Game Balance & The Endgame

[Coyotedancer]

On 9/24/2020 at 1:12 PM, Ralathar44 said:

What you responded too never said they were NECESSARY. 

 

"That's not the way the game used to be" was what I was reacting to, Ral.

 

There's never really been a time when support characters were all that (Much less necessary-) when it came to the high level game. It could be argued that they're less so now than they were at some time in the game's past... but that's just a matter of degree, and I obviously don't see as much difference as you seem to. Maybe playing with the badgers and speed-runners back on Liberty vs. the less build-focused roleplayers and lower-key maniacs now colors my observations... But Bright really didn't feel like any less of a tag-along in the early days than Ivory does now.

 

(Complete aside... when I mentioned this conversation and the pre-IO/post-ED period to FlyingCodeMonkey, who is and always has been a "Controller specialist", he laughed. He actually walked away from the game completely for awhile during that period, because of how poorly Controllers fared. 😝 )

Edited October 23, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[macskull]

1 hour ago, Haijinx said:

Don't think anyone said that. 

A certain few posters have been claiming that over the last several pages of this thread and it still boggles me.

[Dragotect]

2 hours ago, arcaneholocaust said:

This totally-new-to-me narrative about debuff sets being weak is really making me wonder what game I’ve been playing.

I completely agree. As an IOed/Incarnated out willpower brute, I'm ecstatic when I see a debuffer on the team.

 

They make it so much quicker or easier for the whole team. I don't really enjoy +4 TFs unless a debuffer is present.

 

Debuffer + buffer and that's the dream. I'll pass on healers.

 

I'm more of a roleplayer and play with more of the roleplayer crowd than meta player, so maybe that's why I have this perspective.

Edited September 24, 2020 by Dragotect

[Coyotedancer]

*livin' the Dark life* 😄

[TJBC]

36 minutes ago, Dragotect said:

I completely agree. As an IOed/Incarnated out willpower brute, I'm ecstatic when I see a debuffer on the team.

 

They make it so much quicker or easier for the whole team. I don't really enjoy +4 TFs unless a debuffer is present.

 

Debuffer + buffer and that's the dream. I'll pass on healers.

 

I'm more of a roleplayer and play with more of the roleplayer crowd than meta player, so maybe that's why I have this perspective.

First, let me agree with the sentiment that debuffs are incredibly effective for max difficulty content, but when you say buffer I assume you mean +damage?
 

As an IOd/Incarnated out WP Brute you must have defense/resist maxed and massive regen and recovery and recharge and probably not lacking for tohit/accuracy and you said yourself you don’t need heals.
 

So the only thing you want is +damage and -resist/-regen, cause nothing else really moves the needle very much.
 

That’s one of the reasons why some people think it’s unbalanced.

Edited September 25, 2020 by TJBC

[Leogunner]

2 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

Well sure that could be possible, but it was not my question though. 

Well I'm not the one you were replying to with that question so I don't see why I would need to stick to that outline. 

 

2 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

The post I was replying to said "3 blasters in the team nuking constantly every 20 - 30 secs is not fun for anyone. "  What if those blasters are having fun doing what they are doing?  Or do they not count because they do not fit into the narrative?  Your question also seems to make the assumption no one else is doing anything on the team other than moving from mob to mob watching blasters just nuke.

I was offering a separate situation where nukes do crash.  The fun is supposed to be the absolute destruction, not the self-efficiency...because they were initially not efficient from a personal perspective, it is something a team can cover for.

 

Does the Empathy defender not count in your narrative that then uses Adrenaline Boost/Recovery Aura to nullify your crash?  Or the Tanker that swoops in to take any aggro that you got for the nuke?  Again, I'm forming a different hypothetical that is targeted toward using more of your team rather than pushing certain outliers to carry everyone else.  I'm also not really assuming the team isn't doing anything, that is the assumption of the consensus of the thread.  People are talking end-game and discussing aspects that get marginalized.

 

Technically, my hypothetical wasn't targeted at you but more a general talking point put forth to the participants in the thread, especially since I didn't ask a question for you to answer, I just spoke of a point.  You can dismiss it or whatever.  But let's not use selective memory here since a lot of valid points regarding overall balance have been presented.

