Game Balance & The Endgame

[siolfir]

Catching up on the thread, so lots of replies.

3 hours ago, FUBARczar said:

Blaster's get a worry-free sustain, and hiccup-free incarnate power activation.  If someone in playing TW/Bio, TW/Rad, TW anything but SR or Willpower their chains  get broken and momentum is sacrificed by activating defensive and all are impacted when activating incarnate powers.

a) I posted those numbers in response to a "Fire Blast has better DPA numbers than Titan Weapons with Momentum," which made me take a look at it again because - get this - Fire Blast isn't that far ahead of the next best ranged set, while Titan Weapons - annoying mechanics aside - has a wider performance gap between it and second place.

 

b) As I've said repeatedly, I DON'T CARE IF A FIRE/ BLASTER CAN OUTDAMAGE A TW/ SCRAPPER. THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO. I put the numbers up because knew Blaze was good, and didn't believe that the rest of the single-target attacks were well in line with others. So stop telling me a Blaster can clear faster, because IDGAF, it's WAI.

 

2 hours ago, Lockpick said:

The better path is providing more avenues for player created content that provides the hard mode content people want.

That's one of the intended uses for AE, but you see how much of that player-created content turned into unique and original stories, how much turned into challenges, and how much turned into "how can I minmax this to get better rewards." Player-created content is a mixed bag at best.

 

1 hour ago, ScarySai said:

They used to, and they were often skipped or got the user killed for doing it.

 

If Paragon saw it fit to buff those, I don't see any valid reason to get rid of it now.

I used the old crashing nukes a lot. But I also used to use a spell on a MUD that also used all your mana and had a small chance of permadeath (ie, unusable character) with a large chance of permanent hp loss based on how much mana you had at the time you cast it. I don't miss the crash, but I liked the longer recharge and higher damage. 

 

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.

I could post the DPA numbers for the whole set like I did with Fire Blast, Titan Weapons, Radiation Melee, and Street Justice, but you don't seem to want them based on this:

1 hour ago, Ralathar44 said:

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.

Suffice it to say that Tanker farming times went way down using Fire Melee when they got larger radii and a larger target cap, neither of which the other ATs get. 

 

9 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.

 

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.

It's not wider than TW, though, and unlike Titan Weaspons, Fire Blast doesn't have any secondary effect besides more damage.

 

As for the "actual point" of player powerset choices leading to a huge number of Fire Blast characters, have you thought that people could congregate to a set because throwing fire at something to do a ton of damage is just as thematic and genre-defining as super strength, in even more areas than just hero comics? That it's also a top performer no doubt helps, but it's such an easy and obvious thematic pairing that it's hardly surprising that it's the most-picked blast set even if it wasn't, much like Empathy is the most-picked even if its relative performance to other support sets doesn't make it the top performer for thematic reasons from outside of hero comics.

[golstat2003]

Just now, Haijinx said:

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.  

No. You balance individual powers and outliers (buffs and nerfs) which HC has been doing just fine at and will continue to do so. Over YEARS.

 

With the size of the team we have now, any discussion of large changes to huge systems like IOs isn't realistic. Small changes targetted at powers and sets, is more realistic.

 

Well, if we actually want anything to actually get pushed out to production anytime before the heat death of the sun. YMMV.

[macskull]

2 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

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.  

As long as the IO system is optional you can't balance the existing game around it. You can make adjustments to individual powers or interactions between powers while taking IOs into consideration, but balancing the game as a whole for IOs opens a whole new can of worms that is going to involve constantly chasing some semblance of balance because it'll basically be targeted nerf -> IO meta changes -> targeted nerf -> IO meta changes -> rinse and repeat.

[BitCook]

18 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

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.

I think you were not around for the beginning of the game.  It was never a trinity.  However, it was a game where if you wanted to tackle the harder content and be efficient about it, variety helped.  You never needed tank/healer/dps, it was unique in this.  However, right now, you are trending to one AT,  Solo Survivable Damage Dealer.  While you can play others, there's little point in doing so.  

Yes, that's an exaggeration, but it's not too far off.

