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

[Myrmidon]

21 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I spend a fair amount of time talking to self-professed newbies when I'm giving away inf. 

This “newbie” will happily take as much Influence as you’re willing to send.

[Hyperstrike]

28 minutes ago, Myrmidon said:

This “newbie” will happily take as much Influence as you’re willing to send.

Same here!

[Hyperstrike]

30 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I really haven't seen these people

Omni-presence in 60 zones, 24-hours-a-day, 6.75 days a week (maint), and 52 weeks a year on 5 "live" shards and 2 testing servers (Pre and Beta)?

Just saying.

[Yomo Kimyata]

4 minutes ago, Hyperstrike said:

Omni-presence in 60 zones, 24-hours-a-day, 6.75 days a week (maint), and 52 weeks a year on 5 "live" shards and 2 testing servers (Pre and Beta)?

Just saying.

Send any and all to the giveaway in my sig!

[Bill Z Bubba]

6 hours ago, Brutal Justice said:

They didn’t have it for how many years and did just fine?   

They were never "just fine" and still aren't. The disparity in leveling speed shows this.

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Brutal Justice said:

I didn’t say they were as durable.  What I said was a soft capped blaster makes your “max survival tank with 3 attacks” largely pointless in 99% of the game.  

Go do a Werner rules ITF with your blaster and get back to us.

[Brutal Justice]

16 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Go do a Werner rules ITF with your blaster and get back to us.

Very clever, but could that possibly be the 1% that I left room for when I said 99%...

[Brutal Justice]

20 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

They were never "just fine" and still aren't. The disparity in leveling speed shows this.

I don’t remember a shortage of blasters in the olden days.  Blasters today are also much more powerful than they were then.  With crashless nukes and amazing sustain.  

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, Brutal Justice said:

Very clever, but could that possibly be the 1% that I left room for when I said 99%...

Could be, or you can buy defense amps from 1 to 50 or perpetually stock up on break frees or do all manner of other things but in the end, DPS and thus XP gain drop to zero when you're faceplanted from getting mezzed and lessened by more than the DPS gain from being a blaster. I've got a blaster. T3ed/T4ed mix. She's fun on teams. Sucks ass solo.

 

Just now, Brutal Justice said:

I don’t remember a shortage of blasters in the olden days.  Blasters today are also much more powerful than they were then.  With crashless nukes and amazing sustain.  

Nope. Never was a shortage of defenders or controllers or corruptors either. Doesn't mean that they didn't always lag behind due to a lack of mez protection.

[Bill Z Bubba]

Granted, I do and always will judge an archetype by what it's capable of solo. Anything can become great when using the crutch of teaming.

Edited January 24, 2021 by Bill Z Bubba

[Doomguide2005]

58 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Granted, I do and always will judge an archetype by what it's capable of solo. Anything can become great when using the crutch of teaming.

😄  well my Emps have and always could solo ... and I don't think they died all that much even on "Invincible".  But, yeah speed through the mission or solo vs AVs definitely wasn't a thing either.  I don't think crutch is quite the right word either at least with Empathy the set screams team me.

[BelleSorciere]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Granted, I do and always will judge an archetype by what it's capable of solo. Anything can become great when using the crutch of teaming.

"The crutch of teaming" This is an MMORPG, Bill. Teaming is intended play, not some kind of cheat code.

 

Not all ATs solo equally and every character probably has a sweet spot in level + #Players where leveling is fine solo. That's not a bad thing really. Some people want to push things as far as they can and solo at max difficulty and others want something different. An AT's value isn't determined by one person's subjective judgment.

 

 

[golstat2003]

1 hour ago, BelleSorciere said:

"The crutch of teaming" This is an MMORPG, Bill. Teaming is intended play, not some kind of cheat code.

 

Not all ATs solo equally and every character probably has a sweet spot in level + #Players where leveling is fine solo. That's not a bad thing really. Some people want to push things as far as they can and solo at max difficulty and others want something different. An AT's value isn't determined by one person's subjective judgment.

 

 

Ehhhh I kinda see Bill's point. If I'm not able to solo at a steady pace with a given powerset setup I'm more than likely not to bother getting it to 50. Because I'm not guaranteed to always have teams available at some of the times I get to play during the week. /shrug.