[Leogunner]

2 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

@Leogunner, Dark melee has a mix of survivability / Great ST damage that allows you to tear down the boss spawns rather well and with great safety, on top of Soul Drain + Buffed Shadow Maul actually letting you do work to a crowd. It overall ended up with pretty consistent results thanks to that.

 

So does that mean DM doesn't need anymore damage buffing?  Is changing Dark Consumption into a mini-nuke or even a standard-ish AoE even necessary anymore?  I still wouldn't mind changing DC into a low damage, better rech self +END AND a foe -ToHit because even with its utility, I think it could manage some more for GP.  

[macskull]

25 minutes ago, TJBC said:

First, let me agree with the sentiment that debuffs are incredibly effective for max difficulty content, but when you say buffer I assume you mean +damage?
 

As an IOd/Incarnated out WP Brute you must have defense/resist maxed and massive regen and recovery and recharge and probably not lacking for tohit/accuracy and you said yourself you don’t need heals.
 

So the only thing you want is +damage and -resist/-regen, cause nothing else really moves the needle very much.
 

That’s one of the reasons why some people think it’s unbalanced.

"Only these buffs/debuffs are useful" is a different argument than "buffs and debuffs aren't useful." Besides, not everyone is playing the game at the IO/incarnate level and I'd wager there's a wider spectrum of buff/debuff that's useful in that scenario.

 

EDIT: Regarding the "only -res/-regen/+dam is useful at max difficulty content" I think that's assuming everyone on the team is running fully IOd builds which is not always going to happen, and even if you're assuming everyone is IOd to the gills you're not going to be able to significantly vary the buffs or debuffs that are useful without making either the NPCs more difficult or the players weaker, and you will piss off everyone no matter what you do there.

Edited September 25, 2020 by macskull

[Ralathar44]

42 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

"That's not the way the game used to be" was what I was reacting to, Ral.

 

There's never really been a time when support characters were all that great (Much less necessary-) when it came to the high level game. It could be argued that they're less so now than they were at some time in the game's past... but that's just a matter of degree, and I obviously don't see as much difference as you seem to. Maybe playing with the badgers and speed-runners back on Liberty vs. the less build-focused roleplayers and lower-key maniacs now colors my observations... But Bright really didn't feel like any less of a tag-along in the early days than Ivory does now.

 

(Complete aside... when I mentioned this conversation and the pre-IO/post-ED period to FlyingCodeMonkey, who is and always has been a "Controller specialist", he laughed. He actually walked away from the game completely for awhile during that period, because of how poorly Controllers fared. 😝 )

That's not true at all though, Post-Ed and pre-IO support characters were amazing.  Melee could not survive +3/+4 mobs like they can today and everyone wasn't soft capped on defenses.  That free 45% softcap everone gets now didn't come without a cost.  The survivability provided by the free 45% everyone can get now was previously provided by supports and controllers.  Same story with accuracy and global recharge and every other set bonus.  All of that is power budget removed from supports.

How can you even make a statement like that when we're talking about everyone in the game gaining such massive swings in power pre-IO and post IO and knowing that most character simply could not survive +3 consistently to the same standards people now survive +4/+5?  And then for fun add on level shift.


We must have played a different game.  There was a time were my Trick Arrow Defender, one of the lesser of the defenders, was LOVED for being on teams.  Post-IO pre-HC that love was less but still there.  Today on HC nobody needs what you bring because they have everything they need from their own IO sets or someone else on the team who is IO'd out carrying the team.  The difference is incredibly dramatic.

 

[Ralathar44]

10 minutes ago, macskull said:

EDIT: Regarding the "only -res/-regen/+dam is useful at max difficulty content" I think that's assuming everyone on the team is running fully IOd builds which is not always going to happen, and even if you're assuming everyone is IOd to the gills you're not going to be able to significantly vary the buffs or debuffs that are useful without making either the NPCs more difficult or the players weaker, and you will piss off everyone no matter what you do there.

