Game Balance & The Endgame

[oedipus_tex]

14 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

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.

 

Perma-Dom was actually well known when the OG developers retooled Domination in Issue 15. 

 

14 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

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.

 

If I use the powers that are available I have the ability to set up missions that are -2 to +3 to me. Marking the Alpha Level Shift "Incarnate Zone Only" like Lore and Destiny would change the range to -1 to +4. If the reward rate for +3 enemies were adjusted like I suggested, players would have more rather than fewer options. Right now, we're all being held back by players who don't want there to a difficult setting higher than +3.

Edited October 24, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[carroto]

5 hours ago, mechahamham said:

players simply leave an event team as soon as they see it's being run by an under-50

Thanks for the effortful post.  I agree with most of what you wrote.  However I doubt that any changes to incarnates would change the part I quoted.  People want to use their entire builds.  They don't like losing access to powers when they exemp down.  Of course some are willing to accept it to do a TF or similar, but given the choice they'll still prefer to be operating at level 50.

[Lockpick]

A bunch of power sets and powers have been buffed / nerfed on Beta.  It seems this thread was a waste of time and the devs aren't really interested in feedback at all.  There is no way these changes weren't well under way long before this thread was started.

[CrudeVileTerror]

I would say you're half-right, @Lockpick.   Maybe two-thirds.

The Devs care, as far as I can tell, and quite passionately at that.  From what I've observed, though, they've just not got their priorities straight on a fundamental level when it comes to design philosophy.

 

More on this later.  Spouse needs me to go right now.

[Ruin Mage]

Page 6 (which is now I27) was underway long before this thread was made.

So going off about how the devs don't care or don't have their priorities straight just sounds odd and baffling.
Game balance is not, from my couch potato position, an easy task. It's also that they are going to design things based off the community's forum voice. THAT in itself is a bad idea.
They'll make their decisions based on what they want to do and weigh it with the general idea they can gauge from the community.
I27 is also not the last time they'll do a power balance revamp/sweep.

Edited October 25, 2020 by Shadeknight

[Alchemystic]

31 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

A bunch of power sets and powers have been buffed / nerfed on Beta.  It seems this thread was a waste of time and the devs aren't really interested in feedback at all.  There is no way these changes weren't well under way long before this thread was started.

if its on the beta, that means they are interested in feedback.

 

That's the whole point.

 

[AerialAssault]

I think the purpose of this thread was a way for the developers to touch base with the community for what to work on in the future. It was never intended to be "make a suggestion and we'll put it in next patch!"

 

Be patient. Good things come to those who wait.

[Ruin Mage]

It is a very bad move to suddenly adjust their plans off a thread that was made after plans for i27 were already underway.

Just because feedback wasn't catered to instantly is not the end of the world, Lockpick. They are still looking for feedback (Beta forums) and who knows what sort of things are coming past Page 1.


 

[GM ColdSpark]

Keep it civil please folks. I've done a little tidying here. @AerialAssault put it quite nicely I thought in terms of what this thread can/should do vs. the feedback we're obviously very keen for (particularly on the i27 Page 1 Beta) - All feedback is good, so long as we keep it respectful of course. Thanks.

[Runebound]

I feel blindsided by the nerfs to Blaster secondaries, in part because of what I read here, or rather what I didn't read.

 

Based on this thread, I felt safe to spend much of my game time in the last month leveling Blasters with /Plant and /Tac Arrow, without any sense that the nerf bat would hit so hard. Maybe it's because I'm new, while veterans would know better, but the OP threw me:

On 9/20/2020 at 11:19 AM, The Curator said:

 

 

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

 

 

That suggests a coming nerf for TW. Fine: a heads-up beats blindsiding, and that kind of advance notice great way for GM's to make use of the Forum

 

But when I read "improvements to... Blaster secondaries," I never pictured such deep cuts to CC across the board.  Ice Arrow and similar powers look to be changed from the ability to hold an Elite Boss after 12s to doing so after 80 seconds. (That's from Mag 3 x 2/12 s to Mag 2 + Mag 1 x 4/16s. If it doesn't work that way, please enlighten me: even Magnitude is hard to get info on, with clear errors in this Wiki page, and I'm even less sure what "Scale" means in the listed nerfs).

 

Worse still are the cuts to the range of Tactical Arrow. Range seemed to be the feature of the set. This thread on Blaster secondaries gives a good sense of player views on its key role as a ranged secondary (in the first two pages, before the thread devolves). Here are the comments from page 1:

• "Most blaster secondaries are very powerful melee attacks, usually with a debuff, with Build Up later on. Tactical Arrow has a lot of debuff and soft control and Devices offers a little bit of everything if you absolutely don't want to get into melee range"
• "And then you even got tactical arrow which has all ranged powers that provide both control and damage, plus several nifty buffs. Ditto for devices....Overall, however, the thing I like the most about blaster secondaries is that they are all different, and thus provide very different playstyles"
• "Both ATs secondaries have a wide variance in how they work, with Blaster /Devices and /Tactical Arrow working much differently than /Electric and /Fire."

