Game Balance & The Endgame

[Vanden]

2 minutes ago, Noyjitat said:

Why is it short sighted because I won't keep quiet and accept every nerf and just be glad that I can play here? So what am I supposed to do when every power I like is nerfed and useless and when everyone I like playing with quits? Unlike you I'm not going to blindly accept change without voicing my opinion.

Because they literally explained why balance is important in the announcement, and you still come out swinging with the "no nerfs" rhetoric (and made it a double-whammy with the tired old strategy of trying to dictate where development time is spent).

[Super Atom]

Just now, FUBARczar said:

I hope that Energy melee at the very least get's the mechanic that Dominators have.  

 

And blaster secondary sets?  hmm if only Dark and Elec sustain powers weren't clicks.  Am I the only one who feels that way?  

im responding just to like a post twice

[Neiska]

3 minutes ago, Noyjitat said:

Why is it short sighted because I won't keep quiet and accept every nerf and just be glad that I can play here? So what am I supposed to do when every power I like is nerfed and useless and when everyone I like playing with quits? Unlike you I'm not going to blindly accept change without voicing my opinion.

If I may make a suggestion @Noyjitat, "how" you say something is just as important as "what" you say. You might try to rephrase your opinion to be more constructive. Post hows, whens, and whys. Provide examples, and so on. Not just "This sucks and you guys suck omg this game sucks" is hardly anything to take as constructive. If you want a developer to consider your comments earnestly, you might want to give them something to stand on, metaphorically speaking. No one is saying you cant voice your opinion, I just think how you are phrasing it isn't likely to get any desired result. Conduct goes a long way as far as feedback and criticism goes.

 

Best wishes.

[zenblack]

8 minutes ago, LQT said:

As everyone else said fire does nothing but damage. Every set has a secondary effect and for fire it's the DoT. This can actually put fire at weaker position as there are no IO sets that exist for this mechanic. Ice powers can slot slow IOs, Dark powers can slow Tohit debuff IOs, etc. Fire doesn't get that choice. It's just damage IO, power type IOs, and generics.

This doesn't matter for the most part. As a Blaster you have enough places to proc in Fire on the powers that do the heavy hitting that it drastically outpaces all other sets but Ice on the ST (Nowhere on the AOE because Ice is bad at AOE). As a Corruptor you have the same options. It's only on a Defender or (bleh) Sentinel that this comes into play a little, and for the Sent it's only because they are neutered of their snipes.

Edited September 21, 2020 by zenblack

[TC]

14 minutes ago, Xanatos said:

 

Please leave the T9s alone. They're essential (and balanced!) in PVP, and not needed in PVE.

 

If you're adamant about tweaking Overload/Elude/Kuji-In Retsu/Power Surge/Unstoppable, then all you need to do is lessen the crash. (Similar to how the blaster T9's had their crashes removed.)

 

They don't need reinventing. They don't need replacing. Please don't listen to the people with 1000+ posts in the suggestions forum who play the forums more than the game.

I was the one he was talking about and I have 1/5 your posts... so not sure what you're on about there. Also, as someone who gave up on PvP in this game after the botched "balancing" rework... PvP just needs to go back to working the same way as the rest of the game. The rework was a failure, almost the entire PvP community quit at that time and even though the old PvP system, aka the original game's gameplay, was unbalanced for PvP, it was fun. Now it's wacky as all hell and even HARDER to balance because there's two completely different systems. The way to solve both problems at the same time is to 1) revamp T9s and 2) revert the PvP rework entirely. There, problem solved, both aspects of the game behave the same, original way! PvP in this game is my most desired rework and all they need to do for it is revert the rework the devs put in place and get back to basics.

[FoulVileTerror]

@Noyjitat; I think you have some meaningful and important feedback to provide in your criticisms here.  But I agree with @Neiska:  The way you are expressing those criticisms right now is regrettably undermining them.

If you would like some assistance in formulating your ideas differently, I suspect there are some users here who would be happy to help work with you in private to editorialize a little and get the meaningful parts of your concerns fully articulated, while minimizing the negative impact.

[Super Atom]

1 minute ago, zenblack said:

This doesn't matter for the most part. As a Blaster you have enough places to proc in Fire on the powers that do the heavy hitting that it drastically outpaces all other sets but Ice on the ST (Nowhere on the AOE because Ice is bad at AOE). As a Corruptor you have the same options. It's only on a Defender or (bleh) Sentinel that this comes into play a little, and for the Sent it's only because they are neutered of their snipes.

