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

[Apparition]

47 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

 

 

Yes, one of those examples is to restrict Level Shifts to iTrials. 😄  

There are a lot of forum disagreements I "get," but I'm surprised by the Level Shift one. Being able to run around Dark Astoria and get +4 rewards versus +1 enemies while the rest of the team fights +5s strikes me as misperforming both in theory and when actually playing it. I understand we all have our points of view so I won't call anyone who disagrees absolutely wrong, it just surprises me it's a topic of conversation.

More than anything what I do not want to see is +6 +7 and whatnot enemies added just to try to offset the Level Shift ability. At that stage, you're creating teams where some people are fighting +3 or +4s and others are fighting +10s and +11s. Definitely not the direction I want to see the game go in. Much easier to just make the Level Shift apply specifically to iTrials. Should have been that way from the beginning to prevent teaming from turning into Door Sitting All Stars.

 

Dark Astoria is Incarnate content, and was intended as a *solo* Incarnate path.  It was never meant for teams, or at best small teams.  As Incarnate content, the level shifts absolutely should apply.

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, golstat2003 said:

We'll have to disagree on removing them from Dark Astoria. Dark Astoria is incarnate content.

While true, being able to slaughter +4s as +1s in DA seems a bit ludicrous. Granted, it's only somewhat more ludicrous than regular content capping out at +3s when you have just the one.

 

Course, I am in the camp that thinks there should be only 1 lvl shift and you shouldn't get it until T3 Hybrid but I'm obviously mad.

[golstat2003]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

While true, being able to slaughter +4s as +1s in DA seems a bit ludicrous. Granted, it's only somewhat more ludicrous than regular content capping out at +3s when you have just the one.

 

Course, I am in the camp that thinks there should be only 1 lvl shift and you shouldn't get it until T3 Hybrid but I'm obviously mad.

The thing is DA was meant to just be the start of the Incarnate "solo" path. Other incarnate zones would have come, and you were meant to move on from that zone to harder zones. Unfortunately the OG Devs ran out of time.

Edited February 28, 2021 by golstat2003

[oedipus_tex]

What burns me more than anything is spending the game fighting +4s only to reach the end game and find out it caps out at +3 or even +1. 

 

That said, I hope what's still coming in clear is how much I respect differing opinions on the issue. Threads don't go on for 40 pages unless people care, and clearly in this case they do. I respect the passion people have, I hope they respect the passion I and others have about Level Shifts and how I wish end game still meant fighting enemies that were scaled for me. I don't feel that with the current state of the end game.

Edited February 28, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[Myrmidon]

31 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

What burns me more than anything is spending the game fighting +4s only to reach the end game and find out it caps out at +3 or even +1. 

 

I PUG a great deal, Tex, and I assure you that most of the playerbase that I have encountered isn’t fighting +4s as their standard challenge. This past morning, I joined a full Citadel where I was the only one with any Set bonuses of any kind and those teams are quite common on Excelsior.

 

38 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

The thing is DA was meant to just be the start of the Incarnate "solo" path. Other incarnate zones would have come, and you were meant to move on from that zone to harder zones. Unfortunately the OG Devs ran out of time.

This. We all need to keep in mind that Paragon Studios never had the chance to give us the years of content to go with all of the Incarnate-level power that we currently possess. Lucky us that we have someone devoted to continuing content into the future and I’m sure that @Piecemealwill be happy to accommodate.

[oedipus_tex]

1 minute ago, Myrmidon said:

I PUG a great deal, Tex, and I assure you that most of the playerbase that I have encountered isn’t fighting +4s as their standard challenge. This past morning, I joined a full Citadel where I was the only one with any Set bonuses of any kind and those teams are quite common on Excelsior.

 

 

Citadel isn't level 50 content. The ending place for the leveling path has you fighting +3s or+1s (in DA). 

I'm not angry about it, just confused. Why is it critical to keep the Level Shift? With it gone, you could fight the same content at Level 53 or Level 51 (in DA). Why do people fight so hard to make sure the game doesn't scale higher than that? 

[Myrmidon]

16 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

 

Citadel isn't level 50 content. The ending place for the leveling path has you fighting +3s or+1s (in DA). 

