"The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?

[golstat2003]

6 minutes ago, Shenanigunner said:

 

Unnecessary to the gamers who just want the game bent their way. I completely get that.

 

And I have made it clear that it could use exactly the same code base, exactly the same implementation, update after update, just as five shards already do, despite some player differences among them... with one additional switch enabled that already exists on beta/test. No other difference unless the mass pleas of the gamers there want further anti-nerfs.

 

I haven't heard one single cogent argument against the idea itself, except misunderstandings about this and that I somehow advocate "banning" some subset of users. I've said and mean nothing of the kind... but if all the crazed powergamers migrate there, we're all better off, including them.

 

 

Folks gave you plenty of reasons why in the other thread. Not going to rehash them all here.

 

This is unreasonable request for the team we have now and not needed.

 

And you have not given a clear definition of power gamer. This sounds like another absolutely useless rail against powerleveling in disguise

 

As said absolutely unnecessary.

Edited January 22, 2021 by golstat2003

[CrudeVileTerror]

Poor @Galaxy Brain.

Hmm, let's see . . . will this work as course correction . . . 

 

Galax!  Hey.  So, let's say your hypothesis is correct.  Let's say that the bell curve has a distinct bulge in the centre with a majority of players possessing "lynch pin" IOs.

What would you propose after something like that were confirmed?

Do you feel that the existence of a 15% Global Recharge here and a +10% Recovery Rate there merit a complete pass for rebalancing the whole game?  Does those values meaningfully impact the game enough for this theoretical majority of players to potentially put new and casual players in a compromised position?

Could you elaborate a little more, please?

[Bill Z Bubba]

I don't consider the game side unbalanced at all. We're given a huge range of difficulty levels and three starting zones of varying difficulty.

 

It's the archetype/build side that's completely out of whack and yea, a whole lot of that comes down to how mez protection/effects are dealt with and the massive disparity that causes. Can't get clarion until after level 50 and some vet lvls, after all.

 

Do IOs exacerbate the issue? Absolutely. But does that mean the game needs to be rebalanced? Or does it mean that there's a few underlying concepts in our character builds that could be looked at without ever having to touch the environment those builds exist within.

Edited January 22, 2021 by Bill Z Bubba

[Infinitum]

1 hour ago, Shenanigunner said:

 

Unnecessary to the gamers who just want the game bent their way. I completely get that.

 

And I have made it clear that it could use exactly the same code base, exactly the same implementation, update after update, just as five shards already do, despite some player differences among them... with one additional switch enabled that already exists on beta/test. No other difference unless the mass pleas of the gamers there want further anti-nerfs.

 

I haven't heard one single cogent argument against the idea itself, except misunderstandings about this and that I somehow advocate "banning" some subset of users. I've said and mean nothing of the kind... but if all the crazed powergamers migrate there, we're all better off, including them.

 

 

Well have you for once thought that certain communities exist where SO users and crazed power gamers like my self get along and actually team together with no issues and would prefer to not break that bond up?

[Galaxy Brain]

1 minute ago, golstat2003 said:

See the rest of my reply. I edited while you were typing. Sorry.

 

The Inventions system (I consider crafting to be a part of that, just like the AH is) was said to be optional. I don't think that should change.

Ah I gotcha. The actual need to craft is certainly a barrier, but its pretty dang easy nowadays with a saturated market where you Pay X inf and pop out the exact materials.

 

I just think part of it is that Inventions came out in Issue 9 in 2007. The game ended at issue 23, coming into 24 in 2012. That's 5 years and 14 updates with Inventions being a thing vs 8 updates and 3 years with only SO's (with a chunk of that being before ED/ect so even that was a whole different ballgame). Add in HC and thats another 2-ish years with inventions, and the audience now is predominately veterans of CoH I'd imagine who are die-hard or at least familiar with the system when they returned.

 

They have been part of CoH far longer than they haven't, and I would bet that most of us playing HC are veterans who knew of it. Simply "ignoring" them seems odd.

 

 

[Infinitum]

Easiest solution to me would be to add an option to add difficult spawns if you wanted them.  Or if you didn't to not use them.

 

I wouldnt be in favor of the game arbitrarily becoming more difficult across the board because sometimes you just want to have an easy roll.  Sometimes you want a challenge.

