Game Balance & The Endgame

[ZacKing]

On ‎10‎/‎16‎/‎2020 at 7:48 PM, Ralathar44 said:

The IOs themselves are quite compelling and great, the process of getting the recipes, the ingredients, crafting them, looking up what does what, and etc is ALOT of work.

this kind of stuff is a lot of work in all kinds of MMOs, especially those with raid tiers and gear requirements.

[CaptainLupis]

24 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

this kind of stuff is a lot of work in all kinds of MMOs, especially those with raid tiers and gear requirements.

And here you can skip all that hassle completely, if you are of a mind, and just buy them ready made from the AH.

[nihilii]

2 hours ago, parabola said:

I'm interested in why adding what are effectively level bumps to players is 'one of the best updates' but adding them to enemies is 'disappointing'.

Order matters for me. Invincible to +4 came first (disappointment), then the Alpha slot was introduced (reversal of that disappointment).

If all enemies were even level, as it should be in a beautiful and righteous world, with "con" was solely determined by rank, and then suddenly the Alpha slot level shift was introduced, that would have made no sense.

 

Essentially, the purple patch is an aberration against nature and anything that helps lessen its effect is a Good Thing.

In spite of my general feelings, I actually was kind of disappointed when the LRSF was changed from level 54 archvillains to level 53 archvillains. It felt fitting for the Freedom Phalanx to be head and shoulders above the Vindicators, or just about any other archvillain. Heck, I like STF Lord Recluse just fine as well, and his entire encounter could be summed up as giving him ridiculous stats; but then, this is tied to interesting conditions with the towers.

To tell the truth, entirely arbitrary feeling, the game plays well from +0 to +3. This lessens as soon as +4. The purple patch is just too punishing in its current implementation. The curve gets so brutal when it comes to your own accuracy/damage/duration. And that is the part that is frustrating, having enemies hit more often and harder and have more HP wouldn't be a problem in itself. Doing 400 damage against EnemyA with 400 hp and 400 damage against EnemyB with 600 hp feels better than doing 400 damage against A and 300 damage against B with 450 hp, even if the result is functionally the same.

The purple patch may be what we have but it is not the only lever we have, so to rely on this flawed and unfun system to try to reintroduce difficulty just doesn't strike me as sensible.

Other options to explore:

- better rewards for optional TF settings like "enemies buffed", "players debuffed", "no enhancements"

- Hard mode group size from AE adapted to normal content (3-4 bosses in a regular group makes things significantly harder than the standard 1-2 bosses)

- adjust rewards per enemy group and adjust in consequence. The game is for sure too easy if you stick to +4/x8 Council. I have never met a group running +4/x8 Awakened. I would bet money a non-negligible portion of the participants in these discussions who believe the game is too easy have never run +4/x8 Awakened.

- lessen rewards if you have Incarnate slots equipped

- create new Incarnate hunters, void kheldian style (I miss these buggers)

 

Well, I guess most of my suggestions focusing on rewards betray my belief there is plenty of difficulty in this game if one seeks it.

 

For sure, it would be easier to just remove level shifts. I don't see how that would be fun, though. You could also remove all enhancements from the game. It would be very effective at making the game harder, even better than no level shifts at evening the power gap, and it would be terribly unfun.

[Ralathar44]

6 hours ago, ZacKing said:

this kind of stuff is a lot of work in all kinds of MMOs, especially those with raid tiers and gear requirements.

Yeah but people enjoy the raids, the raids are content.  Some MMORPGs do them well, some don't but when done well raids are magnificent.  I'd rather "work" playing the actual game and raiding or grinding than "work" monotonously going through bad UI for hours on end.

[ShardWarrior]

1 hour ago, Ralathar44 said:

Yeah but people enjoy the raids, the raids are content.  Some MMORPGs do them well, some don't but when done well raids are magnificent.  I'd rather "work" playing the actual game and raiding or grinding than "work" monotonously going through bad UI for hours on end.

Some people enjoy raids, sure.  Not everyone does though.  I will never, ever, ever forget running Scholomance in WoW 157 times and never getting the boots drop I needed to complete a set.  Never again.  I am much more happy to spend that time earning the in-game currency to just buy the stuff in lieu of the RNG gods randomly blessing me. 

[Ralathar44]

8 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

Some people enjoy raids, sure.  Not everyone does though.  I will never, ever, ever forget running Scholomance in WoW 157 times and never getting the boots drop I needed to complete a set.  Never again.  I am much more happy to spend that time earning the in-game currency to just buy the stuff in lieu of the RNG gods randomly blessing me. 

