Game Balance & The Endgame

[WindDemon21]

On 9/22/2020 at 2:01 PM, parabola said:

Maybe if the interaction with defence buffs was reigned in it would leave space to boost it's interaction with other effects. It could then be a more worthwhile choice for a greater range of sets.

Also, except that for those other attributes as i've mentioned like heals if you need to use them, you need them NOW usually, and don't have time to click powerboost first in most cases etc. Also given it's long rech for a fairly short duration also being a key issue, is that it really only benefits boosting long duration buffs.

 

The only way to really still make it worth it if it were to not affect defense buffs (which please god don't), would be if it could also (which it should) buff regen, recovery, and resistance buffs (though i wouldn't expect resistance cause i know that's a huge coding mess). Or if it was instead an auto power (which the /energy manip blaster set also REALLY needs this to be auto/toggle) that passively boosted all your heals, endurance, holds etc. But having to click it for that short duration, is not conductive to any of it's uses outside of boosting long duration defense buffs.

[Parabola]

4 hours ago, Lockpick said:

Remember the complaint here is that the game content is to easy.

My complaint (if that's the right word) is predominantly around the teaming experience at high levels. Certain AT's and powersets within them feeling redundant as they struggle to get in on the action. The game difficulty is part of the equation as I think the assumption is that if the enemies lasted longer people would have more of a chance to make a difference, but I don't think it is the whole of the issue.

 

There is a big shift that happens between teaming prior to lv45 and after. It must be quite a shock for anyone experiencing it for the first time, I've been here for ages and I still find it jarring. All of a sudden any lv50's on the team get their incarnate powers and are facing enemies that con 1 lower to them than everyone else. This noticeably changes the team dynamic, and as many have noted can leave people wondering how much they are contributing.

 

Now of course a purpled out incarnate should be more powerful than a character still levelling to 50. They have put in the work to understand the game, make the inf and earned the veteran levels. But I feel there should be the room for a discussion about how wide that power gap should be, particularly in the light of how much easier it is to achieve that power on Homecoming. As I've said before the first thing that jumps out at me is the Alpha level shift in regular content being unnecessary and in my opinion actively detrimental to game balance.

 

I take the view that the core experience the game should be built and balanced around is the casual team game. I love soloing and highly value that this is a solo friendly MMO, but it is still an MMO and maybe one of the best for casual teaming at that. Anything that makes this core experience less fun should in my opinion be looked at closely and I'm happy to take a hit to the power level of my top solo performers if it will improve the team game overall. This is why I have particularly objected to accusations of selfishness, I am trying to take a collectivist view of the game and saying what I feel is best for the game as a whole.

 

And before we go there (again) I'm certainly not talking about wanting rigid trinity gameplay. There is a sliding scale with 'everyone is a tankmage' at one end and 'rigid trinity' at the other and I feel the needle just needs pulling back a touch from the tankmage end. A huge strength of this game has always been the interchangeability of AT's and not needing one or another in particular to complete a team, that shouldn't need to be sacrificed in order to allow every teammate to feel good about their contribution.

[ShardWarrior]

1 hour ago, BitCook said:

No one is spreading misinformation although lots of people are giving their opinions without bothering to give anything more than "I say so".

Please stick to arguing things that people actually ARE saying.  I agree the game was not balanced between ATs even then, but I do believe that the roles for each AT were better defined and more useful than now.  Each AT usually brought something needed and useful to a group and usually increased team killspeed, whether that was another Blaster, a Controller, or a Defender.  Sure, it was in different proportions because there are a lot of variables but now, that is not necessarily the case.

I should edit myself and say "Most people are not spreading misinformation" this has been a long thread and there have been some doozies.

Saying the game had better defined roles back in the day versus now is not accurate either.  I am routinely teaming with people who play the entire spectrum of ATs and power sets and everyone is bringing something to the table. 

[Ralathar44]

Yeah, the game being too easy is not the problem.  I enjoy Dynasty Warriors and that's not exactly a huge challenge.  I enjoy alot of games you cannot even fail.  I also enjoy Darkest Dungeon and that game hates when you win and does everything it can to prevent it :P.  All are valid and fun styles of game.

