Game Balance & The Endgame

[ScarySai]

10 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Man was not perfect, but game developers do more and put up with more than 99% of gamers will ever know.  Most folks just focus on 2-3 snapshots of all the thousands of decisions and tens of thousands of manhours they put in.

1: Good thing Jack wasn't the only dev for the game, then. You won't see Synapse or Arbiter Hawk get even a quarter of the badmouthing that Jack did. The best thing he did for the game was leave.

 

2: You can do a thousand things right, but if you do three idiotic things, people are right to point out why they are idiotic.

 

Game devs are overworked and generally not given the QoL other, non-gaming related jobs with similar workflows are afforded - that doesn't mean every bad idea just gets a pass. Same reason HC doesn't get a pass on the 5% of bad ideas despite the fact I like 95% of what they've thrown at us so far. They're volunteers, and I love what they've done, but I'm not going to feel sorry for expressing my concern, either.

Edited September 23, 2020 by ScarySai

[Ralathar44]

14 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Except this is not entirely true and is more often than not a self inflicted issue.  There is absolutely nothing preventing anyone such as yourself from using the available social tools both in game and out to find like minded players to team up with.  Nothing is stopping you or anyone from advertising to form non-speed, no incarnate powers missions or TFs and the like in game.  I know there are quite a few people who feel the same way from posts I have seen on these forums.  What is stopping you from linking up in game, forming your own teams and playing how you all enjoy? 

I run teams all the time, there are already precious few enough folks running teams many nights  and the population (at least on Torchbearer) is currently not at a level you can really afford to be choosey.  I also don't feel like running teams literally every time I play, so some nights I join teams instead.  TF ability to choose is even more limited.  And honestly, you don't want to add any more steps into running teams as it is.  Like I said there is already a large lack of team running folks many nights and there are a good number of nights I don't feel like running a team but I see people lfg not getting picked up and so end up running teams.

Also, honestly, why should the team leaders be forced to constantly manually stop 1 person from taking away all challenge from the other 7?  Like I'm not completely opposed to be carried sometime or even PL'd on rare occasion but once you past level 30ish it happens constantly. 

 

14 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

This door absolutely swings both ways.  Those who have invested a lot of time into building their characters the way they like to be as powerful as they like because that is what they find fun should not have to dumb down their experience to satisfy others.  What I said above applies here too.  Those people have plenty of channels to find like minded players who enjoy playing that way and they do find others to team with. 

But you can do that solo.  You're a god, you can handle it solo.  If it's just a power fantasy then you can get those some group sizes and levels and wipe it solo.  You have the ability to be that powerful without being on a team.  So that's not really it.  And you're not looking to make other players feel awesome either, because being a god in their mission does the exact opposite.  If you wanted to make them feel awesome you'd play support instead of a invincible god laying waste to missions.

So it's more about showing off that godhood to other players, because if people were looking to be PL'd...that's what AE is for lol.  It's not just that folks want to be a god, they want others to see how much of a god they are relative to them.  Prolly about the only time I see teams full of incarnates is incarnate content and WTFs.  Otherwise it's usually 1-2 to a group and if more joins others get bored and quit.

Edited September 23, 2020 by Ralathar44

[ShardWarrior]

5 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

I run teams all the time, there are already precious few enough folks running teams many nights  and the population (at least on Torchbearer) is currently not at a level you can really afford to be choosey.  I also don't feel like running teams literally every time I play, so some nights I join teams instead.  TF ability to choose is even more limited.  And honestly, you don't want to add any more steps into running teams as it is.  Like I said there is already a large lack of team running folks many nights and there are a good number of nights I don't feel like running a team but I see people lfg not getting picked up and so end up running teams.

Also, honestly, why should the team leaders be forced to constantly manually stop 1 person from taking away all challenge from the other 7?  Like I'm not completely opposed to be carried sometime or even PL'd on rare occasion but once you past level 30ish it happens constantly. 

No offense meant, but this sounds like you are trying to make excuses.  I play the overwhelming majority of the time on Torchbearer and I see non-speed TFs and mission teams being advertised many times daily.  I am sure you would have no problem filling teams for how you want to play.  You just need to ask.

