Game Balance & The Endgame

[BitCook]

9 minutes ago, macskull said:

Meanwhile you've got people complaining about playing City of Statues and how going up against a bunch of CC'd mobs who can't fight back is boring. So now we're at a weird point here:

• You are claiming Controllers are just DPS with minor support and CC is irrelevant
• But Controllers don't have the highest buff/debuff modifiers on their support sets and they certainly don't out-DPS the other support ATs
• Yet somehow Controllers are the most-played support AT

So maybe players actually do still value CC.

That's possible... or, like me, we love the class and mostly play them solo.  They still are fun to solo.  Your kill speed is immaterial and you need the controls to survive.  They are also great from like 20-45 in the level curve.  Or people are sick of making another damage dealer.  I can't say why anyone other than me plays them still.  I can say what I see when I do play them though.

[FUBARczar]

1 hour ago, Ralathar44 said:

Fire Melee has 2 pbaoes and a ranged cone.  It does pretty good AOE damage for a melee set.  You see Martial Arts all the time and that has diddly for AOE and many tanker sets only have 1 pbaoe and 1 melee cone.  When you say it doesn't do damage well is there a DPS chart or missions clear chart you can point to or is that comment based on "I feel"?  Because I'd love to see that data if you have it available.

first of all only tanks get two PBAoEs, +1 Cone and all are long animations.  Personally only Fire Sword Circle is worth it.  Fire Breath's range is too sort, it's cone is too narrow and has bad dpa/dps, same with Combustion.  The damage is just ok, which sucks because it has no mitigation, no secondary effects.

[Lockpick]

23 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

When you have many players that can solo +4/x8 any additional player is superfluous.  There's nothing wrong in my mind to want to be able to solo like that.  But having the character that can easily solo +4/8 participate in a team at less than 50 and still have 100% of their powers, including I-Powers (except for the 2nd and 3rd level shift), is beyond absurd and makes the rest of the team completely superfluous while the Uber-character isn't even breaking a sweat.   Beyond that, it makes little logical or lore sense for one to have all those powers when specifically "powering down" to help, which is what the exemp system is supposed to represent.

 

I am really curious how many players can really do +4/8 solo.  I don't think it as easy as everyone makes it out to be as evidenced by the Scrapper +4/8 thread.

 

Anyway, I am not opposed to an option to select allow / disallow incarnate powers for TFs like there are options for no deaths or no temps.  It seems reasonable and more choices are always better.

 

[Ralathar44]

14 minutes ago, FUBARczar said:

first of all only tanks get two PBAoEs, +1 Cone and all are long animations.  Personally only Fire Sword Circle is worth it.  Fire Breath's range is too sort, it's cone is too narrow and has bad dpa/dps, same with Combustion.  The damage is just ok, which sucks because it has no mitigation, no secondary effects.

Blaster verision of it is basically just 1 giant list of PBAOEs lol.  Tanker has 2 PBAOE and the ranged cone, and while the cone is shortish its alot longer range than melee cones which have low target caps both mechanically and practically thanks to their much more limited range. (even if they have much better arcs)

So really we're talking specifically about Brute and Scrapper versions of Fiery Melee mainly since tanker version might be able to make up some group with the additional PBAOE..  You've mentioned they have bad DPS/DPA and if you can confidently state that again I ask for data.  Where is the reasonably up to date testing/spreadsheet/forum post breakdown/etc showing this?  You've already mentioned long animation times, and I agree the animation times are quite long on some effects (2+ second animations are kinda ridiculous and are a problem for assault rifle blast set too on it's flamethrower powers), that would affect DPS.  But you also said DPA, which is a different story completely.  So gimme data lol.

Edited September 23, 2020 by Ralathar44

[Parabola]

7 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

I will retract the selfish and lazy part of the comment

Thanks. Be well.

