Wayback machine: Fire tanks

[Captain Fabulous]

On 4/3/2023 at 12:20 AM, SomeGuy said:

 

 

Yeah, our characters can be exponentially more powerful now than pre-ED. ED was just implemented poorly. Very poorly. Until sets were a thing, ED really pooped on the game for anyone that got to experience 6 slotting HOs (which were *50%). That and they were telling everyone in the CoV Beta to be quiet about this MASSIVE nerf to the entire game that was gonna go live when CoV went live.

 

Your post reminded me that the Fitness pool was an "optional" choice that was mandatory to take, I was definitely one of the folks that argued it should be inherent and was screamed at by folks for saying such a bold statement. And here we are...

I've said it before and I will die on this hill: ED broke the game.

[Wavicle]

ED saved the game. Without it we would never have gotten IOs or Incarnate powers.

[Hyperstrike]

5 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

I've said it before and I will die on this hill: ED broke the game.

If you define the game by only SOs, sure.

[MrAxe]

Oh so he was one of those. You'd get tells asking 'are you a fire tank'. If you answered no, you'd never hear a peep from that person again. Very annoying. The burn patch nerf was a happy day for us non flaming folks.

[Captain Fabulous]

3 minutes ago, Hyperstrike said:

If you define the game by only SOs, sure.

Since IOs didn't exist at the time, yes. Most of the benefits from IO sets and globals restore what everyone already had organically prior to ED and the defense nerf, creating a two-tier system of haves and have-nots that ultimately wound up making the game extremely difficult to balance. 

If you need to see this imbalance in action, playtest a character with just SOs and then again with a full IO-set build. The difference is night and day. Now imagine you could get 90% of the same functionality as the full IO-set build on your SO build, without having to grind TFs or play the market. It raises the bar for everyone, not just those who have the time and will to grind. The game was far worse off for ED, and dare I say never really recovered from it. All because one man who believed that dying in games was fun.

[Captain Fabulous]

4 hours ago, Wavicle said:

ED saved the game. Without it we would never have gotten IOs or Incarnate powers.

Saved it from what? It wasn't broken and we wouldn't have needed IOs. We would have gotten a crafting system that did something else instead of restoring, for a price, what they took away. And no reason to think we wouldn't have gotten Incarnates either way.

[Wavicle]

Without ED and the Defense and Control nerfs there would not have been room in our power levels for any of that. I remember that time very clearly. Adding diminishing returns on enhancements was a great idea that should have been in from the very beginning.

[Captain Fabulous]

6 hours ago, Wavicle said:

Without ED and the Defense and Control nerfs there would not have been room in our power levels for any of that. I remember that time very clearly. Adding diminishing returns on enhancements was a great idea that should have been in from the very beginning.

There's always room for characters to become more powerful. There is no need to nerf them first. A fully IO'd character with T4 incarnate abilities is significantly more powerful than one without. No one at Cryptic felt that characters needed to be nerfed before they introduced Incarnate abilities to make room. In fact they kept SOs as the balance standard despite introducing IOs and Incarnates.

The reality is that the game suffered immensely from ED and the defense nerf. CoV came shortly thereafter and boosted the playerbase for a time, but in the end it was still a superhero game in which you never really felt super. IOs didn't come till two years later, after Jack had pretty much left the game and was working on the Marvel MMO that eventually became Champions (which also suffered from a massive day 1 nerf from which it never recovered) and Star Trek Online, and the remaining devs were desperate to find a way to inject new life into the game without undoing any of Jack's edicts. From a developer point of view it's a great scheme; make people weak in order to slow their progress and force them to team, which in turn keeps them paying for longer. The invention system expanded on this, forcing people who want to be stronger than what SOs allow to grind their way to be better, again, keeping them playing and paying. But it also created a power schism that Cryptic/Paragon never figured out how (and some would argue purposely never wanted) to fix. They continued to balance the game around SOs despite there being an entire subclass of players who were significantly more powerful than that (equal to and in some ways even stronger than what was possible prior to ED).

