Sweeping defense changes

[Bionic_Flea]

Sweeping defense changes?

[macskull]

28 minutes ago, Brutal Justice said:

A chance for insta death is always better than the guaranteed death resist based scrappers face.  Like skydiving.  The defense scrapper has a parachute.  The resist scrapper doesn’t.  

This would be the case in a vacuum, but in an actual gameplay scenario both Scrappers are going to be actively trying to defeat the enemies they're surrounded by and they only need to live long enough to stop the incoming damage. In other words, the Scrapper's primary powerset is going to be contributing to their survivability. To borrow the skydiving analogy: the resistance-based Scrapper's going to deploy the parachute immediately after jumping and fall at a relatively predictable rate. The defense-based Scrapper does the same, except the parachute might not deploy right away and even if it does there's the possibility it fails after an indeterminate amount of time.

[Brutal Justice]

17 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

You showed some math. I, and many others, determined your math was was incomplete, biased and wrong.

I believe Bopper was asked if my math was correct and he generally agreed it looked good. I don’t think he ever spent much time on it but that’s what it was.

 

I also ran his survival calculator like I was recommended to and it fully supported the numbers and observations.  So the people who disagreed where more than likely wrong.  

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, Brutal Justice said:

I believe Bopper was asked if my math was correct and he generally agreed it looked good. I don’t think he ever spent much time on it but that’s what it was.

 

I also ran his survival calculator like I was recommended to and it fully supported the numbers and observations.  So the people who disagreed where more than likely wrong.  

 

And yet it remains unemplemented and ignored. Perhaps he was being kind.

[Brutal Justice]

4 minutes ago, macskull said:

This would be the case in a vacuum, but in an actual gameplay scenario both Scrappers are going to be actively trying to defeat the enemies they're surrounded by and they only need to live long enough to stop the incoming damage. In other words, the Scrapper's primary powerset is going to be contributing to their survivability. To borrow the skydiving analogy: the resistance-based Scrapper's going to deploy the parachute immediately after jumping and fall at a relatively predictable rate. The defense-based Scrapper does the same, except the parachute might not deploy right away and even if it does there's the possibility it fails after an indeterminate amount of time.

Anything a primary can provide for a resistance set it can provide for a defense set.

 

Run Bopper’s survival calculator and let us know what kind of times till death you get with a 45 defense scrapper, a 40 defense scrapper, and a 75 resistance scrapper.  

[Brutal Justice]

11 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

And yet it remains unemplemented and ignored. Perhaps he was being kind.

Whether or not it’s implemented doesn’t change the math.

 

He does seem to be a rather kind person but he does usually correct misinformation.  

[Bionic_Flea]

Using Bopper's calculator, however well built it may be, does not account for human beings actually playing the game.  Damage doesn't come in at the same rate all the time.  People avoid damage many ways, not just by defense and resist from armors.

 

However, I agree that 45% defense is better than 75% resist.  But I never have just one or the other.

[Brutal Justice]

18 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Using Bopper's calculator, however well built it may be, does not account for human beings actually playing the game.  Damage doesn't come in at the same rate all the time.  People avoid damage many ways, not just by defense and resist from armors.

 

However, I agree that 45% defense is better than 75% resist.  But I never have just one or the other.

This is true but the same non vacuum conditions are faced by both mitigation sets, and in equal non vacuums there is no contest which one crushes the other and thus doesn’t really need to be stated.  

 

I understand the failings of the calculator.  I’m not using it to actually calculate how long you will live.  I’m using it to show the imbalance in the coded numbers that are used for balance purposes.  You can’t balance for individuals, you can only set a base line.  Right now one base line is on a football field and the other is on a futbol field.  

[Bionic_Flea]

Other than Linea's higher level 801 AE arcs and the ASF on relentless, is your resistance scrapper really dying more than your defense scrapper?  Or are both of them essentially immortal in 99% of the game?

[PeregrineFalcon]

4 hours ago, Haijinx said:

And yet, you will fight tooth and nail to block any possible reduction in the performance of IOs.  I find that interesting.  

Yes. Because:

1. I want people who love using the system to make their characters über still be able to do so.
2. I want the ability to make my characters über if I have the time and desire to do so.
3. The developers are in the process of proliferating a new difficulty mode that will require your characters to be über just to survive. So nerfing defense and/or IOs right now makes no sense.

That being said, after the developers have proliferated the new difficulty mode more, and more people have had a chance to spend a great deal of time with it, then we should talk about whether or not defense and/or IOs and/or Incarnate abilities are still too powerful.

 

Until then? Motion denied!  😁

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

That being said, after the developers have proliferated the new difficulty mode more, and more people have had a chance to spend a great deal of time with it, then we should talk about whether or not defense and/or IOs and/or Incarnate abilities are still too powerful.

 

In other words:

 

[Aurora_Girl]

Has anyone heard of DDR? That 45% def on a blaster does fuck all when CDF gets ya like herpes. Doesn't care what IOs you have or how big your internet dick is. 