The problem is not the difficulty, the problem is that the way this game handles power scaling invalidates significant parts of support/control powersets at high end because everyone has outscaled the enemies in terms of survivability and damage but not in terms of support/control.  Damage/survivability scales UP to godlike levels meanwhile Support/control scales DOWN.  If we set the entire concept of difficulty aside for a moment if we handled all the ATs and powersets with a fair and even hand both support and control would also scale up just as much as damage/survivability do.  Everyone could still have their ability to solo +4/8 missions, but now controllers could fully lock down +4/8 missions and support could fully carry teams solo with their support (like half the AT's powersets can with their damage/survivability).   That would be even scaling of everyone.  It'd be easy yes, but it'd be equal treatment.

So if we're not worried about the game content being too easy just remove purple patch diminishing returns from control and debuffs and problem solved.  (or significantly reduce it for control and debuff).  That way everyone gets to feel like gods and not just a fraction of the sets.  Granted, i'm not advocating for buffs/debuffs and have made it clear i think support/control is in a good space in and of itself.  But if difficulty is not a concern at all that's your fix that nerfs nobody....and more or less finishes our transition back to pre-ED lol. (with the exception of aggro/aoe caps)

Edited September 27, 2020 by Ralathar44

[ABlueThingy]

1 hour ago, WindDemon21 said:

Also, except that for those other attributes as i've mentioned like heals if you need to use them, you need them NOW usually, and don't have time to click powerboost first in most cases etc. Also given it's long rech for a fairly short duration also being a key issue, is that it really only benefits boosting long duration buffs.

 

The only way to really still make it worth it if it were to not affect defense buffs (which please god don't), would be if it could also (which it should) buff regen, recovery, and resistance buffs (though i wouldn't expect resistance cause i know that's a huge coding mess). Or if it was instead an auto power (which the /energy manip blaster set also REALLY needs this to be auto/toggle) that passively boosted all your heals, endurance, holds etc. But having to click it for that short duration, is not conductive to any of it's uses outside of boosting long duration defense buffs.

I like this, this is more constructive.  It's not that people want to nerf Powerboost or make some sets worthless.  It's that some aspects have an outsized effect such that it's impacting more than one area.  In this case Powerboost kinda sucks for anything that's not boosting a long durration buff.  If you just made it not work on +def powers it would suck universally.

 

No one wants it to suck.  I personally want it to be more nuanced.

 

What if it was a toggle that drained a very small amount of end and did nothing.  But when you shut it off it gave you a powerboost effect based on how long you charged the toggle for and give it a super short recharge.  Deactivating a toggle costs you almost no time, I think?  That would be neat.  Just have +def accumulate slower then the other effects and tweak the numbers so it takes a full 60 seconds of running the toggle to get the +def to full.  But people who want to use it for heals or controls could cut it at 20 or 30 seconds for a big boost.

 

That way huge +rech won't overbalance it and there's a risk to trying to get the full +def boost. Someone could crash the toggle out and make you start over. But your reward is easily hitting the soft cap.

 

  That's a nerf but it opens up new styles of play.  People who metagame for maximum power can still get there.  Just keep the amount of time the toggle has to run to get the max +def around the cooldown of the power now.   Now you've halved the cooldown for people who just want the +special and it's otherwise normal for the +def.  Roughly.

 

Now I don't necessarily think we SHOULD do this but it's an idea.

 

 

49 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Saying the game had better defined roles back in the day versus now is not accurate either.  I am routinely teaming with people who play the entire spectrum of ATs and power sets and everyone is bringing something to the table. 

The anecdotal evidence of "I've never seen this issue" is not going to sway people when anyone can check the math and show it's trivially easy to make a team below 8 members that is so overpowered that there are whole suites of powesets that cannot meaningfully contribute to the team's success.  No matter how hard they try. Where if you replaced them with literally no one the team's clear times wouldn't change*.  They wouldn't die more often without them*, monsters wouldn't die more easily*.

 

There's lots of casual teams where this isn't as much of an issue, where people are not stuffed to the gills with power. But anyone can intentionally(or unintentionally) run a sub-optimal build and wind up with room for others to contribute. Not so at the maximum levels in the game. When you can max out your def solo, the guy who only gives +def isn't helping anymore.

