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

[DarknessEternal]

Please no, I enjoy being a badass.  If we really want more difficulty, maybe let you turn it up to +10/x20 or something.

[America's Angel]

I love the P2W. Being able to skip 17-year old content on an alt thanks to XP boosters is a godsend.

 

Add in farming, and I'm able to play any new content the devs introduce, at any level, the day it's released, on a brand new character.

 

The extra base teleporters, various travel powers (Athletic Run, rocket board, etc), utility stuff, vanity pets, being able to switch off/on certain insps and recipes from dropping, etc. All great QoL additions.

 

The amplifiers are useful, too. They help me free up slots on my super min/maxed PvE characters. (When I remember to buy them. They don't really make all that much difference in actual play.)

Edited May 21, 2021 by America's Angel

[GM Tempest]

My diet is not balanced around sweetrolls, but it should be.

In other news, please do maintain civility. This topic has attracted a few reports, so remember - you're here to debate a topic, not a person. Don't resort to insults or jabs at one another - save that for the PVP arenas. The jab part, I mean, not the insults.

 

Remember, I am always watching, and I will steal your sweetrolls at the first sign of unruly behavior! 😈

[MTeague]

2 hours ago, GM Tempest said:

My diet is not balanced around sweetrolls, but it should be.

<insert obligatory Skyrim meme here>

[Burnt Umber]

No, the game should not be balanced around Inventions.  Standard TO/DO/SO enhancements should remain the norm. 

 

To me, the problem with the OP is that "balancing" around inventions is a more nebulous/difficult than it seems at a glance.  Primarily, what should be balanced around and how should it be done?

 

The aspects being enhanced?  The ability to "franken-slot" allows players to enhance a power beyond the amount that standard SOs (and even HOs) can achieve.  The Devs could assume that players no longer have to weigh enhancing a power's endurance or recharge against enhancing a power's primary aspects (i.e. it's damage/accuracy/control/buff/debuff/etc.) because some combo of enhancements gets each aspect close to the ED limit; the Devs could, therefore, make global change to endurance usage or recharge by shifting endurance costs or recharge times toward the higher end, respectively.  Similarly, they could make a global change to the powers' damage/control/buff/debuff values to better reflect that players can more readily spam them.  These changes would be very unpopular (to say the least).  Effectively, it would be a sort of "Global Defense Nerf 2.0."

 

Set bonuses?  Bonuses for +Recharge, +Defense, +Accuracy, and +Damage are all desirable.  As a prior post suggested, the Devs could assume everyone has softcapped defenses, high global recharge, and operates near a character's damage cap; the Devs could, therefore, make enemies have higher hit point totals, a higher inherent to-hit, and deal heavy slow debuffs.  I don't think that would be very popular because it is effectively a global nerf to anyone who has built for or relied on these set bonuses.  In fact, one only has to look back to the reaction on Live regarding incarnate mobs that debuff defense/have a higher inherent to-hit (people were not happy).  Furthermore, I think targeting specific bonuses penalizes even those who do not use them:  for example, a character without softcapped defenses would be all the more "squishy" because mobs would be hitting all the more often, or characters without high global recharges would feel painfully sluggish because they do not have the assumed global recharge.  Effectively, it would create a "right" and a "wrong" way to build characters, thereby forcing greater homogeneity in a game that has previously allowed all kinds of builds/playstyles to thrive.

 

Possible procs slotted?  A debuff or control can change into into a damage power (if not an outright "nuke") with damage procs; damage powers can also supercharge their damage potential either through damage procs or -Res procs; and inherent powers like health or stamina can be effectively doubled in value by slotting +Regen or +Recovery procs.  I'm not really sure what the Devs can do to balance around this except for further changing how procs work - either though how frequently they fire or how potent procs are when they fire.  In any case, I imagine that changes to procs would not be warmly welcomed, especially given how much in-game money gets thrown at some of the more popular ones..