 

Dark Astoria - praetorian content from Maria - high level stuff from Unai.

 

It can get dicey at times even with maxed out builds - I think the main problem or non problem is a lot of people don't run the hard stuff that actually does exist.

 

If You run the task force of the week on +4/8 most of those will be a fair challenge from my experience - but a lot of times I set it to -1 because the team I'm with may not be up to that level or not want to slog through.

 

Thats why any changes should be options - not hauling off half the population to a different server as has been suggested here.

 

Options would solve the issue and appease everyone.

 

How to implement those options can be varied - difficulty setting that adds exotic spawns and dmg types is and has always been my solution.

Edited January 22, 2021 by Infinitum

[wjrasmussen]

12 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

So, a shower thought to me was that we often tout the game as "Balanced on SO's". Hell, I make it a point to showcase sets on said metric as often as possible.... but we all know of the IO system and it really is not something gated away in secrecy with all the resources we have at our disposal to learn about it, or even just buy IO's at a whim with the AH being a slash command away.

 

Its often said that "new players wouldn't understand it", or it's simply too complex to be relied on. While both can be true, in today's age much more complex loot systems have come and gone for players to digest which to me mitigates the notion of people not grasping it. The complexity can be tough for sure given how many options there are, but IMHO I think there are a bunch of players who "use" the system enough to where I think it is a solid base of performance. Do they "optimize" it? No, but there is a weird blurry line between an SO build, a Generic IO build, a build with a few uniques, a build with some set bonuses and uniques.... and so on.

 

 

I think it's worth taking a gander at who is using the IO system. First, we need to know our audience:

 

 

Taken off Discord, these are the peak player counts per Shard on HC for the last 7 days as of this posting. On the whole, lets assume there have been 2955 players online this week. The AH is cross-shard, so looking into active bids on commonly sought-after IO's can give us an *idea* of how popular the IO system is, if we try and correlate 1 bid per player:

 

 

 

*LotG I divided by 5 as folks usually try to buy as many as they can

 

I could add more and more, but in my experience these are some of the most commonly slotted IO's across many builds. Now, this is not accurate for sure but if we take this correlation then we can guess that about 44% of active players are using the AH to buy and slot powerful IO's. If we ignore Gaussian/Achilles/KB IO's as not every set gets easy use from those (all others can be slotted in Health/Stamina/Take your pick of pool powers) and it shoots to around 56% average. With this observation we could assume that the IO system is at least *used* by half the players, even if we go just based on Miracle with close to a 47% ratio of Bids to Active Players in the past week, being a unique it could be assumed that 1 bid = 1 player here, though of course some may be buying a good chunk at a time... but that gets too squirrely. 

 

The point I want to bring up with this is that the IO system being used in general with the ability to slot powerful uniques changes things up. Any power that has +Def essentially has +Rech, -Def also has -Res (and damage procs), KB is easy to convert and is being done so (the ratio lines up with roughly the ratio of sets that have AoE KB powers), and so on and so forth. This doesnt even on ATO's which can be easily attained with Merits. It seems to me that many more players are actively using IO's to put themselves a step above the game, and to be honest IO's have been "the thing" for longer than SO's have if you look at the total lifespan. I guess I just want to open the floor to thoughts on this as within the HC community it seems a sizeable portion of people use them.

 

 

 

 

 

so every body plays like you do?  You have them so others must have them.

 

Also, you want a play style therefore other people must play your playstyle?

Do you want content to be harder than it is currently?  Don't slot those things if you feel they are overpowered.  Or is is about forcing something on other people?  Or the power difference from you to them?

[ForeverLaxx]

My biggest contention with the "the game needs to balance around IOs" is... what IOs? What builds? As soon as you start deciding that specific builds are required, those become the only builds anyone makes. Sure, most players are probably running Defense-capped, high-Recharge builds because they're numerically effective at gunning down Council caves with the highest level of efficiency... but when you start building the whole game under the expectation that all players are going to do that, you eventually craft a game where all players must do that.

 

That's not a world I want to be in. One of my biggest draws towards this game, after I settled in way back in the beforetimes, was that I could play and build my characters however I wanted and still feel like I'm doing something. If you choose to "balance around IOs" then you're taking that feature away from the players. I cannot get behind that direction.