With IO's you can get blizzard so low on recharge you can use it literally every mob. Sure it doesn't kill the mob in 2-3 seconds, but it does it in like 10 seconds. Still pretty quick, especially since I'm talking +4 not even level. Also, I don't think Fire out does every set in ST but it certainly isn't bad at it.

[FUBARczar]

1 hour ago, zenblack said:

This doesn't matter for the most part. As a Blaster you have enough places to proc in Fire on the powers that do the heavy hitting that it drastically outpaces all other sets but Ice on the ST (Nowhere on the AOE because Ice is bad at AOE). As a Corruptor you have the same options. It's only on a Defender or (bleh) Sentinel that this comes into play a little, and for the Sent it's only because they are neutered of their snipes.

huh?  Fire doesn't proc well compared to Ice, Dark, Water, etc. etc.

[zenblack]

Just now, Super Atom said:

With IO's you can get blizzard so low on recharge you can use it literally every mob. Sure it doesn't kill the mob in 2-3 seconds, but it does it in like 10 seconds. Still pretty quick, especially since I'm talking +4 not even level. Also, I don't think Fire out does every set in ST but it certainly isn't bad at it.

This is only for optimal damage/slotting. Blizzard is bad at doing damage comparatively to Inferno. Fire does outdo every set, by a large margin. You may or may not take my word on it, but I've tested it extensively.

[Ironblade]

4 hours ago, FoulVileTerror said:

A key reason I would like to have the underlying philosophies which the Team are operating under made public is so that the community can better address any detrimental assumptions or narrowed points of view.  Criticism in a vacuum is just conjecture, and that's not really helpful to anyone.  I don't doubt the team is doing what they believe is the correct decision.  It's just very, very difficult to address those beliefs when they're hidden.

Absolutely a good point.
BUT, I think a goodly portion of their perspective and philosophy is ingrained and even subconscious and I think it would be difficult for anyone to articulate these things clearly.

[Super Atom]

Just now, zenblack said:

This is only for optimal damage/slotting. Blizzard is bad at doing damage comparatively to Inferno. Fire does outdo every set, by a large margin. You may or may not take my word on it, but I've tested it extensively.

I'll take your word on it, but not with Blizzard. 1 power killing a +4/x8 group isn't bad, it's not instant like inferno but it doesn't need to be, since i can use blizzard in every group but inferno is about every other group. Granted. Fire doesn't need inferno to kill a group about as fast as blizzard.

[zenblack]

1 minute ago, FUBARczar said:

huh?  Fire doesn't proc well compared to Ice, Dark, Water, etc. etc.

You can fill the powers you need with procs and damage modifier so that the damage it is outputting is probably 25%+ any of those sets with the exception of Ice ST which is comparative.

[FoulVileTerror]

Absolutely, @Ironblade.

Which is all the more reason to bring it up to the forefront.

The more we shine a light on it, the more we -can- talk about it, and the more robust the language we can form to articulate the ideas that were previously just held as assumptions.

It's win-win-win-win!

[M3z]

3 things:

1. Just reduce ET animation cast time to its original cast time. I don't want energy assault changes or none of that. I doubt this set can compete with psi melee in ST even if we revert it completely to i12.

2. Are MMs gonna get any help soon or not? LMAO I get it that blasters are Leandro's favorite AT but cmon mercs have been god awful for more than a decade. And from what I've read a lot of MM players(NOT ALL) have to solo because they get excluded or cant compete in late game content(not saying it's not possible, there are just a lot of problems with this AT in general).

3. Can we get new arena maps? The community voted on them almost a year ago and we were told "they are easy to implement". If they aren't then that's fine. But if it doesn't take a coder that long to put 4 walls around a pre existing map and add 2 spawns then what's the hold up. This would be so huge for us, just having anywhere new to play. We've been playing on the same maps since pvp started basically.

 

I get it you guys are volunteers so obviously these are not demands and you can do whatever you want. But just wanted to throw these out here and let it be known what some of the concerns these communities have.

Edited September 21, 2020 by M3z

[Captain Yesterday]

Quote

 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.

Then proceeds to completely ignore the exact thing they recognize that people wanted, ignore all suggestions, and talk about all the changes NOBODY wanted. Hope you enjoy your dystopian empty servers, because this is how you get dystopian empty servers.