 

6 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

But you can do that solo.  You're a god, you can handle it solo.  If it's just a power fantasy then you can get those some group sizes and levels and wipe it solo.  You have the ability to be that powerful without being on a team.  So that's not really it.  And you're not looking to make other players feel awesome either, because being a god in their mission does the exact opposite.  If you wanted to make them feel awesome you'd play support instead of a invincible god laying waste to missions.

So it's more about showing off that godhood to other players, because if people were looking to be PL'd...that's what AE is for lol.  It's not just that folks want to be a god, they want others to see how much of a god they are relative to them.  Prolly about the only time I see teams full of incarnates is incarnate content and WTFs.  Otherwise it's usually 1-2 to a group and if more joins others get bored and quit.

Well no, it has nothing to do with showing off.  It has to do with people doing what they do in MMOs - being sociable and playing together because they want to.  The people I team with regularly are real life family and friends and others who are like minded in play style.  This is what we find fun and we are enjoying our game time together.  To imply that myself and other with similar tastes are trying to somehow make others feel bad or inferior is so far off base, it truly the mind and says a whole lot more about you than them.  If others are making you feel inferior, then do not team with them.  Find others who play like you do.  It is not like it is a difficult thing to do.

[Ralathar44]

24 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

1: Good thing Jack wasn't the only dev for the game, then. You won't see Synapse or Arbiter Hawk get even a quarter of the badmouthing that Jack did. The best thing he did for the game was leave.

OFC not, never said he was the only DEV.  And traditionally you have 1-2 people in your company who are the faces of the bad news, because they are the ones that can take it.  Other people opt out.  This is the industry I work in.  Opinion is always split within teams, decisions are made, conversations are constant, and a select few people deliver those decisions and ethos and fight for them regardless of whether they believe them or not.  Because it's your job and because if you don't do it someone else will have to.  Essentially performing the role of a tank.

Only those who worked with him and knew him privately would really know where Jack stood on things.  Anything public facing though is persona on and armor up.
 

24 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

2: You can do a thousand things right, but if you do three idiotic things, people are right to point out why they are idiotic.

That's a purity test nobody can win.  Pretty common idea these days online, up until people are hoist in their own petards anyways.   If who you are is the 3 idiotic things you did then everyone loses because everyone has 3 major idiotic things.  OFC its easy to say that kind of rhetoric anonymously on the internet :P.

Personally I'm a bit more old school.  More of a Scarlet Letter style myself where stigmas have a limited shelf life and the A can later stand for Able rather than today's ridiculous ethos that your mistakes are enshrined in stone forever and are now what permanently defines you.

 

24 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

Game devs are overworked and generally not given the QoL other, non-gaming related jobs with similar workflows are afforded

Aye I put in more overtime at the game company I work at just tonight and indeed those considerations of QOL and etc are real in the industry.  Though I'll say I greatly prefer it to how working in social media was...even if I did get paid more in social media.
 

24 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

that doesn't mean every bad idea just gets a pass. Same reason HC doesn't get a pass on the 5% of bad ideas despite the fact I like 95% of what they've thrown at us so far. They're volunteers, and I love what they've done, but I'm not going to feel sorry for expressing my concern, either.

Bad ideas in game balancing/design are an odd concept.  You have opinions, I have opinions, but we all suck and use such loaded language.  I'm not perfect either and speak in ways I shouldn't sometimes too.  Perhaps even most of the time.  It's a human failing :(.  In general gamers hate nerfs and would happily power creep their games into oblivion while also complaining about power creep.  Gamer feedback is incredibly valuable, but we speak in emotional terms not logical ones and what we say and what the problems/solutions are often radically diverse, often being opposite to what we believe.

You don't normally see alot of good coverage of this but here's a good article around gamer feedback on balancing in games.  Pretty darn accurate with a great example:  Too Many Skags.  And if game balancing and design was so easy we'd all be millionaires.  But plainly it's pretty complicated if even the best and most successful developers have plenty of mistakes and things that don't work out well.

Edited September 23, 2020 by Ralathar44

[Ralathar44]

24 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

No offense meant, but this sounds like you are trying to make excuses.  I play the overwhelming majority of the time on Torchbearer and I see non-speed TFs and mission teams being advertised many times daily.  I am sure you would have no problem filling teams for how you want to play.  You just need to ask.