I'm not angry about it, just confused. Why is it critical to keep the Level Shift? With it gone, you could fight the same content at Level 53 or Level 51 (in DA). Why do people fight so hard to make sure the game doesn't scale higher than that? 

It’s likely a sense of “I earned it so I should always be able to use it”. Honestly, it’s likely easier to make adjustments to future content than it is to anything current, however, I wouldn’t complain if they:

 

1. Dumped the level shifts beyond the Alpha Slot (I could live with no level shifts, however, this is the compromise).

2. Limit Dark Astoria to 50s. The zone is supposed to be a solo path for Incarnate content, not a sidekick golfcart.

Edited February 28, 2021 by Myrmidon
Autocorrect is The Devil.

[oedipus_tex]

8 minutes ago, Myrmidon said:

It’s likely a sense of “I earned it so I should always be able to use it”.

 

You earned the right to fight at 50+4 when you could do the exact same thing fighting at 50+3? Again I just don't understand it. Is it a fear that some players or team could do better? A fear that teams might do better than soloists?

The weirdest part of it being for me that that's how the game played for years and years without issue. If it was an actual power or ability I could understand it. But the right to run the exact same content at a higher level and not allow people to adjust difficulty above that. Just throws me completely.

[Apparition]

25 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

 

Citadel isn't level 50 content. The ending place for the leveling path has you fighting +3s or+1s (in DA). 

I'm not angry about it, just confused. Why is it critical to keep the Level Shift? With it gone, you could fight the same content at Level 53 or Level 51 (in DA). Why do people fight so hard to make sure the game doesn't scale higher than that? 

Because Dark Astoria was designed with the level shifts in mind.  It is supposed to get easier.  People were not meant to run full lackeyed teams in it.  You were supposed to get through it solo or on small teams, and then graduate to Incarnate trials.  That was the stated intent and purpose.

[Apparition]

5 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

You earned the right to fight at 50+4 when you could do the exact same thing fighting at 50+3? Again I just don't understand it. Is it a fear that some players or team could do better? A fear that teams might do better than soloists?

The weirdest part of it being for me that that's how the game played for years and years without issue. If it was an actual power or ability I could understand it. But the right to run the exact same content at a higher level and not allow people to adjust difficulty above that. Just throws me completely.

People can already run at level 50+4 if they so choose by unslotting their Alpha.  If they don’t, then that tells you how many people actually want to do that.

Edited February 28, 2021 by Apparition

[oedipus_tex]

Just now, Apparition said:

People can already run at level 50+4 if they so choose by unslotting their Alpha.

 

Yes, also no power actually does too much damage, you just slotted it with Damage enhancements, which are optional. 😛

[DrunkFlux]

While IO's can solve a lot of character weaknesses, I say no, if anything, IO's  need to be  brought  in line with the game a little.  When blasters,(Yes, BLASTERS) can get soft-cap defense vs the three locationals with just IO's that practically renders almost every archtype in the game useless outside the incarnate trials.  As in theres just no point to really playing the other archtypes.  Unless you wanted to have high damage resistance to, then sure, you could role a tanker/scrapper/stalker/brute, but to an overmaxed toon theres not much point is there?

 

It's kind of created a conundrum, imo.  Blasters can get defense to high to easily with IO's as they currently stand.  I mean theres supposed to be other archtypes for higher survivability, or support archtypes for  +defense/resistance/extra damage ect.  In fact finding that  people are getting soft-cap with blasters like that REALLY hurts the game for me(at least tonight anyways), I played this feeling it was at least somewhat fair.  I mean, the ramifications, lets see.

 

Scrappers are useless, lower damage than blaster, no more survivability than blaster(only has mez protection and the builds some people get don't need destiny for this, also blasters have the same HP pool as a scrapper).

Sentinels are underpowered also, lower damage than blaster, only get easier soft cap locational and faster cooldown t9's but thats  it.(Though sentinels kind of do need a buff even compared to the other  ATs).

Defenders: Severely impacted, though we all know defensive focused defenders were always weaker late game, soft-cap locational defense blasters really hurt defenders usefulness long term.

Corruptors: See Defender above.  Except against arch villains/giant monsters, corruptor damage is fairly low.