 

Quote

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.

Then proceeds to talk about MORE nerfs that nobody wanted. Stating that they must REDUCE the quality of life in gameplay and change the rules of fun so everybody plays in a muffled way according to their vision, so that "fun" can be had. And completely glosses over the players characters and time invested in them that will be completely ruined by the new changes.

 

The devs seem to be on a misery campaign to evacuate the servers, and/or make sure that any who remain on their servers are quietly suffering and miserable, playing mediocre heroes that have all  the feeling of slogging through molasses and fighting foes with whifflebats with every fight or it ain't "their approved version of fun."

 

Half the fun of COH is overcoming it's terrible limitations and and nerfs (i'm, looking at you endurance, hitting vs +4 mobs, and doing 1 point of pet damage vs. +4 unless you slot damage procs)

Overcoming is the fun. And the devs keep nerfing, it seems like they want to make overcoming  impossible!

 

How to fix the game in the way PEOPLE WANT (not dev want) with these steps.

1. Create new level 50 content - not just missions, but special tf and trials. Have special timed content/stories/etc.

    Effortlessly enhance said difficulty of said content by doing NO more than limiting all teams to a size of 4, and increasing the aggro cap to 22 or 32. Super mega blaster is going to wait for the tank.

2. Make some new powers first. There are a million ideas in these forums, and if you have to, steal from thunderspy and other servers - they passed you going 80 mph with all the new powers. And all your changes just seem to make people mad, leave, or suffer. That is a sign you are not looking  for players to actually have fun, and that you may indeed be looking to accomplish something else.

3. Don't nerf anything anymore - STOP NERFING STUFF. DON'T BRING ANYTHING DOWN! RAISE them UP to level them out with the others - WHO is it that decided video game development = NERFS? ruining stuff other people like? You are traveling the road of Bethesda. This is how you get empty servers. Why? The rules of a game are agreed, now that you have us invested in the game, you "change" the rules, and wonder why people balk? How would you like to wake up one day and you had to defecate out of your mouth and eat with your rectum? You'd have a REAL problem with that. Especially after all this time doing it the other way. Some people would never get used to it and complain forever. That's how some people who aren't you and your yes men feel. That's how beneficial your nerfs really are. Sure you'll have city of heroes. You'll have it all to yourself because people will leave. Leave titan weapons alone.

4. FIX the OLD JUNKY POWERS - every bad thing you know -

a. STEAL from thunderspy and fix mastermind pets with auto upgrades, raise all pets to the same level so that there attacks are NOT gentle massages and loving hugs of ill-intent. No-one will complain when pet damage jumps from 1 per hit, to an amazing 2 per hit. No one. Also, REMOVE Mercs redraw animation. If all you have is a gun, WHY do you keep putting it away?

b. Forcefield - rework, remove, or replace - personal forcefield, stasis bubble, repulsion bomb, force blast, etc - it's a set with 3 powers, 4 powers max.

c. Raise up/fix other under performing sets i didn't mention up to good levels

5. REDUCE animation times globally. If it its less than 1 second, reduce it by .30. If it is more that 1 second, cut it in 1/2. The "grand old oprah hand dance" from dark healing comes to mind about a too-long animation. It's many of the animations that make some sets unbearable, like stone or electrics "air molasses" jumping smash. Just silly.

6. INCREASE drawn weapon time. If all I have is a titan weapon, swords, or guns to attack - WHY do I keep putting them AWAY every 5 seconds if I know I am in a dangerous environment and going to need them? Why not increase that time to 30 seconds? I'm in a building full of carnies! I'd better keep this out, even if I'm not fighting atm!

7. Leave procs alone. Procs are the only way some of this game is bearable. It makes tanks do damage and MM pets tolerable - AND it is already BALANCED because you have to eschew set bonuses and other opportunities just to slot procs.

 

Nearly Effortless Global changes that make the game fun with the most minimal moves

1. Effortlessly enhance current gameplay by limiting team and tf size to 6. (you'll feel the difference)

2. Increase the Aggro cap to 20 or 32. Now super mega-charge ahead guy is going to wait for the tank, cause he can only nuke 16.

3. Give a global 25% endurance discount to all powers overall, or 100% boost to stamina inherent. The amount of super powered beings having asthma attacks after using their powers twice after having 5 toggles, and living on incarnate endurance recovery is too damn high!