[FUBARczar]

1 hour ago, Ralathar44 said:

Blaster verision of it is basically just 1 giant list of PBAOEs lol.  Tanker has 2 PBAOE and the ranged cone, and while the cone is shortish its alot longer range than melee cones which have low target caps both mechanically and practically thanks to their much more limited range. (even if they have much better arcs)

So really we're talking specifically about Brute and Scrapper versions of Fiery Melee mainly since tanker version might be able to make up some group with the additional PBAOE..  You've mentioned they have bad DPS/DPA and if you can confidently state that again I ask for data.  Where is the reasonably up to date testing/spreadsheet/forum post breakdown/etc showing this?  You've already mentioned long animation times, and I agree the animation times are quite long on some effects, that would affect DPS.  But you also said DPA, which is a different story completely.  So gimme data lol.

It's not like I am saying that Fiery Melee runs mish X at speed Y.  I think you are fully capable of looking up hard numbers like activation times and power damage numbers.  /e jokingly: Aren't you?  (please say yes so I can maintain to foster hope in humanity)  

[Ralathar44]

6 minutes ago, FUBARczar said:

It's not like I am saying that Fiery Melee runs mish X at speed Y.  I think you are fully capable of looking up hard numbers like activation times and power damage numbers.  /e jokingly: Aren't you?  (please say yes so I can maintain to foster hope in humanity)  

Napkin math using only those powers' numbers without seeing something in practical application and comparing data sets is a recipe for making bad assumptions.  Feelings are often correct, at least in part, but ultimately are fairly unreliable.  Data is trustworthy.  MMORPGs and  MOBAs have shown time and time again that people, even the vast majority opinions, and even professional players, are quite capable of being wrong over and over again with reasoning that is intended to be honest but flawed or biased in some way.

For example a big spanner that could change the efficacy dramatically is enemy resistances.  You've formed a fine enough hypothesis but that's all it is without testing and a robust data set.

Edited September 23, 2020 by Ralathar44

[carroto]

35 minutes ago, BitCook said:

In most groups you can barely get off your -RES debuff before the mob is dead.  At those speeds you certainly don't need to use most anything other than damage.  That was not how the game used to be.  There was time and space for characters to debuff mobs, set up control, and do other things to make missioning interesting and varied.

This is at the core of the difference so many have noticed in the way the game plays relative to retail.  It especially stands out if I want to use an opener with a long animation time.  If I lag behind other members of the team by even a bit, the mobs will be mostly defeated by the time my animation completes.  It was a total waste.  I mean, I guess I still hit the bosses, so there's that.

 

This results in various members of the team running ahead or splitting to engage groups of mobs before others get there, just so they can actually do something that has an effect.  On those teams I sometimes try at first to apply control/debuffs, and then revert to just damage, because it's not doing any good.  Just apply some damage so I can feel like I'm contributing in some way.

 

It can be enjoyable to join lower-level groups.  It feels more like what I remember.  It kind of sucks to have many of my powers unavailable, and some of my set bonuses shut off, but it tends to be an actual team, working as a team, to some extent at least.

[jdos911]

On 9/21/2020 at 5:50 AM, macskull said:

There's only been one time in the history of this game that a power has been nerfed in PvE solely for PvP reasons and I'd bet a billion inf you don't know what it is.

Veng stacking nerf?

Those were the days...

[Kanil]

1 hour ago, carroto said:

True for Fire Blast.  Want an example of what that would look like?  See Fire Melee.  All it does is damage, and it doesn't do that well.  I can't remember the last time I saw a Fire Melee character.

you mean the powerset that is still in the top 5 overall for damage and isn't top 3 because it doesn't have a source of -res proccing unlike fire blast's inferno or all the sets above it?

spoilers: fire melee in high +dmg and high -res situations does significantly more damage than everything but TW and WM, and that's with it having a completely worthless T9 and an inability to leverage really good proc builds focusing on offense.

 

 

not a single person has generated any evidence contrary to my point - fire blast is the best at the thing that matters for most ats that you can pick it on and is far and away the best at it at nearly (or more than?) the same outlier as TW vs. WM (the 2nd best melee powerset), down to the thing where the 2nd place powerset (arguably ice) has the exact same issue of being 'close' in ST and getting clobbered in AOE.  it's an outlier in the same vein, so why is it that TW is the only one that's affected? "because it only has damage?" how transparent is that statement when i'm sure a huge amount of pages of this discussion i've barely read is about how "incarnates are too powerful and kill things too fast"? like, really?