[Bastille Boy]

The game can be balanced around SOs at base difficulty and still present an interesting challenge to IOed players at +4/8.

 

Different enemy groups scale up differently. Council at +4/8 is easy-peasy on an IOed team or with an IO build designed for soloing. My big goal in the game for the past several months has been to solo Linea's AE 801.2 at max difficulty. (I think I'm almost there...my SR/WM tanker can do it at +3/8 and doesn't have lores yet.) This is a notoriously difficult mission, yet it's designed to be beatable at base difficulty on an SO build.

 

I think it's a good idea to keep the bulk of game content balanced around SOs at base difficulty. I think that's necessary to keep the game accessible to new, casual players (including new players who aren't being tutored by a veteran player).

[Infinitum]

17 minutes ago, wjrasmussen said:

so every body plays like you do?  You have them so others must have them.

 

Also, you want a play style therefore other people must play your playstyle?

Do you want content to be harder than it is currently?  Don't slot those things if you feel they are overpowered.  Or is is about forcing something on other people?  Or the power difference from you to them?

If anything I could see this leading to balancing rewards based on content rather than whole game rebalancing - which IMO is fair.

 

I think you are misreading GB, I dont think rebalancing the whole game is the intent of this.

 

And if it is hes really going to have to brush up on his willpower slotting.

Edited January 22, 2021 by Infinitum

[golstat2003]

32 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Ah I gotcha. The actual need to craft is certainly a barrier, but its pretty dang easy nowadays with a saturated market where you Pay X inf and pop out the exact materials.

 

I just think part of it is that Inventions came out in Issue 9 in 2007. The game ended at issue 23, coming into 24 in 2012. That's 5 years and 14 updates with Inventions being a thing vs 8 updates and 3 years with only SO's (with a chunk of that being before ED/ect so even that was a whole different ballgame). Add in HC and thats another 2-ish years with inventions, and the audience now is predominately veterans of CoH I'd imagine who are die-hard or at least familiar with the system when they returned.

 

They have been part of CoH far longer than they haven't, and I would bet that most of us playing HC are veterans who knew of it. Simply "ignoring" them seems odd.

 

 

Oh I'm not saying ignore them. I'm saying what should be the BASE game be, and should that including having to interact with the inventions system at all?

 

The "selling point" of COH was always that you didn't really have to craft gear or deal with an auction house.

Is it high time that selling point goes away? Maybe.

 

But maybe not if it means taking significant time of our limited volunteer team to have to rebalance large portions of the game.

 

If it's easy let them have at it. But I bet it's not and I'd rather have them spend that time more wisely.

 

Fix outliers (like they just did in the last deployment) sure, but spend large amounts of time rebalancing the game (and potentially introducing new bugs) along the way for something that may not have that much payoff compared to new costumes, low level story arcs, new at, new powersets etc?  . . . no.

Edited January 22, 2021 by golstat2003

[wjrasmussen]

20 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

If anything I could see this leading to balancing rewards based on content rather than whole game rebalancing - which IMO is fair.

 

I think you are misreading GB, I dont think rebalancing the whole game is the intent of this.

 

And if it is hes really going to have to brush up on his willpower slotting.

Balancing rewards.   Does giving out more rewards factor into it?

[Infinitum]

1 minute ago, wjrasmussen said:

Balancing rewards.   Does giving out more rewards factor into it?

Thats just one way to look at it, there are lots more.

 

But when you can get the same reward for council stomping rather than Malta or carnies or incarnate content that is a balance issue.

[Galaxy Brain]

1 hour ago, Shenanigunner said:

 

Unnecessary to the gamers who just want the game bent their way. I completely get that.

 

And I have made it clear that it could use exactly the same code base, exactly the same implementation, update after update, just as five shards already do, despite some player differences among them... with one additional switch enabled that already exists on beta/test. No other difference unless the mass pleas of the gamers there want further anti-nerfs.

 

I haven't heard one single cogent argument against the idea itself, except misunderstandings about this and that I somehow advocate "banning" some subset of users. I've said and mean nothing of the kind... but if all the crazed powergamers migrate there, we're all better off, including them.