Nothing I read there, or in the OP here, suggested that Tac Arrow needed to nerfed back into melee range, hence the unwelcome surprise.

 

This post isn't meant to debate the nerfs to Tac Arrow (or Plants. sigh.). There's another thread for that, Focused Feedback: Blaster Secondary Revamp. Here, I'm responding to the good intentions of the OP of giving us a heads-up about pending changes, and to avoiding a "homogenization" of powers. I was thrown on both counts.

 

So here's my plea to the GM's: in the future, please give a few specifics on projected changes - not exact numbers and amounts, since those can get last-minute tweaks, but rather statements like "we plan a reduction of Blaster CC abilities and in the range of Tactical Arrow powers" instead of  the vague and misleading "improvements to Blaster secondaries." If we have a clearer idea of what's coming, we can be better prepared.

 

 

 

 

[Wavicle]

Plant and Tactical are still among the best Secondaries for Blasters.

[CrudeVileTerror]

For me, from my perspective, it comes down to the fundamentals of communication and the very basis of what it means to even play this game.

And from the get-go, it looked to me like the Homecoming Devs were raring to go!  And I get that.  I've been thinking about this game for many years too.  I've dreamt about what I would do with the opportunity to pick up where we left off and see what I could bring to other players' enjoyment.  It has shaped my views on game development significantly and experiences I've had with this game fifteen years ago have changed me as a person.  

Yet it seems the lessons I learnt from analysing this game are different from the ones the Homecoming Devs took.  Not going to say either are right or wrong, mind you.

 

Where I think they faltered, however, was at the starting line.  I believe that threads like this one should have been the first order of business.  Research in to who the players are and why they play.  Deep dives in to the fundamentals of what sort of decisions were made with the Legacy Devs for retail/profit reasons.  Exposing the guts of the game to everyone, so we could all be equally informed and informative in our analyses of the game.  And (most importantly) some back-and-forth in that regard to meet any assumptions and break them open to see where they were coming from, and how to operate around them.

Sure, we got a little something in the one thread asking "what would you like," but I certainly didn't see much in the way of engagement.  I didn't see discussions from the Homecoming Team to refine the answers given, to create a dialogue, and to develop a rapport with the diverse players we have here.  And Jimmy did reply more back then, as did some of the other Team members; but I often found those replies to miss the entire point and then move on ( @Jimmy, I apologize for calling you out, but you in particular have been someone who I find very challenging to create a dialogue with.  Based on past exchanges, you and I seem to be operating on entirely different wave lengths.   I would like for us to find a means to meaningful communicate with one another, though.  Of course, I also recognize that I'm just one voice amoungst thousands, and you are a volunteer working on a passion project:  You owe me nothing.  But in the absence of discussion, I'm left to fill in the blanks to the best of my abilities.)

From what I observed, the Homecoming Team ended up creating a bit of an echo chamber with players who shared the same vision as they have.

 

And, sure.  That's their prerogative.  

Homecoming is their server; yes.

But City of Heroes isn't their game any more or any less than it's our game as a collective community.

I don't like the disconnect between the mission statement saying "we welcome everyone," while simultaneously seeing examples of the Homecoming Team entirely missing whole demographics, and I'm going to call attention to it.

 

And what really gets my particular goat is the mantra of "we do what we do for the good of the game," which Team members and GMs love to say on repeat . . . while I watch (with my admittedly limited perspective) and see example after example of opportunities for them to say "we made a mistake, and we want to work with the community to address it."

And I don't imagine that you folks in the Team think of yourselves as perfect.

But it's also important to clearly and concisely state it out loud from time to time.

 

Just as each of us (and absolutely myself included) are human beings, and prone to constant mistakes.

But collectively . . . we -can- work together to fix problems.

 

So.  

Kudos on starting this thread!  It's what the community needs.

We needed it a year and a half ago, but better late than never.

And I know you're volunteers, and I -know- you're under a LOT of pressure from certain players to deliver and deliver quickly . . . but honestly?

I think the best choice is to slow down.

Take a step back.

Take a look at everything.

And take all of us along as a part of that process.

Openly.

With clear communication being the first objective.

And finding out why we're really here.

 

Why we -love- City of Heroes.

Because most of us lost it once before.  I can't imagine many of us ever want to lose it again.

[Moka]

I think new stuff is cool.

[Coyotedancer]

As "just players", it's not really our circus to direct, VT and those monkeys aren't ours to train.

 

We're the people up in the stands eating peanuts...

 

I think you're asking an awful lot if you want to somehow be considered a part of the proverbial show.