Unfortunately it only takes between 1-3 people (depending on AT) to reach the "only -res/-regen/+dmg is useful" threshold.  A godly tank or brute is enough to invalidate all survivability debuffs/buffs.  I know because I've done it.  Unless you break aggro cap by a significant amount nobody is going to die and you're not going to die either.  A couple godly blasters is enough to raise the kill rate enough to invalidate not only the survivability buffs/debuffs (because mobs don't live long enough to matter) but offensive increasing debuffs (because mobs don't live long enough to matter and you're on recharge for every other group or more)

Think of it as an overall "team survivability" and "team damage" rating, and when either exceeds a certain point survability is no longer a concern.  When team damage exceeds a certain point your -res/=dmg also is no longer a concern vs all but maybe AVs.  Godly Tanks and brutes can raise team survivability to max all on their own easily.  But so can any soft capped character that can take aggro first and can hold most of it for 3-5 seconds on high damage teams.

Edited September 25, 2020 by Ralathar44

[arcane]

I am now becoming more and more convinced of the existence of "Forum PvP'ers" that know the game's mathematics but the game not so much. "There's never really been a time when support characters were all that great" - Jesus Christ...

[Kanil]

the solution to chars being too strong? make every enemy group also spawn with a full set of x8+4 rularuu bosses next to them.

let's see how you like psi damage, phasing and autohitting -def suckerssssssss

 

for good measure, every other spawn will also have lvl50+ praetorian resistance there also dealing -def and -res. you know, for flavor.

[Judasace]

5 hours ago, BitCook said:

Force multipliers work because they make your team more effective.  So a buff that raises team kill speed by 10% is more valuable on a team that takes longer to wipe out a mob than one that doesn't.

 

In the example I game, the first buff was a three second reduction to the time to kill.  However, if the team took 1/3 of the time to kill the mob, the benefit to the buff is a much less impressive 1 second.  My contention is that the old live environment was like the 30 second team and our current environment is more like the 10 second team.  Changes have been made and power creep has happened.  How much is up to you to believe 

 

It was an illustration for people wondering why there are some of us disparaging support and controls in today's endgame.  It's why some of us feel the way we do.

 

The faster teams get and the more damage they do, the less it matters if you buff/Debuff.  Most buffs/debuffs work as a % of damage/resistance/speed etc.  However all of them can be boiled down to the effect on clear speed.  When clear speed starts getting to the time it takes to cast a buff, there is no point in casting it.  I have played Rad a bit and my example was that I can't usually get more than RI out before the mob is dead.  I don't have time for another buff... So the value of my RI is what?  A tenth of a second?  One second faster clear time?

 

If you agree with that, and my anecdotal evidence supports it for me at least, then there is no purpose to play one of those ATs other than you enjoy it... Or exemp a lot, or some other reason than you want to be effective.

So because you want to be essential 100% of the time, on every single fight in a every single mission, instead of just on AV fights, everyone else needs nerfed until they can't live without you. Got it.

 

Maybe instead of acting like your team's crazy Ex, you should just use your other powers, be it Blasts, Assaults, Pets, whatever in order to do damage instead of trying to make everyone dependent on your support abilities.

Edited September 25, 2020 by Judasace

[Wavicle]

1 hour ago, Coyotedancer said:

There's never really been a time when support characters were all that great (Much less necessary-) when it came to the high level game.

This is the clearest demonstration of the inaccuracy that keeps getting repeated here.

[Ralathar44]

4 minutes ago, arcaneholocaust said:

I am now becoming more and more convinced of the existence of "Forum PvP'ers" that know the game's mathematics but the game not so much. "There's never really been a time when support characters were all that great" - Jesus Christ...

TBH I was pretty surprised to see that too.  Support has wavered in value from patch to patch and major change to major change but Defenders were borderline worshiped at one time and this was striking for me because it was a major difference from other MMORPGs...especially since so many of them did it without any significant healing.  Seeing a Forcefield defender join the team used to be a cause for celebration even if you were on a tank.  It kinda still is that way today at low levels.  There is the odd team here and there at high level a bubbler still feels useful on, but most of them these days have zero use for you. 

