Game Balance & The Endgame

[WindDemon21]

2 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Perhaps they could start by revamping the council.

 

Since this is the group that gets beat up the most, any changes here would really impact the state of the game.  

 

Although my preference is improving the brains behind the idiot bad guys - maybe buffing some of the group members would help.  

 

Leadership powers for Council Bosses I think might work well.  

Add some more grenades.  Or buff the ones they have.   Blasters got their T1 buffed with damage.  Do that.  

Add in medic powers to some of the LTs.  

I think this explains a very crucial point.

 

WHY do you think pi council radios are so popular. Because end game they are the easiest things to fight.

 

If people wanted harder content and weaker feeling powersets then they would play other content and PLAY those weaker sets and harder content on a higher average.

 

But while some people do, the numbers clearly show that lots of people like where the game is being able to overcome it.

 

Therefore nerfing the fame and powersets isn't the answer, boosting underperforming power sets and making harder content is the answer. Otherwise you are going to alienate a lot of people who enjoy the easy part of the game after putting hours and millions into their characters.

 

Back to the powerboost option. The same people saying how it's overpowered also say how its not even needed late game anyway. Considering how late it comes to begin with and how incarnate content comes soon after, there l is a very limited window where using it actually uses that nice benefit.

 

I for one enjoy it most not for incarnate stuff, but FOR those radios to bring along baby tools to keep them alive so they can have fun killing tough stuff with more ease.

 

Also on the instant base tp macro, its QOL not making anyone OP. Whatever workaround is proposed, it should NOT go live until that God awful mission bug is also fixed where it sets the mission to +0/x0 if the mission holder isn't in the same zone if someone enters the mission first.

 

 

[carroto]

5 minutes ago, WindDemon21 said:

WHY do you think pi council radios are so popular.

No doubt because of the reasons you gave.  But also in part probably because of the maps Council missions are on.  I know that I avoid factions that can be in cave maps just because I don't like those maps.  Difficult to navigate, and of course there's the infamous layer cake room.  I would fight a wider range of enemies if I could count on them not being in caves.

[WindDemon21]

1 hour ago, Haijinx said:

Breath of fire is kinda epic though on a team with range enhancers though.

 

But yeah I usually skip it too.  Fireball is awesome enough.

Like all ranged cones, they need their rarget cap upped to 16. NO reason they should only have a 10 target cap when taoes have 16. Especially on things like dark, sonic, and ar blast.

 

That said a lot of powers like this also need an activation reduction to at least about 1.5 seconds. Especially breaths, howl, and psy scream.

[Haijinx]

3 minutes ago, carroto said:

No doubt because of the reasons you gave.  But also in part probably because of the maps Council missions are on.  I know that I avoid factions that can be in cave maps just because I don't like those maps.  Difficult to navigate, and of course there's the infamous layer cake room.  I would fight a wider range of enemies if I could count on them not being in caves.

true the cake room is OP 

[Phoenix']

42 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

I'd up the recharge time on the nukes a bit or do something where recharge is unaffected on these powers kinda like how some of the newer armor t9s have a set recharge.  

 

Then they could do something like make it 50% end drop then it also caps your defense values at 30% and resistances to 45% for like 15 seconds.  You're exhausting yourself with a massive attack so wouldn't it be likely you'd be easier to hit and harm just after exhaustion?

I would prefer a dmg bonus 50% to the attack and no end when you do it. 

The unaffected recharge is nice too. 

Maybe every 1 min? 

Also I would like its range to be increased as well

I find the def and res buff too much for that kind of power

 

 

Edited September 24, 2020 by Phoenix'

[Haijinx]

41 minutes ago, WindDemon21 said:

 

Therefore nerfing the fame and powersets isn't the answer, boosting underperforming power sets and making harder content is the answer. Otherwise you are going to alienate a lot of people who enjoy the easy part of the game after putting hours and millions into their characters.

 

Middle of the road power-sets can laugh at all content with enough IOs.   Thus bringing down something like TW(#1 Dmg) so its only a little ahead of War Mace(#2 dmg) isn't going to fix the game being too easy.  

 

Since War Mace is also potentially a monster.

 

But so potentially is Broad Sword, which isn't anywhere near the top.    

Edited September 24, 2020 by Haijinx

[ScarySai]

1 hour ago, Phoenix' said:

Nukes need to return to where they were tbh. 

No, they really don't tbh.

[Mezmera]

1 minute ago, ScarySai said:

No, they really don't tbh.

They weren't all that bad before.  You could just carry a blue or two and back to normal.  But I wouldn't advocate for it going back to how it was either.  They could though tinker with adding back some of that trepidation to use it while keeping some of what makes it much more appealing to have in your arsenal nowadays.  