But that's not a problem with raids as content for progression, that's a problem with imbalanced rewards.  And we had a similar problem WITHOUT the game being raid focused on live with IOs.  The content didn't change, the reward rates did.  This is also why most later MMORPGs introduced some form of token systems.  That way RNG was still important but yo could never be completely screwed because if bad RNG hit you'd still get your gear via tokens.

[ShardWarrior]

6 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

But that's not a problem with raids as content for progression, that's a problem with imbalanced rewards.  And we had a similar problem WITHOUT the game being raid focused on live with IOs.  The content didn't change, the reward rates did.  This is also why most later MMORPGs introduced some form of token systems.  That way RNG was still important but yo could never be completely screwed because if bad RNG hit you'd still get your gear via tokens.

No, it was one of many problems with raiding. 

[Heraclea]

21 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

Some people enjoy raids, sure.  Not everyone does though.  I will never, ever, ever forget running Scholomance in WoW 157 times and never getting the boots drop I needed to complete a set.  Never again.  I am much more happy to spend that time earning the in-game currency to just buy the stuff in lieu of the RNG gods randomly blessing me. 

Or losing them to need/greed rolls.  Not having crap like that is one of the major reasons why the community here is so much better than elsewhere.  Games I gave up quickly have drama drivers like

 

- the MMO trinity (if you're a tank or healer you're indispensable and you know it);

- repair costs (i.e. you are expected to know the fight mechanics before you even start);

- complex choreography and catherding (ditto);

- public loot with raid leaders or chance mechanisms deciding who gets (this one should be obvious);

- 'soulbound' and other forms of non-transferability of game rewards;

- strongly integrated and progression related PvP (inevitably discriminates against non-stealth melee, who can be worn down or CCed by people they can't touch). 

 

All of these misfeatures increase drama and tension in the player base for reasons that should be fairly obvious.  Their absence here is this game's glory.  They are also why introducing choreography in the form of floor patches you must move out of is a bad idea here.  That sort of thing just doesn't work in a game where powers have been re-balanced by un-abortable animation times.  It never should have been added; if it's possible, it ought to be removed. 

Edited October 21, 2020 by Heraclea

[ShardWarrior]

2 hours ago, Heraclea said:

Or losing them to need/greed rolls.  Not having crap like that is one of the major reasons why the community here is so much better than elsewhere.  Games I gave up quickly have drama drivers like

 

- the MMO trinity (if you're a tank or healer you're indispensable and you know it);

- repair costs (i.e. you are expected to know the fight mechanics before you even start);

- complex choreography and catherding (ditto);

- public loot with raid leaders or chance mechanisms deciding who gets (this one should be obvious);

- 'soulbound' and other forms of non-transferability of game rewards;

- strongly integrated and progression related PvP (inevitably discriminates against non-stealth melee, who can be worn down or CCed by people they can't touch). 

 

All of these misfeatures increase drama and tension in the player base for reasons that should be fairly obvious.  Their absence here is this game's glory.  They are also why introducing choreography in the form of floor patches you must move out of is a bad idea here.  That sort of thing just doesn't work in a game where powers have been re-balanced by un-abortable animation times.  It never should have been added; if it's possible, it ought to be removed. 

If I could up vote this a gallion times, I would.

[DSorrow]

Heh, weekly gated RNG loot is the primary reason I've quit playing several MMOs. The last one I left had me running a raid ~60 times without getting any of the 3 drops I would've liked. Instead of feeling excitement over maybe getting the cool thing I wanted, I just started feeling resentment over the lack of player agency and basically cut my game time down to just doing the raid every week and finally when I started expecting disappointment it didn't take long to stop playing the game entirely. Sadly the game was mechanically very satisfying to play, but the loot mechanics were absolutely crap once you got past the point of having great but not perfect gear.

[Ralathar44]

1 hour ago, DSorrow said:

Heh, weekly gated RNG loot is the primary reason I've quit playing several MMOs. The last one I left had me running a raid ~60 times without getting any of the 3 drops I would've liked. Instead of feeling excitement over maybe getting the cool thing I wanted, I just started feeling resentment over the lack of player agency and basically cut my game time down to just doing the raid every week and finally when I started expecting disappointment it didn't take long to stop playing the game entirely. Sadly the game was mechanically very satisfying to play, but the loot mechanics were absolutely crap once you got past the point of having great but not perfect gear.