 

However, what troubles me most is that, despite the mantra of "the game is not balanced around IOs," a number game design decisions do in fact take inventions into consideration.  The game does get balanced around IOs, even if only tacitly so.  For example, the recharge on some armor sets' Tier 9 (particularly, Willpower's Strength of Will and Shield's One with the Shield), Widows'/Fortunatas' Mind Link, Vengeance (both the Widow/Fortunata version and the Pool Power version), and the Tier 5 power in the Origin Power Pools have long recharges or are unaffected by buffs/enhancements.  I can't believe that making a power have a 10 minute recharge is not without the tacit assumption that a power will have that recharge halved by enhancements and then halved again by global recharge; when controllers' AoE holds were made to have long recharges back in Issue 5, the recharge was set as 5 minutes as a "very long" time.  A 10-minute recharge would have been nearly unthinkable at that time, but it is plausible now because someone can basically say, "Oh that is really less than 5 minutes once you consider enhancements (and global recharge)."  Indeed, the recent changes to Rune of Protection basically amount to a nod to how IOs are tacitly being considered when balancing.  Similarly, when Widows/Fortunatas were given Mind Link, Castle more or less said, "You can't slot Recharge Enhancements into the power directly, but IOs with a recharge aspect lower the recharge and global +Recharge lowers it too."  Although I am not particularly troubled how this balancing operates on its face - it probably allows for a better power over all - I am troubled by the fact that it suggests that Devs don't trust the playerbase enough to be forthright with respect to their reasoning.  This impacts my desire to give feedback (I don't really know the metrics being used to evaluate something) and my attachment to my characters (I can't be invested in a character that might drastically change how it plays).

 

For all of these reasons, I'm firmly against opening the can of worms that is "balancing around IOs."

[SaintD]

I'm not going to read all 53 pages because.....well.....eat my butt, because I ain't. But for me, the real thing that unbalances the game isn't the I/O system. The I/O system is just minmaxers doing their thing. If you keep trying to chase down those people, you leave everyone else unable to play because they're.....not minmaxing. If there wasn't an I/O system, they'd all be playing an identical character with the crushingly tested 'best numbers' and using other methods to kick the game down into little pieces. That's just how they roll.

I would say that for the 'unspoken average joe' the I/O system is a kinda fun system that provides a minor surge of puzzle-like creativity and some satisfaction of slotting up some cool stuff, without really unbalancing the game all that much.

What really unbalances the game?

....wait for it....

....seriously....

....teams larger than four. For higher level players it's still a faceroll at four, but with eight, you can play like absolute puddings and it doesn't matter. With eight players on a team, I/O slotting is laughably irrelevant because so many team buffs and enemy debuffs can be thrown around that you're all going to be def softcapped demigods beating on paraplegic children for enemies regardless.

[Hyperstrike]

6 hours ago, SaintD said:

I'm not going to read all 53 pages because.....well.....eat my butt, because I ain't. But for me, the real thing that unbalances the game isn't the I/O system. The I/O system is just minmaxers doing their thing. If you keep trying to chase down those people, you leave everyone else unable to play because they're.....not minmaxing. If there wasn't an I/O system, they'd all be playing an identical character with the crushingly tested 'best numbers' and using other methods to kick the game down into little pieces. That's just how they roll.

I would say that for the 'unspoken average joe' the I/O system is a kinda fun system that provides a minor surge of puzzle-like creativity and some satisfaction of slotting up some cool stuff, without really unbalancing the game all that much.

What really unbalances the game?

....wait for it....

....seriously....

....teams larger than four. For higher level players it's still a faceroll at four, but with eight, you can play like absolute puddings and it doesn't matter. With eight players on a team, I/O slotting is laughably irrelevant because so many team buffs and enemy debuffs can be thrown around that you're all going to be def softcapped demigods beating on paraplegic children for enemies regardless.

Simply because some tasks don't scale linearly, and are objectively "easier" doesn't mean the game is "unbalanced".
One of the objectives of the game is to encourage teaming.
 