 

everyone wants to engage on the "actually fire blast is fair" side of the argument, or brainlessly meme about "tw is overpowered because it does kb, -res, kd, whoaohoh, insert slide whistle noise here" without context of how the sets actively are affecting powerset choice in player population or how they work in live play. who gives a shit which powerset is objectively better? fire blast better do more damage than TW on blasters, that's the point

the pearl clutching of "oh no, don't nerf fire blast!" is eye-rolling because it hasn't been the point of my statements to begin with - the point is that "if TW is such an outlier that it has to be nerfed due to perception and how it affects player population powerset picks, why is fire blast, which is demonstrably worse in affecting that seen as OK?"

 

what is the purpose of going after TW for that reason and not fire blast? why is it that people go "actually, blaster sets need help but TW needs to be nerfed?" what is the logical chain on that beyond the most surface-level observations of powersets?

 

once again, for the millionth fucking time i hate using these charts because there's so many factors that come into power choice (see: empathy bein #1 defender set and regen being popular as the easy examples of legacy knowledge affecting that or SS being the superhero powerset) but are everyone is seriously trying to argue that fire blast being more popular than both powersets under it combined on the ATs that aren't defender (sonic blast support world) or sentinel (their version of FB is a joke) isn't some kind of anomaly? that it's less of an anomaly than TW?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 23, 2020 by Kanil

[carroto]

3 minutes ago, jdos911 said:

Veng stacking nerf?

Those were the days...

I'm thinking Hurricane.  If that's not what he's referring to then there have clearly been more than one.

[Ralathar44]

8 minutes ago, carroto said:

This is at the core of the difference so many have noticed in the way the game plays relative to retail.  It especially stands out if I want to use an opener with a long animation time.  If I lag behind other members of the team by even a bit, the mobs will be mostly defeated by the time my animation completes.  It was a total waste.  I mean, I guess I still hit the bosses, so there's that.

 

This results in various members of the team running ahead or splitting to engage groups of mobs before others get there, just so they can actually do something that has an effect.  On those teams I sometimes try at first to apply control/debuffs, and then revert to just damage, because it's not doing any good.  Just apply some damage so I can feel like I'm contributing in some way.

 

It can be enjoyable to join lower-level groups.  It feels more like what I remember.  It kind of sucks to have many of my powers unavailable, and some of my set bonuses shut off, but it tends to be an actual team, working as a team, to some extent at least.

My TA/A Defender was my main on retail and I loved him.  I felt effective and useful.  I feel like dead weight on high level teams now.  My entire job as TA is to shoot off disruption arrow and acid arrow now.  That's about all I normally have time for so I doubt the -res/-def is even helping much...especially when reduced by the purple patch against +4, or +5s if you're pre-50 and sidekicked even 1 level up.  Even Oil Slick Arrow doesn't feel good anymore.  Against +2s and +3s it feels powerful with the damage and falling down enemies.  But it does little vs +4 or +5 with knockdown procs happening way less and damage not doing enough to matter.  Meanwhile teams can kill the group of mobs before the oil slick even gets more than a few ticks of damage off even if you fire it down first and they instantly ignite it.

The difference is incredibly dramatic and disheartening.

 

[carroto]

15 minutes ago, Kanil said:

you mean the powerset that is still in the top 5 overall for damage and isn't top 3 because it doesn't have a source of -res proccing unlike fire blast's inferno or all the sets above it?

I would expect the set with a secondary effect of more damage to do the most damage.  If it doesn't then what's the point?  If I can get more (or the same) damage with extra effects from another set, why go with FM?  You downplay the presence of secondary effects in TW.  I can only speak for myself here, but secondary effects often play a significant role in my selection of damage sets.  The leveling experience of sets with KD or other effects is vastly different and much safer than those without.

 

For Fire Blast while leveling the lack of any other mitigation is very much felt.  You are sacrificing something real to get that extra damage.  If I could get the KB of Energy Blast with more damage than Fire Blast, why wouldn't I?  Maybe the gap between Fire Blast and other sets is larger than it ideally should be, but it should be there.  If you've justified it for TW I must have missed it.

