If you followed through on the fallout of the New Praetorians arc and gave the level 50+ Council the capabilities of equivalent IDF mobs (infantry with the abilities of IDF rangers, mek-men with those of clockwork/warworks, hover bots with the abilities of the IDF orbs) there’d be a very different perception of difficulty.

[SableShrike]

10 hours ago, Leetdeth said:

@ClawsandEffect has a good point, though. If you remove the set IOs now, you'd have to scale back a lot of the newer content in return, and I don't think that's the answer.

Yeah, I totally agree the cat's out of the bag as far as set IOs go.  We're not ever seeing them go away given the amount of time and effort people have put into getting them.

 

BillZ has a good idea with the dynamic scaling and such.  Maybe there's a way to quantify the overall set boni into a single total, and then you could have the game ramp up the nastiness from there.

 

Have to see how the new villain group (Freakloks) pans out, too.  They may have certain mobs going forward specifically placed to hose the solo softcap player.  Kind of like how Super Stunners were put in to hose the facerolling of Freakshow farms.

[FoulVileTerror]

I anticipate plenty of Toxic Damage based on the Vahzilok portion of their heritage.

[Black Zot]

13 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

How about let the game decide the difficulty? It sees you're fully IOed out and T4ed it automatically throws in extra buff/debuffers to the enemy in question? It automatically adds EBs where they didn't exist before? Random AVs with missions suddenly set to Kill All?

 

But if you've got nothing but TOs in your build and running at +0/x1 it adds nothing.

 

HahahahaNO.  Leave the rubberband difficulty in Mario Kart and let people have fun.

[Judasace]

21 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

How about let the game decide the difficulty? It sees you're fully IOed out and T4ed it automatically throws in extra buff/debuffers to the enemy in question? It automatically adds EBs where they didn't exist before? Random AVs with missions suddenly set to Kill All?

 

But if you've got nothing but TOs in your build and running at +0/x1 it adds nothing.

And then the Bandits can all be wearing Daedric armor. Cool.

 

Seriously though, level scaling of the type used in Oblivion, which sounds like what you're describing here, is one of the most derided things in gaming. Getting more powerful shouldn't make random story arc #12 into the equivalent of the MLTF.

 

Superheroes are supposed to be powerful, more powerful than the average and while they face enemies that are more powerful, that's when they get a team. What you're describing doesn't sound like fun at all.

[Golden Azrael]

Balance isn't futile.  

 

It doesn't have to be generic homogeny.  ATs can specialise.  Powers can be 'good' at their thing and have unique specialisms so it makes playing different sets and ATs worth it.

 

Never been one for 'nerfs' but making concepts 'more' so.  (Though TWs seems to be a bit 'out there.'  Waiting for the animations to animate gives me a virtual panic attack...'..yes...yes...waits...Just hit already...')

 

If you watch 'Over Drive' NPC from the point of view from a Defender...you can see get a feel of where some sets are that far out.

 

Try playing solo Defender vs a solo Scrapper.  And the difference is telling damage wise.  You have to do this, this and this...before you can start to fight...and the scrapper wades in and starts chomping.

 

Maybe that is just the way it is with some ATs?  Does it have to be?

 

Kinetics Rad defender.  Very artful.  But the damage seems to be miles off.  And I think some of the more artful and thoughtful playing sets don't seem to reward the damage to encourage the play of them.

 

I'd like to see Defenders 'self buff' so the effects they apply to others could apply to them.  It seems odd the way that it is.

 

Azrael.

[Soyuz]

4 hours ago, Golden Azrael said:

 

I'd like to see Defenders 'self buff' so the effects they apply to others could apply to them.  It seems odd the way that it is.

I've always thought it was odd too. There seem to be things baked into the design of the game which are taken from the superhero genre and others which obviously came from the MMO genre. Happily, most things have a foot in both camps, but ally-only buffs seem to me to be something which was just legacy MMO design - done that way because it always had been. I've usually got around this by playing debuff-heavy sets like Storm, which don't have the problem to the same degree.

 

I have sometimes had people try to tell me to "just heal" though. Never teams I've stayed on for very long, needless to say.

 

Regrettably I think it's something that's unlikely to change now. It's been part of the game for far too long and people are used to it. I'd love to be proved wrong though.

[jubakumbi]

CoH broke the mold on the Role based MMO paradigm.

 

We now have players that want to the Roles balanced, Defender/Tank/Controller/DD, while at the same time we have players that prefer a Super hero that plays all Roles.