Please re-read what I wrote: "I run teams all the time, there are already precious few enough folks running teams many nights" .  Like all populations there are peaks and valleys in the amount of people playing and it varies night to night.  Sometimes predictably, often not.  Sometimes very few people are on, sometimes they are all in the wrong level ranges, sometimes everyone is soloing. 

I've got tons of global friend requests from running teams and I keep getting happy hails from people who recognize me from the teams I keep running.  All feedback has been good and I'm an experienced team runner.  I use all tools available including the lfg chat, and in game search and tells and etc.  Some nights dead is dead.  Not excuses, LFG chat dead, broadcast dead, everyone afk/solo/etc.  This was not near as much the case about a month or a month and a half ago but the population has noticbly dipped since then and this is noticeable even on the server load screen.

If you only play prime time perhaps you don't see it as much, but I play CST from prime time (7PMish CST) and then often deep into the night (as late as 3amish CST sometimes).  I'm an experienced team leader though, it is what it is.  Server is not as active as it was.  Folks who spend a good amount of time off peak see those dips before everyone else is aware of them. 

 

24 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Well no, it has nothing to do with showing off.  It has to do with people doing what they do in MMOs - being sociable and playing together because they want to.  The people I team with regularly are real life family and friends and others who are like minded in play style.  This is what we find fun and we are enjoying our game time together.  To imply that myself and other with similar tastes are trying to somehow make others feel bad or inferior is so far off base, it truly the mind and says a whole lot more about you than them.  If others are making you feel inferior, then do not team with them.  Find others who play like you do.  It is not like it is a difficult thing to do.

Right, so are you willing to concede that maybe it's not YOU being like this but maybe alot of other incarnates are playing as I mentioned?  The concern, as mentioned, is certainly not confined to me.  And as presented you are not part of the problem here.  And indeed I don't think people wanting to play together with other people on Icarnate characters is a problem.  The problem is bringing that incarnate power level into non-incarnate missions as the default, which is a systems problem.

I don't want to prevent people from playing together, but when a controller can stroll into the middle of the +4/8 group and solo it then alot of people's roles on the team are being invalidated and the fun of the team > the fun of the incarnate.  You suggested controlling it as team leader.  What if team leader could toggle on/off "incarnate mode"?  So that they had a setting which would "pause" or disable incarnate powers and level shifts on their team.  That way incarnates could play too, just not be game breakingly powerful and if the group wanted it then the mode could be toggled.

Edited September 23, 2020 by Ralathar44

[ABlueThingy]

I like playing Superman but I also like playing Batman.  Right now CoH endgame is just for Superman. 

 

It's not fair to the people that invested in the Incarnate content to be stuck doing boring regular content. It's also not really fair to ask them to hold back and play limited just for non-incarnates.

 

But it's also not fair for people that don't want to engage with the Incarnate system being completely sidelined because there's one or two Incarnates on the team.

 

I'd like to see an alternate non-incarnate/non-cosmic power endgame systems/content.  Not INSTEAD of but ALONG SIDE the Incarnate stuff.

[Vanden]

15 minutes ago, ABlueThingy said:

I'd like to see an alternate non-incarnate/non-cosmic power endgame systems/content.  Not INSTEAD of but ALONG SIDE the Incarnate stuff.

How would that even work? Endgame content that doesn't make you stronger isn't really endgame content, it wouldn't be any different from any regular missions you can run at 50.

[Judasace]

1 hour ago, Ralathar44 said:

That's the problem innit?  The game balance is based around all classes needing each other to some significant degree and filling the holes that other classes lack.  Complete IOs and Incarnate basically destroys that interconnected relationship.
 

You do not speak for the majority, even the entire forums here are only a tiny % of the people who play and cannot speak for the majority.  Also, this game does not have a holy trinity.  Tank/heals/dps is not COH.  CC, Debuff, and Buff are so much more powerful than in other games.  As someone pointed out earlier a team full of buff/debuffer characters is quite strong, which does not work in Trinity designed games.

