Game Balance & The Endgame

[ABlueThingy]

4 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

Not true at all.  Use AE to create Hard Mode content if you don't feel the current content is at the limits you want.  Anyone can do it and it has been proven to work.  Instead people just want to nerf / rebalance instead of owning their own game experience.

Being able to make harder content doesn't address my point.  Some powersets are just not able to compete at that level no matter how skilled the player or how many IO bonuses they stack. If your only answers are "Don't change anything, they just have to deal with being sub-par" or "Just buff the under preforming sets" you're missing the problem I'm trying to articulate which is:  "There is no higher heights you can buff these sets to that will improve them relative to one another"

 

 

6 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

Any character in this game can be powerful with the right build.  Some will be more powerful than others, but so what?  Superman is much more powerful than Spider-Man who is more powerful  than Batman.  You are going to have power tiers.  Everyone should embrace it and own their game experience.  Nothing could be more boring than having every AT at the same level of effectiveness.

When you say it would be boring to have ATs at the same level of effectiveness do you mean some ATs should be more effective OVERALL?  Or that it would be boring if all ATs were at the same level of effectiveness for EVERYTHING?

 

Those are very different and I'm aiming for one but not the other.  I want the sets/ATs to be good at different things.  Protecting, aggro management, durability, control, damage, etc.  There's lots of types of roles.  But right now, if you bring enough pure burst AoE damage and get your personal def above the soft cap?  You're set.  Effectively you can be SO effective at damage that you render the other stats meaningless.  That's the problem I have.  Incarnate buffs and IO set bonuses effectively negate a lot of powerset's usefulness.

 

To use your example of comic book super heroes.  Superman is physically stronger than those heroes, yes.  But Superman still teams with Batman because he brings SOMETHING to the team.  Right now, in this game, there are teams with several Supermans just eye-nuking whole groups faster than batman can run to catch up.  Spiderman sometimes manages to get off some webbing but like... why? A Superman is just going to nuke them in a moment anyway.  And all the Supermens have soft capped def and huge resistances so they're not even worried about getting hit.

 

If all the batmans and spidermans left the team, would the Supermans even notice?  It wouldn't change their DPS or put them at more risk of taking damage.

 

6 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

Guess what?  Once you rebalance there will absolutely be an AT that is at a higher tier and will then need to be rebalanced. Rebalancing begets rebalancing and it is a no win situation for everyone.

 

Of course there will always be a "Best" in any given category, no one here has at any point denied that.  No one has even said that it's a bad thing. I want every AT and every set to EXCEL at something and I want what they excel at to be useful to a team at all levels.  Maybe some sets are better in some situations then others, that's fine.  That's great even.  But we have too many situations where some sets excel at nothing or at something useless.

 

The point of rebalancing is not to achieve perfection.  It is to bring things closer to perfection.  Even the Devs admitted in the first post that perfect parity is impossible.  I agree.  I still see the attempt as a worthy endevour

 

 

[xl8]

On 9/20/2020 at 2:19 PM, The Curator said:

reworking Titan Weapons, one of the most overperforming sets

I rolled a TW/Bio to see what the fuss was about. It "overperforms" at lower levels but at end game it's overshadowed by faster sets. I think it's actually perfectly balanced with cast and damage as is and I don't know anyone who has a problem with this. Why not just leave it alone?
 

On 9/20/2020 at 2:19 PM, The Curator said:

There are numerous issues right now, such as the interaction it has with different types of recharge bonuses and AoEs, which causes the system to be unintuitive (slotting for recharge can make a power… less good!) in some areas and not well balanced in other areas (many procs are very strong in AoEs and very weak in single targets). 

This is precisely what makes it fun. Granted many have issue with this, but its a unique system that offers a playability challenge in itself. Anything that diverges away from a systemic pattern is welcome.

Why not just leave it alone?

 

On 9/20/2020 at 2:19 PM, The Curator said:

We’re also looking at other areas long-term, such as the impact that Incarnate abilities have on non-Incarnate content

If you're talking non-exemped content, okay. Otherwise, no issue here.

 

The two most requested additions have always been end game content and additional powersets/archetypes. All other "tweaks" are just noise. While I appreciate the attention detail and care with which the changes are being made, I think the current proposed changes are underwhelming and in some cases totally uncalled for. Yes, each powerset should have a strength that outsthines others, but should they all be created equal. Absolutely not. And finding ways of overcoming this is part of the fun.
My arch/ninj blaster is bad on paper and it challenges me to be a better player. That's exactly how I (and most others) want it to be.