Even Traps used to get praise.  TRAPS.  Because yeah they knew your regen triangle would be unreliable from mob to mob but it was great for stationary fights and your FF generator provided defense and mezz resist.  Those two things alone were enough for teams to love you joining.  Now they don't need either of those in most high level teams and the average kill speed is so fast now that your immobile nature is more of a liability than ever before.

[Wavicle]

27 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

 Today on HC nobody needs what you bring because they have everything they need from their own IO sets or someone else on the team who is IO'd out carrying the team. 

 

An exaggeration, but not without some truth to it. And this seems to be exactly what they said they hope to address.

[Dragotect]

1 hour ago, TJBC said:

First, let me agree with the sentiment that debuffs are incredibly effective for max difficulty content, but when you say buffer I assume you mean +damage?
 

As an IOd/Incarnated out WP Brute you must have defense/resist maxed and massive regen and recovery and recharge and probably not lacking for tohit/accuracy and you said yourself you don’t need heals.
 

So the only thing you want is +damage and -resist/-regen, cause nothing else really moves the needle very much.
 

That’s one of the reasons why some people think it’s unbalanced.

No, I mean any buffer. I'm not maxed on anything. My highest resist is around 65, not close to 90, and defenses highest is around 30. Could be my build, but I'm more roleplay than min/max. Either way, one FF and it makes me untouchable. One thermal, and I rarely see my HP below 97.5%.

 

Any buffer, any debuffer, and it's easier for the team too. Healers leave you too reliant on their reactive support as opposed to the proactive support of the other two.

 

Ideally, though, yes. Kin + Rad has been the best support pair since I started playing back around issue 4. And that isn't surprising. Since +damage coupled with -resist/Regen is a pair that multiplies itself.

 

 

Not sure why any of this matters, either. I've never been refused a team spot on any of my alts because I was on the wrong buff type, attack type, or anything (except when I joined a speed run team that did not advertise as being a speed run team).

Edited September 25, 2020 by Dragotect

[Ralathar44]

1 minute ago, Wavicle said:

An exaggeration, but not without some truth to it. And this seems to be exactly what they said they hope to address.

Yeah, admittedly there is prolly some hyperbolicism to it but it's hard not to feel that way when in the average high level group the mob literally does not survive long enough for my TA/A to deploy all his debuffs.  And people are taking little to no damage whether I help or not.  Against +4/+5 no less.  People on level 50 teams used to love seeing Oil Slick Arrow and it used to be super effective.  But since the power creep has bumped the average level enemy faced by 1-2 levels it's alot less effective than it was AND my team mates are alot more effective than they were on average.  So how much it helps the average team now is a tiny fraction of what it used to be.

[ShardWarrior]

1 hour ago, Leogunner said:

Well I'm not the one you were replying to with that question so I don't see why I would need to stick to that outline. 

 

I was offering a separate situation where nukes do crash.  The fun is supposed to be the absolute destruction, not the self-efficiency...because they were initially not efficient from a personal perspective, it is something a team can cover for.

 

Does the Empathy defender not count in your narrative that then uses Adrenaline Boost/Recovery Aura to nullify your crash?  Or the Tanker that swoops in to take any aggro that you got for the nuke?  Again, I'm forming a different hypothetical that is targeted toward using more of your team rather than pushing certain outliers to carry everyone else.  I'm also not really assuming the team isn't doing anything, that is the assumption of the consensus of the thread.  People are talking end-game and discussing aspects that get marginalized.

 

Technically, my hypothetical wasn't targeted at you but more a general talking point put forth to the participants in the thread, especially since I didn't ask a question for you to answer, I just spoke of a point.  You can dismiss it or whatever.  But let's not use selective memory here since a lot of valid points regarding overall balance have been presented.

Right so I take it then that you feel those blasters and the fun they may be having do not count?  I guess the only people who are allowed to have fun are those who follow a specific style of play.  At least this is what it sounds like you are hypothetically trying to say unless I am misunderstanding you.