 

*to within the margin of error.  Obviously if you land a blow then the damage must have done something to speed up it's death but it can be so little a difference that it falls inside the expected variance caused by random chance. ie, not meaningful.

[Naraka]

18 hours ago, Lockpick said:

 

If you want the game to be harder why not use the in game mechanics to make it harder?  I would have a lot more sympathy for the people saying the game is to easy if there weren't existing mechanics to make the game harder.  However, there are existing mechanics to make the game harder and the people that want to make the game harder are refusing to use them.  It's hard to feel sympathy for those people that want to make the game harder, which will also affect many players that do not believe the game is to easy or may believe it is easy, but like the game as is.

 

I am being serious. Please answer the question.  Why is it better to make the entire game harder as opposed to using the existing mechanics to make your play experience the hard mode you crave?

 

I generally respect your posts and builds, so I am genuinely interested in your response.

 

Firstly, how do you know they aren't using the in-game mechanics to make it harder?  If you know they aren't using said in-game mechanics, have you asked them why?  Or are you just throwing a blanket statement out to win the debate?

 

As for the in-game difficulty mechanics, I'm certain people take advantage of the +a/*y difficulty since it's pretty prevalent in the in-game info that points you to the NPCs that adjust it.  Things like flashback and self-nerfs for TFs can be something to utilize but there might be people who find such options are "not fun" because it's not challenging your build, just nuking it.  It's about the same as telling people to just build inherently inferior characters...again, it's removing an aspect of the game (character building) that certain people might find just as fun as putting those builds to the test.  Lastly, tailored teams is certainly the logical solution as you can get some challenge out of a smaller, close-knit team with the same goals but again, it has its drawbacks as well since being a social game, getting to meet, talk to and play with new people with new ideas and differing playstyles to adapt to can be its own joy as well.

 

So why not use existing mechanics to make your play experience the hard mode you crave?  Another form of difficulty is spontaneity.  Not knowing or dealing with the unexpected can be difficult but if you have to tailor your difficulty for it, from the players you team with to the content all the way down to how strong you're allowed to build your character removes a lot of that unknown (i.e. difficulty).  Why is it worse to add onto or shift the game to have some added difficulty overall?  The funny thing is, if such difficulty were to be implemented, we have all the tools to bring that content DOWN to the current level too.

 

18 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

How?  Am I somehow better than anyone else?  How did all the people in the various channels I belong to find like minded players?  I am absolutely not the only person who has done this. 

I find this argument amusing.  If this were directed at another group who had requirements like sporadic playtimes, unpredictable living arrangements, social anxieties, parental guidance or disabilities so telling them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and socialize, it would seem rather insensitive and dismissive.

 

Perhaps you should merely compromise that some people will not be able to work around some limitations for teaming and difficulty rather than continue to repeatedly beat the drum of "be a go-getter! Look at me, I did it!"  Your position isn't wholly untrue, it just might not be the solution that certain people want.  Arguing if they should accept that solution regardless is on you, however.

 

18 hours ago, Lockpick said:

Let's try to remember that we had old school CoH and the Live team set about making it easier because that was what the players wanted.  Now we have a much smaller player base with a much smaller team supporting it.  You don't have the scale to make the game harder for everyone because many people will get upset and leave.

 

Where!?  To me, it always seemed like the devs were more likely chasing after standard MMORPG progression but they had to make hurdles to get to it...but would also need to cut everyone at the knees before giving them bionic legs.  I never saw it as making CoH "easier".  They just wanted a vertical progression which was likely something NCSoft pushed and wanted monetized.  But yeah, I never saw it as making the game "easier"....in fact, quite the opposite.  Didn't Jack want to keep people down to 1Lt or 3minion level so they would require teaming?  ED and GDN happened to pave the way for IOs and eventually incarnate.  Difficulty scaling came in for AE.  Many nerfs happened to balance PvP and high-end builds.  

 

 

Previous quotes aside, a lot of this thread was difficult to read because...it almost seems like most making persistent arguments are doing so from an absolutist position.  Just because the devs might look at PB+Farsight doesn't mean they aren't going to buff support.  Just because they happen to be taking TW down a couple notches doesn't mean they won't buff other sets.  Just because people don't want to globally make the game harder doesn't mean they aren't going to look into other options for a new difficulty setting (that will ultimately end up being the norm because of run-away buffing).  While a lot of suggestions on their own have some good thoughts behind them, I the real solution is going to be taking pieces of a variety of ideas, regardless of if you like/agree with them or not.