   On every character I play, I have to 4 slot stamina with end and performance Io, then by lvl 27 have 3 slotted health - panacea, miracle, and numina's. If I don't its asthma attack town for me every 2 fights, especially brutes and tanks. That's not super!

4. Change the T9's away from garbage. Give them resistance debuffs, remove the crashes - not necessary. How about limiting MAX endurance for 30 seconds instead of and end loss or crash? You want my t9 to crash because superheroes should have strokes after exerting themselves? How about my guy just gets tuckered out instead? (1/2 max end for 30 seconds)

5. Open up the pool power sets to 5-6 choices, and you will start to get more builds that are concept and would play better in teams and  NOT MIN/MAXED def/res capped. Since I only have a few choices of how to fill the holes in old cheap powers, i'm gonna fill the holes first so I can have fun. No one wants to face plant every fight.

6. steal from other servers - Have I mentioned this? Allow people to pick freely the EXACT power they want from any power pool with NO pre-requisites - and you'll see a hole new life be breathed into the game.

7. New pool powers that fill the gaps. Tough mind. Quick on feet. Inexhaustible. Bullseye. Guns. MMA. Knives. Swords. Give us other ways to FIX the holes in powers that can be enhanced, and you'll see different builds, playstyles even.

8. Give people Real gadgets. Make real gun powers that are purchasable, and don't have the redraw - or make guys for sale with influence - and have no redraw.

9. I really appreciate the multi-buffs in the game, any way to make those last 10 mins?

 

Fun New Money Sinks - want to clear out that economy? I got you covered.

1 Guns and Knives and bats! Yes. The same as the free ones, but cost influence, no redraw before attack, and limited number of uses. Fixes controllers, slow levelers, and sucks down money.

2 Better Inspiration Vendors - Make a hot dog stand outside atlas that sells medium and large enhancements for 1000 and 10000, id buy em. Make one in PI that sells Large team and duals for 25000.

3 Make  Mission teleporter and TT unlimited purchasable with infl. make teleport 2 mil and tt 20 mil.

 

anyway I'm babbling, and I do not give permission to use this information to harm me in any way.

 

Edited September 21, 2020 by Captain Yesterday

[XaoGarrent]

4 hours ago, Seed22 said:

It's not. At all. All it does is damage, take that away and well..it sucks

The problem is most other things that blast sets do, they do so either so sparsely or so weakly that more damage ends up becoming the universally better option. Especially on the Blaster AT where damage is your primary goal, and your utility options aren't quite as good as say, a Corruptor.

 

You're not wrong, but if we're using most other power sets as a baseline, Fire Blast is still "overperforming," and has been for a long time, thus it needs a whack. I actually don't agree with this, personally, and consider the entire category of blast sets to have fundamental flaws in their versatility, but that's what strict adherence to hammer-the-nail balance would have you do. Probably along side giving a few other, newer sets a whack, too.

Edited September 21, 2020 by XaoGarrent

[Ruin Mage]

1 minute ago, Captain Yesterday said:

Then proceeds to completely ignore the exact thing they recognize that people wanted, ignore all suggestions, and talk about all the changes NOBODY wanted. Hope you enjoy your dystopian empty servers, because this is how you get dystopian empty servers.

jesus my dude, take a chill pill.

[Xanatos]

2 hours ago, TC said:

I was the one he was talking about and I have 1/5 your posts... so not sure what you're on about there. Also, as someone who gave up on PvP in this game after the botched "balancing" rework... PvP just needs to go back to working the same way as the rest of the game. The rework was a failure, almost the entire PvP community quit at that time and even though the old PvP system, aka the original game's gameplay, was unbalanced for PvP, it was fun. Now it's wacky as all hell and even HARDER to balance because there's two completely different systems. The way to solve both problems at the same time is to 1) revamp T9s and 2) revert the PvP rework entirely. There, problem solved, both aspects of the game behave the same, original way! PvP in this game is my most desired rework and all they need to do for it is revert the rework the devs put in place and get back to basics.

 

Whoah there buddy. Let's slow it down on the PVP ideas. If you don't PVP, please please please don't start suggesting stuff for it.

My dig was at the sort of thread you see all the time in the suggestions forum. They're always bad. But because people keep making them, they start getting traction.

 

Things like this:

 

 

Or this:

 

And a bunch of posts towards the end of this thread:

 

The forums are RIFE with people who play the forums, and not the games. It can lead to genuine problems.