Tankers  and  brutes: OUtside of incarnate trials and a couple task forces, soft-cap blasters don't need anyone drawing fire from them, ever.

Controllers/dominators: Lol control?  While CC can be useful in a lot  of situations, a max locational defense blaster laughs as everything dies super fast and cannot hit back anyways.

 

That is just IMO, not good for the game.  And anyone who knows me will know, I usually do NOT advocate nerfing anything.  It's bad, like worst than titan weapons OP days bad.  It's one thing to see a blaster having  high defense against just smash/lethal and maybe energy.  But another to see a blaster having nearly or at soft-cap vs locationals, that to me is just a game breaker.

 

To Balance around IO's, they'd have to do something like, hard-caps on defense or something. (Like, 55% for tankers/brutes, 45% for sentinels/scrappers/stalkers, 35% for the rest(yes, 35%, 40% is still extremely high).  OR reducing defense from IO's or something but I'm sure many players would dislike that, including me even.    OR they would have to make it so you HAVE to have super good IO  setups to even survive say, 50+2 even level or something silly.

 

IO's should be balanced around the game, not the other way around.  Blasters having to much defense is kind of a sign why they need to be.

Edited February 28, 2021 by LaughingAlex

[Apparition]

1 hour ago, LaughingAlex said:

To Balance around IO's, they'd have to do something like, hard-caps on defense or something. (Like, 55% for tankers/brutes, 45% for sentinels/scrappers/stalkers, 35% for the rest(yes, 35%, 40% is still extremely high).  OR reducing defense from IO's or something but I'm sure many players would dislike that, including me even.    OR they would have to make it so you HAVE to have super good IO  setups to even survive say, 50+2 even level or something silly.

 

IO's should be balanced around the game, not the other way around.  Blasters having to much defense is kind of a sign why they need to be.

 

We've had this argument before.  I don't know if it was earlier in this thread or elsewhere, but hardcapping defense to 35% or 40% is a no go.  It can't happen, nor will it ever happen.  If it should ever come to pass, expect a mass exodus of players to other servers.

Edited February 28, 2021 by Apparition

[oedipus_tex]

I think sometimes folks underestimate how effective even a single Level Shift is. Level Shifts get better as enemies get higher than you. This happens in reverse of the Purple Patch (or rather, specifically because of the Purple Patch).

 

Shifting a+4 enemy down to +3 rescales your damage up from dealing x0.48 to x0.68. To put that on scale for an attack chain dishing 1000 damage:

• 1000 x 0.48 = 480 damage
• 1000 x 0.65 = 650 damage

 

650 / 480 = ~ A 35% damage increase. This increase effects attack powers, damage procs, even unscaled abilities like Judgment. On top of that, all your debuffs are also 35% more effective. This is a "true" damage increase as well, not +Damage in the sense of a power like Build Up. It's actually a multiplier on top of that multiplier, increasing the final damage tally as last step in the calculation. No wonder we're blowing enemies away so quickly.


As for what's going on in Dark Astoria when you fight +4s pushed down to +1:

• 1000 x 0.48 = 480 damage
• 1000 x 0.90 = 900 damage 

 

900 / 480 = ~ 87% damage increase. I have nothing but love for the OG dev team and the amazing game they created, but I also think they made some missteps. I feel this was one of them.


I haven't gotten to the fact that the Level Shift also reduces how much damage you take and how effective enemy debuffs are. And again this gets more effective as enemy level increases. 

Edited February 28, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[Hew]

What about minions -> bosses, and lts/bosses go to -> eb

 

Bosses and eb's get vastly larger bucket of toys to abuse players with!

[oedipus_tex]

17 minutes ago, Hew said:

What about minions -> bosses, and lts/bosses go to -> eb

 

Bosses and eb's get vastly larger bucket of toys to abuse players with!

 

That's not a bad idea for some pieces of content. All-boss spawns tend to screw Controllers though, so you need to have a balance. The minion-lt-boss balance exists in part because of how the Control sets are meant to play. That said, hurling the occasional all boss or even all EB spawn at the group isn't a bad idea on Task Forces.