 

[Naraka]

27 minutes ago, ABlueThingy said:

I like this, this is more constructive.  It's not that people want to nerf Powerboost or make some sets worthless.  It's that some aspects have an outsized effect such that it's impacting more than one area.  In this case Powerboost kinda sucks for anything that's not boosting a long durration buff.  If you just made it not work on +def powers it would suck universally.

 

No one wants it to suck.  I personally want it to be more nuanced.

 

What if it was a toggle that drained a very small amount of end and did nothing.  But when you shut it off it gave you a powerboost effect based on how long you charged the toggle for and give it a super short recharge.  Deactivating a toggle costs you almost no time, I think?  That would be neat.  Just have +def accumulate slower then the other effects and tweak the numbers so it takes a full 60 seconds of running the toggle to get the +def to full.  But people who want to use it for heals or controls could cut it at 20 or 30 seconds for a big boost.

 

That way huge +rech won't overbalance it and there's a risk to trying to get the full +def boost. Someone could crash the toggle out and make you start over. But your reward is easily hitting the soft cap.

 

  That's a nerf but it opens up new styles of play.  People who metagame for maximum power can still get there.  Just keep the amount of time the toggle has to run to get the max +def around the cooldown of the power now.   Now you've halved the cooldown for people who just want the +special and it's otherwise normal for the +def.  Roughly.

Is PB really a problem? An idea from me if buffing long duration powers is too much:

 

Remove the whole "increases certain buff" clause and just make it a "granting power" power.  Power Boost for the caster would only last the 10sec but when used in conjunction with any kind of clicky buff, it gives the target a granted passive that basically does the buffing.  If that is the case, you can have it boost long duration buffs for how long you want it to be balanced around rather than the duration of the click you used to grant it.  So if you wanted PB to buff effects for only 30sec, it would give the user the +def/whatever effect to any defense powers the target has (ally or self-granted) for 30sec and expire.

 

I think Electric Affinity's tier 9 works in a similar way, if I'm not mistaken.

[Wavicle]

6 hours ago, shrikefire said:

Why not also an only AV and EB mode? I'm not really kidding.

Hey, yea, sure, why not?

[Ralathar44]

17 minutes ago, Naraka said:

Didn't Jack want to keep people down to 1Lt or 3minion level so they would require teaming?  ED and GDN happened to pave the way for IOs and eventually incarnate.  Difficulty scaling came in for AE.  Many nerfs happened to balance PvP and high-end builds.  

They've already expressed a great hatred of Jack and mentally separated him out from the rest of the Devs like they were all somehow held at gunpoint for the changes he was the spokesperson for (because that was his job).  I've been called Jack several times in this thread, intended as a grave insult, for saying that the ED/GDN/target cap changes were ultimately very positive for the game by allowing room for an end game and allowing more diverse teams rather than 1 tank stacking things into a dumpster while everyone else AFK'd at the door.

[golstat2003]

8 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

I never said rebalance the entire game around IOs, only new level 50+ content.

That  . . . would probably make it even more complex.

[Blackbird71]

2 hours ago, Lockpick said:

 

To be honest, I have no idea of the percentages of people that think the game is fine as is, who think it is to easy, or who think it is to hard.  I have no clue if the majority agree with me.  I suspect that there is no majority leaning in one direction and that all the players are split across several opinions.  That is why I suggested doing some data analysis on certain data sets.

 

My suspicion is that the people that think the game is to easy are the power gamers.  These people plan out build (which you do quite a bit), spend the inf to get billion inf builds, and then incarnate to T4.  I do this as well.  For all I know, the vast majority of our player base are power gamers and the existing player base are vets from Live, so they have the knowledge and enthusiasm to make these builds.  This could be the case, but I doubt it.  And even if it is you are still have some of these power gamers (like me) that think the balance is fine. 