TBH it's an unsovleable problem.  Content/Progression takes over 10 times longer to make than it does to play through.  Folks that run out of progression typically get bored and wander off to play other things.  Currently "end game" content/loot in an MMORPG will always be trickled out because it has to be.  City of Heroes is a game extends the time it takes poeple to get bored and wander off by giving good reasons to roll a bunch of alts but even then those of us still playing the game today are a very small self selected group of die hard fans and not representative of the average COH player, much less the average MMORPG player.

People say those time gated systems are crap but the MMORPGs people play the most thrive on those systems and outside of a few rare PVP centric MMOs that's always been the case.  That's no accident, people say they hate it but it's very compelling to most folks.  Other designs HAVE been tried, they just don't have the same pull/staying power.  Non-gated loot progression is the equivalent of niche flavor Ice Cream.  It's not the most popular flavor but its still good.  However calling chocolate ice cream crap because you don't personally like it is pretty short sighted.

And for the record I like raiding and I like boss mechanics and etc but I hate super RNG laden progression.  But I also like public quests a la Warhammer Online that's basically "casual raiding" and I also like the leveling process too.   The super RNG progression where you can raid continuously and get little back is one of the few MMORPG things I decidedly dislike.

Edited October 22, 2020 by Ralathar44

[DSorrow]

46 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

TBH it's an unsovleable problem. Content/Progression takes over 10 times longer to make than it does to play through.  Folks that run out of progression typically get bored and wander off to play other things.

Slowly accumulated tokens would've been a solution in my case, at least. Deterministic progression is what I like most about CoX, as long as whatever you're doing gets you inf or merits, you're always a step closer to whatever your build goal is. In other games it's frustrating to do 10 raids and be right where you were 10 raids ago. Several ways to do reward trickling, and I think 100% RNG is just doing it wrong.

 

I wonder if there are any studies on staying power in the long term. Extremely low progression probably turns off people at some point because it's basically equal to lack of progression for people who have "finished everything". People getting bored and wandering off can be an issue, but some of them probably come back at one point or another unlike people who get burned out and just quit. Would be interesting to see a quantified analysis of where the optimal rate of progression and RNG vs. deterministic rewards is on a population level.

[oedipus_tex]

On 10/20/2020 at 3:06 AM, @Ghost said:

It may be the simpler route, though I've always thought the option of going the other way had more potential: expand the difficulty options to let people apply shifts to enemies in regular content. +4x8 too dull for you? Try +5x8, or +6x8! Presumably with better rewards, too.

 

It's almost certainly more work, but fine tuning a custom difficulty is (I think) one of CoH's coolest features. Plus, expanding on it would feel much better than taking away what people have already earned and are used to with their characters.

 

Thanks for your thoughts. I always enjoy more options and I agree that they're a nice feature in CoX.

 

Unfortunately in this case, I don't think just expanding the game with higher +level enemies will have the effect we're looking for. To me the problem is more fundamental.  If there was an option for even higher level enemies the issues with the Level Shift would get even stronger.

 

For example, we've mentioned that nukes have radically changed gameplay, which is true. But more specifically nukes have radically changed gameplay in part because the Level Shift has them doing 17% more damage if an enemy +4 to you is shifted to +3. If you make the gap even larger, the benefit for the Level Shift gets bigger and bigger.

 

Removing the Level Shift in non-incarnate would be the smartest move IMO. The tech exists to do it already, and there were many years where the game operated without the Level Shift and players did fine. 

Edited October 22, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[ShardWarrior]

The Purple Patch comes into play with regard to anything above +5, so the idea of just adding +6 or higher as a difficulty option will not work. 

[Apparition]

1 hour ago, oedipus_tex said:

Removing the Level Shift in non-incarnate would be the smartest move IMO. The tech exists to do it already, and there were many years where the game operated without the Level Shift and players did fine. 
 

 

The level shift has existed for over three years of CoH, (ten years if you include Resurgence).   At this point it has been in the game for about a third of its life.  That is not something easily done and would be flat out rejected by a substantial number of players.  In addition, players can already remove the level shift on their own by sticking with a second tier Alpha.

[macskull]

1 hour ago, ShardWarrior said:

The Purple Patch comes into play with regard to anything above +5, so the idea of just adding +6 or higher as a difficulty option will not work. 