With the introduction of F2P, the Incarnate system, and various paid-gates the game allowed some people (those willing to keep paying and grinding) to get even stronger, creating yet a third tier of player strength. At no time did they ever institute another across-the-board nerf to make way for the increased power the Incarnate system would bring. Nor did they ever attempt to rebalance the game around it.

So yeah, they told us ED was necessary to balance the game (just like how they told us the day 1 CO nerf was necessary for the same reason), but it's always been a flat out lie. ED came about because Jack didn't like how we played his game, that we found ways to surpass his "one hero equals three minions" design mentality. He straight up admitted he thought repeatedly dying on missions was a good thing that enhanced the game's enjoyment. But achieving both required nerfing the hell out of our damage and defense potential.

And here we are 20 years later debating what life could have been like without ED 🤣 But I will say this, even now playing with just SOs or even common IOs is still a slog if you're not on a well-powered team. Soloing at anything above +1 is a decidedly un-fun experience due to constantly running out of endurance, non-stop debuffs/mezzing/KB, or simply getting curbstomped by 3 minions. Which is exactly how Jack wanted it.

Edited April 7, 2023 by Captain Fabulous

[Hyperstrike]

6 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

There's always room for characters to become more powerful. There is no need to nerf them first. A fully IO'd character with T4 incarnate abilities is significantly more powerful than one without. No one at Cryptic felt that characters needed to be nerfed before they introduced Incarnate abilities to make room. In fact they kept SOs as the balance standard despite introducing IOs and Incarnates.

The reality is that the game suffered immensely from ED and the defense nerf. CoV came shortly thereafter and boosted the playerbase for a time, but in the end it was still a superhero game in which you never really felt super. IOs didn't come till two years later, after Jack had pretty much left the game and was working on the Marvel MMO that eventually became Champions (which also suffered from a massive day 1 nerf from which it never recovered) and Star Trek Online, and the remaining devs were desperate to find a way to inject new life into the game without undoing any of Jack's edicts. From a developer point of view it's a great scheme; make people weak in order to slow their progress and force them to team, which in turns keeps them paying for longer. The invention system expanded on this, forcing people who want to be stronger than what SOs allow to grind their way to be better, again, keeping them playing and paying. But it also created a power schism that Cryptic/Paragon never figured out how (and some would argue purposely never wanted) to fix. They continued to balance the game around SOs despite there being an entire subclass of players who were significantly more powerful than that (equal to and in some ways even stronger than what was possible prior to ED).

With the introduction of F2P, the Incarnate system, and various paid-gates the game allowed some people (those willing to keep paying grinding) to get even stronger, creating yet a third tier of player strength. At no time did they ever institute another across-the-board nerf to make way for the increased power the Incarnate system would bring. Nor did they ever attempt to rebalance the game around it.

So yeah, they told us that ED was necessary to balance the game (just like how they told us the day 1 CO nerfs were necessary for the same reason), but it's always been a flat out lie. ED came about because Jack didn't like how we played his game, that we found ways to surpass his "one hero equals three minions" design mentality. He straight up admitted he thought repeatedly dying on missions was a good thing that enhanced the game's enjoyment. But achieving both required nerfing the hell out of our damage and defense potential.

And here we are 20 years later debating what life could have been like without ED 🤣 But I will say this, even now playing with just SOs or even common IOs is still a slog if you're not on a well-powered team. Soloing at anything above +1 is a decidedly un-fun experience due to constantly running out of endurance, non-stop debuffs/mezzing/KB, or simply getting curbstomped by 3 minions. Which is exactly how Jack wanted it.

Basically there are more, diverse ways to optimize a build AFTER DR and ED.

It's not just "Slap 3 in and call it done".

Screw "The One True Way".

Which has to be the laziest way to do anything.

[Wavicle]

The game is way more fun now than it ever was prior to ED.

[Captain Fabulous]

2 minutes ago, Hyperstrike said:

Basically there are more, diverse ways to optimize a build AFTER DR and ED.

It's not just "Slap 3 in and call it done".