 

A far superior way of tackling this issue would be to introduce a rock, scissors, paper system. Obviously not with 3 attributes, but with a circular ranking that leverages each "element" over another- fire beats ice, but is vulnerable to water and so on.

 

I'm not desperate to rush over to Thunderspy or We have cake, but introducing a type like the Synergist, that was created by a singular user with care and attention, is a much more welcome change to play.

 

[xl8]

6 minutes ago, ABlueThingy said:

The point of rebalancing is not to achieve perfection.  It is to bring things closer to perfection.  Even the Devs admitted in the first post that perfect parity is impossible.  I agree.  I still see the attempt as a worthy endevour

Rebalancing the NPCs and reverting back nerfs like the ones made to Regen and Energy Melee would be a better idea.

[golstat2003]

1 hour ago, arcaneholocaust said:

Although you can pretty much have a team of anything nowadays, I definitely do not agree it was always this way. In the early days especially I remember an awful lot of waiting around for a tank or support. 
 

Now the only semblance of this I still see is maybe a brief mention of “Think we’re ok with a sentinel as tank this TF? *yups all around*”

 

On another note, the tiny minority actually asserting that no nerfs should ever occur and that that’s somehow a sustainable position sounds awfully thoughtless to me.

Nerfs and buffs should always be on the table. But they should be targetted and from a balance perspective based on what the devs see. Not some one's "feeling" of their individual powerset not being needed as much on teams today as back in the so-called "old days".

[xl8]

1 minute ago, golstat2003 said:

they should be targetted and from a balance perspective based on what the devs see.

Have to disagree. This is what broke regen and energy melee. And it came from listening to part time PVP players.

[golstat2003]

14 minutes ago, Saikochoro said:

I have to agree. The only thing I like on my team better than a debuffer is a kinetics support. 
 

I would take a kinetics support over another dps/tank 10/10 times if I had the option. I would take a heavy debuffer over another dps/tank 10/10 times as well. I LOVE having supports on my teams even at +4/8 end game. 

Yeah I'm not getting the sentiment at all that support sets are less wanted on HC. 

[golstat2003]

2 minutes ago, xl8 said:

Have to disagree. This is what broke regen and energy melee. And it came from listening to part time PVP players.

That's only telling part of the story. But others can dispute that, I'm leaving that alone for now.

 

I'd trust the devs over the players on the forums. This thread alone shows there is no consensus on where the difficulty of the game should be.

 

When I start seeing things on the forums like "debuffers are less wanted/powerful nowadays" is when I start to not take the opinions of the forums in general as a balance point. 

 

Forum feedback should be read and listened to . . . but only to a point.

 

[KeepDistance]

On 9/24/2020 at 12:34 PM, BitCook said:

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.

10% speedup is 10% speedup, regardless of how much time it takes to clear a particular enemy. If the support set is giving 10% speedup all the time, then the raw clear speed for a particular mob doesn't matter. I think what's leading the argument astray is confusing proportional and raw speedup values.

 

I think this is the real crux of your argument:

Quote

 

When clear speed starts getting to the time it takes to cast a buff, there is no point in casting it.

 

I agree with this assuming you mean debuffs (for buffs, the buff goes with the player not the spawn). In the hypothetical case of the mob being dead before the debuff is fired, there isn't a 10% speedup - it's closer to 0%. The speedup is linear only in the difference between raw (un-debuffed) clear speed and cast time. It's that nonlinearity that's important.

[ShardWarrior]

9 minutes ago, xl8 said:

I rolled a TW/Bio to see what the fuss was about. It "overperforms" at lower levels but at end game it's overshadowed by faster sets. I think it's actually perfectly balanced with cast and damage as is and I don't know anyone who has a problem with this. Why not just leave it alone?

Same experience for me.  I mean, it is a fun set to play at 50 but I honestly do not see what all the fuss is about.  Even at lower levels it is not as good as faster sets in my opinion. 

[golstat2003]

3 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Same experience for me.  I mean, it is a fun set to play at 50 but I honestly do not see what all the fuss is about.  Even at lower levels it is not as good as faster sets in my opinion. 