 

 

[Troo]

5 hours ago, Lockpick said:

Leveraging Devs should be a last resort.

definitely.

 

Ideally dev effort applied to add to the game is preferred. Not remove.

 

This is the way.

 

Granted, sometimes things get broken or create an issue and need to be addressed but again, ideally, these are infrequent.

[Haijinx]

Of course any improvements to game balance have to be based around IOs. 

 

IOs are why the game is so damn easy. 

 

Ignoring IOs is like trying to police cheating at poker without addressing the fact that people have extra cards up their sleeves.  

Edited September 24, 2020 by Haijinx

[Kanil]

2 minutes ago, carroto said:

I would expect the set with a secondary effect of more damage to do the most damage.  If it doesn't then what's the point?  If I can get more (or the same) damage with extra effects from another set, why go with FM?  You downplay the presence of secondary effects in TW.  I can only speak for myself here, but secondary effects often play a significant role in my selection of damage sets.  The leveling experience of sets with KD or other effects is vastly different and much safer than those without.

 

For Fire Blast while leveling the lack of any other mitigation is very much felt.  You are sacrificing something real to get that extra damage.  If I could get the KB of Energy Blast with more damage than Fire Blast, why wouldn't I?  Maybe the gap between Fire Blast and other sets is larger than it ideally should be, but it should be there.  If you've justified it for TW I must have missed it.

 

 

the gap being larger is the whole point - the gap is as wide of a margin as TW, with TW's caveat being that it has those additional benefits at the expense of a mechanic that actively makes it unfun for tons of folks to play and detrimental to high-end teams due to the speed/anim-time/rooting related aspect of it vs. pace those teams steamroll through stuff.

 

fire blast's caveat is "it doesn't do secondary effects" and little else, which is fine with it being the damagelord. the amount that you value having KB/-slow/-end/-def or whatever mediocre secondary effect of other powersets is clearly not the standard case with the playerbase, because of the player numbers shown above. once again, i reference however much of this thread is dedicated to how all high-end content devolves into "nothing matters but damage given sufficient IOs/incarnate powers and buffs" or whatever the hell that discussion is about.

 

i'm not sure how to reply to someone who believes that energy blast or peacebringer blasts are near comparable to the output that fire provides. applying that to the melee side of powersets would be like stating that battle axe having knockdown on everything has near-equal value to katana's overall all-rounder strength or something. it's strange.

 

fire blast doesn't have a mechanic that has that kind of 'fun penalty' - there is no "oh you gotta wait until you get a full attack string for it to be fun" with fire. you come out the door guns blazing and stay superhot.

 

you didn't address my actual point, still. fire blast's outlier aspects clearly affect player power choice more than TW. why is it that TW is nerfed and fire blast is seen as "ok"?

 

for what it's worth, i still want fire melee buffs because i think it should have the highest damage in the same vein fire blast does. i just want to use GFS in strings and use it as an crit strikes proc attack - one of the things that is often missed in scrapper damage comparison stuff is how the ATO and attack chains interact since high-end output for them is so reliant on the ATO, and sadly fire melee is one of the sets who only has mediocre options anim/rech/DPA-wise for that and suffers greatly for that when it comes to sustained ST damage.

[Mezmera]

12 hours ago, Piecemeal said:

I came in here optimistic. I still am, but also this:

 

Welcome to the team!  We'll try to be gentle.  *Snaps on latex gloves*

 

[golstat2003]

3 hours ago, MTeague said:

Just about fell out of my chair.  I'd honestly given up hope on that one. 

 

I acknowledge that'll be a sensaitive one. Many people may be quite unhappy if they lose access to incarnate powers, during, say, the Maria Jenkins arc. Or Doc Quaterfield.

And I should also acknowledge, I have no idea if that's even on the table.  MY definition for "non-incarnate content" may not match the dev's definition. 

Other standard boilerplate applies. 

 

I think it's great that it's being looked at. Whether or not anything ultimately changes.