[Wavicle]

Careful friends, if you wring your hands too much they'll fall off, and then how will you play City of Heroes?

[golstat2003]

Just now, BitCook said:

I think you were not around for the beginning of the game.  It was never a trinity.  However, it was a game where if you wanted to tackle the harder content and be efficient about it, variety helped.  You never needed tank/healer/dps, it was unique in this.  However, right now, you are trending to one AT,  Solo Survivable Damage Dealer.  While you can play others, there's little point in doing so.  

Yes, that's an exaggeration, but it's not too far off.

I was here. The game then was worse than the game now. I like that you can fill you team with 8 of what's available and go to town and have fun. The further we get away from "we need more of this on the team" the better.

[Haijinx]

Monopolizing the discussion does not actually further the stated goal of this thread. 

[Wavicle]

6 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

I was here. The game then was worse than the game now. I like that you can fill you team with 8 of what's available and go to town and have fun. The further we get away from "we need more of this on the team" the better.

There is a balance to be struck between not needing any one thing in particular and everybody being valuable to the group.

[BitCook]

3 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

I was here. The game then was worse than the game now. I like that you can fill you team with 8 of what's available and go to town and have fun. The further we get away from "we need more of this on the team" the better.

Hmmm, I don't know if I agree that it is better now.  

From a variety of powersets to keep interest, yes.
From a person power perspective and solo capability, yes.
From a diversity perspective, no.  There are classes that completely invalidate the need for anything else.  That's not good design.
From an ease of leveling and options to do so, yes.
From a balance perspective, no, I don't think so.

So yes, there's a lot to like about the game how it is now.  But there was a lot to like in the team dynamic before.  ATs had roles and while you didn't need a role to do anything, having something other than DPS made team content easier.

[Widower]

20 minutes ago, siolfir said:

As for the "actual point" of player powerset choices leading to a huge number of Fire Blast characters, have you thought that people could congregate to a set because throwing fire at something to do a ton of damage is just as thematic and genre-defining as super strength, in even more areas than just hero comics? That it's also a top performer no doubt helps, but it's such an easy and obvious thematic pairing that it's hardly surprising that it's the most-picked blast set even if it wasn't, much like Empathy is the most-picked even if its relative performance to other support sets doesn't make it the top performer for thematic reasons from outside of hero comics.

Alternatively, a reasonably large number of players are exercising their inner pyromaniac in a constructive (if not particularly more socially acceptable) way.

[golstat2003]

Just now, Wavicle said:

There is a balance to be struck between not needing any one thing in particular and everybody being valuable to the group.

True. I just don't think a repeated idea coming off in this thread that certain ATs as a whole aren't seen as valuable is factual. That's not what I see when playing on pugs, iTrials, and tfs.

[siolfir]

32 minutes ago, Leogunner said:

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.

To be fair, Fire Blast had the animation time changes (to 1, and 1.67 seconds) but the recharges on Flares (2.18) and Fire Blast (4) are not the standard 4 and 8 second recharges that the sets were supposed to have. That's why the power Fire Blast is actually worse off for DPA than an equivalent 4-second recharge blast from most any other set: even with the DoT, the much longer animation hurts it.

 

Sonic and Water are also non-standard with 3 and 7 second recharges, and Burst in AR does more damage (scale 1.08 vs scale 1) for its 4 second recharge, 1 second animation - but until Homecoming's new powers (including the Shadow Maul update in this), pure DoT powers usually got a damage bonus for being DoTs for their recharge and endurance cost.

Edited September 24, 2020 by siolfir

[golstat2003]

6 minutes ago, BitCook said:

Hmmm, I don't know if I agree that it is better now.  

From a variety of powersets to keep interest, yes.
From a person power perspective and solo capability, yes.
From a diversity perspective, no.  There are classes that completely invalidate the need for anything else.  That's not good design.
From an ease of leveling and options to do so, yes.
From a balance perspective, no, I don't think so.

So yes, there's a lot to like about the game how it is now.  But there was a lot to like in the team dynamic before.  ATs had roles and while you didn't need a role to do anything, having something other than DPS made team content easier.

