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

[Brutal Justice]

1 hour ago, Infinitum said:

I may not be the majority but im 100% sure your idea isn't nor will never be the majority - because it won't work, and would destroy the game community were it to be implemented.

Destroying the community is an over exaggeration shown to be false by several people other than myself stating it would be a minor nerf and listing ways around it.  

[Luminara]

44 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

only 3 things in the game that can take my tankers out - Hamidon, tyrant / battle maiden unique crap, and ME.

 

Your tanks date Hami?

Ew...

[BelleSorciere]

It's actually perfectly reasonable to define sets by their primary form of mitigation.

[ForeverLaxx]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

leaving all of the other people playing other sets twisting in the wind

No it wouldn't. Nothing about the current reward structure would change for them if they chose to stay with breaking Council faces. That is a reward structure they're currently satisfied with. The only way this mentality has any merit is if you base your fun and success entirely upon what others can accomplish, and that's not very healthy is it?

 

My advocacy for this change is based upon characters who aren't rocking sets bonuses. Balancing for set bonuses is a fool's errand, so I don't even consider it part of the equation.

 

For a character without mez resist or appreciable defense/resistance, any faction with a hard mez is a threat, and that includes Council. The damage surrounding that hard mez from the Council is overall less threatening than the damage surrounding the hard mez of the Carnies, thereby making Carnies more dangerous which in turn suggests they should be worth more to take down due to added risk. But they aren't worth more. You're in more danger, and you're beating them slower, but each foe is worth the same as a Council member. When my squishies fight the Council, all I look for are Marksmen because their -recharge is annoying -- nothing else they have matters to me.  When they fight Carnies? I have to stop every spawn to make sure I nuke whoever has the mez first while trying to blow up the illusionist before they shift and hope I don't have to fight too long with a Mask debuff. With Malta, I better have a breakfree for those Gunslingers or ice that Sapper or I may as well not even bother.

 

My DA Tanker doesn't care about the damage or mez that a Carnie can output, most of the time, but he still really hates their debilitating debuffs, endurance drain on death, -recharge slowing down his kill speed, and total frustration fighting Illusionists that keep phasing a queued attack. You know what doesn't do all of that? Council. Just because DA is better suited to Carnies than Invuln doesn't mean they're easier than Council for that DA character. My ElecArmor characters don't really care about Sappers but they still need to keep the Titans from combining with powers that recharge once every 30 seconds due to all the -recharge floating around. Lingering around in one group waiting for powers to recharge reduces kill speed, and when the foes aren't even worth the EXP to be sitting around, I'm better off even on the ElecArmor character to go fight Council since his smash/lethal/energy resist values are more than adequate for the task and they're easier to kill to boot.

 

To reiterate, my characters Do Not Use Set Bonuses. Currently, anyway. This is a balance in EXP reward proposal for the player who isn't rocking demigod status.

 

We're just going to have to agree to disagree because it's clear to me at this juncture you're looking from a "I'm built for this" perspective while I'm from a "yeah, it hurts less but it's still worse than anything else I could be doing" one. For the standard SO/Basic IO player, it's pretty clear what factions are more of an issue to fight regardless of in-set tools.

[Black Zot]

29 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

Your tanks date Hami?

Ew...

 

Guarantee you there's Hami porn on the web somewhere.

 

Along with people who, ahem, "make use" of it.

[Galaxy Brain]

@Brutal Justice, the 45% defense soft-cap is not worth changing directly at this time. Not only is it far too drastic a change for the playerbase as it would require changing the ToHit mechanics entirely, but IIRC would not be possible without some jank for certain ATs getting certain modifiers based on your suggestion.

 

That said, I get what you are trying to solve but this isn't the way to do it. The roles of Support and Control in particular are heavily affected by IO's due to the bonuses generally allowing you to become far more personally durable, which for many support sets greatly diminishes their ability to help a team in conventional means (healing gets devalued, +Def gets devalued aside from a buffer against -Def but that is weird, etc). It also lowers the need to lock down foes as much if they aren't gonna hurt too bad in the first place, let alone if you can just delete most enemies in the time it takes to apply controls.

 

This leads to a good number of characters feeling like they are just being dragged along in a good number of teams, which isn't alleviated by trying to find other teams since the cycle continues for a number of sets that don't offer specific types of force multipliers. 