 

 

I can only speak for myself, but I'll chime in and say that I personally HATE planning out builds.  Planning builds means wasting all kinds of time researching the forums, crunching numbers in Mid's, sometimes even creating the build on the test server to try it out.  All of that is incredibly tedious and painful work to me, and it's time I would much rather be spending just playing the game.  I do it because I feel that if I don't, I'm lagging behind and pulling teams down. 

One of the things that originally drew me to CoH back during live was the game's simplicity, but it lost a lot of that with the introduction of IO sets, and it took a step towards being more like other MMOs where you have to find and grind for the perfect combination of gear to be effective.  Unfortunately I think that particular genie is out of the bottle, as I don't expect anyone would agree to removing IO sets entirely, but I long for the days when such detailed build planning was unnecessary to be able to play the game at comparable power levels to everyone else.

Again, this is just one player's opinion, but I would wholeheartedly cheer any change that reduced the need for complex build planning and just let us get back to playing the game.

[golstat2003]

5 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

I don't think you can just make new difficulty options for the same reason you can't re balance IOs.  Too much time investment, too many people left behind, and essentially fractures a playerbase that's already spread thin.  It's a huge  amount of work for little return.

- You can't just scale up the current system, purple patch is already eating into alot of classes like MMs and +5/+6 is not viable as a balanced difficulty since we're talking debuff/control getting 30%/15% of the original value.
- If you scale the new difficulties to challenge the defense softcap then you basically screw over anyone who didn't softcap. 
- Same thing with to-hit.  You can't just scale the difficulty to all the set bonus levels of accuracy because anyone that doesn't have that is completely screwed.  It'd just force people to bring leadership onto the team and it's already over-prevalent. 
- How do you balance out the risk reward of the new content vs the current +4/8 if it's actually challenging with assumedly more deaths and less kill speed?
- This is a horrible state of game balance mentality to be stuck in, if no significant nerfs are acceptable and only buffs are acceptable then it's only a matter of time until your game goes off the rails or becomes stagnant.  Even adding new content will not help hardly because the new content will have to follow the previous difficulty for the reasons already mentioned and thus after an initial spate of novelty it'll either become the new farmed content or we'll just go back to the previously farmed content within like 2 weeks to a month.  We have a crapton of great content in this game people already never touch.

- After all this work if you actually made it challenging a significant amount of people who currently run content at +4/8 would still never touch it and 90%+ of teams would still be focused around.  It's clear that some folks want to scale to a point there they are never threatened by content again.  There was alot of talk earlier in the thread about people wanting to feel like a god and if we didn't to find another team.  If that's them being genuine they are not going for the new content.  Genie is out of the bottle. so long as +4/8 is super easily rolled and lucrative people are not going to stop doing it for the same reason people are not going to stop rolling fiery aura brutes and choosing fire farms.  And just like AE farmers influence the market and availability of team mates as they farm and powerlevel people so too will folks rolling easy content.  Finding teams for the new higher difficulties levels would be difficult and only the most dedicated players would do it.

I don't think you need a full scale rebalance of the game period. There simply isn't the man power for what folks are saying or asking for.

 

There IS the manpower for smaller harder content and difficulty options, and very targetted buffs and nerfs, released in an agile fashion over many months.

Edited September 27, 2020 by golstat2003

[golstat2003]

4 hours ago, BitCook said:

I have played since around i3.  

If you have, then we will have to disagree in our assessment.  I would agree that the game has never been "balanced" in that every AT brings the same amount of power.  However, where the game was balanced was that you could play content with any 8 ATs and make it through.  However, since the power creep was not where it is today, every AT brought something valuable to nearly every mission.  I don't feel that is the case anymore.

I have several posts where I talked about how the relative value of support goes down as kill speed increases.  Controls are devalued by the same as well as the increase in player survivability.  As individual power goes up, team related benefits, buff/debuff/aggro/controls become relatively less valuable as the threat and damage that mobs can put out has remained static.  .

With that said, that is something I think the game currently misses.  Sure, no one's turning you away because you're a controller.  Because the game is at the point where not only can any 8 characters do any content, but any eight characters will likely crush any content.  There's a subtle distinction in being able to do anything and be able to steamroller anything.  In the first case, all ATs have more relative value because the team kill speed requires more damage/debuffs/aggro/control/support/whatever.  When the game gets to where 1-2 players can solo the hardest content, then nothing really matters beyond the 1-2 players who can do so.  However, it disproportionately affects support players and those that rely on team mechanics as the core of their AT because they by nature do not have the kill speed of many of the overtuned ATs. 