At lower levels it's actually one of the most painful sets to level. And the momentum mechanic is absolute TRASH. Glad it's getting updated soon.

 

EDIT: To be clear I couldn't care less how much damage TW does, mine is shelved as playing her feels like I'm moving in molasses, especially after playing faster weapon-based sets.

Edited September 25, 2020 by golstat2003

[KeepDistance]

Just now, ShardWarrior said:

Same experience for me.  I mean, it is a fun set to play at 50 but I honestly do not see what all the fuss is about.  Even at lower levels it is not as good as faster sets in my opinion. 

I have a TW tank and I feel the same. I have been wondering if there is some trick to managing momentum that other players know about and I don't, that would somehow transform the set into an overperforming one. Or, it might be the difference between tanks and scrappers. My only other tank is War Mace which according to other posts is also overpowered...

[Ralathar44]

3 hours ago, Ukase said:

If we really want to test a set of primaries -we cannot only test them at the end game. Too many players never get there. We need to test them at level 12, 22, 35, 41 & 50 vs various npc factions, solo and teamed. 

I could be wrong about this - but I don't think I am. Determining one AT/powerset to be "OP" in a farm, ergo it should be nerfed, is just silly. What about the player that doesn't PL to 50 and takes them up through Gold and switches alignments willy-nilly after level 20? Every AT has growing pains at some point in the leveling path. It's probably part of the reason so many like to PL to 50 - to skip the discomfort. But before we can think about improving or nerfing any sets, we need the full picture. And that means playing the powerset/AT combo all the way through to 50 to get a hopefully more clear picture of what's really going on. 

Just my opinion, I could be wrong. (and no - I have no desire to roll all the AT/Combos necessary to see what's really going on - that would be a huge undertaking. I don't mind testing out a couple..but even still, that's a lot!

The vast majority of sets are i pretty good shape up until level 30ish or so.  Even TA, which is a late bloomer that needs alot of recharge and powers to really start helping much, still has flash/glue/poison arrow + ice arrow to make a difference + disruption/acid so it performs well mid level after being a bit weak low level.  Oil Slick Arrow is where TA peaked on live and then maintained that peak...but thanks to the increased power level of all your team mates on HC Oil Slick Arrow is basically when you start to drop off hard.  You get a few levels of feeling good with your new toy but then as you get higher and higher level from there teams get safer and safer and safe until you feel like it'd be better if you were on basically anything else.

- Most melee (stalker may be an exception) has a steadily rising power arc as they level.  They peak and dip a little at various times but on the whole it's a rising arc of power from 1-50. 
- Blasters and Sentinels follow a similar trajectory. 
- Widow/Soldier also follows this trajectory with growing safety, damage dealing power, and leadership buffs.
- Controllers bsaed around damage (fire/illu kin/rad) follow a similar trajectory
- Controllrs based around support/CC peak around 32 and then fall off significantly by 50 due to increasing team safety. 
- MMs follow a similar peak and decline due to the way they interact with level differentials with their pets combined with the fact half of their set is often supportive (to keep their pets alive)
- Defenders with sets significantly based around survivability (force field, Trick Arrow, Dark Miasma) are quite strong early game (with exception of TA), still pretty strong mid game, and fall off hard late game. 
- Defenders with sets significantly based around debuffs that have moderate to long cooldowns (20s+ even after 1/3rd base recharge) falll of hard late game even if those debuffs are damage increasers.  Kill speed just increases so much that the uptime on debuffs becomes low.  Usually around 50% uptime or less.  This is due to mobs dying within 10 seconds or less.  The more damage you have (blaster nukes and incarnate nukes make a HUGE impact here due to how quickly they kill a group) the more underneath 50% your uptime is.
- Dominators I honestly don't play enough to high level to know. 
- Kheldians I honestly don't play enough to high level to know.

Edited September 25, 2020 by Ralathar44

[Wavicle]

1 hour ago, ZacKing said:

Yeah man that's called socializing and being in an MMO and it works.  Nerfing everyone to make everyone the same isn't a solution that suits everyone.  options are.

Just telling people to accept that their power set isn’t capable of performing at nearly the same level as others also isn’t solution.

[golstat2003]

4 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

- Dominators I honestly don't play enough to high level to know. 
- Kheldians I honestly don't play enough to high level to know.