 

However, the solution to give these more relative value is not to widescale nerf most of the playerbase and mess with the most basic of base mechanics, mainly as that is treating symptoms and far more trouble than it's worth. Defense bonuses are sort of balanced around Def Debuffs existing, but by nature having a tiny chance to be hit in the first place it gets kind of counter-balanced + overwhelming offense can greatly mitigate the incoming hits in the first place. .... It's complicated. Taking away from players removes player choice and agency as they all just kinda get worse, its not like how in some games you can tackle certain challenges that are not the norm in order to get outside the norm benefits. 

 

Speaking of, a chunk of the balance talk about IO's that gets greatly overlooked is how they are obtained. It's easier than ever to get a hold of IO's even if playing "casually" (I'll define this as maybe like an hr a day or less) due to a bunch of factors, but in general it is relatively low effort to grab up materials or items straight up with minimal research and investment. In the before times, despite being a "haves vs have nots", there did exist a level of investment behind getting to these power levels that has been greatly diminished. This is out of necessity for sure, but I do feel it has been a source of power creep that has thrown off the ecosystem of multiple power sets in unforseen ways. I have half a mind to just open the floodgates as it were and make IO's just a thing that drop / you can buy from stores outside very rare/special ones as at that point it would be a massive base lvl power boost to the players that would in turn allow the devs to make more interesting enemies that don't feel as insurmountable. Superpowered characters fighting superpowered enemies sounds like fun to me! Nerfing characters wholesale though does not, and simply makes the game worse.

 

 

 

 

 

[Infinitum]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

 

Your tanks date Hami?

Ew...

yeah.... he doesnt know how to treat a lady thats for sure  lol

[Infinitum]

1 hour ago, Brutal Justice said:

Destroying the community is an over exaggeration shown to be false by several people other than myself stating it would be a minor nerf and listing ways around it.  

there is nothing minor about what you are suggesting.

[Infinitum]

2 hours ago, BelleSorciere said:

Yeah, that.

 

It just seems to me that tanker damage benefits most in the most frequent situations. An argument could be made that on teams it doesn't make a big difference, and I'd agree, but when doing solo content it seems tankers have the advantage.

 

I don't mind all that much - I have two level 50 tankers which is twice as many as level 50 brutes - but I do think Bill has a point.

If that were the case why doesnt a Fire Rad Tanker beat a Rad Fire Brute - granted its close but the brute still wins.  While that is a farmer vs farmer comparison - it translates to Brute Fury still giving Brutes a damage advantage on i would guess 95% of the powersets.

[Infinitum]

1 hour ago, Brutal Justice said:

Ok really you’re just making up you own definition of a hybrid and applying it to whatever it is you define as one.  A hybrid is really just a mix two or more things.  

No - its really not - both are widely accepted as what makes a Hybrid a Hybrid and a pure resistance set a pure resistance set.

 

If you want to call it something else you are welcome to - but it stands that by and large the community sees it exactly the way i described it.

 

Because it involves incoming damage and ways to mitigate it directly - not indirectly.

[BelleSorciere]

21 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

If that were the case why doesnt a Fire Rad Tanker beat a Rad Fire Brute - granted its close but the brute still wins.  While that is a farmer vs farmer comparison - it translates to Brute Fury still giving Brutes a damage advantage on i would guess 95% of the powersets.

 

Yeah brutes will hit ten targets harder than tankers will hit 16 but they're both using the same power and the larger AOE + target cap isn't irrelevant.

 

I don't think tankers need a nerf, btw. I'm more concerned about sets like FF or entire ATs like MMs underperforming in at least some content.

 

 

Edited January 28, 2021 by BelleSorciere

[SwitchFade]

2 hours ago, Brutal Justice said:

Destroying the community is an over exaggeration shown to be false by several people other than myself stating it would be a minor nerf and listing ways around it.  

Make no mistake, it's not minor and if it were actually instituted I would permanently log out.

 

Defense is fine, as is.

[Troo]

11 hours ago, macskull said:

Who is this mythical "casual player" you keep mentioning?

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, ForeverLaxx said:

No it wouldn't. Nothing about the current reward structure would change for them if they chose to stay with breaking Council faces.

 

They wouldn't make that choice.

 

You're ignoring the history of Co*.  How many missions were changed to use timers to prevent players from farming?  How many critters have had their XP reduced because players abused the bonus they offered?  Every glowie in the game had its XP removed specifically because players saw an opportunity to reap increased rewards with less risk, and they didn't just take that opportunity, they dosed it with roofies, bent it over and hammered it until the developers dragged them off of it.  How many times have we been down this road, with anything offering a reward above and beyond the norm being taken out behind the wood shed and beaten into submission because players went to town on it?  Do we really need another lesson?

