Game Balance & The Endgame

[Seed22]

On 9/23/2020 at 5:35 PM, carroto said:

True for Fire Blast.  Want an example of what that would look like?  See Fire Melee.  All it does is damage, and it doesn't do that well.  I can't remember the last time I saw a Fire Melee character.

So much this!! I do wonder, why did they nerf it? I mean..it’s not like it had good AoE AND ST 

[Grouchybeast]

2 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

Keep in mind, this is when pricing for IOs was absurdly high and out of reach for most players on the AH.  The situation is much, much different here.

Multi-billions top-end forum builds, featuring 2 billion PVP IOs and massed ranks of purples were way out of reach on live.  But even redside before the market merge it was possible to put together reasonably priced IO builds that were miles better than SO builds.  I got an awful lot of mileage out of Crushing Impact and Thunderstrike on live.

 

The main issue with Sets is that they're stupidly complicated, and follow Byzantine and non-intuitive rules that even people who've been using sets for years frequently misunderstand.  Personally, I love playing with IO builds.  However, I don't think any content in the game should ever be tuned to require IOs.  I absolutely think that a reasonable response to looking into Sets is 'life is too short for this nonsense' and slotting SOs or Common IOs instead.

[Gobbledigook]

A well balanced team with just SOs can do most content easily anyway. Those with an IO build just make it so much easier. It is quite normal for 1 or 2 or so IO built characters to carry most SO characters nowadays anyway. How many times do we see a Tanker on SO's for example fail and die for an IO'd Scrapper to jump in and clear mob after mob. Just getting 50+1 makes a huge difference.

 

There is plenty for SO only characters to do. There is little challenge for well built IO characters though. When your hero/Villain is fully IO'd what challenge is left for them?. Add extra content for them and the SO characters can just run it on +3 instead until they have an IO build or get carried by IO'd players like we have now. Instead of adding +5 +6 difficulties lol just make +4 harder and those that can not handle it do it on +2 or +3.

 

IO's are easy to get nowadays. There is no reason a player can not get a few easily or are they just limiting themselves to SO's only, for more of a challenge?

 

If IO's are there to make players stronger then content needs to keep up with it and still provide challenges or why even bother? 

[Patti]

Making the io gui make sense would help a lot.   They're really confusing if all you do is look at them in the game.   Needing a tool made by fans to even start to make sense of it seems really bad.  

[Apparition]

3 hours ago, Wavicle said:

IMO the content I mentioned, the New Praetorian arcs, First Ward, Night Ward, DOES take IOs into account yet isn't so hard that it's out of reach for SO builds. DA is similar, as you build up your Incarnate powers, progression through DA is acceptable without IOs.

I reread all of the AMAs a few months ago.  One of the things brought up is that the increased difficulty gold side was a mistake.  They were dealing with new systems and new power sets that they didn’t fully comprehend, and did not realize how much more difficult it would be compared to even red side.  Paragon Studios planned to eventually nerf gold side NPCs, especially The Awakened.

Edited October 1, 2020 by Apparition

[CaptainLupis]

30 minutes ago, Apparition said:

I reread all of the AMAs a few months ago.  One of the things brought up is that the increased difficulty gold side was a mistake.  They were dealing with new systems and new power sets that they didn’t fully comprehend, and did not realize how much more difficult it would be compared to even red side.  Paragon Studios planned to eventually nerf gold side NPCs, especially The Awakened.

I've never found the NPCs, or groups, gold side to be particularly OP, the problem with the design was the over reliance on multiple ambush spawns. At those levels it isn't always possible to take them down quickly, due to lack of attacks and/or recharge, meaning they can start to pile up on you to the point where you are overwhelmed. Other than that though I thought they were fine.

[ABlueThingy]

16 minutes ago, CaptainLupis said:

I've never found the NPCs, or groups, gold side to be particularly OP, the problem with the design was the over reliance on multiple ambush spawns. At those levels it isn't always possible to take them down quickly, due to lack of attacks and/or recharge, meaning they can start to pile up on you to the point where you are overwhelmed. Other than that though I thought they were fine.

The fact that they have controls and multiple attacks sub-20 makes them significantly harder than the standard Blue side mobs. Or even Redside.

