ppm A Solution to the Incarnate Recharge PPM problem.

[Oneirohero]

If what I know is correct, the calculations for Proc PPM is determined by the modified recharge rate of a power plus its activation time, therefore the greater the recharge enhancements applied to the power, the more negatively it is impacted in PPM chance. The only exception to the rule is Global recharge given by set bonuses and powers such as Hasten. Now I'm not against enhancement recharge affecting PPM in this way, what I am against is the idea that the Alpha slot does, it makes such sets as Agility and Intuition (I may be wrong on that) PPM breakers since they count as enhancement bonuses. And I am not a fan of options functioning as secret downgrades to character performance.

 

The solution seems simple: Change the portion of recharge that ignores Enhancement-Diversification into Global Recharge instead of an ED-defying enhancement bonus. The function is exactly the same since Alpha affects all powers that accept recharge and still ignores ED like it too. And since the recharge bonus is global, it will affect PPM much less (especially at Tier 4),

[aethereal]

PPM is bad: change my mind.

[arcane]

I don’t see this as a “problem” in need of a fix. Until the current PPM situation is nerfed, players know to minimize recharge slotting to maximize procs. Players also know that this extends to the Alpha slot.

 

Even if the devs allow PPM to stay in its current controversial state forever, I don’t see why they would change how the Alpha slot fundamentally works just to accommodate some procsters.

[Oneirohero]

1 hour ago, aethereal said:

PPM is bad: change my mind.

The old way allowed faster-charging powers get a massive advantage in procs per minute whereas PPM at least gives slower charging powers a chance to activate as much as faster ones. It makes sure Procs are more effective on fast and slow recharging powers instead of just fast.

 

9 minutes ago, arcaneholocaust said:

I don’t see this as a “problem” in need of a fix. Until the current PPM situation is nerfed, players know to minimize recharge slotting to maximize procs. Players also know that this extends to the Alpha slot.

 

Even if the devs allow PPM to stay in its current controversial state forever, I don’t see why they would change how the Alpha slot fundamentally works just to accommodate some procsters.

Not sure what is currently controversial about PPM, I will have to wait on your response on that. Procs are used by many players who have any interest in optimizing their character's power, so it is an issue when two Alpha slot trees negatively impact it when no other trees do. As recharge affects PPM in ways that other buffs do not.

[arcane]

24 minutes ago, Oneirohero said:

The old way allowed faster-charging powers get a massive advantage in procs per minute whereas PPM at least gives slower charging powers a chance to activate as much as faster ones. It makes sure Procs are more effective on fast and slow recharging powers instead of just fast.

 

Not sure what is currently controversial about PPM, I will have to wait on your response on that. Procs are used by many players who have any interest in optimizing their character's power, so it is an issue when two Alpha slot trees negatively impact it when no other trees do. As recharge affects PPM in ways that other buffs do not.

And it’s Beginner Procs 101 to avoid recharge enhancement already so what’s the problem with this logically extending to two Alpha slots?
 

Read other threads for devs and player statements expressing that the PPM system is overpowered or broken. 

[aethereal]

26 minutes ago, Oneirohero said:

The old way allowed faster-charging powers get a massive advantage in procs per minute whereas PPM at least gives slower charging powers a chance to activate as much as faster ones. It makes sure Procs are more effective on fast and slow recharging powers instead of just fast.

The old way certainly gave advantage to some powers over others -- though perhaps less overall advantage than the current system does to people who have invested in learning it.  The old system also had the advantage of being basically legible: it was much less complex and much easier to understand how it worked without investing a few hours on forums learning from secondary and tertiary sources.

 

But I'm not necessarily advocating for going back to pure percentage chance procs.  I'm just saying that PPM is a disaster.

[arcane]

Even if there were a problem, making all alpha slots do one thing (boost enhancement values) except for a fraction of a portion of two alpha slots just so proc monsters don’t have to make hard choices absolutely reeks of poor design. And I say this as someone with dozens of characters that each have dozens of procs. 

[Oneirohero]

Just now, aethereal said:

The old system also had the advantage of being basically legible: it was much less complex and much easier to understand how it worked without investing a few hours on forums learning from secondary and tertiary sources.

 

But I'm not necessarily advocating for going back to pure percentage chance procs.  I'm just saying that PPM is a disaster.

I'll admit that when it comes to powers with radius/cones the system is way beyond me, but legibility is no reason to abandon the system outright. The game could really do with calculating the chances for the player and display it in the description text of Proc IOs/ATOs. Why it wasn't done earlier is either a complete mystery or due to development being cut short before it could be resolved.

 

Placeholder values are already present in many enhancement descriptions, particularly when it comes to percentages; extrapolating the actual proc chance and putting it into the description text is definitely possible if the game itself uses it during calculations. Ideally it should also calculate as you hover over powers so you're not having to trial and error with unslotters just to find out the odds of each one.

[aethereal]

9 minutes ago, Oneirohero said:

I'll admit that when it comes to powers with radius/cones the system is way beyond me, but legibility is no reason to abandon the system outright. The game could really do with calculating the chances for the player and display it in the description text of Proc IOs/ATOs. Why it wasn't done earlier is either a complete mystery or due to development being cut short before it could be resolved.

 

That would help but not resolve the legibility situation, since part of it is "understanding why the numbers would change in one way or another when I do certain things."

 

It wouldn't change that the system remains a nightmare, arbitrarily rewarding and undermining certain strategies for no real reason, creating way too much incentive to build in weird ways, and, hilariously, offering Yet More Reward For Global Recharge.  (It's impossible to imagine who looked at the state of CoH at like i23 or whatever was right before PPM and said, "I think that what this game needs is more emphasis on achieving higher global recharge.")