 

 

 

Edited October 25, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[Moka]

This videogame is nearly old enough to smoke and I think the fact its updating at all is pretty stellar. Nothing against the other servers, but despite the fact they add much more content, I find a lot of it can come off as rather jank lol. I do like the optimization in Homecoming's new content and keeping it feeling like City of Heroes.

[Ruin Mage]

I'm going to honestly and bluntly put this as best I can:
We are owed nothing. This game does not belong to the community. This server does not belong to the community. If Homecoming developers wanted to suddenly table-flip power balance on its head, it is full within their right as the ones running the show to do so. It is in that same line that feedback and suggestions are just that - feedback from the community and suggestions from the community. They are not hardcore things that need to happen - but things people want. Which HC can decide if they want to give it or not.

Transparency, or whatever word/reasoning is used here, is a load of crock for a not-live server's development.

I would rather they keep the forums at an arm's length because development-by-the-forums is a great way to lead into a proverbial dumpster fire. I know some people probably think they can power balance better than Powerhouse, but I have also seen enough on the forums to consider that to be hilarious. The better route is for people to realize that this is their show, they can add in input, but HC is not obligated to implement anything we desire / anything we desire precisely as is. The better route is for people to be content in being able to give feedback and be heard, but understand that being heard does not mean anything/everything you desire is going to happen.

We do not need a heavy handed approach of "Include us in this ride please!!" because we do not need to see everything under the hood. There's a lot already seen when they tease pages/Issues, when they talk about costs, and when the beta shards get updated. Hell, the fact they made this thread in general to give us a general heads up of what they're doing is more than enough in my eyes. While community engagement is great? I would rather it be done with the arm's length distance mentality - because inviting the community closer is a recipe for disaster. Especially if you take a look at the Suggestions and Feedback forum since HC came up.

There is no easy or good way about it.

Wavelengths don't really matter, honestly. I'm not trying to say we can't/shouldn't hold the HC team accountable, but people need to stop getting false hopes and assuming. This isn't our show, and that needs to be recognized. Speaking as if there's a need for anything in particular, to me, comes off as arrogant and claiming as if one knows better than the rest. Which, honestly, no one does except the team - as they know what sort of server they want to give to us. The community's influence needs to be moderated or else the snowball effect will happen and that is bad. One thing will lead to the next.

Case in point - the entire 79 pages of this thread has been back and forth, circular debate, and more. The community should be cherry picked, and not listened to wholesale. Otherwise, things get dumb and fast. Take it from a couch potato who loves this game and has spent way too many hours reading forum posts. who thinks he knows how to develop games but actually doesn't.

Edited October 25, 2020 by Shadeknight

[Saikochoro]

Very well said @Shadeknight.  I think the Homecoming team has actually been very good about communication with the community.  They have asked for our input on several occasions and have always been upfront with their intentions.  They have done an outstanding job on being accountable and transparent. 
 

That said, I do think forum communities (homecoming included) can become very entitled very fast. This is one of the things that bothers me most about gaming communities. The idea that the dev team are never doing enough, never communicating well enough, not transparent enough, not doing things the right way, etc. For a completely, volunteer team I think @Jimmyand team have knocked it out of the park with how they treat and engage the community. Far better than most paid development teams from large studios. 
 

One thing that I have also very much appreciate about this dev team is that they don’t seem to shy away from taking unpopular stances. Nor do they seem keen on beating around the bush in some of their posts. I also especially like that they aren’t afraid of defending themselves and their team from the community when the community is being overly entitled and critical. 

Edited October 26, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Runebound]

1 hour ago, Saikochoro said:

 I think the Homecoming team has actually been very good about communication with the community.  They have asked for our input on several occasions be have always been upfront with their intentions. 

I agree.

 

I do think a little more detail before the patch would help achieve the OP goal of "clearing up" issues around power sets, hence my post above, but that doesn't keep me from seeing and appreciating how the GM's reach out to the community. That's a win for everyone.

 

Also, while there are bound to be cranky voices in any long thread, it seems the GM's make the most of constructive feedback. Early on, Widower posted

On 9/20/2020 at 7:10 PM, GM Widower said:

Eh, this isn't worse than when we tested Page 3 a year ago - go back and read those threads; you'll see there are a lot more fireworks than there are here....

 

I might suggest, however, that if anyone should want their feedback to be taken seriously, it might be wise to avoid implying that we have some sort of dastardly plan to destroy the game. Nothing could be further from the truth.

[LQT]

15 hours ago, Runebound said:

That suggests a coming nerf for TW. Fine: a heads-up beats blindsiding, and that kind of advance notice great way for GM's to make use of the Forum

 

The coming changes were announced for TW months ago, some point after Page 5 went live back in March, because of the extreme synergy TW/Bio produced.