 

Standard hellion minion has one revolver attack and one other melee attack.  An axe or sledge or something. If they're in melee range they will just wait for the melee attack to recharge.  This means you have a couple of seconds between attacks.  Their LTs are even worse, they only have a Shotgun or Submachine gun attack.  No melee at all.  This is all almost identical for all the other low level groups blueside.

 

Redside gets a bit tougher, your average Wolf Spider minion has 2-3 attacks and doesn't have to waste time pulling a different weapon out.  That raises their DPS just by virtue of them having less downtime between attacks. In addition a group like Arachnos has a ton of enemy types that all have weird quirks to them even at level 1.  Smoke grenades, psi attacks, electrical attacks, end drain, sleeps, toxic damage.  They're much more dangerous then the 1-20 blueside groups.  Longbow is fairly similar in that respect, though with fewer tricks.

 

GOLDSIDE though. The Clockwork, the PPD, the Resistance.  They all have multiple attacks they can cycle and they rarely need to exchange weapons.  They're almost always attacking and it's almost always mixed with some exoitc damage like Energy or Fire which at level one many people are going to have no protection against.  You get up to even just level 10 guys and you're looking at hard controls and status resistance too. It's one thing if you're running a melee class with defenses of some kind.  But squishes get chewed up.

 

 

[Lockpick]

Just to add that when I see people talking about balancing around IOs I assume they are talking about standard IOs and not set IOs.  I do believe that players can get standard IO easily enough through drops / crafting, but set IOs you have to use the market or merit vendor, so I would expect a certain portion of the population will not have complete set IO builds.

 

I have a friend who absolutely will not market or farm.  He plays the game and he will craft his drops, but that's about it.  His attitude is he doesn't want to waste his game time playing the market, he wants to play the game.  I doubt he will ever have a high end build...

[CaptainLupis]

5 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

Just to add that when I see people talking about balancing around IOs I assume they are talking about standard IOs and not set IOs.  I do believe that players can get standard IO easily enough through drops / crafting, but set IOs you have to use the market or merit vendor, so I would expect a certain portion of the population will not have complete set IO builds.

 

I have a friend who absolutely will not market or farm.  He plays the game and he will craft his drops, but that's about it.  His attitude is he doesn't want to waste his game time playing the market, he wants to play the game.  I doubt he will ever have a high end build...

That's fine, but should the very top level content really be based around that? There's already plenty content that isn't based around IOs, is it really such a problem to have some new content that is? I'm not saying all new content should be, but I think it's fair enough to have some.

Edited October 1, 2020 by CaptainLupis

[Ralathar44]

8 hours ago, Grouchybeast said:

I thought that harder content for the sake of harder content was the entire point?  People are dissatisfied with the challenge, and want harder, more challenging content.  If they're actually fine with the current level of challenge, and would only want to play harder content for higher rewards, it seems like a waste of time.

 

Otherwise, you're moving to a new question, which is, how can I talk the devs into giving me more stuff?

Unfortunately they cannot be separated.  Even if someone wants to run harder content that doesn't mean they want to nerf their own returns by seeking more challenge.  Harder content will take longer to run by it's very nature, so having the same rewards is a bad idea.  That doesn't mean harder content needs to be the most lucrative content, clear speeds matter too.  If you do a hard TF and get 50 merits, the easy TF gives you 30 merits, but you can run 2 easy TFs in the same time you can run a hard TF this starts being closer to what is desirable.

The Hard mission doesn't have to be hands down better, but it does need a boost in rewards to prevent it from being ridiculously worse.  And ideally the hard TF would reward very slightly more for the same amount of time.  Not enough to matter or force the issue, but enough to just play the psychology of the gamer brain into being "this was worth it".  Because if the challenge is more fun for someone but the reward is far less you end up with a state of cognitive dissonance.

Like it or not most people in this game are significantly influenced by reward level because of how the progression is designed.

[Coyotedancer]

4 hours ago, DSorrow said:

Obviously, this is completely anecdotal, but I'd still be surprised if the no-IOs at all population was anywhere near 80%.

Agreed. It's still far from universal for characters to have complete IO builds, but just based on talking to people in-game and looking at the character information windows (Something I do habitually-) of the people I team with? I'd say about half seem to use them, at least to some extent.