 

 

Well, if you wanna play at 50 immediately with any IO's you want the Beta Server is accessible to everyone.... but that isn't too popular. I can pop in there and make myself lvl 50 immediately with the freebies menu, then use the same menu to slot myself out without ever touching a crafting table or the AH.

 

 

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

I don't consider the game side unbalanced at all. We're given a huge range of difficulty levels and three starting zones of varying difficulty.

 

It's the archetype/build side that's completely out of whack and yea, a whole lot of that comes down to how mez protection/effects are dealt with and the massive disparity that causes. Can't get clarion until after level 50 and some vet lvls, after all.

 

Do IOs exacerbate the issue? Absolutely. But does that mean the game needs to be rebalanced? Or does it mean that there's a few underlying concepts in our character builds that could be looked at without ever having to touch the environment those builds exist within.

 

I did a bad job explaining what I had in mind for balance, but Bill basically nailed what I had in my head. It is not so much "wow the whole game is out of whack" and more:

 

Huh, there are many builds that cannot equally use the IO system in the same fun ways (Sets with -Def or +Def and not, certain ATOs being amazing and others not), and there are a ton of IO's that *everyone* takes which ends up with less diverse characters than what I would imagine be intended.

 

Its things like a new pool power being bad/amazing depending on if you can slot LotG, or an AT falling behind because they do not benefit from the same ATO proc abilities as a rival AT, or an AT/Build that is actively not fun unless you "cram" tons of IOs into it to just level the playing field (MM's can be argued to be here with Pet Auras). That is where lines get very blurry and you gotta start thinking on where adjustments should be made if any. Let alone the general point of you being stronger overall just by using them. 

 

25 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

The "selling point" of COH was always that you didn't really have to craft gear or deal with an auction house.

Is it high time that selling point goes away? Maybe.

 

 

So this is gonna be a hot take, but something that came to mind is there are also a lot of IO sets that don't do much (a good chunk of yellow / non scaling to 50 sets). With the market stocked with materials / tons of premade IO's already out there.... what if non orange/non unique/non-proc ones just dropped into your inventory? Or at the least like, make it so you can craft on the go if you have the materials + recipe on hand and slot while playing. In HC it's already basically there with /AH and the right amount of Inf as you auto-fly across a zone to the next mission, why not just allow it when you're able?

 

 

 

1 hour ago, wjrasmussen said:

so every body plays like you do?  You have them so others must have them.

 

Also, you want a play style therefore other people must play your playstyle?

Do you want content to be harder than it is currently?  Don't slot those things if you feel they are overpowered.  Or is is about forcing something on other people?  Or the power difference from you to them?

 

Not so much that I expect people to conform or anything of the sort, but with all the talk here, in discord, or even just in-game I know that a lot of people use the IO system but it seems almost Taboo to talk about it's impact. As I said in an earlier post, they have been part of the game far longer than not and making them more integrated via balancing them/balancing what sets can slot what/etc could go a long way.

[Greycat]

Was going to reply earlier, didn't. Haven't really read through, to be honest. Skimmed a bit. So, here, two cents. Don't spend it all in one place.

 

Yes, the game - both content and powers - should be balanced around SOs. Everyone gets them. Can get them for free. There's nothing much to understand about them, and they make a good baseline. SOs don't really "break" the game. (There can be some argument on getting them earlier doing so, now - at least one thread was started on that - but that ship sailed with DFB. They're more powerful, but there's also a cost for upkeep.)

 

There's no side question on set bonues, globals, how many of what you have, build cost (as opposed to a min/maxed IO build,) etc.

 

If you want to go with IOs and get more powerful that way, you can - either just a little (say, frankenslotting and not bothering with set bonuses much) or all out. Do so and content at base levels will get easier. (Moreso than the various "perks" we've gotten over the years have done.)

 

Content? Well, it's still measured against that base level... generally with SOs.

 

Trying to tweak the game, whether we're looking at power (do we *really* want to nerf recharge on the assumption X percent of builds have at least three LOTG globals?) or content - though the latter can be specifically marked, like some may do in AE - around the assumption that "the player will have IO builds" just rapidly gets into a chaotic mess about what assumptions *that* entails, and followups about what should be a "base" there, and shouldn't we just make that the base without a build, etc, etc, etc.