Doms are godly. Some of them can farm better than Fire Farmers. And we all know what IOs lead to for those who focus on recharge for doms. lol

 

Kheldians can be pretty good, but they do need some help in some areas. IOs and Incarnates have helped some holes for them. A few targetted buffs would help them more.

Edited September 25, 2020 by golstat2003

[Wavicle]

26 minutes ago, ABlueThingy said:

Being able to make harder content doesn't address my point.  Some powersets are just not able to compete at that level no matter how skilled the player or how many IO bonuses they stack. If your only answers are "Don't change anything, they just have to deal with being sub-par" or "Just buff the under preforming sets" you're missing the problem I'm trying to articulate which is:  "There is no higher heights you can buff these sets to that will improve them relative to one another"

 

 

When you say it would be boring to have ATs at the same level of effectiveness do you mean some ATs should be more effective OVERALL?  Or that it would be boring if all ATs were at the same level of effectiveness for EVERYTHING?

 

Those are very different and I'm aiming for one but not the other.  I want the sets/ATs to be good at different things.  Protecting, aggro management, durability, control, damage, etc.  There's lots of types of roles.  But right now, if you bring enough pure burst AoE damage and get your personal def above the soft cap?  You're set.  Effectively you can be SO effective at damage that you render the other stats meaningless.  That's the problem I have.  Incarnate buffs and IO set bonuses effectively negate a lot of powerset's usefulness.

 

To use your example of comic book super heroes.  Superman is physically stronger than those heroes, yes.  But Superman still teams with Batman because he brings SOMETHING to the team.  Right now, in this game, there are teams with several Supermans just eye-nuking whole groups faster than batman can run to catch up.  Spiderman sometimes manages to get off some webbing but like... why? A Superman is just going to nuke them in a moment anyway.  And all the Supermens have soft capped def and huge resistances so they're not even worried about getting hit.

 

If all the batmans and spidermans left the team, would the Supermans even notice?  It wouldn't change their DPS or put them at more risk of taking damage.

 

 

Of course there will always be a "Best" in any given category, no one here has at any point denied that.  No one has even said that it's a bad thing. I want every AT and every set to EXCEL at something and I want what they excel at to be useful to a team at all levels.  Maybe some sets are better in some situations then others, that's fine.  That's great even.  But we have too many situations where some sets excel at nothing or at something useless.

 

The point of rebalancing is not to achieve perfection.  It is to bring things closer to perfection.  Even the Devs admitted in the first post that perfect parity is impossible.  I agree.  I still see the attempt as a worthy endevour

 

 

This is great. Game balance is important for the same reason why Justice League sucked.

[Bionic_Flea]

On 9/20/2020 at 2:19 PM, The Curator said:

Hey all,

 

Before we continue, a caveat: Some of the changes and plans mentioned below are either very early in development or still purely conceptual. Some of them will likely not make the cut and either change greatly or be scrapped entirely.

 

Since Homecoming launched there’s been a few questions and concerns about why we’re making certain balance changes, so with Page 6 just around the corner we thought it would make sense to explain our overarching goals in this area.

 

Expanding the end-game and creating more end-game content was an incredibly popular request in the A Question from The Homecoming Team thread, and is something that we are very interested in pursuing. However in order to be able to do that and for it actually work for everyone across the board, we need to clear up some of the existing balance issues in the game - both with specific powersets, whole ATs, and in more general areas.

 

 

The best way to describe the current state of balance in the endgame is probably unfinished. The game closed down mid-way through the Incarnate system being developed, and before it had been through any significant post-release balance passes. In addition, the impact it had on the rest of the game hadn’t yet been given much consideration.

 

Our overarching goal is to have every powerset / AT be viable and have a place in the game. Obviously, achieving this goal perfectly isn’t actually possible, so our true aim is to get as close to that bar as we are able to. In addition, we want your choices to matter. Currently there’s a large amount of homogenization at the endgame and many of the individual choices that you make for your character don’t have much of an impact, and for some decisions a few options are vastly stronger than anything else.

 

Powersets & ATs
This is where most of the balancing work has been done so far, and where a lot of work in the immediate future will also be happening. The primary goal with these changes is to ensure everything sits in a healthy medium, with every powerset being a valid pick and valuable in different circumstances. 

 

This means some sets will be buffed, and yes, some sets will be nerfed. However, we feel there are definitely more underperforming sets than there are overperforming ones - so expect to see more buffs than nerfs. There’s also a lot of sets to get through, so it may take a while for us to get to your favourite.