 

Not all of those have anything close to "complete" IO set-builds, mind. There seem to be *A LOT* of "mix of common IOs of various levels, plus a few sets here and there, plus a few procs and specials"-type builds among the Everlasting and Excelsior players. I'd even go so far as to say those make up the majority of the IO-users I've seen. It's just one more reminder that those of us who hang out on the forums and routinely build absolute monsters aren't exactly the "Everyday Average" we tend to think we are. 😝

 

 

 

Edited October 1, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[Ralathar44]

5 hours ago, macskull said:

How do you take the IO system into account without making the game incredibly difficult for characters who aren't IOd? Even at that point, what do you balance against?

That is the "unsolvable" problem when it comes to any idea of harder content.  IOs basically double the power level of your character (or more).  So it'd be impossible to balance content for IO characters without screwing over non-IO characters just like SO balanced content is a complete joke for IO characters.

[ABlueThingy]

8 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

That is the "unsolvable" problem when it comes to any idea of harder content.  IOs basically double the power level of your character (or more).  So it'd be impossible to balance content for IO characters without screwing over non-IO characters just like SO balanced content is a complete joke for IO characters.

Also, not every build can squeeze the same amount of benefit out of IOs.  It's not a universal power boost like Incarnates.

[Coyotedancer]

There's a pretty wide gap even between an "okay" IO build and a really well-tuned high end one, I'd say... That would have to be taken into account as well. 

[Parabola]

Ok, I've had a slightly leftfield idea. If the argument against increasing difficulty is that the game is still balanced around SO's and people aren't willing to contemplate reductions in the power of IO's how about:

 

Buff SO's. Then raise the difficulty at the endgame. Raise the floor and the ceiling at the same time while leaving IO'd builds where they currently are. That way no-one gets left behind and no-one even has to be directly nerfed. We narrow the power gap between SO and IO builds and increase the difficulty headroom for the purpled out monsters.

 

Not sure this would fix everything on it's own, I'd still want to take a hard look at incarnates and I'm not entirely convinced the 'support not needed in a world of tankmages' problem would entirely go away just by increasing difficulty. But it might be a step in the right direction and make it easier on the devs by giving a narrower power spread to have to accommodate going forward.

 

What might buffed SO's look like? As an example give them higher raw enhancement values and then maybe give them a little of the 'certain % ignores ED' from the alpha powers. That way an SO build could outstrip an IO build in raw enhancement values, at least in one or two areas per power. IO builds would always stay ahead overall because the global bonuses would always outweigh any shortfall in the raw enhancement values.

 

Anyway just a thought. ☺️

[Ralathar44]

1 minute ago, ABlueThingy said:

Also, not every build can squeeze the same amount of benefit out of IOs.  It's not a universal power boost like Incarnates.

IOs always felt weird for me honestly.  Before them Pretty much everything was about enhancing your powers and your power set.  So any power increases were very focused on what you were supposed to be good at and it kept a good amount of identity to each set, good or bad.  Power Pools and Epic Power Pools were your only real way of "reaching outside your specialization".  So you could lessen your weaknesses somewhat, but not too much.  And Endurance was a major consideration for how much you could pile onto your character.  Sets being endurance efficient was a notable advantage for those sets.  Even after inherent fitness.

After IOs though nobody had to have any weaknesses anymore.  Everyone can become softcapped no defense, endurance pretty much ceased to be a problem for many sets, and everything got more homogenized.  Hasten was already a big deal before, but thanks to +recharge and more endurance management the difference between a hastened character and a non-hastened one became even larger since more characters could achieve and utilize longer amounts of hasten uptime and afford to replace cheaper/faster/weaker powers with heavier/slower/more expensive powers in their attack rotations.

And, as mentioned, damage and defense gets way WAY more benefit from IOs than debuff and control, + are supported by leadership stacking (which is much easier to sustain thanks to IOs).  So offense and defense and to-hit now scales up enough to punch right through the purple patch and controls/debuffs don't.  But as mentioned it scales differently for different sets.

COH has never been the most balanced game but IOs took the balance that was there out back and shot it in the head.  And power set identity took a few bullets too, not quite dead but wounded since def debuffs, to-hit buffs, self defense buffs, endurance costs, -recharge, - speed, CC for damage mitigation and etc matter less than ever before.

[Patti]

If trainng and dual also get buffed than I like the idea of buffing sos to make them more meaningful.