While the specifics of those changes have only recently been released both TW and many other i27 topics [EM rework/TacArrow/Enhancement rework] have been mentioned by Captain Powerhouse and others both on Discord and on these forums quite a few times, in part because of how long ago these changes were originally brought up as players would request updates on when these changes might be happening.
 

5 hours ago, Runebound said:

a little more detail before the patch would help achieve the OP goal of "clearing up" issues

 

Early on, Widower posted

 

As mentioned in that post you've quoted there are entirely separate issues when the devs do announce these things, regardless of timeframe. It's likely impossible to ever effect change and not "upset" someone in some way because you'll have different groups of people enjoying different things.

 

To use an example of people I know IRL: Someone I know doesn't like the music group RHCP because to them "all their stuff sounds the same". Another person doesn't like Linkin' Park because "all their albums sound different from one another". It's different sides of the same coin: Make no changes, feelings of stagnation. Make changes, feelings of moving away from original concept.

CoX has the same experience. Some players find a lack of new content to be stagnant, others find changes/additions [IOs/Incarnates/etc] to the game feels too different from what they are used to or experienced back on live. There's likely no single solution to both these problems as by their very nature they are antithetical to each other, but even Paragon's own dev team in the various Lore AMAs that can be read on paragonwiki and other places go on to explain the changes they had planned were the game to have continued and concept wise it meant even more tiers of power beyond the current Incarnates such as Ascendants, Dimensionless, in addition to 4 more Incarnate powers [Genesis/Mind/Vitae/Omega] before what would have been more tiers after that.

 

[ivanhedgehog]

On 10/24/2020 at 11:28 AM, mechahamham said:

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.

There is a simple way to get lower level event teams....form them. I find people all levels in the game standing around with their hands in their pockets. They wont form teams.

[ivanhedgehog]

On 10/24/2020 at 1:13 PM, 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.

so expecting players to have self control is asking too much?

[ivanhedgehog]

On 10/24/2020 at 1:35 PM, oedipus_tex said:

 

Perma-Dom was actually well known when the OG developers retooled Domination in Issue 15. 

 

 

If I use the powers that are available I have the ability to set up missions that are -2 to +3 to me. Marking the Alpha Level Shift "Incarnate Zone Only" like Lore and Destiny would change the range to -1 to +4. If the reward rate for +3 enemies were adjusted like I suggested, players would have more rather than fewer options. Right now, we're all being held back by players who don't want there to a difficult setting higher than +3.

you have the ability to make the mission +4. you simply refuse to do it and want to get the devs to make everyone conform to your preferences. I would rather have more options, not less to satisfy someone perfectly able to do it for themselves.

[golstat2003]

On 10/25/2020 at 12:18 PM, CrudeVileTerror said:

I would say you're half-right, @Lockpick.   Maybe two-thirds.

The Devs care, as far as I can tell, and quite passionately at that.  From what I've observed, though, they've just not got their priorities straight on a fundamental level when it comes to design philosophy.

 

More on this later.  Spouse needs me to go right now.

Completely disagree after reading the patch notes. With the amount of extensive work they've done there, I'm not at all shocked we didn't see large sweeping changes. If that's all the amount of work they have been working on all this time, I think the expectations of this thread were phenomenally unrealistic.

Edited October 27, 2020 by golstat2003

[Alchemystic]

8 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

Completely disagree after reading the patch notes. With the amount of extensive work they've done there, I'm not at all shocked we didn't see large sweeping changes. If that's all the amount of work they have been working on all this time, I think the expectations of this thread were phenomenally unrealistic.

 

Honestly it's not like Paragon Studio's design philosophy was any better. Hell, it was arguably worse.

 

All the new powersets ended up performing far better than the older ones thanks to new features and updated mechanics.

 

And then the old powersets were guarded by the 'cottage rule' so any of these new goodies were never ported to them.

 

Homecoming are doing away with the old way of doing things, they're retroactively enhancing powersets so they dont fall by the wayside. Paragon Studios did very little in order to make older powersets more effective when measured against the newer ones, and there are two major reasons for that;

 

1) They needed to make the new powersets marketable, so making them more effective than others was a big selling point. It was on the fringe of being Pay to Win.

 

2) There were few members of the original team remaining who worked on the older powersets, so they instead left their archaic design choices in game.

 

Neither of these things are an issue anymore, so moving forward Homecoming are free to make these changes as they revitalize the game.

 

 

[Haijinx]

We knew there were nerfs coming to the control type powers in the newer blast secondaries a year ago.

 

Its not some sneak attack.  

 

The reason was clear, many of those powers were more useful than similar Dom/Controller powers due to their recharge.

 

That and their mag was higher than older comparable blaster secondary powers.

 

Finally its been common knowledge forever that Tact Arrow was the best version of Trick Arrow.   

 

Of course many of those new blaster secondaries need their lamo melee attacks looked at.  They never got the correct Blaster recharge/scale adjustments.