 

To date, we’ve looked at Tankers, Dominators, Snipe powers and a few individual powersets. In the near future we’re going to be rolling out improvements to Energy Melee, Trick Arrow and Blaster secondary sets, whilst also reworking Titan Weapons, one of the most overperforming sets.

 

 

Bringing these overperforming sets down to a healthy level is important in ensuring those key goals stated above are met. When one set is able to outdamage every other set in almost every circumstance, it causes those other sets to be less viable choices, and also makes it impractical for us to begin work on the end game - do we balance it around Titan Weapons or Trick Arrow?

 

The answer is neither, of course. We want to balance around that healthy medium, but we’re not quite there yet.

 

Procs & PPM
Something we’ve recently started looking at is procs. We’re only scratching the surface here, but our goals are similar to that with powersets: Bringing each option towards a happy medium. One big topic that needs looking at specifically is PPM. This system was still in beta when the game shut down, so it never really graduated properly to the live servers, and never received any follow-up balance passes.

 

There are numerous issues right now, such as the interaction it has with different types of recharge bonuses and AoEs, which causes the system to be unintuitive (slotting for recharge can make a power… less good!) in some areas and not well balanced in other areas (many procs are very strong in AoEs and very weak in single targets). 

 

Along with improving general game balance there’s a secondary benefit to cleaning up PPM and procs: it will allow us to continue building new enhancement sets with new and unique procs and set bonuses.

 

We’ve got no firm plans to discuss just yet, but it is a key area we will be looking at in the future.

 

Lastly...
We’re also looking at other areas long-term, such as the impact that Incarnate abilities have on non-Incarnate content, Incarnate crafting, how +special buffs interact with long duration +def powers, and improving the enhancement system below level 50. You'll hear more about these as we start exploring them in the future.

 

And that’s all for today. We hope the above has shed some light on why we’ve been making the changes that we’ve been making.

 

Hi!  I forgot what we were talking about so I quoted it here to remind me.

 

The generally stated goal of having every AT and powerset have a worthy role sounds good to me.  I understand the desire to have some sort of balance.  I just hope we don't play a never ending game of nerfing one thing and buffing another, just to come back again in the future to nerf the next king of the hill and push the next bottom of the barrel closer to the top. 

 

I don't make as many proc monsters as some, but I am worried about what may become of procs.  I would suggest some kind of diminishing returns such that one or two procs are essentially left as is but each additional proc after that would have a reduction of either damage or chance.

[Ralathar44]

1 hour ago, Grouchybeast said:

The blaster love actually came initially from the devs on live, not HC.  Most of the blaster changes, like non-crashing nukes, sustains and the core of the snipe changes were in I24 and about to go live when the game shut down was announced.  IIRC they were the result of data-mining by the devs that showed blasters were one of the ATs most frequently abandoned as players levelled them up.

As someone who works in game QA, changes that are not live are subject to change at any time including complete removal.  I've seen many things pulled player will never know about.  Heck alot of changes that DO go live get significantly changed and sometimes removed.  All that data mining means is that they were thinking about it and prolly willing to test it out.  We have no idea what the final state would have looked like.  Maybe it would have been just like now on HC, maybe they would have been reverted completely, more likely it'd be somewhere in the middle.  But it could also be like Starcraft Ghosts...an entire game just completely killed despite so much of it existing.

I also do notice how you phrased "the core of the snipe changes".  That's a pretty loaded phrase.   If I added 1 pet to both T1 and T2 MM minions I could then make a change that also added an additional T3 pet and say that the core of the MM changes were already present...yet obviously a rather severe differential in the implementation has occurred.


I don't say this to argue you, but it's an important detail to note.  I don't personally mind any of the changes mentioned.  And I don't know if Blasters are too strong or not currently, I need more time playing.  But if I was to come tot that conclusion it wouldn't be because any 1 change was bad but rather that all of them, combined with the IO availability (the proverbial elephant in the room) was too much.

Edited September 25, 2020 by Ralathar44

[golstat2003]

4 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

As someone who works in game QA, changes that are not live are subject to change at any time including complete removal.  I've seen many things pulled player will never know about.  Heck alot of changes that DO go live get significantly changed and sometimes removed.  All that data mining means is that they were thinking about it and prolly willing to test it out.  We have no idea what the final state would have looked like.  Maybe it would have been just like now on HC, maybe they would have been reverted completely, more likely it'd be somewhere in the middle.  But it could also be like Starcraft Ghosts...an entire game just completely killed despite so much of it existing.