Nobody is arguing for a Trinity, that I know of anyways.  But classes needing other classes to do the hardest content?  That's a pretty reasonable ask IMO. 
 

Honestly that's the exact opposite because the people that wanted the "my character is a god and can taken on the highest difficulties solo" went away.  Because that was pre-ED.  ED is what allowed a proper end game to start being made as well as a great deal of build variety to exist via IOs.  Solo dolo was never what this game was, though it was a niche some people liked WITHIN this game.  But honestly if I want to solo and feel like a god tackling the highest difficulty an MMORPG is not my first choice for that lol.  Because it's kind of meaningless if I'm so overpowered there is no challenge left.  It just becomes a grind for more money and more numbers that I'll never need.  If I want that fix I'll just play an idle game :P.

Basically there are two mindsets. One is those that want to group because they feel like it and it's fun to smash stuff up with other people around. The other is "must have perfect group to play."

 

I personally do NOT want to have to rely on having other specific AT's around in order to complete content. I'd honestly prefer it if CoH were a solo game with some online features where you could smash something up with other people. I'm not looking for a "challenge" from a 16 year old MMO that was in its grave for almost a decade. I'll leave that to all the "games as a service" crap that the industry has turned into.

 

I'd much rather see them focus on creating new stuff than breaking what's fun about the things we already have.

[ScarySai]

1 hour ago, Ralathar44 said:

Bad ideas in game balancing/design are an odd concept.

Not really, bad ideas can be objectively measured on the basis of how healthy they are for the game in question, how fun they are, general desirability and impact on existing gameplay just to name the first few that come to mind.

 

1 hour ago, Ralathar44 said:

In general gamers hate nerfs and would happily power creep their games into oblivion while also complaining about power creep. 

Not going to follow you on that one. CoH's an anomaly in many ways, where it's "everyone is overpowered" thing actually kinda works for it, and trying to fix that would likely harm the game more than just leaving it alone or making other, less powerful things better.

 

If you mean in the general sense, this is just untrue. Players in general want an engaging game with depth that will hold their attention and not feel like busywork. Very few are actively going to support power creep, even fewer are going to support it and then complain about it. Don't push that nonsense here.

[ABlueThingy]

23 minutes ago, Vanden said:

How would that even work? Endgame content that doesn't make you stronger isn't really endgame content, it wouldn't be any different from any regular missions you can run at 50.

 

The simple way would be to have a mirror system set up with mutually exclusive powers to the Incarnate system with a different story as to why you have level adjustments and such. An... Uncarnate system if you will.  But I think there's a better way and I've been working on a grand theory for an Uncarnate system in my manifesto.

 

Everyone called me mad but soon, you'll all see...

 

 

[Mezmera]

1 minute ago, ABlueThingy said:

 

The simple way would be to have a mirror system set up with mutually exclusive powers to the Incarnate system with a different story as to why you have level adjustments and such. An... Uncarnate system if you will.  But I think there's a better way and I've been working on a grand theory for an Uncarnate system in my manifesto.

 

Everyone called me mad but soon, you'll all see...

 

 

The road to hell is paved with peoples manifesto's...

[WindDemon21]

3 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

Except this is not entirely true and is more often than not a self inflicted issue.  There is absolutely nothing preventing anyone such as yourself from using the available social tools both in game and out to find like minded players to team up with.  Nothing is stopping you or anyone from advertising to form non-speed, no incarnate powers missions or TFs and the like in game.  I know there are quite a few people who feel the same way from posts I have seen on these forums.  What is stopping you from linking up in game, forming your own teams and playing how you all enjoy? 

 

This door absolutely swings both ways.  Those who have invested a lot of time into building their characters the way they like to be as powerful as they like because that is what they find fun should not have to dumb down their experience to satisfy others.  What I said above applies here too.  Those people have plenty of channels to find like minded players who enjoy playing that way and they do find others to team with. 

This *applauds*

[WindDemon21]

1 hour ago, Mezmera said:

The road to hell is paved with peoples manifesto's...