Having something other than DPS today, DOES make the content easier. That's the point I just made. I'm not sure where this idea is coming from. Some people and I are playing an entirely different game.

 

EDIT: To be clear I jump for joy internally when team leaders pull in Doms, Controllers, Defenders to a team when that scrapper or blaster leaves. Why? Cause I know the power of force multiplication. When I form teams I'm not primarily looking for DPS. And I've not seen a majority of folks in LFG ever turn away non-dps ATs.

Edited September 24, 2020 by golstat2003

[macskull]

8 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Monopolizing the discussion does not actually further the stated goal of this thread. 

I don't think this thread has a "goal." OP wasn't even soliciting input, it was just stating some of the stuff the dev team may be looking at (but I feel like the caveat in yellow at the first post is silly since it basically invalidates the entirely of the rest of the post). Like, "hey here is some stuff we are looking at but none of this might actually happen or it might be completely different than we are looking at right now" is kinda weird.

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, golstat2003 said:

True. I just don't think a repeated idea coming off in this thread that certain ATs as a whole aren't seen as valuable is factual. That's not what I see when playing on pugs, iTrials, and tfs.

I agree. That doesn’t mean that some couldn’t use a little help, but yes.

[ScarySai]

Titan Weapons is the fighter who uses loopholes in the system to solo the Tarrasque five minutes after making his character sheet.

 

Fire blast is the DPS specced wizard raining hell down on things after many levels and min/max character building.

[FUBARczar]

3 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

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.

this was shared earlier in the thread (page 8 if you want more details).  As you can see Fiery Melee didn't perform well here.  And was second to last using just SOs.  Not that surprising if you look at the DPA of Fiery Melee attacks compared to those of other sets.   

 

+3/5 with a mid-level IO build and with WP as the secondary.

[FoulVileTerror]

I'm guessing that's kind of the point, @macskull.

Not to shoot my own feet any more, but . . . coupled with Piecemeal's post a few pages back, it seems like the Team are testing the waters of increasing transparency.

I hope the level of drama here hasn't been too discouraging, and that helpful feedback has been obtained.

 

[ScarySai]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1av2vWL9UVgGw183BbjFNweJze7N5P3Tn8tYSppdFQgE/edit#gid=2124428541

 

This is a good reference for scrappers, at least.

[golstat2003]

Just now, FoulVileTerror said:

I'm guessing that's kind of the point, @macskull.

Not to shoot my own feet any more, but . . . coupled with Piecemeal's post a few pages back, it seems like the Team are testing the waters of increasing transparency.

I hope the level of drama here hasn't been too discouraging, and that helpful feedback has been obtained.

 

Yeah, also expect that everything they posted on page 1 may end up not making it out in page 6, or all of it will, or parts of it will. As long as folks keep their expectations realistic then we're gucci, as the kids say nowadays.

[Lockpick]

24 minutes ago, siolfir said:

That's one of the intended uses for AE, but you see how much of that player-created content turned into unique and original stories, how much turned into challenges, and how much turned into "how can I minmax this to get better rewards." Player-created content is a mixed bag at best.

 

I agree and it is mainly because AE was not given the support required to make it the focus for new content.  If I was the lead of this game I would make a number of minor changes to AE and community outreach in the short term to get more focus on it.  I don't think the short term changes would be complex and it would certainly be a lot easier than rebalancing all the sets, ATs, etc.

 

 

[FUBARczar]

1 hour ago, ScarySai said:

Titan Weapons is the fighter who uses loopholes in the system to solo the Tarrasque five minutes after making his character sheet.

 

Fire blast is the DPS specced wizard raining hell down on things after many levels and min/max character building.

Titan Weapon is the fighter, who if he came make it through training camp and cut weight (ie people still want to play after leveling) can perform as a class leader (about 11% faster than the number one contender Claws) 

[Kanil]

59 minutes ago, Leogunner said:

 

funny enough about the galaxy brain testin' that i found out about this thread, he actually has a blaster and mastermind (?) variant of that. thankfully, because i'm definitely too lazy to test that kinda stuff, haha. don't get me wrong, the aspects of 'hey, what is the value for standardized SO builds' when you actually have to take into account survivability totally matter for that point vs. high end 'only damage ONLY DAMAGE' world. the discussion around the results it provided earlier in the thread were pretty interestin' as well, because of how much value changes on blaster stuff when in the realm of SO builds vs. IO builds. archery and energy blast go way up the list under those circumstances.