Me definition is if I'm 45-50 I should have my incarnate abilities. If not then there's no point for me to pursue the incarnate content or do further trials.

[golstat2003]

3 hours ago, macskull said:

I assume based on the rest of your post you meant kill speed needs to go up but if you raise time-to-kill you're just going to further bias the meta in favor of DPS (things will take longer to kill or things will do less damage, therefore I will need more damage dealers to accomplish the same thing) which means you'll have even fewer support characters making appearances. I also don't understand where the "support isn't valuable" argument comes from, especially because support still acts as a force multiplier for the entire team to the point where it's usually more beneficial to bring a support character than another DPS character.

 

If you look at, for example, the Task Force Olympics stuff (speed task force races, basically) most teams consist of Blasters and Corruptors/Defenders with the occasional Scrapper thrown in. It's very rare to find a "speed" team without any form of support. I mean, hell, if I see a random TF forming in LFG or general or a global channel and I ask the team lead what they want the answer is usually "support or DPS." The role of support is far from marginalized in this game. There may be support sets that have been marginalized (Empathy and Force Fields come to mind) but support as a whole is still extremely valuable.

For the second time in 2 days, I'm here to say QFT to a macskull post. All. of. this!

[golstat2003]

2 hours ago, BitCook said:

I played from launch until about i10/12 then on and off from there.

IOs were both a boon and a curse.  A boon in that they added build options like few games have or have had.  I love that aspect of the game.  But they also started the decline of AT roles.  Yes, kill speed on a lot of toons at +4/8 solo would be slow, but the fact that there are lots of builds that can is part of the problem.  

That is at the extreme end, and I'd admit that.  However, it doesn't take more than a couple of tricked out toons... maybe they can only handle +3/8 on their own... to basically invalidate the need for anything other than more damage.  That is very common.  I do PUGs all the time.  I play support toons nearly 100% of the time; Controllers/Doms/Defenders/Corruptors.  In most groups you can barely get off your -RES debuff before the mob is dead.  At those speeds you certainly don't need to use most anything other than damage.  That was not how the game used to be.  There was time and space for characters to debuff mobs, set up control, and do other things to make missioning interesting and varied.

However, the argument I've been trying to advocate has kind of gotten lost.  I've said going back would likely be suicide for the game.  To many people would be upset and feel like their toons were nerfed into the ground.  I am arguing that removing any viable options from those marginalized toons is not a good idea unless you are going to head back to a state where teams needed to kind of work together more than they do now.

And this would be a game I would not play. The farther we get away from the holy trinity type of mmo's past, the better. It's the one thing COH got right.

[golstat2003]

1 hour ago, Haijinx said:

Of course any improvements to game balance have to be based around IOs. 

 

IOs are why the game is so damn easy. 

 

Ignoring IOs is like trying to police cheating at poker without addressing the fact that people have extra cards up their sleeves.  

We don't have the manpower for that. It's simply not realistic.

 

EDIT: There are so many combinations of IOs now in the game as is, and so many builds you would need a team larger than paragon was in its heyday to be able to get that balance right, if you're basing balance around IOs. We are far, far far from that now.

Edited September 24, 2020 by golstat2003

[Leogunner]

I'm guessing you want to parley...

45 minutes ago, Kanil said:

the gap being larger is the whole point - the gap is as wide of a margin as TW, with TW's caveat being that it has those additional benefits at the expense of a mechanic that actively makes it unfun for tons of folks to play and detrimental to high-end teams due to the speed/anim-time/rooting related aspect of it vs. pace those teams steamroll through stuff.

Is it though?  I can assume that Fire Blast has a prominent gap between it and the next up and coming blast set, but is that gap "as wide" or are you just saying that?  When @Galaxy Brain posted a comprehensive comparison of the melee sets using controlled elements, I'm convinced it does perform quite a bit better than other melee sets but it also takes into account death and needing to return to the map which seems more fair than just assuming a build is IO'ed and needs no effects except damage.  I'm actually asking, is there any testing done with a similar approach for blast sets?