[Bill Z Bubba]

Crutch probably is the wrong word for what I'm attempting to explain. I like teaming these days. Even have a regular group I hang out with but when they're not around I would like to have just as much fun with my squishies as I do my non-squishies but I don't. Certainly not before 50. It was only thanks to hopping on the PLing Train that I even ended up with as many non-melee as I have now, and yes, some of them can at least get through missions at high diff, but it's a drag.

 

I only want to see some of that disparity alleviated one way or the other.

[Hyperstrike]

7 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Send any and all to the giveaway in my sig!

Probably should have put it in a slightly more polite way (any exposure to Social Media is too much).
But the numbers I talked about should be kept in mind when one says *I* never saw one.

[Hyperstrike]

2 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Crutch probably is the wrong word for what I'm attempting to explain. I like teaming these days. Even have a regular group I hang out with but when they're not around I would like to have just as much fun with my squishies as I do my non-squishies but I don't. Certainly not before 50. It was only thanks to hopping on the PLing Train that I even ended up with as many non-melee as I have now, and yes, some of them can at least get through missions at high diff, but it's a drag.

 

I only want to see some of that disparity alleviated one way or the other.

Crutch <<< Assistive Aid

[ForeverLaxx]

8 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Doesn't mean that they didn't always lag behind

Tolerance for solo speed is going to change from person to person. I, personally, have had zero issues soloing my "squishy" ATs because I don't insist on running at breakneck speed constantly and carry a Break Free for emergencies. If you're going to judge an entire AT by how easy it is to turn your brain off, hold W, and roll face on your attack keybinds then of course you're going to prefer some kind of Scrapper/Brute/Tanker.

 

Different ATs bring different playstyles, feels, concepts, and power fantasies to the table. There's nothing wrong with that and any change that pushes the ATs closer to some universal homogenized mean isn't something I personally want to see.

[AerialAssault]

Really good discussion all around. I'll share my thoughts.

 

The Live game was, as we know, balanced with SO's in mind. Even the newer arcs are perfectly doable with only SO slotting. They might not be easy, but certainly doable. This should not change. All content that we have now should, in effect, be frozen in place unless there is a compelling argument for a total overhaul.

 

Newer content provided by HC, I suspect, might not be balanced around SO's. I'm talking about the two new Story Arcs. This is only my theory, based on my own experiences. If any of the Dev team have said, or are willing to say otherwise, I'll stand corrected. On the test server, I tested the Hero-side arc with a fully tricked out build on a challenging setting (+2/x4) with a friend who was not tricked out. And my character had no issues except from the rave segment, which has since been tweaked. However, on the villain-side arc using only non-set Common IO's, I found it suitably challenging that I had to knock the difficulty down two notches. Does this mean anything? Maybe that I suck at the game, but I feel that this newer, post-Live content is generally more difficult than any of it's peers, that I believe it is balanced with Common IOs in mind.

 

To be honest, if that is the way newer content goes, then I am in favour of it.  But only for newer content or any revamped Task Forces.

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 hours ago, ForeverLaxx said:

Tolerance for solo speed is going to change from person to person. I, personally, have had zero issues soloing my "squishy" ATs because I don't insist on running at breakneck speed constantly and carry a Break Free for emergencies. If you're going to judge an entire AT by how easy it is to turn your brain off, hold W, and roll face on your attack keybinds then of course you're going to prefer some kind of Scrapper/Brute/Tanker.

 

Different ATs bring different playstyles, feels, concepts, and power fantasies to the table. There's nothing wrong with that and any change that pushes the ATs closer to some universal homogenized mean isn't something I personally want to see.

Would 3 points of mez protection that kicks in at lvl 10 added to the inherents of all squishy ATs homogenize everything? They'd still get mezzed through that but it wouldn't be nearly the binary fun vs mezzed that the current situation creates. And it wouldn't involve respecs nor would it force a change in tactics.

 

You left off Stalkers and Sentinels, by the by. Not that I play stalkers but, yes, I don't enjoy having to hide or constantly back away from fights or analyze every spawn every mission because one mis-step means having to use a rez or a hospital trip or waiting around for someone else to pick me up off the floor.