I also do notice how you phrased "the core of the snipe changes".  That's a pretty loaded phrase.   If I added 1 pet to both T1 and T2 MM minions I could then make a change that also added an additional T3 pet and say that the core of the MM changes were already present...yet obviously a rather severe differential in the implementation has occurred.


I don't say this to argue you, but it's an important detail to note.  I don't personally mind any of the changes mentioned.  And I don't know if Blasters are too strong or not currently, I need more time playing.  But if I was to come tot that conclusion it wouldn't be because any 1 change was bad but rather that all of them, combined with the IO availability (the proverbial elephant in the room) was too much.

We're IOs waaay before the blaster changes though? And devs still datamind that they they underperformed? My memory may be off on that. Some others who remember can chime in. It's been a while.

[ABlueThingy]

19 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

how about doing what many people have suggested already and creating harder end game level content that is made for incarnates?  there's already a shit ton of content for pre-50 to do. 

Like I said, that wouldn't solve the issue.  If you add harder content but the power disparity that exists still remains... it won't make the other powerset combos more desirable.  It just means instead of bringing in 4 Blasters and winning you'd have to bring 7 Blasters and a Def.  Once you hit that "Can obliterate everyone in one or two seconds" level you're done.  You don't need anyone else.  The only way to fix that is to prevent players from being able to obliterate foes in one or two seconds.

 

You can either build a huge elaborate story arc and maybe some new Tasks forces. You can design model, program, animate and balance an entire new and unique villain group or two, maybe some upgraded versions of existing groups. And give them un-debuffable resistance bonuses or maybe health gating so you can only do 1/3rd of their health in one shot.  That would make them harder for sure.  Or just give them something like 6x the health.

 

Even if that somehow fixes the issue I'm talking about(and I don't think it will for the reasons I outlined above) it doesn't fix it for the other 99% of content.  Just the new stuff.

 

To fix the issue there you're still going to have to nerf 'em. Which would make all that new content too hard(Because you based it around the most insanely powerful players who you have now nerfed) so you'll have to rebalance that again too.

 

Or before you go spending the huge effort of building a new endgame... you make sure that everyone is on the same footing.

 

 

 

21 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

PUGs are a different animal man.  If you're a rookie getting tossed into the game with a team full of pros, what do you expect?  this is why you form groups

with others that have the same style of play. 

I'm not talking about rookies.  I stated that pretty clearly I think?  Some powersets, no matter how skilled the player is or how well built their build are just never going to be useful to a team build using the "right" sets.

 

 

41 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

  I know it's hard to refute facts, but it's a fact people are are different.  people have different skill levels, that's reality.  has nothing to do with anyone being stupid or incapable, it's just real life.  again I'd love to play in the NBA, but I'm not even close to being good enough to cut it.  Should players like LeBron James or Michael Jordan have to dial it back to make me feel useful?  Or should we all be playing in a different league?

Do you believe that some powersets and archetypes are "Rookies" or otherwise inferior to other "Professional" sets?   Unless I'm mistaken everyone has been working under the assumption that this is a skill-neutral discussion.  We're talking about the sets themselves, the raw math and balance behind it.  Obviously individual skill will change the outcome.  So you have to assume two equally matched players. 

 

If you assume all the players are equally skilled does your argument still hold?  What would happen if Lebron's scores counted for ten times as much as Jordan even though they're equally skilled?

 

Perhaps 10x is an overstatement but there are powerset combos in this game that contribute far, far, less to a fully optimized and skilled team.  No matter who is driving them.

 

 

 

 

25 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

 There's no strawman.

👇

38 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

You're advocating for everyone to play the same and that's a pipe dream fantasy because no one ever will be the same.   nerfing everyone to be exactly alike is boring and doesn't solve anything.  allowing people the options to play to the best of their ability does. 

WIth no malice I want to point out, this is a strawman argument.  No one has said they want to nerf everyone into being exactly alike. No one is arguing that everyone has to play the same.   When you say that someone is you are "Creating a strawman argument" a kind of fallacious version of a person's argument that is simpler or weaker.  In this case saying someone is arguing for nerfing everyone to be exactly alike.  No one has said that and no one would agree with that argument.  This makes the argument very weak, rhetorically, and easy to "knock down."