 

Without literally having two sets of rules, one for both sides, IMO that will never work - and we know two sets of rules don't really work well - PvE/PvP.

 

I think the only way to solve this issue is some serious work on how to set mission levels and difficulties with the game in it's current state.

We literally have diametrically opposed ideas as to what the character power level should be, so IMO, there is no way to accomplish that with the characters, it must be done with the encounters.

 

No ONE thing is ever, ever going to please these diametrically opposed POVs.

Edited September 28, 2020 by jubakumbi
speeling

[Golden Azrael]

COH is unique with the odd 'standard' convention.

 

I think it's a simple matter of amplifying its strengths.  

 

As for 'balance.'   Not fond of nerfs.  TWs not withstanding.

 

Brutes and scrappers seem to be alright.  Chompin' damage monsters.

 

Things I'd like to be brought into the game.

 

Perma Hasten.  (Not behind an IO pay wall.)

Self Buffing Defenders.

Time being the damage variable.  Slow but harder.  Faster but lighter damage.  (Rad for defenders seems slow and light...damage.)

Tanks being the single target monsters.  Slow and heavy hitters.  eg. Energy Melee.  I'd make the 'big' hitters hit twice their current damage.  Like Energy Transer used ta.

Dark Melee's 'build up' cool downs reduced to something sane.

Some of Tricks cool downs reduced.

Blasters got auto snipe.

I wonder if Domis can get Auto Domination (ie over the 1-50 levels you get to the point where you need to hit less and less mobs to activate this mode and as you hit L50 your button flashes as you encounter enemy mobs.  Like the 'snipe' ring in Blasters.)

Tanks get a longer 'build up' ie a Power Build Up with 2ndary effects.  Lasting 30 secs instead of 15.  A mode where they do 'twice' their normal damage for a limited amount of time.

Blasters got the self buff.  So def's being able to self buff?  Why not?

 

These are just the things I play.  And some ideas for consideration.

 

I see damage as a path all the ATs and power sets get to as a different path.  As long as that path is 'equal' and imaginative in its 'rule.'

 

Azrael.

[Lines]

29 minutes ago, jubakumbi said:

I think the only way to solve this issue is some serious work on how to set mission levels and difficulties with the game in it's current state.

We literally have diametrically opposed ideas as to what the character power level should be, so IMO, there is no way to accomplish that with the characters, it must be done with the encounters.

 

While maybe not the only way, I agree with this hugely.

 

Expanding the ways that the game can respond to our characters is also a way for our characters to become more dynamic. The world we occupy is an extension of ourselves, the more varied it is, the more varied we can become.

Edited September 28, 2020 by Lines

[Judasace]

26 minutes ago, Golden Azrael said:

 

Brutes and scrappers seem to be alright.  Chompin' damage monsters.

 

 

Scrappers are not alright. Why do you think so many are gravitation to TW? Because it's the only set that lets them be on a par with Brutes and Blaster. With the increased survivability of blasters, the higher caps on damage and res for Brutes, Scrapper sets being full of smashing/lethal and mostly ST damage, there's nothing about scrappers that puts them on a par in damage or survivability over those other ATs.

 

People complain about support not being needed...except they still are in TFs/Trials anything with a hard target. Aside from current TW, there is no situation where it isn't better to have a brute or blaster than a scrapper.

Edited September 28, 2020 by Judasace

[Twisted Toon]

27 minutes ago, Golden Azrael said:

As for 'balance.'   Not fond of nerfs.  TWs not withstanding.

From what I can recall, not one person that said that nerfing is a viable method of balance stated that everything should be nerfed to the lowest common denominator.

No-one is really fond of nerfs.

Some people realize that it is more feasible to nerf one or two things instead of buffing 50 or 60 (or 700) things.

The part of your post that I quoted, is exactly in line with what most nerf-is-viable people think.

They also pity the poor programmers that have to work on the balance issues.

[Chris24601]

I’m wondering if some of the disparity couldn’t be solved by going a step further on the idea the devs were testing of moving SO access all the way down to start (and having an “upgrade all” button for bumping them up to current maximum you could slot).

 

The step further would be make generic IO’s the default enhancement type for drops/basic vendors with the “upgrade all” button for taking those 10’s to 15’s, etc.

 

Difficulty could then be set around the IO enhancement levels (where two 50 IO’s puts you at close to where ED diminishing returns really start to kick in) because that’s essentially the new floor for performance.