[Lockpick]

45 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Unfortunately they cannot be separated.  Even if someone wants to run harder content that doesn't mean they want to nerf their own returns by seeking more challenge.  Harder content will take longer to run by it's very nature, so having the same rewards is a bad idea.  That doesn't mean harder content needs to be the most lucrative content, clear speeds matter too.  If you do a hard TF and get 50 merits, the easy TF gives you 30 merits, but you can run 2 easy TFs in the same time you can run a hard TF this starts being closer to what is desirable.

The Hard mission doesn't have to be hands down better, but it does need a boost in rewards to prevent it from being ridiculously worse.  And ideally the hard TF would reward very slightly more for the same amount of time.  Not enough to matter or force the issue, but enough to just play the psychology of the gamer brain into being "this was worth it".  Because if the challenge is more fun for someone but the reward is far less you end up with a state of cognitive dissonance.

Like it or not most people in this game are significantly influenced by reward level because of how the progression is designed.

 

I agree.  I was thinking of SWTOR where they have the normal flashpoints and operations where they have various levels of difficulty.  I think they have a normal mode, hard mode, and maybe a nightmare mode.  I wouldn't mind seeing Task Forces having multiple modes like this with different rewards.  This way people wanting to do the most challenging content get better rewards and those wanting less challenge get less reward.  Seems logical to me and no one is restricted to one type of content.

 

I'm not sure how something like this would be coded or if it would be easy to modify, but it would probably be easier than trying to rebalance the entire game.

[Gobbledigook]

I think if they added more difficulties like suggested, it should be 

 

+5. +4 level but buffed damage etc. Good for partial and full IO builds and organised teams.

+6. +5 mob levels. Full IO builds.

+7. +5 mobs level with buffed damage etc for insane difficulty. 

 

If you went any higher levels you would barely land a hit.

 

There would need to be good rewards like increased purple drops etc due to increased time it would take.

 

I could get behind this.

 

Options to disable or put a cooldowns on Insps and temp powers could be optional settings that could increase reward chance even more.

 

You can choose fast and easy or insanely hard. Both should be similar reward for same amount of time.

Edited October 1, 2020 by Gobbledegook

[golstat2003]

5 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

That is the "unsolvable" problem when it comes to any idea of harder content.  IOs basically double the power level of your character (or more).  So it'd be impossible to balance content for IO characters without screwing over non-IO characters just like SO balanced content is a complete joke for IO characters.

There's also the fact that there are multiple types of IO builds you can make.

Just off the top of my head:

 

1. Frankensloted with Commons and sets

2. Full Set IOs

3. Purples and Set IOs

4. Attuned and Purples.

 

Which do you balance around? Do you assume most folks are going with 1? Great, but then the content is still trivial for those with 2, and sure as hell is for groups 3 and 4. Do you balance around 2, still trivial for 3 and 4, and slightly harder for 1.

 

I don't think folks are realize how much a puzzle this could end up being.

 

EDIT: And I didn't even mention proc monster builds.

Edited October 1, 2020 by golstat2003

[golstat2003]

1 hour ago, Gobbledegook said:

I think if they added more difficulties like suggested, it should be 

 

+5. +4 level but buffed damage etc. Good for partial and full IO builds and organised teams.

+6. +5 mob levels. Full IO builds.

+7. +5 mobs level with buffed damage etc for insane difficulty. 

 

If you went any higher levels you would barely land a hit.

 

There would need to be good rewards like increased purple drops etc due to increased time it would take.

 

I could get behind this.

 

Options to disable or put a cooldowns on Insps and temp powers could be optional settings that could increase reward chance even more.

 

You can choose fast and easy or insanely hard. Both should be similar reward for same amount of time.

Errrr, I'm not sure about that last line. You had me up to there. How would both fast and easy or insanely hard take the same amount of time?

[golstat2003]

5 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

Unfortunately they cannot be separated.  Even if someone wants to run harder content that doesn't mean they want to nerf their own returns by seeking more challenge.  Harder content will take longer to run by it's very nature, so having the same rewards is a bad idea.  That doesn't mean harder content needs to be the most lucrative content, clear speeds matter too.  If you do a hard TF and get 50 merits, the easy TF gives you 30 merits, but you can run 2 easy TFs in the same time you can run a hard TF this starts being closer to what is desirable.