 

50 minutes ago, Kanil said:

fire blast's caveat is "it doesn't do secondary effects" and little else, which is fine with it being the damagelord. the amount that you value having KB/-slow/-end/-def or whatever mediocre secondary effect of other powersets is clearly not the standard case with the playerbase, because of the player numbers shown above. once again, i reference however much of this thread is dedicated to how all high-end content devolves into "nothing matters but damage given sufficient IOs/incarnate powers and buffs" or whatever the hell that discussion is about.

 

i'm not sure how to reply to someone who believes that energy blast or peacebringer blasts are near comparable to the output that fire provides. applying that to the melee side of powersets would be like stating that battle axe having knockdown on everything has near-equal value to katana's overall all-rounder strength or something. it's strange.

 

fire blast doesn't have a mechanic that has that kind of 'fun penalty' - there is no "oh you gotta wait until you get a full attack string for it to be fun" with fire. you come out the door guns blazing and stay superhot.

 

you didn't address my actual point, still. fire blast's outlier aspects clearly affect player power choice more than TW. why is it that TW is nerfed and fire blast is seen as "ok"?

 

for what it's worth, i still want fire melee buffs because i think it should have the highest damage in the same vein fire blast does. i just want to use GFS in strings and use it as an crit strikes proc attack - one of the things that is often missed in scrapper damage comparison stuff is how the ATO and attack chains interact since high-end output for them is so reliant on the ATO, and sadly fire melee is one of the sets who only has mediocre options anim/rech/DPA-wise for that and suffers greatly for that when it comes to sustained ST damage.

I think the point of contention here is you're trying to compare TW to Fire Blast.  The thing that you're not acknowledging is, you're also comparing Melee ATs to Blast ATs.  They have completely differing balancing paradigms here and, to my knowledge, the blast sets are far more standardized than melee.  That Fire Blast or the equivalent highly-effective blast set doesn't have Momentum is a testament to how standardized the blast sets are.  The balance used to be a lot more shifty but with the change to Blaster inherent, the first blasts were standardized across ATs and with the nukes being de-crashed, it unbalanced them on the high end.  The only real difference in the blast sets beyond "gimme d33Pz" is the mez blast (some do good damage, some barely any), the presence of Aim and the presence of a Snipe.  They're all just varying levels of "shoot em dead" to "shoot em dead safer" with some exceptions (AR and non Defender Sonic).  Elec Blast's position has shifted thanks to the Snipe change while still maintaining its shut-down features.

 

But all that is irrelevant when compared to Melee because they are not the same.  If you feel Fire Blast needs a nerf, then make that argument.  If your only argument is to defend TW because Fire Blast, and the only thing you can do is point to popularity data, you're wrong.  Try again. 

[Haijinx]

1 minute ago, golstat2003 said:

We don't have the manpower for that. It's simply not realistic.

manpower for what?  

 

If you have the ability to balance the game around SOs, do you not also have the ability to balance it around IOs? 

[golstat2003]

3 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

manpower for what?  

 

If you have the ability to balance the game around SOs, do you not also have the ability to balance it around IOs? 

No. Because there are some key questions you need to ask about IO balance that you don't have to about SO balance.

 

First of what level of balance? Are we saying IO builds that are frankeslotted, procs, purples, attuned IOs? At what balance point do you start with? What assumptions do you start with about what the majority of players are slotted with? What the "best" and "worst" slotting combination or combinations for various powers? And who decides that? Who takes the time to dig into the code to do the unit testing for that as powers are tweaked in code around those balance points?

 

Take a look at how long changes currently take to get to live now on HC, no multiply that by many times the balance pass you'd have to do for IOs and their various options.

Edited September 24, 2020 by golstat2003

[Haijinx]

1 minute ago, golstat2003 said:

No. Because there are some key questions you need to ask about IO balance that you don't have to about SO balance.

 

First of what level of balance? Are we saying IO builds that are frankeslotted, procs, purples, attuned IOs? At what balance point do you start with?

 

Take a look at how long changes currently take to get to live now on HC, no multiply that by many times the balance pass you'd have to do for IOs.

Then don't bother adjusting the balance at all. 

 

IO monsters will laugh at any puny attempts to balance the game around SOs 

 

It would make the effort meaningless.