Sorry just kept seeing too many "manifestos" not to share what I kept hearing in my head lol

 

 

[Parabola]

7 hours ago, BitCook said:

I find it strange that in the current state of the game, where Kills speeds are so over the top, that we're worried about ANY combination from Defenders/Corruptors/Controllers/Dominators.  There are a few niche builds that do pretty good using some interesting mechanics like this... or heavy procs.  However, they pale in comparison to your average damage dealer.

When I build one of the above mentioned ATs it takes stupid amounts of effort to make a character that doesn't get slapped around in the endgame and can contribute something positive to the team.  Builds for those ATs tend to be very complicated.  Turn around and take Tank/Brute/Scrapper/Blaster/Stalker.  I have found those builds nearly simple by comparison with a lot more in variety to make them decent.  

I would rather see more options to make those ATs more viable, not less.  Currently control sets have little purpose in any end game content.  Support sets are good, but again with the end game environment, most people already have the things that support sets historically gave, so their place is becoming superfluous as well.

I think this confuses two problems. Problem A is that time and powerboost together are too powerful in relation to other options amongst defence granting powers, both in support sets and elsewhere. Problem B is that the overall state of game difficulty means that damage dealers are mostly more effective than support in the endgame.

 

We shouldn't fix a problem with another and we shouldn't simply leave an imbalance in place for the same reason. Time/powerboost is an outlier amongst the buffs available to support sets, reigning it in will allow the room to make powerboost a more generally useful power to more sets. Seperately, the overall game difficulty and power balance between AT's can be looked at to try to make support more valuable in the endgame.

 

Edited to add: This is also why I don't buy the 'procs are the only thing making AT's x, y and z playable, therefore we shouldn't touch their mechanics' argument. We should look at these as two issues seperately, procs should work in a balanced way and then if AT's or powersets need help they should get it. We shouldn't accept one problem as a fix for another.

Edited September 23, 2020 by parabola
A further thought

[macskull]

3 minutes ago, parabola said:

I think this confuses two problems. Problem A is that time and powerboost together are too powerful in relation to other options amongst defence granting powers, both in support sets and elsewhere. Problem B is that the overall state of game difficulty means that damage dealers are mostly more effective than support in the endgame.

 

We shouldn't fix a problem with another and we shouldn't simply leave an imbalance in place for the same reason. Time/powerboost is an outlier amongst the buffs available to support sets, reigning it in will allow the room to make powerboost a more generally useful power to more sets. Seperately, the overall game difficulty and power balance between AT's can be looked at to try to make support more valuable in the endgame.

Power Boost has a couple issues: 1) there are several important buffs/debuffs it doesn't affect at all, which means 2) it's mostly only useful for long-duration click buffs, most notably defense. In most cases aside from that boosting buffs or debuffs with PB is simply overkill.

[Ralathar44]

Let's be totally honest.  We've refused to let hasten, a power half the builds are based around, be fixed for years and years despite how ludicrously broken it is.  Why in the harbles would we fix the much lesser powerful clicky of power boost? 

Edited September 23, 2020 by Ralathar44

[Parabola]

3 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Let's be totally honest.  We've refused to let hasten, a power half the builds are based around, be fixed for years and years despite how ludicrously broken it is.  Why in the harbles would we fix the much lesser powerful clicky of power boost? 

Because they can? I'm sure if they feel that hasten also needs changes it will be looked at. I'm on the fence about whether it is a balance problem in of itself anyway. It only permas when you add in serious global recharge and that doesn't seem broken to me. You can argue that a majority of builds take it and therefore it should be made inherent but where do you stop with that? Making travel powers inherent? The fighting pool?

[Parabola]

5 hours ago, ScarySai said:

Frankly, those people are full of s***.

I don't think I've seen those of us arguing for greater game balance resorting to insults. It rather undermines your position if this is your counterargument.

[Ralathar44]

15 minutes ago, parabola said:

You can argue that a majority of builds take it and therefore it should be made inherent but where do you stop with that? Making travel powers inherent? The fighting pool?

Honestly the travel pools are already on the docket to be looked at along with power pools in general IIRC.  Travel powers are already acknowledged as a pain point.  There are strong arguments to be made as well that some sets like Regen basically caannot perform without tough/weave and thus tough/weave is being used to band-aid non-competitive sets into being useful.  But likewise the presence of tough/weave means if you buff those sets to be competitive on their own then they will still take tough/weave and thus end up stronger than you balanced for.  So it's a catch 22 where those sets cannot be buffed because the fighting pool exists.