 

that paradigm between melee sets uniqueness vs. blast sets being more standardized is actually what i'm gunning at in terms of "what is the balance sense here" more than "defending TW or nerfing fire blast" - fire blast sticks out like a nail in the same vein as TW in the context that matters the most for the game of Big Damage (see: best times in galaxy brain's thread, where the gap demonstrably gets even wider when you consider high end builds) since that aspect would also apply given any situation where the blaster has any amount of survival support if they aren't built up.

 

my actual 'argument' is "why waste time nerfing TW when fire blast exists and does the same thing when you could be buffing AR and FM/whatever powersets i play" which is equally as worthless in the context of all of this stuff already happening anyways but it's fun to prod and see why folks don't believe in that disconnect beyond the most obvious reasons. 

 

like, stating that blast sets are largely homogeneous  and then going "but it's okay that there is no reason to pick anything but fire blast from the high-end aspect because ???" is just strange to me - why not just admit that it's an outlier and that's okay? that other stuff should be brought up to have cool specialties over that? what makes TW 'the' outlier over fire blast under those circumstances when the direct comparison is even more weighted on such similar sets.

 

52 minutes ago, siolfir said:

 

we're just back at the point where our last reply was, haha. i asked for the numbers in terms of it being 'not having a wider gap' and what you considered as the criteria for those sets being directly under the equivalents. so it's just back 'there's no secondary effect' w/ the broad statements, which is like, sure, boats passing in the night. i know you said that other dude doesn't want 'em, but i love seein' those hard numbers. you also never actually addressed the distinction between flares vs. momentum and how you think using flares is equivalent to the entire momentum mechanic in how it affects live play and performance but that might just be another one of those 'boats in the night' things.

 

"hey, there are secondary effects that mean you scrap the safest and strongest given [x] conditions" isn't a particularly compelling to me as an argument of when the immediate opposing thought to me is "8 fire blast characters is The Best Team at high end with practically no margin otherwise" - the aspect of sets being distinct and cool is lost when 'im throw fire and kill everything' ends up being the default and absolute tippity top, y'know? if ice blast/other sets actually did more or even equivalent ST damage than fire outside of build/AT conditional factors (i.e. scourge + procs) that's a step forward! if it were factors related to the powerset, like "fire does the most damage, sure, but the secondary effects or conditional things can create cool situations where this powerset is explicitly better" outside of "everyone has SOs and there's no support chars"

 

like, i love that my AR char has full auto as part of their ranged attack string. i think that's cool as hell, having a 120m range nuke that i can fire off. it's unique and applicable in weirdo outdoor map situations where it can be fun to just nuke folks in near draw-distance range. but beyond flavor, why in the world would i pick that over fire blast? what's the point of working on stuff to nerf that type of thing for TW?

 

re: player powerset choice and legacy/theme, that's literally the first thing i posted as a disclaimer in how much i hate using those data points? it's one of those things where the thematic purpose and legacy aspect can be what accounts for it. i don't fault ya for missing that cuz you had to wade through hellpost world including my own, but yeah i don't discount it at all. but in general the concept/metric of why something is nerfed is because 'it's affecting the playerbase/powerset deisgn negatively', right? measuring that is pretty rough in it's own right so i'm just goin' with what's there in terms of available data.

 

Edited September 24, 2020 by Kanil

[ScarySai]

12 minutes ago, FUBARczar said:

Titan Weapon is the fighter, who if he came make it through training camp and cut weight (ie people still want to play after leveling) can perform as a class leader (about 11% faster than the number one contender Claws) 

Inb4 "claws is too OP, pls nerf."

[Kanil]

1 minute ago, ScarySai said:

Inb4 "claws is too OP, pls nerf."

claws is OP, make full auto a toggle is my argument