 

They would not choose not to farm the enemy groups with increased rewards.

 

And that would, absolutely, lead to a lot of archetypes and power sets being completely sidelined because they didn't fit the new farming meta.  People would line up for it, abuse the fuck out of it and, inevitably, come to the forums to complain about everyone playing a limited number of builds, builds being overpowered, teams being hard to find, the enemy group being boring, everything is too easy, et cetera.

 

1 hour ago, ForeverLaxx said:

My advocacy for this change is based upon characters who aren't rocking sets bonuses.

 

All of the drastic nerfage caused by players abusing everything which offered increased rewards occurred before IOs existed.  IOs don't cause abuse/exploitation of reward structures, or enable it, nor does not having IOs mean players wouldn't abuse/exploit an increased reward from an enemy group.

 

2 hours ago, ForeverLaxx said:

We're just going to have to agree to disagree because it's clear to me at this juncture you're looking from a "I'm built for this" perspective while I'm from a "yeah, it hurts less but it's still worse than anything else I could be doing" one. For the standard SO/Basic IO player, it's pretty clear what factions are more of an issue to fight regardless of in-set tools.

 

 

I'm looking at it from the perspective of having proven that anyone can build for anything, without relying on set bonuses, and neuter any enemy group if that's their intent; and the historical perspective of having personally witnessed just how readily players will exploit the tiniest reward advantage when it's available.  It's all happened before, and if you tempt fate, it will happen again.

[hastened]

5 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

Toss in some Rularuu, too, just for fun... Eyeballs are like honey badgers, They just don't care what your Defense is. 

I used to run a forcefield defender on live with another forcefield defender friend.  We would form teams together, bubble each other and push 85% def to the team, -usually- making everyone unhittable with enough def to stop cascade def failure.

 

IIRC, we actually got a SR reflex scrapper up the point where they could mitigate most of the damage from those jerks, but they still were not quite floored unless Elude was used.  Good times, good times.   Did enjoy watching someone dodge them, at least.  Same thing with a quartz emanator.

[Galaxy Brain]

57 minutes ago, Luminara said:

You're ignoring the history of Co*.  How many missions were changed to use timers to prevent players from farming?  How many critters have had their XP reduced because players abused the bonus they offered?  Every glowie in the game had its XP removed specifically because players saw an opportunity to reap increased rewards with less risk, and they didn't just take that opportunity, they dosed it with roofies, bent it over and hammered it until the developers dragged them off of it.  How many times have we been down this road, with anything offering a reward above and beyond the norm being taken out behind the wood shed and beaten into submission because players went to town on it?  Do we really need another lesson?

TBH, that kind of went out the window with the AE. As long as players can make custom enemies and gain rewards from them, there's no content that will actually match the risk/reward/time stats. Luckily, that is self-balancing in that the farm maps/missions are so far removed from "actual" gameplay that it's basically another game itself and it immediately turns a lot of people off. 

 

Going back to the comparisons of Council vs Carnies, it gets much more complex than Damage Types. Lets break down both groups at level 50:

 

Yellow = Bonus Acc

Blue = Mixed type attacks

Green = Yellow + Blue

 

 

Council breaks down with 8 different Minions, 5 different LT's, and 4 different bosses in a given mission. At x8, assuming a full team of players, the average group will contain 14 minions, 4 LT's, and 1 Boss group to group. Without going nutso looking into every single power, we can look at the ratios of damage from rank to rank as well as the base hit chance at even-level:

• Minions are damage mod 1, base hit chance 50%
• LT's are damage mod 1.5 (on average, LT attacks deal about 1.5x that of an identical minion power), base hit chance 57.5% (1.15 acc mod)
• Bosses are damage mod 2.7 (2.7x stronger than an identical minion on avg) , base hit chance 65% (1.3 acc mod)