As far as making Hasten inherent?  Whatever for?  That's but one option upon many, one that is an overall buff...which I know people fight 90% for more buffs more buffs more buffs but nerfing is an option too.  But again, it'll never happen, hasten isn't going to be touched.  The HC devs would have to have harbles of steel to touch hasten because half the forums would lose their @#$% even if it could somehow be unquestionably proven it was best for the game as a whole.

[Ralathar44]

17 minutes ago, parabola said:

I don't think I've seen those of us arguing for greater game balance resorting to insults. It rather undermines your position if this is your counterargument.

There's been a great deal of ad hominem and snarkiness honestly.  But it's not actually personal or targeted at anyone...even if they specifically call someone out.  That's how people get when they feel their toys are threatened, they get defensive and often passive aggressive or even outright aggressive.  They're lashing out at what they perceive as a threat against their fun, and the internet is anon so folks don't really see other people....they're more the representation or avatar of whatever was said.  So people get boiled down into pretty simple labels and ideas instead of actually treated as people.  Same thing happens in tribalism.  Because of that dehumanization/depersonalization along with the anonymity people are way more prickly, opinionated, and less are understanding online in general than they would be IRL.  Online is a terrible way to communicate...and yet here we are.

Specifically here though people get emotionally invested in their specific bits of the game.  Most people wouldn't hack it as a game designer/balancer because one of the core attributes is the ability to kill your most loved features/ideas if needed and most people wouldn't even let themselves become marginally weaker without a drag out fight :P. 

Edited September 23, 2020 by Ralathar44

[kenlon]

This topic has done a really great job of proving why the devs shouldn't make posts telling us what they are thinking about doing. Sheesh.

[LQT]

On 9/21/2020 at 10:50 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.

Oddly enough I was just thinking the other day how annoying it is when you post this topic, dragging out the conversation causing subsequent posts to try and guess the answer rather than you just coming out and stating what the example is.

It was annoying when SweetChilli did it on the official forums regarding PVP, it's annoying when you and others do the same thing now.
 

On 9/21/2020 at 4:32 PM, ScarySai said:

I made a test TW/bio for a laugh, and I'm pretty sure I never killed an AV that fast before, and I play crab spiders and masterminds.

 

Critical on TW are what make it more silly than anything else, to me. At least claws has to keep rapidly tearing away in single target. I was chunking about 1/8th of it's health bar per rotation on the TW, meanwhile.

 

I'm very anti-nerf for this game in particular, and even I have to agree that TW, especially on scrappers, was out of line.

Was wondering how long it would take for the topic of TW to touch on the synergy issues since bio is one of the main reasons the TW set is as OP as it is.

What few posts seem to be also addressing however is the extremely negative team playstyle/mentality that many TW/bio toons [which are mostly scrappers due to the inherent crits] exhibit.

Out of all the ATs, and all the powersets, TW/bio scrappers are the most selfish specs I've ever encountered in CoX with recurring behaviour because they can pretty much kill everything and not die they just run off by themselves and clear groups of mobs. I know I'm not the only one that thinks this due to chats with others who also notice it and have similar grievances when teaming with that particular AT and spec. 

Now while clearing mobs isn't a bad thing in itself, when you couple this with tunneling [or scrapperlock as some people call it despite it being something that happens not just to scrappers or even this game] you can end up with players who ignore fight mechanics, ignore mission mechanics [seen quite a few ITF mission 2s where a TW/bio runs off clearing cysts and then drops multiple ambushes on everyone else causing wipes], and ignore team mechanics. Something all the more exasperated by how difficult some players seem to find being able to read in-game chat in general.

Seen it cause a few wipes on Keyes runs where a TW/bio doesn't stop on AM during the earlier phases. So the entire league explodes.

 

Or mess up badge attempts on various sync kills like the Triple Thread in MAG, Mo runs in BAF, bunker doors in Keyes, etc.