Screw "The One True Way".

Which has to be the laziest way to do anything.

How do you figure? Everything with SOs and common IOs is built pretty much the same precisely because we can't 6-slot certain key powers like Stamina and Hasten and the defense nerf obliterated the effectiveness of tohit buffs. Ironically ED actually reduced diversification, because now every attack, armor, and buff power has to be slotted exactly the same way when previously there was some wiggle room. You can't deviate except in special use cases because characters have a fraction of the power they used to and would be sub-par otherwise. There's a whole slew of enhancements that never get used because it would gimp you. Calling it "enhancement diversity" and trying to explain it as a way to allow for differing builds was another straight up lie. It did no such thing. All it did was make us significantly weaker. Which was always the point.

Inventions did introduce a lot of different ways to build things depending upon what attributes you want to focus on (most of which you already had prior to ED), but ED doesn't make this possible. IOs do, which can absolutely exist without ED. You would just be building for slightly different things than we do now.

[Captain Fabulous]

1 minute ago, Wavicle said:

The game is way more fun now than it ever was prior to ED.

In the time after ED but before IOs and in terms of gameplay? No. Absolutely not. In no way shape or form. And as I previously said, the introduction of IOs wasn't reliant upon ED. An invention system would have been introduced at some point even if ED never happened.

[Wavicle]

7 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

In the time after ED but before IOs and in terms of gameplay? No. Absolutely not. In no way shape or form. And as I previously said, the introduction of IOs wasn't reliant upon ED. An invention system would have been introduced at some point even if ED never happened.

Who said anything about after ED but before IOs? I said NOW. The game is more fun NOW than ever before.

Once again, ED saved the game by making room for IOs and Incarnates. That's a fact, whether you agree or not.

[Hyperstrike]

6 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

How do you figure? Everything with SOs and common IOs is built pretty much the same precisely because we can't 6-slot certain key powers like Stamina and Hasten and the defense nerf obliterated the effectiveness of tohit buffs. Ironically ED actually reduced diversification, because now every attack, armor, and buff power has to be slotted exactly the same way

This isn't true and you know it.

Yes, from a dumb, raw enhancement perspective.
Sure.  Emphasis on "dumb"

Things like SET bonuses, procs and uniques provide multiple avenues to viable builds.

 

[Gobbledygook]

As much as I hated it at the time, (I hate change, even when I was young. Especially changing shitty diapers), but I agree, it changed things for the better.

Before ED, I could go all night, now...

Wait, wrong ED...

 

Before ED, attacks were slotted:

1 Acc, 1 End, 1 Recharge, 3 Damage

Armors:

1 End, 5 Def/Res/Heal

Health: 6 Heal

Stamina: 6 End Mod

Hasten: 6 Recharge Reduction

Edited April 7, 2023 by Gobbledygook
Grammatical Issue

[Captain Fabulous]

10 hours ago, Wavicle said:

Who said anything about after ED but before IOs? I said NOW. The game is more fun NOW than ever before.

Once again, ED saved the game by making room for IOs and Incarnates. That's a fact, whether you agree or not.

Yes, but that's despite ED, not because of it. As I've already pointed out ED wasn't to "make room" for anything as there was zero intent at the time to create any kind of system that would bring power levels back up. It was solely a means to weaken people to fit Jack's piss-poor game philosophy, and it was WILDLY unpopular. Inventions came 2 years later after Jack left. History does not support your assertion of fact.
 

4 hours ago, Hyperstrike said:

This isn't true and you know it.

Yes, from a dumb, raw enhancement perspective.
Sure.  Emphasis on "dumb"

Things like SET bonuses, procs and uniques provide multiple avenues to viable builds.

 

Yes, now, but this has nothing to do with ED. If anything, IO sets and Incarnates prove that ED was a shit design decision, as they're literally designed to circumvent it. If ED was the end-all-be-all must-have so-incredibly-important-to-the-game implementation, why would the devs have gone out of their way to create not one but two systems years later that bypassed it?