[Ralathar44]

23 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Right so I take it then that you feel those blasters and the fun they may be having do not count?  I guess the only people who are allowed to have fun are those who follow a specific style of play.  At least this is what it sounds like you are hypothetically trying to say unless I am misunderstanding you.

I think the goal is that everyone has space within the team to not just be useful but feel awesome.  This is actually a delicate balance because there is only so many mobs and so much incoming damage and a finite value of to-hit checks coming in.  So if any 1 person or if a few people are TOO awesome then that takes away from the ability of everyone else to be feel awesome.  Now as a sometimes thing, that's not a problem, but when everyone is too awesome as a matter of course it becomes a problem because again, there is a finite amount of awesome to go around because the mechanics by which we obtain the awesome are based on finite values.

Jimmy said as much on page 2:

  

On 9/20/2020 at 6:08 PM, Jimmy said:

 

On 9/20/2020 at 4:54 PM, Burnsidhe said:

Don't forget that in the end, people *want to feel super* regardless of what power they take.

This is crucial IMO - but it cuts both ways. It's pretty difficult to feel super when one team member can solo the entire mission without breaking a sweat.

 

Edited September 25, 2020 by Ralathar44

[Leogunner]

29 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Right so I take it then that you feel those blasters and the fun they may be having do not count?  I guess the only people who are allowed to have fun are those who follow a specific style of play.  At least this is what it sounds like you are hypothetically trying to say unless I am misunderstanding you.

No, I'm more saying you can have fun by contributing to the success of a team.  Having fun shouldn't mean you're the center of attention but I'm sure to some it should.  And even if being that core is fun, isn't it more benevolent to spread that fun to others and not just yourself even if you have to endure some lows amid the plateaus?

 

But then I'm not saying who can or can't have fun, just sharing my perspective but I can be an odd one.  I tend to not "try hard" on teams if only because engagements are more fun and chaotic that way and it's also a bit more fun when situations start to turn sour and I still have fuel in the tank to try harder and attempt to stop the situation from going full south. In such cases, I will hold onto Domination or my nuke or only use some of my control or focus on using ST instead of AoE or only bother picking off annoying targets and leave the grunt work to others.  And beyond that, there's also just splitting off into smaller groups/soloing spawns.

 

As for what I'm trying to say: I tend to play devil's advocate a lot.  When people readily dismiss a point too quickly without consideration of why it was brought up or for whatever other reason, I like to bring it up with a different spin instead.

[BitCook]

1 hour ago, Judasace said:

So because you want to be essential 100% of the time, on every single fight in a every single mission, instead of just on AV fights, everyone else needs nerfed until they can't live without you. Got it.

 

Maybe instead of acting like your team's crazy Ex, you should just use your other powers, be it Blasts, Assaults, Pets, whatever in order to do damage instead of trying to make everyone dependent on your support abilities.

Well of the two of us.  I laid out my arguments without petty insults.  I actually used logic and laid out my viewpoint, which even if you didn't agree with it, you could have at least read it.  It's been a long thread so I'll forgive you for not reading, although given the tone of your posts I am not sure that it would have done much.  Cheap insults and witty comments do not make a decent argument.  Usually those are vestiges of people who have little to say.

However, had you followed why I started here, it was in reaction to nerfing PB + Farsight.  My argument has not been nerf everything, nor has it been to bring the game back to a state that it was fifteen years ago... even if it was a far more balanced game at that point.  That would be the death of this game.  My argument, was to leave viable builds in place for support/control ATs so that there is a reason to play them.  That while PB + Farsight was an outlier it wasn't so much of one that it should be gutted.

Part of that discussion talked about AT balance.  Whether you like it or not, there is a large imbalance due to the kill speed of modern teams.  Because it invalidates the things that used to make the ATs different, my suggestion would be to either make those powers more useful, or to give support classes far more survivability/damage to compensate for the fact that the things they actually do, are becoming less and less relevant.  

So thank you for the cheap insults please take them somewhere else, that would be appreciated.

Edited September 25, 2020 by BitCook

[macskull]

4 minutes ago, BitCook said:

Part of that discussion talked about AT balance.  Whether you like it or not, there is a large imbalance due to the kill speed of modern teams.