So they are not contributing to the kill speed in a significant manner with their abilities, and the don't have the kill speed on their own to compensate.  It's just bad design and bad balance.

No, the game was not perfect in live.  However, I do think that from IOs to about i22 the game enjoyed a rare spot that most MMOs don't.  ATs weren't balanced, but they all had a needed and useful role.

We will need to agree to disagree. I'll leave it there.

[golstat2003]

13 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

They've already expressed a great hatred of Jack and mentally separated him out from the rest of the Devs like they were all somehow held at gunpoint for the changes he was the spokesperson for (because that was his job).  I've been called Jack several times in this thread, intended as a grave insult, for saying that the ED/GDN/target cap changes were ultimately very positive for the game by allowing room for an end game and allowing more diverse teams rather than 1 tank stacking things into a dumpster while everyone else AFK'd at the door.

See this is why I find it funny where people long for the old days where they claimed things were better balanced. You exmaple and the large changes it lead to are exactly my point. The game has never been well balanced at any point. Huge changes (both global and targetted nerfs AND BUFFs, see Blasters) have come to try to force it towards that balance pretty much every year of the game being live.

[Ralathar44]

5 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

I don't think you need a full scale rebalance of the game period. There simply isn't the man power for what folks are saying or asking for.

 

There IS the manpower for smaller harder content and difficulty options released in an agile fashion over many months.

Both are incredibly huge projects.  I think you're underestimating the errr....difficulty of creating new difficulty options that won't screw over anyone that isn't neck deep in the IO system or basically enforce specific IO builds.  Heck last I heard the overwhelming majority of folks barely messed with the IO system unless I'm misremembering.

[Naraka]

5 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

See this is why I find it funny where people long for the old days where they claimed things were better balanced...

Are they, tho?

 

Clarification: Are they longing for the old days?  Or are they just pointing to tangible examples from the past?  That is to say, I enjoyed Stalker how it was in the old days.  I think the new Stalker infringes on Scrapper.  I'm not longing for old Stalker, I'd just have like a more direct focus of Stalker's style rather than overbuffing it to making Scrapper range from "the same" to "obsolete".

[golstat2003]

7 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Both are incredibly huge projects.  I think you're underestimating the errr....difficulty of creating new difficulty options that won't screw over anyone that isn't neck deep in the IO system or basically enforce specific IO builds.  Heck last I heard the overwhelming majority of folks barely messed with the IO system unless I'm misremembering.

Oh I have no doubt we're talking about months of work. I think some folks in this thread and in the Suggestions forums need to temper their expectations greatly. The team we have isn't Paragon Studios. And this was before COVID was involved. With the expectations that things won't get back to normal worldwide till about 2022, I can't see us getting much released yearly for some time. All this talk by everyone is nice, but people need to keep it real.

 

Now let's figure out how long it's taken us to even get to talking about Page 6 in this climate. HC committed to getting Page 6 out in 2020. I don't expect even that any times soon.

 

Which is why I keep going back to the idea of targeted (and not wholesale) changes.

 

EDIT: Also I would expect disclaimers on the new difficulty options telling folks exactly what they are getting into. Other games do this. The folks asking for those options I think already know what they'd likely be getting into, and expect to bring to the table.

 

If you don't know what an all av, all elite boss missions would be like . . . you need to play the game more. Or try it in AE.

Edited September 27, 2020 by golstat2003

[golstat2003]

Just now, Naraka said:

Are they, tho?

 

Clarification: Are they longing for the old days?  Or are they just pointing to tangible examples from the past?  That is to say, I enjoyed Stalker how it was in the old days.  I think the new Stalker infringes on Scrapper.  I'm not longing for old Stalker, I'd just have like a more direct focus of Stalker's style rather than overbuffing it to making Scrapper range from "the same" to "obsolete".

There have been multiple posts over the last two years pointing to the "good ol days". Not just in this thread. Like the game was somehow better balanced at some mystery point in time. It wasn't.