With this in mind, we can look at each attack and multiply it by the number of the rank on average, then divide it by the number of the rank in the group. Then, you multiply it by the rank's damage mod, and then the chance to hit you to get a final "portion" of incoming damage. For example, a Vortex Cor Leonis Fire is a minion, so there will be 14 of them in a group, but only a 1/8 chance of it appearing compared to other minions so it's Flamethrower power bumps up to a 14, and then down to a 1.75. Minions have a damage scale of 1, and a 50% chance to hit but the flamethrower has a 1.3 bonus accuracy modifier turning that 50% into 65%! 1.75 * 1 * 0.65 = 1.1375 as the final "Fire" contribution. Add those up, and then divide the result by the total and you get the following spread:

 

 

I'm kind of surprised by the sheer amount of negative energy damage that council pack, but to be honest Smashing and Lethal may as well be combined as IIRC there are very, VERY, few protective powers available to players that only protect against one or the other:

 

 

Lets do the same for Carnies:

 

 

 

While having less damage types, they do have a significant portion as Psychic which is an explicit hole for many builds and will need to be dealt with spawn to spawn, whereas the negative damage from Council has no sets with explicit weaknesses to it. Lets actually take a look at these enemy groups vs Tanker sets:

 

 

So uhhhhh, long story short here when factoring in the base Res/Def values it turns out that Council are actually Deadlier than Carnies on average, by about 1.1%. Two of note are Ice Armor and Rad Armor which had basically opposite performance vs either group.

 

This is only part of the picture though as that is just raw damage (and only 1 AT's mitigation of it), and even then this is just spit-balling SUPER hard since I am ignoring recharge/attack cycles, etc, since I was sort of laser focused on damage types. That also said, the ratios of damage are important to note as Council while seemingly only having a *small* portion more SL than Carnies have many more attacks with a SL element when it comes to defense. Since I stayed up in a rabbit hole doing this, I may not have accounted for that. 

 

But that's not what matters between the two, the bigger issue is their special abilities.

 

Council have:

 

Council	39.85
Special	# per Group
Knock	9.2
Acc Bonus	6
-Speed	4.75
-Rech	4.5
Disorient	3.6
Self Resists	3.6
Self Heals	2.8
-Res	1.75
Hold	1.3
Immobilize	1.3
Sleep	1.05

 

 

Carnies have:

 

Carnies	81.77
Special	# per Group
-End	19
Exotic Resists	19
Disorient	8.83
Knock	5.3
SL Resists	4.83
-Def	4
Self +Def	3.5
Sleep	2.33
Hold	2.33
-Acc	2.33
-Dam	2.33
Phasing	1.83
Flight	1.83
Burns	1.33
Heal Allies	1
Immob	0.5
Summons	0.5
-Regen/Rec	0.5
-Rech	0.5

 

 

Their damage spread may be comparable in terms of theoretical proportions, but the share of special effects blows Council out of the water. In the meta sense that SL defense is easier to come by, on top of the plethora of nasty side effects that Carnies have I think it is safe to say that on the whole Carnies offer more challenges than Council at high level*.

 

 

*Interesting note, Council change radically based on level bracket and I'd argue certain brackets like 30-35 are far superior than the lvl 50 council due to their makeup.

 

[BelleSorciere]

Back on live when it was harder to come by magic salvage I had the final Carnie arc mission saved on my Dark/Dark scrapper to farm for said salvage. Just avoided defeating the AV. I think I finally completed it just before Sunset.

 

This worked fairly well for me, but having decent psi resist and end drain resist helped a lot. I don't think most people wanted to do that and with AE + some other balancing magic salvage was no longer more valuable.

[DSorrow]

13 hours ago, Brutal Justice said:

I am in the camp of its minor.  Others are in the camp of hugely.  If it was hugely and hugely then that would be an issue.  If it was minor and minor then it would be a waste of time.  Since it’s both hugely and minor then it leads me to believe it’s in the right direction.  

I'm going to be pretty blunt here: your bolded conclusion is absolutely the most ridiculous case of confirmation bias I've ever come across. In any professional or academic setting I've been a part of, if there's a massive difference of views on any proposal (such as minor vs. huge), it usually means that either your premise is wrong, your evidence is lacking or the reasoning that takes you from the premise and evidence to your solution doesn't add up, or in other words, it should lead you to believe it's in the wrong direction.

 

It is completely fine to like an idea you come up with, but one should avoid becoming so enamored with it that you hold on to it no matter what, or even worse, keep pushing it when nobody else agrees with it and the evidence supports it being a bad idea.

 

As for why some people think it would make a huge difference? Let's consider a few points:

 

Def based Tanker vs. Incarnate mobs

Quote

I don’t think a defense tank would become worse than a resist scrapper.

