Game Balance & The Endgame

[Ralathar44]

2 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

No one has provided a reasonable answer (IMO) as to why balancing the entire game is a better option than focusing on players creating hard mode content.

They are all bad options.  We're in the snake pit dug in deep.  There are no easy and good answers at this point.  Creating hard mode content as I said earlier has significant issues and would also take significant man hours itself.  It's not an easy feat.  It's prolly close to the same level of work as rebalancing the entire game.  Rebalancing the entire game or heck even just rebalancing IOs is already mentioned to be more work than is practical for the HC team.

We're prolly more or less stuck in the current situation by practical realities.  Many people will enjoy that, many will not, it bodes ill for the overall future of the game though since all routes to significant improvement and change are prolly cut off by the brick wall of work required.  So we'll get some more sets, we'll get some more arcs, and we'll get some tweaks, but unless HC teams pulls a rabbit out of a hat then we're prolly going to be in almost exactly the same place due to those brick walls.

That being said, never count a hero out of the fight :).  Maybe one of them is magic origin and can pull that rabbit :D.

[golstat2003]

At this point I think we're all talked out and just waiting to see what comes out of Closed Beta, and for us to get to public testing.

 

THEN, the REAL arguments will start. 😛 

[Ralathar44]

21 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

EDIT: I was referring to things like blaster buffs (historically then have been more than one set over the life of the game), and changes to Doms. Those were on live.

Nope.  HC Issue 24:  Crashless nukes with much lower cooldowns too, Snipe rebuild, T3 blasts got their ranges doubled, sustain was shoehorned into secondaries across the board.  More changes made in I25.

SOME things were based off of datamined changes that were never actually pushed live.  Some are modifications or HC side inventions.  A great deal of balancing and bug fixing and testing happens right before release in game dev with alot of things being changed majorly or removed completely so taking a months off build and calling that live is highly disingenuous.  Player betas are not representative of that, and that's by design.  We try to do as much of the process as we can before the players touch it because players get attached to things once they know it exists.


I could go into other HC changes by issue but I think I've made my point.

Edited September 27, 2020 by Ralathar44

[Lockpick]

1 minute ago, Ralathar44 said:

They are all bad options.  We're in the snake pit dug in deep.  There are no easy and good answers at this point.  Creating hard mode content as I said earlier has significant issues and would also take significant man hours itself.  It's not an easy feat.  It's prolly close to the same level of work as rebalancing the entire game.  Rebalancing the entire game or heck even just rebalancing IOs is already mentioned to be more work than is practical for the HC team.
 

 

My solution revolves around the players creating the hard mode content, not the devs.  I don't see how that is a bad option.  The problem with MMOs is that no MMO can create enough content to keep the player base happy.  Here, with some tweaks, we could have all the content we could ever play with the appropriate rewards.

 

Of course, if we relied on the devs to create the content it would take forever.  The solution I am advocating would require minor updates from the devs.

 

My solution (provided previously in this thread, but re-added here with some additional points):

• Devs would adjust AE to add more tags and filters, so players can find appropriate content
  • Devs should probably clean up AE and disable or tag missions where the creators are no longer active and the mission is not getting traction
• HC Team volunteer would create Community AE mission contests with the help of community volunteers
• Devs would create reward badges and and provide reward merits for players creating and testing content to incentivize players
• HC Team volunteers would take the content that is lore based and fits the parameters of what the HC team believe are appropriate from a complexity, lore, difficulty standpoint and tag it as Canon content
  • HC Team would set parameters that limit the ability to game the system for inappropriate rewards
    • Only provide rewards at completion of the mission
    • Ensure that there are different enemy types in each mission and sets of missions, so if doesn't become a defacto farm
    • Other parameters as needed
    • Maybe have a monthly contest for canon story arcs that are accepted as Canon content and have quarterly Task Forces added as Canon content; that gives you 4 new TFs per year and 12 new story arcs per year in addition to additional content that may be selected as Conon Content
      • Maybe do something similar for Incarnate content
• Once content is tagged as Canon it becomes Dev content, so the creator can no longer make adjustments not approved by Devs
• Give Canon content the same rewards as TFs and Incarnate missions (i.e. reward merits, threads, shards, Astral Merits, EMPs. etc.)
  • Balance the rewards based on appropriate reward levels and adjust as needed
  • If you find that everyone is playing the Council AE mission over and over because they are a weak enemy, lower the rewards
• The Devs can also make some of the AE Content WSTs to get players to play it