 

Sure those attempts can be made again later but it comes with the consequence of both that particular player pretty much being marked as a pariah [which can be done literally with account player notes if they don't make any attempt to improve] as well as create the very perception at hand regarding TW/bio when the repeat offenders are one AT and spec over the others.

 

Maybe whatever changes that come will help fix parts of this issue although the biggest hurdle in-game of reading chat will still loom. But you can't solve everything at once.
 

On 9/21/2020 at 4:12 PM, ScarySai said:

People seem to have forgotten just how bad blasters were before I24. Mental was basically the only playable secondary for awhile.

The Precision Rangers say 'Hello HOOOOO!'
 

On 9/21/2020 at 7:40 PM, ShardWarrior said:

This is my experience as well and would say Kinetic Melee suffers the same due to animation length.  TW is definitely not on the list of choices for me on speed TFs or iTrials.  Far from it in fact.  To be honest, I do not think I have ever seen a TW scrapper or Brute on a TF or iTrial recently.  From my experience, they are an outlier and nowhere near as common as SS or StrJ.

I have. Kind of. In that I see them at the start, then they run off to solo things because they're sort of unkillable normally. They do however die a lot more in itrials than normal 8-man teams so at least I've always got something to cast Vengeance on.
 

On 9/21/2020 at 9:05 PM, ScarySai said:

Yeah, it's not like Arbiter Hawk outright said that statistically, Blasters spent more time eating floor than any other AT.

 

Blasters got squashed pretty easily before the buffs, it's really not up for debate.

Could be.

Was that pattern consistent, or did it suffer more during the times/issues where the blaster inherent Defiance "rewarded" risky behaviour a lot more and had players actually running on fumes intentionally [riding Defiance] for max damage bonuses? Did that earlier behaviour then set a trend in playstyle that some never got past? Did some take the idea of a Blapper a bit too much to the extreme and forego the more ranged aspects of the primary set when the secondary offered near suitable numbers of melee despite the lack of both def/res shields and mez protection?

Giving a glass cannon mechanic [original Defiance] to an existing glass cannon was always going to end up with a lot of shattered glass and I remember seeing a lot of blasters fall from that knife edge back on live because 5% hp meant a 400% damage boost [and 20% to hit].

 

Unfortunately attacks had some perilous activation times and a mob plinking 5% often took less time than a t9 activating.

[Phoenix']

16 hours ago, Jimmy said:

We do as well, but we're not getting rid of until there's a viable alternative to sharing base access easily, and unfortunately that's not super simple to achieve.

You can just add recharge to the base macro lets say to 20 - 30 secs or maybe an animation similar to Pocket D

Edited September 23, 2020 by Phoenix'

[Phoenix']

16 hours ago, Furiant said:

I just want to say that all this talk of balancing the game around incarnates is scary to me. I can barely keep my characters in basic IOS and have only done the patron arc on one character so far (a severely underslotted Defender - it was really tough and made me not want to do it again).

 

I have only the vaguest idea of what incarnates are... I assume it's the giant monsters 50s summon that just eat up the map and turn the team into a group of additional redundant pets that follow the 50 around and die to loose mobs.

 

I barely understand the proc mechanics and frankly it makes my eyes glaze over reading endless arcane theorycrafting about obtuse and complicated systens that only the highest level ultra-wealthy players can afford anyway.

 

I just want to do TFs and missions and feel like a superhero, not a super-rich-hero. I miss the old days when everyone was on more of an even playing field and everyone contributed something even if they weren't the most rarified meta build.  

Incarnates should be remodeled.

They should be a boost to your toon not making it a god. 

Aoe heals, regen, end, rec, res, def and debuffs should completely be ripped of. 

Seeing a tank using lore pets, a troller nuking, a stalker doing ageless the whole team and a blaster debuffing with interface I mean....... Whats the point of having Archetypes if everyone does everything. 

Im sorry but yeah I'd love to have more end game content but I think incarnates break the system and removes the AT uniqueness this game always had

Edited September 23, 2020 by Phoenix'

[Lines]

1 hour ago, kenlon said:

This topic has done a really great job of proving why the devs shouldn't make posts telling us what they are thinking about doing. Sheesh.

I'd hate to be the person combing this thread for any semblance of feedback.