What I would like best is a mix up roughly equivalent to the ITF, which I think is designed pretty well. The ITF has some moments where you face all boss spawns, some with mostly easy enemies, some harder spots, etc. Specifically, I wish missions were more "dungeon like" and you could eyeball spawn groups and decide whether its worth tangling with or sneaking past them. The current mission randomizer mostly makes homogenized groups. You don't ever run up on, say, 16 Malta Sappers and have to deal with that or leave it alone.

[oedipus_tex]

BTW RE: the difficulty of adjusting the Level Shift mechanics, I think I pulled it off just since I made the comment last night on my private modded game. The Level Shift uses very straightforward Requirements mechanics. I'd just need to be sure to test this on an iTrial to make sure I didn't break something else. 

 

 

 

It involves adding one line of code to each Alpha slot (about 20 lines total, the same line copied and pasted from a modified version of Destiny) and removing a tiny snippet from Lore and Destiny that checks to see if you are in Dark Astoria. BTW yeah, Dark Astoria is literally coded into those powers by name, kinda surprised me.

 

Of course I don't want to turn this into a strangle on the Homecoming team. I think they're brilliant and will decide for themselves what to do even if I hope to convince them. I'd really like them to follow this lead and make this adjustment. There's a reason I had the willpower to change it for myself, its bothered me since the Level Shift ability was released and especially since I realized that awesome scary zone that is Dark Astoria could be reduced to Universe of Lisa Frank just by following normal character progression.

[Apparition]

2 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

It involves adding one line of code to each Alpha slot (about 20 lines total, the same line copied and pasted from a modified version of Destiny) and removing a tiny snippet from Lore and Destiny that checks to see if you are in Dark Astoria. BTW yeah, Dark Astoria is literally coded into those powers by name, kinda surprised me.

 

Which just proves my point that Dark Astoria was designed to take Incarnate level shifts into consideration, it was intentionally designed to become easier as you progressed as an Incarnate, and that it was intentionally designed to eventually funnel you to Incarnate trials for increasing challenge.  So thank you.

[DrunkFlux]

7 hours ago, Apparition said:

 

We've had this argument before.  I don't know if it was earlier in this thread or elsewhere, but hardcapping defense to 35% or 40% is a no go.  It can't happen, nor will it ever happen.  If it should ever come to pass, expect a mass exodus of players to other servers.

Well are there alternatives?   Because as it stands IO's are basically letting blasters become the clear go-to archtype, superior to all the others once you've geared them out and by a landslide.

 

Let me clarify a bit, I don't really like that idea either, but blasters soft capping the LOCATIONALS(key word, locationals) to me is a VERY bad thing.  Only other thing I could think of, exclusive to blasters is letting them only soft cap damage typed defense but never locational.

 

I somehow am getting the feeling people are  not understanding how dangerous it is to let a blaster get locational defense, or the difference between locational and typed defense or rather the bang-for-the-buck locational defense is.    I mean soft-capping the  locationals means your soft-cap vs all damage types except pure psionic attacks.  Thats 90% damage mitigation effectively, a ten fold survivability increase, for a BLASTER.  On a class meant to be extremely high damage and lower survivability.   It's not  even remotely the same as smash/lethal/energy defense capping, it's on an entirely different level of survivability.

 

You can never hope to buff or balance  sentinels when blasters get effectively the same survivability.   Scrappers also lose a lot of there use, blasters can always choose to go into melee on top of ranged to.  Thats with the scrapper being a balanced AT.

 

I mean blasters have extremely high damage, insanely high damage, by design.  To let them soft cap vs everything effectively means they far outclass the other archtypes, comparably high survivability to most archtypes and about 3-4 times the firepower to 90% those same archtypes, one shotting minions/lt's and annihilating boss rank enemies in seconds, yeah that seems 'very' fair.   An overpowered god with zero effective weaknesses.  Blasters effectively 3-4  times as powerful as other archtypes (Overall power = Defense * Damage, how do people not remember that simple rule?)   Only stalkers  have  any advantage and thats only in single target DPS, and  only a few sets give  them any AoE and  even then they are horribly dwarfed by blasters.  Other melee AT's and the other ranged AT's can't hope to match the AoE firepower of a blaster, it's not even a contest.

 

This, just knowing blasters can hit 40+ defense on locational(build I saw was about 42-43), it seriously worries me.