 

Ex. you can now balance player to-hit chance on a pre-clamped floor value (0.75 x 1.424 accuracy for a single generic 50 IO)... meaning you need a 9+% defense buff on a level 50+ mob before it will have any effect on even the most basically slotted player’s hit chance (75 - 8% defense buff = 67% to-hit x 1.424 accuracy = 95.4% hit chance).

 

With that floor in place you can look at mobs who have +defense or -to-hit effects and scale them to at least 10-15% since anything less won’t even be noticeable.

 

Once you’ve got a firm floor, you can then start looking at what, if any, changes to the ceilings are needed.

[Golden Azrael]

30 minutes ago, Judasace said:

Scrappers are not alright. Why do you think so many are gravitation to TW? Because it's the only set that lets them be on a par with Brutes and Blaster. With the increased survivability of blasters, the higher caps on damage and res for Brutes, Scrapper sets being full of smashing/lethal and mostly ST damage, there's nothing about scrappers that puts them on a par in damage or survivability over those other ATs.

 

People complain about support not being needed...except they still are in TFs/Trials anything with a hard target. Aside from current TW, there is no situation where it isn't better to have a brute or blaster than a scrapper.

Scrappers?  Seem like an embarrassment of riches compared to defenders who generally get to stand and watch scrappers clear the all you can eat buffet.

 

A claws/Bio scrapper is a lot of fun melee wise.

 

I don't expect Wolverine Scrapper to do as much damage as the Hulk brute.  

 

Blasters have a self buff.  But can't go toe to toe without getting their head mezzed in.  So you have to be more artful than a scrapper to survive.

 

Fighting a mob of Warriors is much easier on a scrapper.  You're not that 'unlucky' shot or die roll away from getting yer head kicked in.

 

I've liked playing the 'chosen ones' on live (Scrappers.)  But I'll get my tiny violin out for them not being on a par with a brute or blaster damage wise.

 

Azrael.

Edited September 28, 2020 by Golden Azrael

[Judasace]

25 minutes ago, Golden Azrael said:

Scrappers?  Seem like an embarrassment of riches compared to defenders who generally get to stand and watch scrappers clear the all you can eat buffet.

 

A claws/Bio scrapper is a lot of fun melee wise.

 

I don't expect Wolverine Scrapper to do as much damage as the Hulk brute.  

 

Blasters have a self buff.  But can't go toe to toe without getting their head mezzed in.  So you have to be more artful than a scrapper to survive.

 

Fighting a mob of Warriors is much easier on a scrapper.  You're not that 'unlucky' shot or die roll away from getting yer head kicked in.

 

I've liked playing the 'chosen ones' on live (Scrappers.)  But I'll get my tiny violin out for them not being on a par with a brute or blaster damage wise.

 

Azrael.

Have you actually played blasters at high levels on HC? Because I have multiple IO'd/Incarnate blasters, and they are NEVER in any danger of getting mezzed to death or one shotted.  Their defense is so much offense that the enemy never has a chance to do any damage. My blasters can go toe to toe with anything in the game without ever being in danger of dying.

 

Defenders aren't meant to be primary damage dealers. But they're amazing and vital on the hardest content in the game.

 

Basically you're describing a godmode character - top tier damage, infinite survivability, high end buffs and debuffs.  That isn't "balance".

[jubakumbi]

56 minutes ago, Chris24601 said:

The step further would be make generic IO’s the default enhancement type for drops/basic vendors with the “upgrade all” button for taking those 10’s to 15’s, etc.

This.

Just drop DOs/SOs entirely and move to basic IOs as the 'baseline'.

For one thing, that would simplify so many things for the casual player.

Then, there would just be two basic gear 'tiers' - Sets and non-Sets.

 

Balance wise, there are simply Role based Archetypes with Power Combos in this game that were never really meant to be used as solo Characters.

There is nothing wrong with that, it allows us to create a great many different types of characters, IMO.

 

IO Sets and Incarnates allow the 'determined hero' to become Super.

 

I just don't see 'why' a FF/Sonic Defender would roll through enemies like a Fire/Fire Blaster … they are built to do two different things.

 

It kind of baffles me as to why anyone would think Hawkeye and Thor could do the same things, they were never meant to...

[Bill Z Bubba]

28 minutes ago, jubakumbi said:

It kind of baffles me as to why anyone would think Hawkeye and Thor could do the same things, they were never meant to...

And yet Hawkeye managed to kill the Hulk. Granted, he rezzed, but whatever.

Edited September 28, 2020 by Bill Z Bubba