Under your new rules, the Tanker is capped at 45% Defense. Incarnate mobs have something around 63% base ToHit, so you'll be hit roughly 18% of the time for full damage for a net mitigation of ~71% (63% hits reduced to 18%), which is less than a Resist based Scrapper (75%). However, because the Resist based Scrapper is taking mostly constant damage while the Def based Tanker has much more volatility in the incoming damage (= spikes), the Tank is actually even worse off when it comes to overall mitigation. Why? Lower net mitigation, and also much higher susceptibility to damage spikes as the likelihood of receiving multiple full damage hits within a short time window is no longer trivial.

 

This is pretty easy to show, if you consider that the opening volley of a full spawn consists of 16 attacks (= all enemies attack once): the likelihood of at least one attack landing with current rules and at the soft cap is ~56% while with your rules and at the hard cap it would be ~100%. When you further consider how quickly those volleys repeat, it should be obvious how much more likely it would to be hit with a damage spike (or cascade, if you factor in the debuffs attached to many attacks).

 

Unfortunately, it seems like you didn't do your research and just base your argument of "it's minor" on a hunch.

 

Resist vs Defense based Tankers

Quote

Possibly resistant power sets would over take the top spot for durability.  Somebody will always be at the top, it’s simply a matter of by how much. 

Continuing from the previous calculations, being capped at ~71% net mitigation outside of buffs while a Resist Tanker keeps their 90% mitigation cap is a MASSIVE difference. On top of being at higher risk versus damage spikes, the Def based Tanker receives 3x the damage* the Resist based Tanker gets. Yes, in this case Resist based Tankers would definitely take the top spot, and by a ridiculously unreasonable large margin.

 

*I'll do the work for you: enemy with base 100 DPS, 63% hit chance. Capped Def based Tanker receives

100 DPS * (63% - 45% [DEF]) * (100% - 0% [RES]) = 18 DPS

The capped Res based Tank has

100 DPS * (63% - 0% [DEF]) * (100% - 90% [RES]) = 6.3 DPS

Essentially, if both Tankers were able to regenerate 18 HP per second, the Def based Tanker could deal with 100 DPS, while still being susceptible to damage spikes, whereas the Res based Tanker could deal with ~300 DPS.

 

What's even worse, when you factor in accuracy mods, a +4 incarnate AV will hit a capped Def based Tanker roughly 35% of the time for full damage ((0.63 - 0.45) * 1.5 * 1.3), so that same 100 base DPS example would become 35, whereas the Resist based Tanker is hit 95% of the time for 10% damage or 9.5 DPS left from 100.

 

Again, no research into the "by how much", because you can just claim you thought about it while brushing off the criticism with "somebody will always be at the top".

 

 

Minor vs huge

Quote

I am in the camp of its minor.  Others are in the camp of hugely. If it was hugely and hugely then that would be an issue.

Alright, let's finally tackle this one. Let's say you have a group of normal enemies that deals 1000 damage per second as a baseline, and study how this enemy group would work with various level shifts that affect their accuracy and damage.

 

Enemy level diff	Base DPS	AccMod	DmgMod	DPS	Net DPS, current soft cap	Net DPS, proposed 40% hard cap
+4	1000	1.4	1.44	2016	101	202
+3	1000	1.3	1.33	1729	86	173
+2	1000	1.2	1.22	1464	73	146
+1	1000	1.1	1.11	1221	61	122
0	1000	1.0	1.0	1000	50	100
-1	1000	1.0	0.9	900	45	90

 

Key takeaways from this table? On a non-Tanker character that currently can just withstand these enemies at +4 (current soft cap: 101 incoming DPS), your rules would cause them to have to drop their difficulty to +0 (your proposal: 100 incoming DPS). Similarly, a character that could deal with +3  enemies would have to drop to -1. I've colour coded these roughly equivalent pairs in the table.

 

There's nothing minor about having to drop your difficulty by four whole levels. If you weren't at +4 or +3, then too bad, you can't even get that four level drop so either you better find another enemy faction to fight, or also modify your spawn size in addition to dropping the difficulty. And this is against normal enemies, for incarnates the difference would be even more ridiculous because you're increasing the enemy's minimum hit chance from 5% to ~23%, or a five fold increase in incoming damage when this was table shows the case for "only" double. In what world is a change that makes your survivability go from +4/x8 to +0/x8 minor?