It is my understanding that higher-difficulty options were tested on Resurgence (+5, +6, whatever) but ended up not sticking around because it just didn't accomplish anything. If you're on a steamroller-y team at +4, the only difference between that and +5 or +6 is that you take way longer to kill things but the risk to you is still minimal because of how defense works.

[Bopper]

44 minutes ago, macskull said:

It is my understanding that higher-difficulty options were tested on Resurgence (+5, +6, whatever) but ended up not sticking around because it just didn't accomplish anything. If you're on a steamroller-y team at +4, the only difference between that and +5 or +6 is that you take way longer to kill things but the risk to you is still minimal because of how defense works.

Interesting. I would've thought the extra to-hit (if not level shifted), accuracy, damage, and debuffs would make survivability noticeably more difficult. 

[macskull]

9 minutes ago, Bopper said:

Interesting. I would've thought the extra to-hit (if not level shifted), accuracy, damage, and debuffs would make survivability noticeably more difficult. 

I think it ended up being something like the teams that are wiping the floor with +4 content already have enough defense buffs where the extra tohit from the up-leveled mobs is basically cancelled out, meaning they're not getting hit much more often than they would be against +4s. +5s get an acc bonus of 1.5 instead of 1.4 for +4s but above that the acc bonus stops going up and mobs don't get extra tohit until +6 (and even then it's only 5%). The problem ends up being that you're doing a fraction of your normal damage (30% or 15% at +5 and +6).

 

Basically, if you have enough defense you can wade into a group of higher-level enemies and survive pretty easily.

Edited October 22, 2020 by macskull

[Neogumbercules]

I don't think there's an easy solution to game difficulty but if given unlimited time and resources to address this issue I would eliminate levels from the game and use the gray/green/white/yellow/red/purple conning system as a starting point. I'd then rebalance what those cons meant in terms of power effectiveness, to-hit, etc, and then rebalance every enemy group in the game to have more interesting mechanics across the board. More buffs, debuffs, strengths, weaknesses, and tactics required to be effective against them. 

 

Then, after doing that, there would have to be a long period of adjusting player power on a set by set and AT by AT basis to make sure everyone gets a fair shake out of the level/enemy overhaul. 

 

A lot modern games take this approach. It has its downsides of course, and some do it better than others, but it's at least a stable starting point. 

 

I'm not really advocating for HC to do this. Just, like I said, given unlimited resources, I think this would be a valid approach. 

[aethereal]

On 10/22/2020 at 10:10 AM, Bopper said:

Interesting. I would've thought the extra to-hit (if not level shifted), accuracy, damage, and debuffs would make survivability noticeably more difficult. 

No +to-hit at +5, and thus no +to-hit at +5/+6 but most people are level-shifted.

[mechahamham]

Reading through the comments in this thread, I see most of the conversation is about tweaks to powersets and concerns about nerfs. There was an important factor that was only glancingly mentioned in the OP, but one that's fairly important to me, and doesn't seem to be getting a lot of attention: How endgame affects the rest of the game.

 

One poster tried to make an explicit warning about 'not turning off incarnates'. I'm probably in the other camp. I had my fill of the incarnate system during the Paragon Live era. If I never see another incarnate while I play CoH, I wouldn't be very upset at all. That said, I accept that there are players who want to play to 'be powerful', and I respect that they and I have to live together.

 

Here are my concerns:

 

Many players become so attached to their incarnate abilities that they refuse to play below level 50. This is not a serious problem for taskforce teams and leveling teams. Where it becomes a problem is world content, especially for events like we have currently with the Halloween event. The only zone event team that manages to keep any kind of traction is the 'Murder Motel' league in Peregrine Island, frequently run with multiple players who have Incandescent league teleports to zip masses of players around to monsters and banners. With multiple incarnates spamming their powers constantly, the amount a player in their 20s contributes starts to get close to meaningless.

 

It's not just at 'Murder Motel', but also against any other zone event that garners the attention of Incarnates. I was with a team in Crey's Folly fighting the zombie invasion event earlier in the year. I was on a 35ish blaster, but there were seven or eight incarnates in the assembled league. I couldn't even target the non-boss enemies before the Judgement spam obliterated them. The bosses and EBs lasted for maybe one or two hits before they too were annihilated. Not only did I have no impact on the event, there was also no challenge. If I stopped attacking for a while, there wasn't enough enemy spawn to make me regret it. I could just sit there and earn passive exp. It was pretty disheartening. This is where the 'things don't live long enough to make x worthwhile' complaint comes into my take on the equation.