[Ralathar44]

12 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

See this is why I find it funny where people long for the old days where they claimed things were better balanced. You exmaple and the large changes it lead to are exactly my point. The game has never been well balanced at any point. Huge changes (both global and targetted nerfs AND BUFFs, see Blasters) have come to try to force it towards that balance pretty much every year of the game being live.

Post ED/GDN/AOE caps the game was in a solid place sans maybe blasters being a bit rough.  Interset balance issues were actually a good bit smaller than they were now because some sets were better but all sets could contribute a good amount.  Doms and MM needed some adjustment too prolly, (still do).  Honestly most of what has happened is free power was given to literally everyone, blasters got omegabuffed, and melee somehow got even stronger, and Sentinels got added only for Blasters to be buffed so much they were immediately invalidated.  HC has done alot of good things for the game but alot of it is mixed too, prolly with best of intentions.  After all alot of times the only way to see the problems is to cause the problems :P.

People who wanted to feel like gods still could post incarnate.  You didn't need softcapped defense and IO set builds for that, it happened at the point in the story at which they basically told you that you were becoming a god.  But now we've stacked godhood on top of godhood for god squared :P.

Edited September 27, 2020 by Ralathar44

[golstat2003]

5 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Post ED/GDN/AOE caps the game was in a solid place sans maybe blasters being a bit rough.  Interset balance issues were actually a good bit smaller than they were now because some sets were better but all sets could contribute a good amount.  Doms and MM needed some adjustment too prolly, (still do).  Honestly most of what has happened is free power was given to literally everyone, blasters got omegabuffed, and melee somehow got even stronger, and Sentinels got added only for Blasters to be buffed so much they were immediately invalidated.  HC has done alot of good things for the game but alot of it is mixed too, prolly with best of intentions.

People who wanted to feel like gods still could post incarnate.  You didn't need softcapped defense and IO set builds for that, it happened at the point in the story at which they basically told you that you were becoming a god.  But now we've stacked godhood on top of godhood for god squared :P.

The thing is a lot of the changes you just mentioned were mainly NOT HC. Alot of that was the devs from live, Paragon Studios. And softcapping was happening during that time. I remember numerous discussions and arguments abut the game being poorly balanced and too easy even back then. This isn't new. 

 

EDIT: There used to be posts after posts of people ALSO arguing that Controllers, Defenders, Doms, support needed wholesale buffs. They didn't and they still don't today. 

 

There are a few sets or powers that need changes but nothing as radical as some are alluding to about Support in this thread. This is coming from someone who mostly plays support sets. (if I didn't make that clear before about what types of toons I play).

Edited September 27, 2020 by golstat2003

[Ralathar44]

4 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

The thing is a lot of the changes you just mentioned we're mainly NOT HC. Alot of that was the devs from live, Paragon Studios. And softcapping was happening during that time.

Datamined changes made live on HC are not changes done by Paragon Studios.  Those are theoretical changes they were testing out that they may or may not have done and might have changed significantly or pulled.  Again, I literally work in QA and I see stuff like this on a monthly basis.  And additional changes were made on top of the theoretical ones.  Big melee buffs were definitely made on HC.  HC is where set IOs were made incredibly available without any rebalancing (because it'd take way too much man hours to rebalance) and reward merits increased.

Again, these kind of changs were likely made with the best of intentions and you can only know the cascading effects by implementing alot of times.

Edited September 27, 2020 by Ralathar44

[Lockpick]

32 minutes ago, Naraka said:

Firstly, how do you know they aren't using the in-game mechanics to make it harder?  If you know they aren't using said in-game mechanics, have you asked them why?  Or are you just throwing a blanket statement out to win the debate?

 

As for the in-game difficulty mechanics, I'm certain people take advantage of the +a/*y difficulty since it's pretty prevalent in the in-game info that points you to the NPCs that adjust it.  Things like flashback and self-nerfs for TFs can be something to utilize but there might be people who find such options are "not fun" because it's not challenging your build, just nuking it.  It's about the same as telling people to just build inherently inferior characters...again, it's removing an aspect of the game (character building) that certain people might find just as fun as putting those builds to the test.  Lastly, tailored teams is certainly the logical solution as you can get some challenge out of a smaller, close-knit team with the same goals but again, it has its drawbacks as well since being a social game, getting to meet, talk to and play with new people with new ideas and differing playstyles to adapt to can be its own joy as well.