 

What PPM tried to do was "make procs roughly equally good in all powers" what it actually did was "make procs good in a small subset of powers that were already some of the best powers in terms of overall damage," this both inflating the power level of the game and putting increased focus on an ever-smaller number of powers.

Edited February 28, 2021 by aethereal

[Oneirohero]

2 minutes ago, arcaneholocaust said:

-- except for a fraction of a portion of two alpha slots just so proc monsters don’t have to make hard choices absolutely reeks of poor design.

So why isn't this choice prevalent in any other aspect of City of Heroes? Why isn't there any other feature that negatively impacts performance due to a choice you make? Boosting aspects far beyond what is needed never has a downside because it pads against debuffs, No other enhancement type has these issues aside from Recharge, the game was balanced around having a limited number of slots to enhance with, not 'how' you choose to enhance with. Saying that people should know 'not to use too much recharge' is just a intuitive as someone saying it's not 'legible' and requires looking through guides to figure out it out.

 

What you're smelling isn't poor design, it's inconsistency. I don't know what you have against proc-monsters or whatever, but considering PPM is controversial, that means there definitely is a problem here and should be addressed at some point in time.

[arcane]

5 minutes ago, Oneirohero said:

So why isn't this choice prevalent in any other aspect of City of Heroes? Why isn't there any other feature that negatively impacts performance due to a choice you make? Boosting aspects far beyond what is needed never has a downside because it pads against debuffs, No other enhancement type has these issues aside from Recharge, the game was balanced around having a limited number of slots to enhance with, not 'how' you choose to enhance with. Saying that people should know 'not to use too much recharge' is just a intuitive as someone saying it's not 'legible' and requires looking through guides to figure out it out.

 

What you're smelling isn't poor design, it's inconsistency. I don't know what you have against proc-monsters or whatever, but considering PPM is controversial, that means there definitely is a problem here and should be addressed at some point in time.

I obviously have nothing against proc monsters as I just stated I have dozens of them. I do know how they work though. Google “Hcwiki PPM” - it’s a readily understandable one pager.

[arcane]

13 minutes ago, Oneirohero said:

Saying that people should know 'not to use too much recharge' is just a intuitive as

Also you came out in favor of this logic by defending PPM in the first place as that’s how it fundamentally works so... sensing mixed messages here.

[aethereal]

So for example, here's a somewhat clunky proc system that preserves some of the basic intent and logic behind PPM but unwinds a lot of its ridiculousness:

 

Powers have a proc schedule (let's say A, B, C, D).  Procs have their own schedules (call them 1, 2, 3, 4).  You can cross-reference power schedule and proc schedule to find a chance to proc.  So A1 might be 90% and D4 might be 10%.

 

Convert the old PPM rating of a proc into a proc schedule, so something that was PPM 2 might be proc schedule 4, something that was PPM 7 would be proc schedule 1.

 

Use recharge time and AoE to roughly set the power schedule (so short-recharge time and/or AoE powers would be schedule D, long-recharge time single target powers are schedule A).

 

But then...  everything's static at that point.  You can use recharge -- global or local -- freely.  There are no questions about whether a power uses a pseudo-pet behind the scenes.  It doesn't matter, the power just says, "Hey, I'm schedule C."  People don't have to do math to figure out a proc rate, they just look at a simple chart.  If procs are overpowered (or underpowered) in a given power, we just straightforwardly reduce its schedule, we don't initiate a bunch of second-order changes by fucking around with its recharge time or area.

[arcane]

49 minutes ago, aethereal said:

 

What PPM tried to do was "make procs roughly equally good in all powers" what it actually did was "make procs good in a small subset of powers that were already some of the best powers in terms of overall damage," this both inflating the power level of the game and putting increased focus on an ever-smaller number of powers.

I think you forgot a little side of “hey let’s make epic/patron holds that do barely any damage by design into some of the best damage powers in the game” 🙂

[Bopper]

Some issues with the proposal (apologies that the thread went off the rails on PPM instead of staying on topic, but I promise to just speak to the proposal).

 

If you do this change, you have to be consistent. Recharge shouldn't get special rules just because of the PPM formulas, afterall, Alpha has always been a global enhancement. But,, enhancements can come with set bonuses,, so let's explore that avenue. What you'd be looking at doing is making the ignore-ED portion a set bonus (or some other generic global buff).  This will have negative repercussions to powers that ignore strength/buffs but accept enhancements. So folks who want to use a heal Alpha get hosed when it comes to powers like Earth's Embrace.

 

The other problem with a set bonus approach, damage resistance. You can't grant a strength buff to damage resistance, it doesn't exist due to its mechanics with damage. So, such an implementation of a global buff breaks on that issue alone.

Edited February 28, 2021 by Bopper

[macskull]

4 hours ago, arcaneholocaust said:

I think you forgot a little side of “hey let’s make epic/patron holds that do barely any damage by design into some of the best damage powers in the game” 🙂

...which is balanced around them already having a recharge penalty that is sometimes up to 4x what it'd be on a normal powerset.

[arcane]

48 minutes ago, macskull said:

...which is balanced around them already having a recharge penalty that is sometimes up to 4x what it'd be on a normal powerset.

In this case I was not making a comment on balance but rather on how wacky the PPM system is as aetherial said.

[macskull]

5 hours ago, arcane said:

In this case I was not making a comment on balance but rather on how wacky the PPM system is as aetherial said.

Oh it's definitely not simple, especially when you get into things that aren't single-target attacks. It's way more complicated than the old flat-rate system but I don't think it is bad and needs to be changed.