 

Likewise, if a lower-level player tries to organize an event team, such as for the Zombie apocalypse team or a Deadly Apocalypse 'banner' team in another zone, assuming they can get any kind of buy-in for the event, they're constantly barraged with complaints that they need to 'promote a 50'. I've had maybe half a dozen or so instances this year where players simply leave an event team as soon as they see it's being run by an under-50. I haven't had much luck at all organizing teams in Talos or Steel Canyon at all during this particular event.

 

The 'close to meaningless' problem is also very apparent against zone GMs like the Council Goliath or Adamastor. These guys are pretty much farmed for reward merits as soon as they're able to spawn. People make jokes about how quickly Adamastor dies. In the event of a less common world GM spawns, the difficulty curve of the encounter goes  upside down as soon as the team facing it is dominated by incarnates. A good example is the Malta Zeus Titan that shows up as an ambush during the 'World Wide Red' arc. If a single team of below-40 players with a moderate amount of IOs slotted try to tackle it, it's a pretty rough fight, but completely winnable. A Single team of below 25s would have serious problems with it. If there are a handful of incarnates whapping away at it, it's trivial. The Zeus Titan goes down in seconds as opposed to minutes and things like debuffs or team buffs cease to matter in the face of the sheer amount of damage Judgement is able to pump.

 

The basic problem here is that the 'Giant Monster' level compression code that's used for all these zone events does not (or cannot?) take Incarnate abilities into account. This is the unfinished problem that the Paragon Devs had to leave behind.

 

Certainly applying a nerf to Incarnates now would be so massively unpopular that it'd be hard to justify.

 

My suggestion is to somehow add the following to the 'Giant Monster' code:

 

If the player is not an incarnate, no change should happen.

If the player is an incarnate, the event should make the GM-scaled enemies significantly more resilient to their damage and able to hit them for somewhat more. In effect, the GM-scaled enemies should get an 'incarnate shift' for calculations against the incarnate players, but not against non-incarnate players.

 

I know I'm likely in the minority of players with this kind of concern, but this is a major detriment to my enjoyment of events. I'm pretty much soloing Halloween this year.

[oedipus_tex]

I think that the end goal should be to get battles back into the range of +0 to +4.

 

Functionally,  a 50+1 player vs 54 enemies is the same as a 50 player versus 53 enemies. The only real difference is the drop rates. So I'd remove the Left Shift and then (maybe) slightly increase rewards for level 53 enemies in appeasement. That would reintroduce level +4 enemies as the top tier and hopefully satisfy most players. 

 

 

[ivanhedgehog]

30 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

I think that the end goal should be to get battles back into the range of +0 to +4.

 

Functionally,  a 50+1 player vs 54 enemies is the same as a 50 player versus 53 enemies. The only real difference is the drop rates. So I'd remove the Left Shift and then (maybe) slightly increase rewards for level 53 enemies in appeasement. That would reintroduce level +4 enemies as the top tier and hopefully satisfy most players. 

 

 

satisfy most players that want to control other players experience. You have a simple way to do this for yourself. slot a tier 2 alpha and that pesky level shift goes away. You have no need to control any one else.

[oedipus_tex]

34 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

You have a simple way to do this for yourself. slot a tier 2 alpha and that pesky level shift goes away. 

 

This is the "If you think it's too powerful, don't use it" argument, which is a cousin of "Numbers don't matter." It's like saying no power actually does too much damage; if you think one does, you should just not slot Damage in it. 

I think any argument about this topic that will get us anywhere has to start with assuming players actually use the powers available to them. If we can't make that assumption, its not possible to discuss powers at all, since a player can self-nerf anything.

[ivanhedgehog]

9 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

This is the "If you think it's too powerful, don't use it" argument, which is a cousin of "Numbers don't matter." It's like saying no power actually does too much damage; if you think one does, you should just not slot Damage in it. 

I think any argument about this topic that will get us anywhere has to start with assuming players actually use the powers available to them. If we can't make that assumption, its not possible to discuss powers at all, since a player can self-nerf anything.

They need to stop perma hasten and permadom as the first step. those powers were never designed to act that way and break the game. they enable people to do content they shouldnt be able to solo. level shift is working as designed. You have the ability to set up what ever difficulty you want FOR YOUR SELF. you have no need to change how others play other than a need to be a wanna be dev.