I'm not going to continue arguing the point. There is a mountain of historical evidence to prove what I've said. But whatev, ancient history.

[Hyperstrike]

22 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Yes, now,

You could have just stopped there and said "You're right!"

Oh well.

[FupDup]

It's basically indisputable that stuff like Hasten 6-slotted with Recharge is just pure bullshit and should never be allowed, but not all powers/attributes would end up causing problems like that. For example, if someone 6-slotted an attack power with nothing but endurance reduction or accuracy that would actually be pretty awful.

 

I think an interesting experiment would be to loosen up or remove ED only from certain specific attributes and/or specific crappy powers (like brawl, boxing, etc). Obviously the "important" stuff like damage, recharge, defense, resist, heal, endmod, etc. should still be capped, especially on strong powers. 

[Captain Fabulous]

4 minutes ago, FupDup said:

It's basically indisputable that stuff like Hasten 6-slotted with Recharge is just pure bullshit and should never be allowed, but not all powers/attributes would end up causing problems like that. For example, if someone 6-slotted an attack power with nothing but endurance reduction or accuracy that would actually be pretty awful.

That was one of the biggest complaints at the time, that Hasten would no longer be permable due to ED. Jack himself came to the forums and told us they were going to lower the base recharge so it still could be made perma with ED. And, well, we all know how that went. Dude flat out lied to everyone.

Curious tho, why is 6-slotted Hasten so bad when with IOs you can now easily get perma-Hasten and everyone seems fine with that?

[FupDup]

1 minute ago, Captain Fabulous said:

That was one of the biggest complaints at the time, that Hasten would no longer be permable due to ED. Jack himself came to the forums and told us they were going to lower the base recharge so it still could be made perma with ED. And, well, we all know how that went. Dude flat out lied to everyone.

Curious tho, why is 6-slotted Hasten so bad when with IOs you can now easily get perma-Hasten and everyone seems fine with that?

It would free you from having to chase recharge bonuses so you could focus on other stuff like defenses without losing perma-hasten in the process (usually the sets that give mega recharge aren't giving mega defenses or w/e). Basically you could have your cake and eat it too. 

 

But honestly, my hot take is that I think permahasten is a bit busted in either case and the power should probably be reworked somehow. 

[Hyperstrike]

34 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

That was one of the biggest complaints at the time, that Hasten would no longer be permable due to ED. Jack himself came to the forums and told us they were going to lower the base recharge so it still could be made perma with ED. And, well, we all know how that went. Dude flat out lied to everyone.

Curious tho, why is 6-slotted Hasten so bad when with IOs you can now easily get perma-Hasten and everyone seems fine with that?

Because work needs to be done to obtain such a build.
And following someone's build plan doesn't mean the work wasn't done..
Just not by that particular person

It's not simple BS like "Just drop 6 Recharge enhancers in."

[Wavicle]

It's been literally 15 20 (dammit) years. Get over it.

I remember those days quite clearly.

The game is way better now.

Edited April 8, 2023 by Wavicle

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Yes, now, but this has nothing to do with ED. If anything, IO sets and Incarnates prove that ED was a shit design decision, as they're literally designed to circumvent it.

ED was implemented so IOs and Incarnates could exist.  They weren't created as a workaround for the "problem" of ED, ED was created as a way to enable lateral progression, to make it possible to improve characters without raising the level cap.  IOs and Incarnates were the solution to the lack of progression, and ED had to happen before that solution could be implemented.  The only bad part of ED was how long it took for it to happen.  It should've been in the game at launch.

[Hyperstrike]

6 hours ago, Luminara said:

ED was implemented so IOs and Incarnates could exist.  They weren't created as a workaround for the "problem" of ED, ED was created as a way to enable lateral progression, to make it possible to improve characters without raising the level cap.  IOs and Incarnates were the solution to the lack of progression, and ED had to happen before that solution could be implemented.  The only bad part of ED was how long it took for it to happen.  It should've been in the game at launch.

[Shenanigunner]

The ED arguments make me long for a good "Mac vs. PC" brawl.