[Phoenix']

8 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

No, they really don't tbh.

Yes they do...

Check above what people are saying and they are right. 

3 blasters in the team nuking constantly every 20 - 30 secs is not fun for anyone. 

When defiance was different and nukes had a penalty it was more challenging. 

You had to rely on your empath more and you were dealing much more damage if you were about to nuke with low hp back in the day. 

Since defiance is different it would be better to just give a damage bonus to the power but increase its recharge. 

Also the end penalty the power had yes it was annoying af but it forced you to pick the correct moment to do it and that was cool if you knew what you were doing. 

It should have a penalty I dont know if it should be endurance or maybe res/def dropping of your toon but it should also be more rewarding by making a nuke able to wipe out a whole +4 mob. 

It's just my opinion about nukes

Edited September 24, 2020 by Phoenix'

[Haijinx]

Everyone already has nukes though thanks to Judgement powers.   

 

Talk about a bad game design move. 

[ScarySai]

1 minute ago, Phoenix' said:

Yes they do...

Check above what people are saying and they are right. 

No they don't...

Check what other people who agree with me have said and they are right.

[carroto]

2 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

They weren't all that bad before.  You could just carry a blue or two and back to normal.

I tend to avoid powers with that kind of penalty.  If it's going to take me 15 seconds or more to be able to be active again, any speed-up that I gained from using the power will almost always be more than offset by the enforced downtime.  If I remember correctly those powers didn't just drain all your end, they also prevented recovery for a period of time.  It's easy to blow through a small blue's worth of end before that.  Sure if I have enough blues I can use the power, but that requirement makes it situational enough that I'd probably never think of it.  That seemed to be the case for most players, which is why those powers were changed.

 

If it had to go back I'd want to at least retain enough end to avoid having to retoggle everything.  That's enough of a QoL hit to be a barrier in itself.

[Mezmera]

9 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Everyone already has nukes though thanks to Judgement powers.   

 

Talk about a bad game design move. 

Are you wanting to take away my Dom's jumping ground smash?  Is that what you're asking for?!

 

Blasters get two nukes then if you want to dive down that hole.  

 

Gonna have to give this a hard pass based on the insinuation.  Choose to limit incarnate powers to 50+ content sure but I'd like to see some tougher bad guys and incarnate difficulty sliders.  

Edited September 24, 2020 by Mezmera

[Mezmera]

12 minutes ago, carroto said:

I tend to avoid powers with that kind of penalty.  If it's going to take me 15 seconds or more to be able to be active again, any speed-up that I gained from using the power will almost always be more than offset by the enforced downtime.  If I remember correctly those powers didn't just drain all your end, they also prevented recovery for a period of time.  It's easy to blow through a small blue's worth of end before that.  Sure if I have enough blues I can use the power, but that requirement makes it situational enough that I'd probably never think of it.  That seemed to be the case for most players, which is why those powers were changed.

 

If it had to go back I'd want to at least retain enough end to avoid having to retoggle everything.  That's enough of a QoL hit to be a barrier in itself.

That's why the next sentence I said not to go back to how it was.  It's more appealing to have nukes in your arsenal as it is today.  I'd just adjust in some -res and -def that it does to you upon use or something of that sort.  Leave it mostly how it is but add back some of that think twice before using it.  

Edited September 24, 2020 by Mezmera

[Haijinx]

1 minute ago, Mezmera said:

Are you wanting to take away my Dom's jumping ground smash?  Is that what you're asking for? 

 

Blasters get two nukes then if you want to dive down that hole.  

 

Gonna have to give this a hard pass based on the insinuation.  Choose to limit incarnate powers to 50+ content sure but I'd like to see some tougher bad guys and incarnate difficulty sliders.  

 

No I'm just saying nerfing Blaster nukes seems pointless since everyone has Judgement Powers anyway. 

 

And that Judgement powers were a bad choice. 

 

Lore Pets were also a bad choice.   It wasn't necessary to turn everyone into a mini Mastermind.   It also seems like they are actually stronger than MM pets are.

 

I would have preferred that all the Incarnate Powers worked like the Alpha slot and possibly the Interface slot.  In that they affect your character without adding additional extremely strong Powers to your character.  That and the incarnates are probably too strong.  Including the Alpha slot.    

 

 

[Haijinx]

Just now, Mezmera said:

That's why the next sentence I said not to go back to how it was.  It's more appealing to have nukes in your arsenal as it is today.  I'd just adjust back in some -res and -def that it does to you upon use or something of that sort.  Leave it mostly how it is but add back some of that think twice before using it.  

If enemies were made harder, this might actually work by default, without having to change the powers.  