 

Optional Features if possible:

• Have the player created content be accessible through contacts that are in various zones as opposed to the AE
  • I think this might be much harder than it sounds, but it would be nice to get the player content out of the AE if possible

 

These adjustments will provide many benefits:

• It should be relatively easy to implement because most of the work is focused on getting the Community to create and test the content
• It should be relatively easy to maintain (Devs may have to balance rewards occasionally if the data calls for it)
• It puts more focus on AE and players will realize it is not just for farming
• Content of many different levels of complexity will be created that should alleviate the concern of players that think the game is to easy because they will be able to play the hard mode content they crave
• You will never run out of new content, which is always the issue with a MMO
• People will likely play the content because they are getting the rewards they need for progression
• It will bring the community closer together because we will be working together to create and test content
• The Devs will not have to worry about creating content and can focus on incremental adjustments, bug fixes, new power sets, etc.
• Players will be able to more effectively "own" their play experience as opposed to expecting the Devs to manage their play experience
• It doesn't cause anger from balancing ATs/power sets to get to some whole game balance (which is impossible in this environment, IMO) that will negatively impact what I would think are a large percentage of the palyer base that are not power gamers and min/maxers looking for challenge

 

 

[Naraka]

4 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

 

I know in at least one case because I asked the question specifically and was told no by one of the advocates to make the game harder.  I also asked again in that post you quoted.  No one has provided a reasonable answer (IMO) as to why balancing the entire game is a better option than focusing on players creating hard mode content.

 

I also provided some.  I guess they weren't reasonable lol...

 

6 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

If people in this thread advocating to make the game harder are using the existing mechanics to make the game harder I am sure they would be saying why the existing mechanics don't work.  They are not saying that, they are just pointing to the game not being hard enough.

 

Okay, I guess I was reading different posts.  To me, I was reading that a lot of the in-game options don't work.  Likely not that it's not "hard enough", but rather just uninteresting.  It's like the difference between telling a Dark Armor character to load up on +END serums from the P2W vendor and telling them how to slot the dmg aura and Dark Regen to "fix" the problem.  Some don't want to rely on temp powers, some don't want to conform to limited IO builds.  Just because they don't want to use those options doesn't mean they aren't valid options...but just because those options are valid doesn't mean they are the only options and you must use them.

 

12 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

I don't believe wholesale balancing will work because you will get some people that like it and some that don't. 

Why?  Why have you literally dismissed an option?  Why is you dismissing this option valid but someone not dismissing certain difficulty options not valid?  Just because some people will whine about something is hardly a reason, no more impactful than ignoring balance all together.  I mean, I hear the Cake server has a lot more shinies and stronger builds and options there, why haven't you gone over to them?

 

15 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

 

What happens if you do all the balancing and then all of a sudden you get a mass of players flooding the forum with threads that the game is to hard?  Do you go back and balance again?  These players were likely playing the game, having fun, and had no idea that the game they enjoyed was to easy.  Then all of a sudden it was much harder and now they are pissed.

 

Well firstly, no one is advocating for "doing all the balancing" but more or less supporting the *option* of using that method.  Secondly, if a change went through to challenge high-end builds, do you think standard players will even notice?  And if they do, they wouldn't think to change their difficulty settings?  Thirdly, you didn't seem to qualify "much harder" so who knows to what degree you're even arguing from.  Regardless, I think the likelihood of any changes would probably come tied to some kind of checkbox option or merely tied to the +4 level (mainly looking at changes to mobs and their powers).  Anything more (like nerfs) are probably coming as a power-by-power basis, have come before and will likely continue to come as inconsistencies are exposed.