[Wobegone]

6 hours ago, SaintD said:

...teams larger than four. For higher level players it's still a faceroll at four, but with eight, you can play like absolute puddings and it doesn't matter. With eight players on a team, I/O slotting is laughably irrelevant because so many team buffs and enemy debuffs can be thrown around that you're all going to be def softcapped demigods beating on paraplegic children for enemies regardless.

This is true for groups like the Repeat Offenders who purposely stacked buffs and debuffs(and trivialized most content).  Pre-IO PUGs...not so much.  

[Neiska]

At the end of the day, I think any "balancing" really depends on what difficulty and activity we are talking about here. Personally, (in my own inexpert humble view) most activities on +2/8 difficulty to feel the best overall rounded. Anything beyond that, I see as a "hardmode" or new game plus sort of thing. Not all AT's will be able to do +4/8 etc, but that's not a bad thing either. Some ATs/Builds could likely do +5 or maybe even do a +6/9 difficulty, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing either.

 

What does worry me, is it feels as if some people are pushing for nerfs in order to (achem) "encourage" people to team to do anything. I would urge caution against that point of view. As I expect the following would happen -

 

1. The fewer builds that can "push" difficulties, the more things become "meta". As an example, if everything sucked but a handful of builds, well, the minmaxers/power gamers would all play those hand full of builds. (This is not meant as an attack on minmaxers, I am a minmaxer myself. I am only visualizing what I expect would happen.)

 

2. "Forcing" or "Corralling" players to play a certain way, usually doesn't end well in an open game environment. Particularly in a game with such varied mechanics such as CoH can boast. I mean, if people are forced to team/play an AT in "X" manner, then why even bother having the other options at all? I mean, nobody wins in such a scenario.

 

3. "Balancing" is a very vague goal to achieve, because not everyone is going to agree where the "end" should be. Lets take DPS for an example, as people tend to compare Pylon damage as a sort of measuring stick to go by. Well, exactly how much content in the game do you fight pylons? (My guess? Less than .05% of the game content.) And yet that's often referenced as the measuring tool as to compare damage, and doesn't take into account things like AoE damage, Debuffs, Team Dynamics, or even your own defenses since Pylons don't fight back.

 

To expand my example a bit, lets say Blaster #4510 has gawdlike dps, but has horrible defenses and resistances themselves, to the point they often go splat themselves when playing solo, which would render that deific dps moot.

 

4. And that is one mere aspect of Balancing. One should consider things like Team Size, Objectivity, things besides DPS. I mean, I consider some Controllers, Tankers, and Masterminds OP, despite their sub-par DPS numbers, simply because of what they can be built to do. 

 

It is a multifaceted issue to be sure, with no easy answer. But as I said before, in order to "balance" things, whomever is doing the balancing really should first decide on where the overall endpoint of the game is.

 

+0 difficulty, I think pretty much any build properly slotted even with plain IOs could handle this.

+2 difficulty would require some knowledge of the game with a bit of investment in enhancements.

+4 difficulty is something people have to push for, and not something every AT will be able to do.

Incarnate content is where things just begin to get wild where balance is concerned.

 

So when people talk about Balance, I immediately wonder what difficulty/activity they are talking about.

[America's Angel]

On 5/21/2021 at 3:19 PM, GM Tempest said:

Don't resort to insults or jabs at one another - save that for the PVP arenas. The jab part, I mean, not the insults.

 

Jab should just be a set mule. Boxing is better DPA.

[Black Zot]

On 5/21/2021 at 11:19 AM, GM Tempest said:

 

Remember, I am always watching, and I will steal your sweetrolls at the first sign of unruly behavior! 😈

 

And don't go thinking that not having sweetrolls is any kind of defense.

 

He'll steal them anyway, because he's just that good.

[arcane]

Every powerset combo in the game is already easily soloable. Nobody wants to force that to change. If you personally can’t solo on something in the current state of the game though? That’s a you problem, and you should probably adapt your tactics or team.

[Troo]

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

 

Is end game balanced around IOs? Are there SO only characters participating in endgame content? Are there builds which don't leverage uniques and procs doing Dr. Aeon Strike Forces?

[GM Crumpet]

Necro thread. Locked.