 

Hence, "Strawman."  A man made of straw doesn't fight back.  It's like if you whipped up a straw copy of... lets say Steve and put Steve's face on it.  Then you beat the straw man up and said "See, this proves Steve's kung-fu is weak" when in reality the strawman does not represent Steve's actual kung-fu prowess and to determine that you'd have to actually fight the real Steve.

 

Steve is a ween-ass tho and his Wilting Lotus style is like that of a teething child, grasping futility to calm a sore toothless mouth. If Steve wishes to prove otherwise he will meet me atop the white mountain three moons hence.

 

 

 

 

 

[Wavicle]

Just now, ShardWarrior said:

This is not true.  I can introduce you to a whole host of players who have at least 1 of every AT at 50 and are all viable on any team. 

Leaving Sentinels aside, we’re talking about power sets, not ATs, for the most part.

[Ralathar44]

20 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

That's only telling part of the story. But others can dispute that, I'm leaving that alone for now.

 

I'd trust the devs over the players on the forums. This thread alone shows there is no consensus on where the difficulty of the game should be.

 

When I start seeing things on the forums like "debuffers are less wanted/powerful nowadays" is when I start to not take the opinions of the forums in general as a balance point. 

 

Forum feedback should be read and listened to . . . but only to a point.

 

Spot on.  My job here is to give honest feedback from my point of view based on the testing I do.  I play almost everything significantly, and those I do not feel I have enough experience with I've clearly labeled that....this being blasters (on a balance/imbalanced level), as well as dominators and kheldians across the board.


It is the job of the devs to make the best decisions possible based on all our feedback, their own metrics, and their own vision to serve the future health of the game.  Nobody is precisely wrong in wanting their version of the game.  But obviously there are different versions of the game people want.  Some folks want it to be near unloseable in the normal content run, some want a challenge, some want a compromise in between.  Some want to feel like all powerful gods and damn everyone else...go away and do something else if you don't like me being so strong, some want a game whee everyone feels roughly (+/- 15%) equally useful, and a few crazies out there even like being underpowered.

All of those are valid opinions.

[ShardWarrior]

5 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

Leaving Sentinels aside, we’re talking about power sets, not ATs, for the most part.

The same applies.  I can introduce you to several people who will make any AT/power set combo viable and fun to play.

[ZacKing]

7 minutes ago, ABlueThingy said:

No one has said they want to nerf everyone into being exactly alike. No one is arguing that everyone has to play the same.

Except there are people suggesting that.  Good try though.

[Ralathar44]

26 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

We're IOs waaay before the blaster changes though? And devs still datamind that they they underperformed? My memory may be off on that. Some others who remember can chime in. It's been a while.

IOs were definitely waaaayy before the theoretical blaster changes.  However IOs were incredibly difficult to obtain compared to HC today.  I played alot more time on live and was running in mainly common IOs with a few franken sets being on my most played characters.  I've been back to HC for about 3 months now and while I've played ALOT (prolly too much lol) it's no more than I used to and all my level 25 characters are running franken sets the moment they hit 25.  The difference in ease of acquisition was night and day.  I don't know what changes HC made but I can find and afford set IOs infintiely easier than I did on live even having to build myself back up from scratch again.

It was actually rare for me to run into non-tank/brute/occassional scrapper who could eat +3/8 aggro much less +4/8.  On HC today "squishies" do it all the time.  I still remember a Lizard man Incarnate Controller (fire/kin) being able to solo +2/8 without any risk and getting upset if the difficulty went over that because he'd actually start dying 😛.  He was temperamental but on my friends list.  He was one of the more powerful squishies at the time, im not saying there were not squishies more powerful than him but he was more powerful by a large margin than the vast majority of controllers his level.  Which is ironically why I kept him on my friends list.  He liked having an excuse to run missions and show off and I liked having the ability to gain a few levels from time to time on struggling toons looking to hit key powers.

Edited September 25, 2020 by Ralathar44

[ScarySai]

25 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

This is not true.  I can introduce you to a whole host of players who have at least 1 of every AT at 50 and are all viable on any team. 

I should host a build challenge where people intentionally make a useless character, it's a lot harder than some people here seem to understand.

 

Mercs are the closest thing that come to mind.

Edited September 25, 2020 by ScarySai