 

21 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

As a side note I was in game this morning and I was watching the Help channel.  Quite a few people were asking for help.  Do you think those players feel the game is to easy?   It was obviously hard enough that they needed help getting an answer to their questions.

 

Uh, I dunno.  Where they asking where the Cosmetic Surgeon was?  Were they asking how to /respec?  Were they bumming some inf?  Or perhaps screaming for help as they are being actively targeted and murdered by Malta?  There's a lot of things people ask for help for, some can't be helped though.

 

Aside, I am of the odd cut that thinks adversity is fun.  They become learning experiences and brand your memory.  Some adversity is good, some bad, but all memorable.  I'm not the moral arbiter of adversity and memorable moments adequate for future reference.  

[Ralathar44]

11 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

 

My solution revolves around the players creating the hard mode content, not the devs.  I don't see how that is a bad option.  The problem with MMOs is that no MMO can create enough content to keep the player base happy.  Here, with some tweaks, we could have all the content we could ever play with the appropriate rewards.

 

Of course, if we relied on the devs to create the content it would take forever.  The solution I am advocating would require minor updates from the devs.

 

My solution (provided previously in this thread, but re-added here with some additional points):  *snipped AE suggestions*

 

Content wise I agree completely.  The devs can still make the passion content they want like the upcoming arc but giving a clear and easy ability to find high quality player AE arcs with competitive rewards not buried by farms would definitely help.  And players could help curate that too by helping to sift through the chaos and reccomending AE missions that could then be community playtested and rated and the top ones reviewed by the devs for consideration.  OFC the caveat being that it sounds easy to make that possible but whether it's easy or not in reality might disagree :P.

But until further notice I'll prolly just not be playing support/non-damage controller as much at high level.  Because it's just not satisfying to not feel effective or actually useful the same way I do on melee/blaster/dmg controller or even sentinel in MOST high level content.  There are times it still feels good, but a significant amount of the time it does not.  And as per the playtime numbers many other folks are making that decision too.

 

Edited September 27, 2020 by Ralathar44

[Naraka]

16 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

My solution (provided previously in this thread, but re-added here with some additional points):

 

FYI, I'm not against your solution.  I just think there is room for other aspects to either differentiate the landscape or become options to amend various other ideas...like, for example, this thread:

There are some ideas in this thread I don't like and some ideas I think could prove to reign in some aspects of the game, either globally or for specific crafted or existing factions.  There is room for more than a 1-sized solution.

[Jimmy]

38 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Nope.  HC Issue 24:  Crashless nukes with much lower cooldowns too, Snipe rebuild, T3 blasts got their ranges doubled, sustain was shoehorned into secondaries across the board.  More changes made in I25.

SOME things were based off of datamined changes that were never actually pushed live.

A little fact checking is in order.

 

There was a lot of mess to clean up.

[Haijinx]

9 hours ago, Lockpick said:

 

My suspicion is that the people that think the game is to easy are the power gamers.  These people plan out build (which you do quite a bit), spend the inf to get billion inf builds, and then incarnate to T4.  I do this as well.  For all I know, the vast majority of our player base are power gamers and the existing player base are vets from Live, so they have the knowledge and enthusiasm to make these builds.  This could be the case, but I doubt it.  And even if it is you are still have some of these power gamers (like me) that think the balance is fine. 

 

 

I have a hard time understanding people who don't think the game is easy. 

 

I do I suppose get it when they say its easy but not "too easy"

 

As for seeing who has mob stomping builds its fairly easy to get a anecdotal sampling.  Just start looking at the info card of all the level 50s you come across and look at how many set bonuses they have.  

[Troo]

43 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

its easy but not "too easy"

this

 

[Edit] Even though that's not necessarily @Haijinx actual opinion.

Edited September 27, 2020 by Troo

[Ralathar44]

4 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

A little fact checking is in order.

 

There was a lot of mess to clean up.

Yup, that's the beta build yall based stuff off of and modified from there.

[Wavicle]

6 hours ago, macskull said:

These powers now obey AT modifiers which is a nerf for any AT that isn't a Defender.

Though if we're being honest Dark Miasma/Affinity is still incredibly strong on all ATs, so not really something to be concerned with.