The Hard mission doesn't have to be hands down better, but it does need a boost in rewards to prevent it from being ridiculously worse.  And ideally the hard TF would reward very slightly more for the same amount of time.  Not enough to matter or force the issue, but enough to just play the psychology of the gamer brain into being "this was worth it".  Because if the challenge is more fun for someone but the reward is far less you end up with a state of cognitive dissonance.

Like it or not most people in this game are significantly influenced by reward level because of how the progression is designed.

It's not just that. But if the reward is not great enough to meet the challenge most folks won't do it. Case in point: The fact that folks actively avoid certain groups while running newspaper missions today. Aka Council after council radio/newspaper mission.

 

They will do it once or twice to see what it's like, but after a while it will become pretty clear that they could be progressing faster in other easier content.

Edited October 1, 2020 by golstat2003

[Gobbledigook]

1 hour ago, golstat2003 said:

Errrr, I'm not sure about that last line. You had me up to there. How would both fast and easy or insanely hard take the same amount of time?

Well you could do 2 runs of +4 or 1 run of +6 for example. A +4 would be easier and faster but a little less rewarding. 1 +6 would be slower but much more rewarding. But 2 runs compared to 1 would average similar reward and time to complete.

 

Just a basic idea really.probably a garbage idea lol.

Edited October 2, 2020 by Gobbledegook

[ABlueThingy]

5 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

-snip-

 

I'm just spitballing but...

 

What if we add a layer at character creation that lets you makes big chunky changes to how characters play.  Like picking a "Power source" that changes how your endurance regenerates.  Or a "Weakness" that gives you bonuses for overcoming when it pops up.

 

Big chunky things you can chip away at with IOs.  And of course some kind of trainer to respec it.  And clamp it at low levels so new players can't hose themselves completely, open it up as they level. 

 

Like you pick the "Earth" power source so you get an end discount that builds up as long as you're touching the ground all the way to 90%.  But you need to pick up a "Fire" weakness like -15% fire def and 30% fire resist.  You picked this because your character "Lodestone" is magnetic and as long as they're aligned with the earth's magnetic field they can draw on it.  But fire de-polorizes them and weakens them.

 

That's something you could use IOs to build around.  Or just run a fire/stone tank and mostly negate that penalty.  Or lean into it and play a wildly end hog Grav/Rad Cont build with a dozen toggles, the whole leadership pool! And use IOs to add enough End recover to ignore the costs. And just pray when you hit a fire based AV that you have enough purp inspers.

 

And of course Incarnate powers will mostly steamroll over this.

 

 

 

 

 

[Ralathar44]

8 minutes ago, ABlueThingy said:

 

I'm just spitballing but...

 

What if we add a layer at character creation that lets you makes big chunky changes to how characters play.  Like picking a "Power source" that changes how your endurance regenerates.  Or a "Weakness" that gives you bonuses for overcoming when it pops up.

 

Big chunky things you can chip away at with IOs.  And of course some kind of trainer to respec it.  And clamp it at low levels so new players can't hose themselves completely, open it up as they level. 

 

Like you pick the "Earth" power source so you get an end discount that builds up as long as you're touching the ground all the way to 90%.  But you need to pick up a "Fire" weakness like -15% fire def and 30% fire resist.  You picked this because your character "Lodestone" is magnetic and as long as they're aligned with the earth's magnetic field they can draw on it.  But fire de-polorizes them and weakens them.

 

That's something you could use IOs to build around.  Or just run a fire/stone tank and mostly negate that penalty.  Or lean into it and play a wildly end hog Grav/Rad Cont build with a dozen toggles, the whole leadership pool! And use IOs to add enough End recover to ignore the costs. And just pray when you hit a fire based AV that you have enough purp inspers.

 

And of course Incarnate powers will mostly steamroll over this.

 

 

 

 

 

Way too late in the game to do this and would require a large amount of developer resources that they don't have.  Would also alienate a fair amount of people.  For better and for worse both COH is old and stuck in its ways.  Honestly even the idea of the community accepting significant nerfs of any sort, direct or indirect, is prolly an impossibility at this point.  I don't expect any significant changes to the game at this point, only minor tweaks.  And even then I expect the power creep to continue.  Blasters have power creeped up enough to basically invalidate sentinels so I expect Sentinels to either be buffed or ignored, either way discovering that once safety is met damage is king and thus nothing Sentinels could possibly bring to the table atm is going to compete with Blasters DPSing them under the table.