[Hyperstrike]

3 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

You start off dealing with Hellions. I am pretty sure they are street level.

"New" is not the same thing as "street level".
New, as in "Holy crap!  I have powers, let's try to figure this stuff out!"

[Erratic1]

4 minutes ago, Hyperstrike said:

"New" is not the same thing as "street level".
New, as in "Holy crap!  I have powers, let's try to figure this stuff out!"

You are never that new, not even in the tutorials, where you have police connections and are directed to deal with problems and are not someone who just suddenly realized they can fantastic things (evidenced in particular by the fact you have a superhero name even).

Edited January 22, 2021 by Erratic1

[Hyperstrike]

3 hours ago, Doomrider said:

This seems to be the same back and forth that this topic always receives, and it's unfortunate. This being just a discussion of ideas, not a development manifesto, you'd think more people would be able to entertain the hypothetical without the need to act like their opinion or feedback has to be a whole hearted acceptance or rejection of an idea. 

I believe you are correct though, the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle when it comes to frequency of IO usage among players. It's a really hard thing to measure though, kudos for your efforts GB.

 

It's too bad that feedback posted on the HC forums is no where near representative of the whole playerbase. Same for Discord. Just 2 different slices of the same pie, but a handful of vocal players in either example. If in game polling was something that could be utilized, that might be a better way at measuring this.
 

1: Because the ideas are inextricably linked with "what sort of development resources would be required".

Hey!  I've got this super-hot idea for XYZ!
Okay.  And WHO is going to do this?
Uh...

More-over, there's the question of "how is this change going to affect others."

2: Feedback on the forums, likely, will NEVER be representative of "the whole player base".
Not everyone utilizes the forums, let alone posts.
We're all the loudmouth weirdos there.
And we subdivide into further "specialty" groups.  Making us even more NOT "the norm".

 

[Hyperstrike]

7 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

You are never that new, not even in the tutorials, where you have police connections and are directed to deal with problems and are not someone who just suddenly realized they can fantastic things (evidenced in particular by the fact you have a superhero name even).

We'll have to agree to disagree on how we each, personally, project our fantasy onto the game.

[CrudeVileTerror]

So, different approach here, @Galaxy Brain . . . if I understood your last post correctly.  What if instead of trying to balance the game because many players use lynch pin IOs/Sets, what if we try to diminish the impact of those lynch pins by adding more features to existing Sets and give players reasons to diversify and explore more directions with their builds?

[Infinitum]

13 minutes ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

So, different approach here, @Galaxy Brain . . . if I understood your last post correctly.  What if instead of trying to balance the game because many players use lynch pin IOs/Sets, what if we try to diminish the impact of those lynch pins by adding more features to existing Sets and give players reasons to diversify and explore more directions with their builds?

Ie stop the underlying cause for every build needing or having perf shifter, miracle and panacea?

[CrudeVileTerror]

Rather, give players something that tempts them to slot something OTHER than Performance Shifter in to Stamina.

[Galaxy Brain]

27 minutes ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

Rather, give players something that tempts them to slot something OTHER than Performance Shifter in to Stamina.

Well, the main thing there is that Perf Shifter is so good + Endurance Issues are awful. Nerfing Perf Shifter is just bad juju and makes End issues worse, but alleviating the End "Hole" everyone builds for (not eliminate) would make Perf go from mandatory to "nice to have". Things like that are what to look out for.

[Infinitum]

29 minutes ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

Rather, give players something that tempts them to slot something OTHER than Performance Shifter in to Stamina.

If the underlying issue remains why would they?  

[Doomrider]

47 minutes ago, Hyperstrike said:

1: Because the ideas are inextricably linked with "what sort of development resources would be required".

Hey!  I've got this super-hot idea for XYZ!
Okay.  And WHO is going to do this?
Uh...

More-over, there's the question of "how is this change going to affect others."

2: Feedback on the forums, likely, will NEVER be representative of "the whole player base".
Not everyone utilizes the forums, let alone posts.
We're all the loudmouth weirdos there.
And we subdivide into further "specialty" groups.  Making us even more NOT "the norm".

 

and you just proved my point.

I also said feedback on the forums is not representative of the whole player base, so now you're just agreeing with me? Ya know what, don't waste your time and mine beyond responding to that.