 

I'm not going to run ahead of the team into a spawn of Rularuu and fire off Nova for example.  I'm going to wait for the Melees to break the alpha and gain some attention first.  

 

But for Council (and a lot of other groups) its Leeroy Jenkins all the damn way.   

[Mezmera]

2 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

 

No I'm just saying nerfing Blaster nukes seems pointless since everyone has Judgement Powers anyway. 

 

And that Judgement powers were a bad choice. 

 

Lore Pets were also a bad choice.   It wasn't necessary to turn everyone into a mini Mastermind.   It also seems like they are actually stronger than MM pets are.

 

I would have preferred that all the Incarnate Powers worked like the Alpha slot and possibly the Interface slot.  In that they affect your character without adding additional extremely strong Powers to your character.  That and the incarnates are probably too strong.  Including the Alpha slot.    

 

 

Sorry I want the full 10 more incarnates that were promised to me when I chose to support Going Rogue.  So before we talk about nerfing any of the incarnates I'd like to see how the last 4 would round out.  

[FUBARczar]

1 hour ago, Mezmera said:

They weren't all that bad before.  You could just carry a blue or two and back to normal.  But I wouldn't advocate for it going back to how it was either.  They could though tinker with adding back some of that trepidation to use it while keeping some of what makes it much more appealing to have in your arsenal nowadays.  

people use inspirations?  Talk about OP

[Mezmera]

5 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

 

No I'm just saying nerfing Blaster nukes seems pointless since everyone has Judgement Powers anyway. 

 

And that Judgement powers were a bad choice. 

 

Lore Pets were also a bad choice.   It wasn't necessary to turn everyone into a mini Mastermind.   It also seems like they are actually stronger than MM pets are.

 

I would have preferred that all the Incarnate Powers worked like the Alpha slot and possibly the Interface slot.  In that they affect your character without adding additional extremely strong Powers to your character.  That and the incarnates are probably too strong.  Including the Alpha slot.    

 

 

And that's the whole point of the "Why are we nerfing this and not this?" argument.  Due to the mechanic involved with TW it doesn't benefit them to use their Judgement powers sometimes when just about all other powersets can do it willy nilly.  

[Haijinx]

2 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

Sorry I want the full 10 more incarnates that were promised to me when I chose to support Going Rogue.  So before we talk about nerfing any of the incarnates I'd like to see how the last 4 would round out.  

I would nerf all of them.  

 

But I doubt that will happen.   And I'm not going to lobby for it.   

 

What were the other powers supposed to be?   

[Lockpick]

23 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Everyone already has nukes though thanks to Judgement powers.   

 

Talk about a bad game design move. 

I don't know I would call it a bad game design move.  It seems the intent of the Devs was to create incarnate content where incarnate would not be OP.  It's not poor game design that the game was shut down before they could do it.

 

It might be poor timing I suppose. 

[Mezmera]

1 minute ago, Haijinx said:

I would nerf all of them.  

 

But I doubt that will happen.   And I'm not going to lobby for it.   

 

What were the other powers supposed to be?   

Mind, Vitae, Something and Omega.  It's searchable what the design intent was but yeah implementation would have needed to coincide with strong enemies that were also being planned.  Omega was supposed to be the inverse of Alpha so maybe that meant you'd get a 100% buff to a certain attribute or whatever.  

[ScarySai]

Just now, Mezmera said:

Mind, Vitae, Something and Omega.  It's searchable what the design intent was but yeah implementation would have needed to coincide with strong enemies that were also being planned.  Omega was supposed to be the inverse of Alpha so maybe that meant you'd get a 100% buff to a certain attribute or whatever.  

I forget which one it was, but one of them was supposed to supercharge one of your other incarnate slots.

[Haijinx]

Just now, Lockpick said:

I don't know I would call it a bad game design move.  It seems the intent of the Devs was to create incarnate content where incarnate would not be OP.  It's not poor game design that the game was shut down before they could do it.

 

It might be poor timing I suppose. 

Yeah but you have to wonder about that game?  Don't you?  

 

Everyone has these incarnate powers that make them much more like the other characters.  And were all going to throw out a Judgement every so often.  And drag around Lore pets.  And everyone has this Defender like Buff ability.  And so on .. 

[Mezmera]

1 minute ago, Haijinx said:

Yeah but you have to wonder about that game?  Don't you?  

 

Everyone has these incarnate powers that make them much more like the other characters.  And were all going to throw out a Judgement every so often.  And drag around Lore pets.  And everyone has this Defender like Buff ability.  And so on .. 

That's why I'd like to get us to those 10 powers and then activate some limitation set where you can only have active 6 of those 10 powers.  They'll all have quite a range of choices within each power so you'd likely be hard pressed to find a team full of all the same incarnates.