 

Seems like, once again, no research into the actual consequences of your proposed change "because 5% is so minor".

 

To slightly repeat myself, you start from an unsubstantiated premise, don't do the proper research, suggest a change that would have wildly disproportionate effects that you brush off with "somebody's going to be at the top anyway" all the while claiming that the consequences are somehow minor and any disagreements actually support you being right. You really need to go back to the drawing board and do research before you propose something such hugely impactful, especially when you are so adamant and yet wrong about it being a "minor" change.

Edited January 28, 2021 by DSorrow

[Parabola]

9 hours ago, Ukase said:

I want you to know I do appreciate your perspective. When making decisions in the real world, I try to think of what the best choice is not only for me, but for my family. And not only for today, but next month, next year and so on. 

As someone who's an officer in an SG, I completely understand that our community has a relatively large number of people who really, really want to team up doing...well, just about anything. They are almost thirsting for it. The pandemic may have some small measure of responsibility for that, but by and large, I think many people enjoy teaming with others more than doing content solo. If you have some amusing teammates, they can certainly make things more amusing than going the solo route. 

But, I have to ask myself how I would feel if soloing were no longer as viable. But, ultimately, I have to cede the point that it doesn't matter how I would feel. What matters is the health of the game and the community as a whole. I'm afraid I don't have a solution beyond me not really seeing a tremendous need for any changes. 

I do recognize there's a large spread between our speed runners and our "noob" or "newb" players. Heck, even a casual player is light years away from some of our speed runners who seem to flawlessly navigate through "cake rooms" (those bluish/gray cave maps) without muss or fuss. Some can't be bothered to improve to that level. Some can't approach that level due to just slow eye/hand coordination, and some lack the computer system to load pages fast enough to even think about speeding. And some just have fun hopping/flying/speeding/teleporting all over town and don't even try to kill anything. They take a free farm to get high enough to travel and are quite content to stay in Atlas and chatter for hours. 

I just don't see how changing anything with IOs will change that gap, because it seems to be that mindset of the players is what's responsible for that gap, not the IOs they're slotted with. But what the heck do I know? Not much! 

Thank you for the thoughtful response. Far too much of this debate is being conducted with defensiveness bordering on hostility and it's refreshing to see a more balanced perspective.

 

Of course you are absolutely right, people play both solo and in teams for all sorts of reasons. No changes to the game are going to please everyone and trying to see how best to manage the game for it's overall health is difficult to say the least. I know how I see it but equally well appreciate that others don't see it the same way. And of course I could well be completely wrong too!

 

Just to clarify, when I talk about clipping soloability I am only talking about soloing at the highest difficulty levels. I still would like to wade into a x8 spawn and wreck it solo but it's being able to do that at +4 that strikes me as the issue. It's having nowhere to go with the difficulty slider when a team faces content individual members can solo that feels wrong to me. I enjoy soloing and 'soloing all the things' as I said before but feel that if I had to solo on say 2/8 instead of 4/8 it might be better for the overall game.

[Parabola]

16 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

Yeah, it would feel a lot more relaxed and enjoyable.  No pressure to do a job, no stress about having to meet expectations, no anxiety about having to fulfill role requirements, just cruise along and have fun.

 

One would almost suspect that someone in charge remembered that games are supposed to be fun, not 40 hour shifts at a labor camp.

Fun is of course subjective. One person may find facerolling enemies fun, the next may desire some more challenge. One may not mind their contribution to a team becoming negligible, the next may become bored and frustrated.

 

I certainly haven't suggested anywhere that I think the game should become a remorseless grind. I feel there is a huge amount of middle ground between faceroll and grind that can be explored. As I see it the problem with where we are now is that we are maxed out at one end of the difficulty slider. A team that wants less challenge at high levels has the ability to turn it down (I can't seriously imagine any lv50 team currently running at -1). But a team wanting more challenge can't go any higher that 4/8, which is effectively 3/8 to incarnates and often easily soloable.

 

And the people in charge have already said that they are looking at this. I'm sure they will be trying to find a balance that is fun for everyone.

[Neiska]

A lot of this still reads to me as - 

 

"I don't like to solo hardest difficulty, so others shouldn't be able to either." or "We need to balance things around X, Y, and Z. But A, B, and C things don't count." As if disregarding a section of the community when making/suggestions could in any way be truly considered "balancing".