There's not, though. If you eliminate Fiery Aura Brutes (for reasons that have been covered several times in this thread) there's a pretty reasonable curve in the "which ATs get played more" graph. If the game were only about DPS and not about support you'd see all the DPS ATs concentrated at the top - but you don't. Stalkers, which are arguably the highest-damage melee AT, are the least-played non-epic AT. Sentinels are only slightly above that. Controllers, which are probably the lowest-damage support AT, are the second-most popular AT at level 50. There's a pretty big difference between what people on the forums and the Discord server say are happening in the game and what is actually happening in the game.

[Judasace]

8 minutes ago, BitCook said:

Well of the two of us.  I laid out my arguments without petty insults.  I actually used logic and laid out my viewpoint, which even if you didn't agree with it, you could have at least read it.  It's been a long thread so I'll forgive you for not reading, although given the tone of your posts I am not sure that it would have done much.  Cheap insults and witty comments do not make a decent argument.  Usually those are vestiges of people who have little to say.

However, had you followed why I started here, it was in reaction to nerfing PB + Farsight.  My argument has not been nerf everything, nor has it been to bring the game back to a state that it was fifteen years ago... even if it was a far more balanced game at that point.  That would be the death of this game.  My argument, was to leave viable builds in place for support/control ATs so that there is a reason to play them.  That while PB + Farsight was an outlier it wasn't so much of one that it should be gutted.

Part of that discussion talked about AT balance.  Whether you like it or not, there is a large imbalance due to the kill speed of modern teams.  Because it invalidates the things that used to make the ATs different, my suggestion would be to either make those powers more useful, or to give support classes far more survivability/damage to compensate for the fact that the things they actually do, are becoming less and less relevant.  

So thank you for the cheap insults please take them somewhere else, that would be appreciated.

There isn't a problem if people are having fun. If you're not having fun, maybe go find something that is fun for you instead of trying to change everything about the place you're in to suit what YOU think is fun.

 

You're like the vocal minority that ruined modern comics. You decide since a bunch of other people are enjoying something, but it isn't all about you and what you want, that you'll force everything to change until things are unrecognizable.

 

So yeah, I'm going to call out that BS for what it is. It's narcissism masquerading as concern. It's people that want everything to revolve around them and their own interests, so they manipulate until they get what they want...of course by that time everyone that liked things the way they were has been chased off, shouted down or cancelled.  And pretty soon the whole system collapses, because what was good about it has been warped into unrecognizability, and the people that made it good in the first place are gone, and all that are left are the narcissists trying to get everyone's to fall at their feet.

 

The game does not need to be balanced around team play. It's perfectly find as a game that can be 99% soloable and with the \re being some elements that require a team. Just because Everquest made the game a hardcore grind with certain "essential" classes does not mean that mold has to define every multiplayer game. There are plenty that do though, so rather than try to twist this into one of those, why not just go play one?

[BitCook]

1 minute ago, macskull said:

There's not, though. If you eliminate Fiery Aura Brutes (for reasons that have been covered several times in this thread) there's a pretty reasonable curve in the "which ATs get played more" graph. If the game were only about DPS and not about support you'd see all the DPS ATs concentrated at the top - but you don't. Stalkers, which are arguably the highest-damage melee AT, are the least-played non-epic AT. Sentinels are only slightly above that. Controllers, which are probably the lowest-damage support AT, are the second-most popular AT at level 50. There's a pretty big difference between what people on the forums and the Discord server say are happening in the game and what is actually happening in the game.

There is some truth there.

Thankfully the game is easy enough that even subpar damage dealers can be played or any AT because you like it.  However, that does not mean it's balanced.  Also, the "groupthink" is that buffs/debuffs are really valuable.  That was the case perhaps early in the game and maybe even up to a few episodes before it closed.  I've laid out why I don't think that's the case any more.  Just like I've laid out why I don't think control powers are really all that useful except solo/small teams.  I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but I do think I've at least given why I think it's the case instead of just stamping my feet and demanding anything.