 

Only other  thing I could think of  was go ahead and balance  the  AT's around IO's, that means nerfing blaster damage output, or greatly buffing sentinel and also further  adjusting tanker/brute/scrapper, support AT's ect.

 

If anything, if a def cap had to be added, could  just add a 'max def cap increase' effect for those using actual defense powers so they still hit better defense caps than those without.   I have  nothing  against other archtypes getting locationals soft-cap since they have far less damage than blasters.   Blasters though?  Really, even as someone who loves the blaster archtype they really shouldn't.  It's  gamebreaking.

[Bill Z Bubba]

15 minutes ago, Apparition said:

Which just proves my point that Dark Astoria was designed to take Incarnate level shifts into consideration, it was intentionally designed to become easier as you progressed as an Incarnate, and that it was intentionally designed to eventually funnel you to Incarnate trials for increasing challenge.  So thank you.

There have been a ton of design choices that were changed over the years because of folks realizing just how silly those choices were.

[oedipus_tex]

44 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

Which just proves my point that Dark Astoria was designed to take Incarnate level shifts into consideration, it was intentionally designed to become easier as you progressed as an Incarnate, and that it was intentionally designed to eventually funnel you to Incarnate trials for increasing challenge.  So thank you.

 

Literally the third line of code in each of these powers is a check to make sure the player paid cash for it, so I would be careful what lessons you extract from the files. 

[Parabola]

44 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

Which just proves my point that Dark Astoria was designed to take Incarnate level shifts into consideration, it was intentionally designed to become easier as you progressed as an Incarnate, and that it was intentionally designed to eventually funnel you to Incarnate trials for increasing challenge.  So thank you.

As I've said before, what the original devs designed or intended is of little importance now. The current devs have to work with the game as it currently is where a snowball effect of lots of changes over time have resulted in the gameplay balance issues we see at the high end. Incarnate content is clearly limited and by all accounts adding new content is time consuming and difficult. Therefore it seems to make sense to me to look at the content that already exists to try to make that as playable as possible and I think removing level shifts would be a big step in that direction.

 

The level shifts have never made much sense to me from a design point of view. The incarnate powers themselves give you more power so why do we need this artificial 'world get's easier' mechanism slapped on top? We spend the climb up to 50 slowly building our power and taking on harder challenges as we go, and then when we achieve the ultimate expressions of our power we suddenly find the game can't fight back as effectively as it did before. It doesn't make me feel more powerful, it just makes it seem like the enemies are suddenly fighting with one hand tied behind their backs.

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 minutes ago, parabola said:

It doesn't make me feel more powerful, it just makes it seem like the enemies are suddenly fighting with one hand tied behind their backs.

Well said.

[QuiJon]

13 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

You earned the right to fight at 50+4 when you could do the exact same thing fighting at 50+3? Again I just don't understand it. Is it a fear that some players or team could do better? A fear that teams might do better than soloists?

The weirdest part of it being for me that that's how the game played for years and years without issue. If it was an actual power or ability I could understand it. But the right to run the exact same content at a higher level and not allow people to adjust difficulty above that. Just throws me completely.

What it really comes down to for me is that several different aspects and systems in the game combine together and create a problem for finding challenging game play in the post 50 world. IOs already upped our game so much, then they added the incarnate system. However they gave us a level shift which already (depending on how you set the difficulty) can skew being able to use the difficulty slider to take advantage of being over level of your enemies to being just under level but earning max rewards. Then you combine that on top of slotted power buffs that even further skew us by doing things like giving melee toons an alpha strike, and such. 

 

There is really only two solutions, either take something away to make what content we have meet an appropriate challenge level, or to add content that meets the challenge level that fully IOd and Incarnated characters are capable of playing at risk of failure. 

 

Part of me thinks the later is the better idea. I like the idea of making the game we have now have like a "extreme" mode. Like an alternate universe where all the current zones and missions are availible but everything is level 50 incarnate content. All the villain mobs have been adjusted for challenge. And suddenly you can go and do like perez park running into level 50 incarnate hellions on the streets and in the door missions. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

21 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

or to add content that meets the challenge level that fully IOd and Incarnated characters are capable of playing at risk of failure. 

Which means diff lvls up to +7/x14.