 

I don't judge ATs by how easy they are. I judge them by how annoying they are to play at a level to which I've grown accustomed. Masterminds are the only AT I refuse to play due to considering them completely broken in a bad way. Stalkers I don't play just cuz I don't like Hide.

 

I guess in the end, I simply dislike having to buy mez protection to have fun with some ATs when the other half of the archetypes don't have to. I don't consider that a balanced situation.

[golstat2003]

2 hours ago, AerialAssault said:

Really good discussion all around. I'll share my thoughts.

 

The Live game was, as we know, balanced with SO's in mind. Even the newer arcs are perfectly doable with only SO slotting. They might not be easy, but certainly doable. This should not change. All content that we have now should, in effect, be frozen in place unless there is a compelling argument for a total overhaul.

 

Newer content provided by HC, I suspect, might not be balanced around SO's. I'm talking about the two new Story Arcs. This is only my theory, based on my own experiences. If any of the Dev team have said, or are willing to say otherwise, I'll stand corrected. On the test server, I tested the Hero-side arc with a fully tricked out build on a challenging setting (+2/x4) with a friend who was not tricked out. And my character had no issues except from the rave segment, which has since been tweaked. However, on the villain-side arc using only non-set Common IO's, I found it suitably challenging that I had to knock the difficulty down two notches. Does this mean anything? Maybe that I suck at the game, but I feel that this newer, post-Live content is generally more difficult than any of it's peers, that I believe it is balanced with Common IOs in mind.

 

To be honest, if that is the way newer content goes, then I am in favour of it.  But only for newer content or any revamped Task Forces.

I think the Dev in question recently said they would need better testing next time around so that they can get the balance point better.

 

Based on that I suspect that only a few of the "higher build" folks played the arcs in beta and then they called it a day.

 

What should have happened (and what the dev suggested) was that they get folks of different ranges of difficulty and builds (including SOs) to test it out. Would that have resulted in the tuning down for those arcs?

 

Who knows.

[golstat2003]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Would 3 points of mez protection that kicks in at lvl 10 added to the inherents of all squishy ATs homogenize everything? They'd still get mezzed through that but it wouldn't be nearly the binary fun vs mezzed that the current situation creates. And it wouldn't involve respecs nor would it force a change in tactics.

 

You left off Stalkers and Sentinels, by the by. Not that I play stalkers but, yes, I don't enjoy having to hide or constantly back away from fights or analyze every spawn every mission because one mis-step means having to use a rez or a hospital trip or waiting around for someone else to pick me up off the floor.

 

I don't judge ATs by how easy they are. I judge them by how annoying they are to play at a level to which I've grown accustomed. Masterminds are the only AT I refuse to play due to considering them completely broken in a bad way. Stalkers I don't play just cuz I don't like Hide.

 

I guess in the end, I simply dislike having to buy mez protection to have fun with some ATs when the other half of the archetypes don't have to. I don't consider that a balanced situation.

To be honest this is PART of the reason I build most (if not all of my squishes) in a way that if they get mezzed it doesn't last that long . . . or they simply can't get hit most of the time.

[Troo]

16 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Granted, I do and always will judge an archetype by what it's capable of solo. Anything can become great when using the crutch of teaming.

This makes sense, but you're not judging an archetype by it's solo capability at 4/8?

[Bill Z Bubba]

25 minutes ago, Troo said:

This makes sense, but you're not judging an archetype by it's solo capability at 4/8?

At lvl 50 and incarnated out, sure. It's not like I run max diff at lvl 1.

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

To be honest this is PART of the reason I build most (if not all of my squishes) in a way that if they get mezzed it doesn't last that long . . . or they simply can't get hit most of the time.

Absolutely. It's why so many lean on Rune of Protection or hover blast with as much ranged defense as they can get. I'd place good money that the vast majority of us make all sorts of concessions in our builds, concessions not needed at all by those with built in mez protection, that given even a modicum of baked in protection would allow for a great many other things to improve our builds and lessen the aforementioned performance disparity.

[SwitchFade]

My vote...

 

Yes, balanced around SOs.

 

Overall this game is pretty sound.