 

And regardless of context I will never support policing other peoples gameplay. Personally, its being able to solo hard content, that keeps me and many like me around. Take that away, and I can guarantee you the community will lose people. And I honestly question where this "people soloing hard content are bad" train of thought came from. Is it people not being able to fill teams? People unhappy with some team members they get? (Strong builds going too fast for player#2546), is it some people trying to nerf farming/AEs?(again)

 

From my seat, the same tools and methods are available to everyone equally. I don't think its a good thing to take some of them away. And not everyone is going to like/enjoy playing the game as someone else does. Try to overly moderate/nerf people into a specific play-style will do more harm than good to the community.

 

Just saying. A lot of people enjoy soloing as well as teaming. And if some of these changes come to pass, personally I would feel my desire to play lessen. I wouldn't "team" more, I would contemplate uninstalling, and I am pretty certain I wouldn't be the only one.

[hastened]

1 hour ago, Neiska said:

A lot of this still reads to me as - 

 

"I don't like to solo hardest difficulty, so others shouldn't be able to either." or "We need to balance things around X, Y, and Z. But A, B, and C things don't count." As if disregarding a section of the community when making/suggestions could in any way be truly considered "balancing".

 

And regardless of context I will never support policing other peoples gameplay. Personally, its being able to solo hard content, that keeps me and many like me around. Take that away, and I can guarantee you the community will lose people. And I honestly question where this "people soloing hard content are bad" train of thought came from. Is it people not being able to fill teams? People unhappy with some team members they get? (Strong builds going too fast for player#2546), is it some people trying to nerf farming/AEs?(again)

 

From my seat, the same tools and methods are available to everyone equally. I don't think its a good thing to take some of them away. And not everyone is going to like/enjoy playing the game as someone else does. Try to overly moderate/nerf people into a specific play-style will do more harm than good to the community.

 

Just saying. A lot of people enjoy soloing as well as teaming. And if some of these changes come to pass, personally I would feel my desire to play lessen. I wouldn't "team" more, I would contemplate uninstalling, and I am pretty certain I wouldn't be the only one.

Its mostly the lack of hard content for teams.  If you can build to solo anything in the game, its almost impossible for it to also be a challenge for a group of competent players.  The proposed fix here is a bad one, but it is problematic that there is not really much that is challenging in the team space.  There is some stuff that is still pretty hard (try rescuing Waylon McCrane successfully on +4/x8 with a team of 4 or less, or do the 6 negotiator mission in RWZ while freeing the assistant NPCs first), but you have to go out of your way to look for it or choose to purposefully limit yourself.  That's ok, but it would be nice if there were some things that were legitimately hard for a full team with good builds to do.

[Neiska]

19 minutes ago, hastened said:

Its mostly the lack of hard content for teams.  If you can build to solo anything in the game, its almost impossible for it to also be a challenge for a group of competent players.  The proposed fix here is a bad one, but it is problematic that there is not really much that is challenging in the team space.  There is some stuff that is still pretty hard (try rescuing Waylon McCrane successfully on +4/x8 with a team of 4 or less, or do the 6 negotiator mission in RWZ while freeing the assistant NPCs first), but you have to go out of your way to look for it or choose to purposefully limit yourself.  That's ok, but it would be nice if there were some things that were legitimately hard for a full team with good builds to do.

Well, wouldnt it be a simpler thing to run teams with self imposed handicaps? Fewer people? No heals or support? No taunter? And so on? 

[hastened]

15 minutes ago, Neiska said:

Well, wouldnt it be a simpler thing to run teams with self imposed handicaps? Fewer people? No heals or support? No taunter? And so on? 

I mean, that's what you have to do to have any semblance of challenge right now.  "Don't try too hard or you'll break it" isn't really that helpful for supporting a playstyle where you would like to actually have to try hard to succeed though.  Its equally valid to state that people can just turn down their difficulty settings if they want to be able to solo hard content.  I'm not opposed to having even team content designed to be difficult to be possible for optimized builds at -1/x0.

 

There's only been a handful of cases where I've done something here where there's any question on whether we're going to succeed or not, and almost all of them have been self imposed challenges of some sort.  Mostly small team attempts trying to keep various assist NPCs alive on +4/x8 maps with ambushes, or boosting difficulty quite high relatively early in a character's career where its still hard for them despite optimization.

[Yomo Kimyata]

Of course, we *could* just make everything free so that people don't have to farm for inf or items anymore.  Then people could just play for fun.

 

<ducks and runs away>