[Haijinx]

1 hour ago, Lockpick said:

 

 

 

If people in this thread advocating to make the game harder are using the existing mechanics to make the game harder I am sure they would be saying why the existing mechanics don't work.  They are not saying that, they are just pointing to the game not being hard enough.

 

 

I have said that.  And I have explained why.  

 

Its barely a game at the level even a 300 Million Inf build plays at.  

 

If you can spend an entire task force where you have a 95% chance to hit and a 5% to be hit, the mechanics have failed.  

[Haijinx]

2 minutes ago, Troo said:

this

That portion you quote is sort of taking me out of context. 

 

I think the game is TOO Easy.  

 

 

[Haijinx]

3 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

Though if we're being honest Dark Miasma/Affinity is still incredibly strong on all ATs, so not really something to be concerned with.

I'm surprised any support set would be on the radar in the current climate. 

 

Since most ATs can basically forge all the support they need from IOs and incarnate abilities. 

[golstat2003]

51 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Nope.  HC Issue 24:  Crashless nukes with much lower cooldowns too, Snipe rebuild, T3 blasts got their ranges doubled, sustain was shoehorned into secondaries across the board.  More changes made in I25.

SOME things were based off of datamined changes that were never actually pushed live.  Some are modifications or HC side inventions.  A great deal of balancing and bug fixing and testing happens right before release in game dev with alot of things being changed majorly or removed completely so taking a months off build and calling that live is highly disingenuous.  Player betas are not representative of that, and that's by design.  We try to do as much of the process as we can before the players touch it because players get attached to things once they know it exists.


I could go into other HC changes by issue but I think I've made my point.

Interesting. Seems Paragon really was dead in the water around the time they announced the shutdown. Could have sworn there was a lot more on test at the time the game when bye bye.

 

(I think crashless nukes were discussed at some point cause folks simply didn't take nukes with the crashes.)

[golstat2003]

14 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

I have a hard time understanding people who don't think the game is easy. 

 

I do I suppose get it when they say its easy but not "too easy"

 

As for seeing who has mob stomping builds its fairly easy to get a anecdotal sampling.  Just start looking at the info card of all the level 50s you come across and look at how many set bonuses they have.  

Oh the game is hella easy. I just like it that way. When I want to play a harder mmo or game I play anything else. But nowadays I often DON'T want to play a harder game.

[Jimmy]

8 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Yup, that's the beta build yall based stuff off of and modified from there.

Right. An actual build (three, in fact). Not "datamined".

 

Paragon's beta process was also significantly different to ours - their changes were generally quite mature by the time they were put in front of players, and not likely to just be discarded outright. Treating them like something that wasn't going to hit live is disingenuous.

 

I'm also not saying that they weren't in need of plenty of balancing and follow-up work - hence all the changes since - but it's all based on the direction set by Paragon.

[Grouchybeast]

56 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Nope.  HC Issue 24:  Crashless nukes with much lower cooldowns too, Snipe rebuild, T3 blasts got their ranges doubled, sustain was shoehorned into secondaries across the board.  More changes made in I25.

SOME things were based off of datamined changes that were never actually pushed live.  Some are modifications or HC side inventions.  A great deal of balancing and bug fixing and testing happens right before release in game dev with alot of things being changed majorly or removed completely so taking a months off build and calling that live is highly disingenuous.  Player betas are not representative of that, and that's by design.  We try to do as much of the process as we can before the players touch it because players get attached to things once they know it exists.

You're splitting some weird hairs, here.

 

Whether or not they went live back then, the blaster changes were created by the live devs.  They were part of their plans for the future of the game.  The changes were on the player beta when the shutdown was announced, There were two revisions on the player beta, during which the Blaster changes stayed basically untouched except for bug fixes.  There's no indication that the live devs weren't perfectly happy with what they had.  Compare them to, for example, the proc changes which got a lot more attention and tweaks in the player beta.

 

ETA: Sorry, I was futzing around and didn't see that @Jimmy had already said it before I posted.