 

If you disagree. Remember it was forum feedback that lead to Issue #13s PVP changes.

 

Anyway, didn't mean to get into anything here. Just wanted to drop in my perspective. Hope no feathers were ruffled. Mucho love to the Homecoming folks for all they do.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Xanatos

[FUBARczar]

1 hour ago, Super Atom said:

I'll take your word on it, but not with Blizzard. 1 power killing a +4/x8 group isn't bad, it's not instant like inferno but it doesn't need to be, since i can use blizzard in every group but inferno is about every other group. Granted. Fire doesn't need inferno to kill a group about as fast as blizzard.

 

1 hour ago, zenblack said:

You can fill the powers you need with procs and damage modifier so that the damage it is outputting is probably 25%+ any of those sets with the exception of Ice ST which is comparative.

 

Reality check out how the sets perform here: blaster primaries

Ice isn't as good as you are saying

 

[Noyjitat]

17 minutes ago, Neiska said:

If I may make a suggestion @Noyjitat, "how" you say something is just as important as "what" you say. You might try to rephrase your opinion to be more constructive. Post hows, whens, and whys. Provide examples, and so on. Not just "This sucks and you guys suck omg this game sucks" is hardly anything to take as constructive. If you want a developer to consider your comments earnestly, you might want to give them something to stand on, metaphorically speaking. No one is saying you cant voice your opinion, I just think how you are phrasing it isn't likely to get any desired result. Conduct goes a long way as far as feedback and criticism goes.

 

Best wishes.

I literally gave them hows, whens and whys of ways to challenge us without nerfing. I do this everytime they have more nerfs planned and instead they ignore it and do it anyway. Kinda like how you ignored it this time "Powers development should instead be going to giving us new powers or proliferating npcs powers, making new powers for incarnate and tf bosses to make them more challenging in hard mode trials. You could be giving us more difficulty options and those mentioned hard mode trials and that would give us the challenge we need instead of breaking everything."

[arcane]

1 hour ago, Noyjitat said:

The mess that's currently on closed beta is seriously disgusting.

Can you elaborate on what you know?

[zenblack]

2 minutes ago, FUBARczar said:

 

 

Reality check out how the sets perform here: blaster primaries

Ice isn't as good as you are saying

 

I don't need that thread to determine if it is or is not what it is. I've tested it myself. You can build an Ice and a Fire separately and see how well their ST performs.

Edited September 21, 2020 by zenblack

[Super Atom]

9 minutes ago, FUBARczar said:

 

 

Reality check out how the sets perform here: blaster primaries

Ice isn't as good as you are saying

 

It's...in the S tier? am i missing something S tier is good

[Neiska]

4 hours ago, Noyjitat said:

Making the same mistakes paragon made all development wasted on balancing, nerfing and dictating how others play instead of making new content, new powers, proliferating more powers to use. You guys never will learn.

 

2 hours ago, Noyjitat said:

Eventually it will only be the volunteers playing if you continue to break and destroy our characters with what you feel is balanced. Not every player posts on forums, facebook or goes to playtests and eventually they find something they were enjoying is now useless to play  and then another character, and another and another is made useless. At that point they come on here and complain and see it gets them no where because the volunteers have spoken so its law. Don't be surprised when they quit.

 

I was referring more to posts like these. Where there are no examples, numbers, or data to draw from. It comes off as a "My way or its wrong" sort of comment. If you want to help change things, think of it as a task to change their minds or opinion, which is entirely possible. I've seen it happen. But these are a bit passive aggressive. If I was a developer, I would read what you wrote and think "well they don't like it" and move onto the next post. If you feel that a change is wrong, then prove it. Post the math, show some data. Take some screenshots and run some statics. If you want change, then I'm afraid the burden of proof is on you. I do appreciate you are so passionate about the game, really, I do. But I don't think posts like these would likely change someone's mind.

 

I mean, put yourself in their shoes, and think about what sort of post or comment would make them stop and go "Hmm, did we overlook something?" They are people too, and people make mistakes. But being polite with data will go much further to make actual impacts on changes than posts about "You're destroying characters. Making people quit. You should spend your free volunteer time doing X, Y, Z."

 

Best wishes. 

[Bopper]

It's funny. After months of people clamoring for an update on what is in Page 6 and with just a small teaser and some forthcoming discussion on future plans, this thread shows proof once again why things are held close to the chest before releasing any information about possible changes. Way to go guys.