 

So why not use existing mechanics to make your play experience the hard mode you crave?  Another form of difficulty is spontaneity.  Not knowing or dealing with the unexpected can be difficult but if you have to tailor your difficulty for it, from the players you team with to the content all the way down to how strong you're allowed to build your character removes a lot of that unknown (i.e. difficulty).  Why is it worse to add onto or shift the game to have some added difficulty overall?  The funny thing is, if such difficulty were to be implemented, we have all the tools to bring that content DOWN to the current level too.

 

I know in at least one case because I asked the question specifically and was told no by one of the advocates to make the game harder.  I also asked again in that post you quoted.  No one has provided a reasonable answer (IMO) as to why balancing the entire game is a better option than focusing on players creating hard mode content.

 

One side wants to rely on the Devs to do wholesale balance changes impacting the entire player community and I would prefer to focus on solutions that have no negative impact to the entire player community, but provides new player created content that will provide new content for everyone.

 

If people in this thread advocating to make the game harder are using the existing mechanics to make the game harder I am sure they would be saying why the existing mechanics don't work.  They are not saying that, they are just pointing to the game not being hard enough.

 

My perspective is very simple.  There is no consensus that I have seen that the game is to hard, to easy, or just right.  Just different opinions of a minority of players in this thread.  I don't believe wholesale balancing will work because you will get some people that like it and some that don't.  What happens if you do all the balancing and then all of a sudden you get a mass of players flooding the forum with threads that the game is to hard?  Do you go back and balance again?  These players were likely playing the game, having fun, and had no idea that the game they enjoyed was to easy.  Then all of a sudden it was much harder and now they are pissed.

 

As a side note I was in game this morning and I was watching the Help channel.  Quite a few people were asking for help.  Do you think those players feel the game is to easy?   It was obviously hard enough that they needed help getting an answer to their questions.

 

You will alienate some group of people no matter how you do wholesale balancing.  Again, I am not advocating for no balancing.  Some balancing needs to happen, but should be rare and should be for outliers.

 

I am not sure why people are opposed to using the existing mechanics and focusing first on a solution that has limited reliance on the Devs.  We should always try to solve our own problems before expecting someone else to solve them for us.

[golstat2003]

I don't evny the devs. There are two spectrums of "the game is too easy" versus " the game is too hard" happening in this thread, and over various threads over the last two years. I wish them luck getting it right.

 

I've seen other COH server NOT getting it right lately.

[Naraka]

8 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

There have been multiple posts over the last two years pointing to the "good ol days". Not just in this thread. Like the game was somehow better balanced at some mystery point in time. It wasn't.

Well that's hardly an argument at all.

 

I haven't read *every* post in this thread so maybe it was particularly argued around page 18 or something...

[golstat2003]

7 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Datamined changes made live on HC are not changes done by Paragon Studios.  Those are theoretical changes they were testing out that they may or may not have done and might have changed significantly or pulled.  Again, I literally work in QA and I see stuff like this on a monthly basis.  And additional changes were made on top of the theoretical ones.  Big melee buffs were definitely made on HC.  HC is where set IOs were made incredibly available without any rebalancing (because it'd take way too much man hours to rebalance) and reward merits increased.

Again, these kind of changs were likely made with the best of intentions and you can only know the cascading effects by implementing alot of times.

Making IOs more available is sep discussion. Making IOs more available is a good thing. Balance issues like this would have cropped up if IOs were more available on live. The market on live was cancer compared to what we have now.

 

Balance issues exist whether more folks reveal them or not. (Aka more people do the uber builds due to more IOs being available).

 

EDIT: I was referring to things like blaster buffs (historically then have been more than one set over the life of the game), and changes to Doms. Those were on live.

 

Crashless nukes I'm not sure when that happened. Not sure if it was already on the test server when the game shut down. If it were I consider that a Paragon change, not SCORE or later HC. I didn't visit the test server much once the game was announced to be shutting down on live.

Edited September 27, 2020 by golstat2003