Edited September 27, 2020 by Grouchybeast

[Wavicle]

58 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Nope.  HC Issue 24:  Crashless nukes with much lower cooldowns too, Snipe rebuild, T3 blasts got their ranges doubled, sustain was shoehorned into secondaries across the board.  More changes made in I25.

SOME things were based off of datamined changes that were never actually pushed live.  Some are modifications or HC side inventions.  A great deal of balancing and bug fixing and testing happens right before release in game dev with alot of things being changed majorly or removed completely so taking a months off build and calling that live is highly disingenuous.  Player betas are not representative of that, and that's by design.  We try to do as much of the process as we can before the players touch it because players get attached to things once they know it exists.


I could go into other HC changes by issue but I think I've made my point.

No. i24 was on Legacy Test. It was NOT an HC issue.

[Wavicle]

9 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

I'm surprised any support set would be on the radar in the current climate. 

 

Since most ATs can basically forge all the support they need from IOs and incarnate abilities. 

Balancing the support sets is a necessary first step to making all support useful.

[golstat2003]

6 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

Right. An actual build (three, in fact). Not "datamined".

 

Paragon's beta process was also significantly different to ours - their changes were generally quite mature by the time they were put in front of players, and not likely to just be discarded outright. Treating them like something that wasn't going to hit live is disingenuous.

 

Not that it wasn't in need of plenty of balancing and follow-up work - hence all the changes since - but it's all based on the direction set by Paragon.

Good to see my memory wasn't that off.

[Ralathar44]

Just now, Jimmy said:

Right. An actual build (three, in fact). Not "datamined".

 

Paragon's beta process was also significantly different to ours - their changes were generally quite mature by the time they were put in front of players, and not likely to just be discarded outright. Treating them like something that wasn't going to hit live is disingenuous.

 

Not that it wasn't in need of plenty of balancing and follow-up work - hence all the changes since - but it's all based on the direction set by Paragon.

I can't say if their process was different or not since i didn't work on their team internally.  We only know the player facing stuff.  However as a rule I'm not going to treat any pre-live content as finalized either in value or direction.  I'm not a predictor of the future or potential alternate pasts either one and I'm going to keep it that way.  Anything that didn't actually happen but was only planned remains speculative as per normal.

Similarly I wouldn't have predicted the game's shutdown and neither did the devs.  I said it earlier on a positive note favoring the HC staff and I'll say it now on a more neutral note.  The ticket to the future is always blank.  And I'm not trying to take shots at yall btw, yall have done your best to follow the legacy and I'm satisified enough with what has been done.  Indeed if I was not interested or have faith I wouldn't be here no?

[Troo]

On 9/27/2020 at 3:16 PM, Haijinx said:

That portion you quote is sort of taking me out of context. 

 

I think the game is TOO Easy. 

The game is easy player friendly to start with a lot to learn for new players (without blocking fun). It ebbs and flows a little while leveling.

 

Later in the game it does get too easy if someone is leveraging accolades, set bonuses, incarnates, p2w, empowerment buffs, temps, etc. Folks simply surpass current content.

 

However if someone is using maybe 2 of the listed it may not be 'too easy'. If they are only using 1 high level content is definitely not 'too easy'.

 

Edited September 29, 2020 by Troo
clean up and clarity

[golstat2003]

1 minute ago, Ralathar44 said:

I can't say if their process was different or not since i didn't work on their team internally.  We only know the player facing stuff.  However as a rule I'm not going to treat any pre-live content as finalized either in value or direction.  I'm not a predictor of the future or potential alternate pasts either one and I'm going to keep it that way.  Anything that didn't actually happen but was only planned remains speculative as per normal.

Similarly I wouldn't have predicted the game's shutdown and neither did the devs.  I said it earlier on a positive note favoring the HC staff and I'll say it now on a more neutral note.  The ticket to the future is always blank.  And I'm not trying to take shots at yall btw, yall have done your best to follow the legacy and I'm satisified enough with what has been done.  Indeed if I was not interested or have faith I wouldn't be here no?

The way paragon worked was that if it was in beta it more than likely was NOT going to change much.