[Bionic_Flea]

[golstat2003]

21 hours ago, Haijinx said:

 

I don't think its by Design per se.  But, It is the end result.  

 

 

If it wasn't by design they never would have even thought of introducing IOs. The adjustments like ED prior were paving the way of this. Let's face it the devs never intended for this to be a hard game. (And yet at the same time maybe not as easy as it's become because of IOs)

 

I always find it funny how a lot of folks focus on Incarnates when we have things like IOs "breaking the game" before the Incarnate system was even an idea on paper.

[golstat2003]

15 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

In other words:

 

 

Well maybe in 2072.  . . If we're all still alive and we aren't all avatars in a virtual reality version of City of Heroes . . . being accidentally broadcast in the Italian Senate . . .LOL

[Wavicle]

21 hours ago, Haijinx said:

But I do have to laugh at the idea that the Mender Ramiel arc was the final power level Players were supposed to have.  I don't think that was the intent. 

 

Again, it is explicitly clear in the story. Ramiel says: "Look, in the future you're crazy powerful and can solo AVs, go find the Well. Oh, the Well has moved, guess you'll have to get there the long way." The long way is the Incarnate system we have. Now of course I agree that the actual level of power in that mission is excessively over the top, but it's an illustration.

 

So, you're right, it's an exaggeration, but that was definitely always the intended direction, that players can become super super powerful.

[golstat2003]

2 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

 

Again, it is explicitly clear in the story. Ramiel says: "Look, in the future you're crazy powerful and can solo AVs, go find the Well. Oh, the Well has moved, guess you'll have to get there the long way." The long way is the Incarnate system we have. Now of course I agree that the actual level of power in that mission is excessively over the top, but it's an illustration.

 

So, you're right, it's an exaggeration, but that was definitely always the intended direction, that players can become super super powerful.

 

With that said I've read some of the posters here say they prefer the "batman" or "daredevil" template for super heroes versus the "X-Men" or "Superman" template. So yeah I can see how that mission is utterly ridic as you mentioned. With that said I prefer my supers . . . Super. Do I still enjoy batman and daredevil? Sure.

 

But if I'm thinking of a super hero I'm looking for the absolutely ridiculous and fantastical . . . hence why I enjoy X-Men (especially the current iteration) and Superman more.

[Wavicle]

48 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

 

With that said I've read some of the posters here say they prefer the "batman" or "daredevil" template for super heroes versus the "X-Men" or "Superman" template. So yeah I can see how that mission is utterly ridic as you mentioned. With that said I prefer my supers . . . Super. Do I still enjoy batman and daredevil? Sure.

 

But if I'm thinking of a super hero I'm looking for the absolutely ridiculous and fantastical . . . hence why I enjoy X-Men (especially the current iteration) and Superman more.

 

And I LOVE that the game offers you the flexibility to make both types at your discretion!

[macskull]

2 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

Let's face it the devs never intended for this to be a hard game.

So I'm not 100% in agreement with this - it was definitely not intended to be easy (see: Jack Emmert's "1 hero = 3 even-con minions")  but it's pretty clear the initial developers had no idea what they were doing re: game balance and this game ended up being a Bob Ross-esque happy accident.

 

21 hours ago, Brutal Justice said:

Right now one base line is on a football field and the other is on a futbol field.  

When either one of them makes you functionally immortal as long as you're not standing there letting mobs bonk you on the head, the difference between the two is more or less irrelevant.

[Excraft]

No.  Please stop nerfherding with this very transparent posts. 

[Doomguide2005]

On 1/19/2022 at 10:17 AM, Brutal Justice said:

Defense hard caps in line with the resistance hard caps is the answer you seek.  

      You want to drop the defense hard cap for scrappers to 40% as I recall.  If so that pretty much invalidates a the new challenge settings.  A Scrapper with hard capped defense of 40 would almost certainly get rapidly and thoroughly obliterated on Relentless settings.

 

Lots of rapid napkin math so if someone spots a mistake please say so.

 

     Inner clamp -> 80 - 40 = 40 

Some of those foes have additional to hit bonuses as well.  That 40 defense is fixed as it's the hard cap so you could put them on a team with a Cold, a Force Field and an Empath and their shield (+defense) buffs are largely useless.  Yay big step forward there on promoting teaming and support roles.

 

     Outer clamp -> 40 × 1.4 × 1.3 (assuming boss) = 72.8 final hit chance.  Have fun with those Melt Armor's splattering around you.  Mind the Tanker and Brute have (err had) hard capped defenses only 5 points higher (i.e. they are getting hit well over half the time).  It'll take slightly longer but 45 hard cap is also pretty much death as well for Tankers and Brutes.

     God help the support characters as they are going to get wiped even faster if attacked.

     Many of the AV are basically not going to miss as they have both +30 to base hit and its the Praetorian base of 59 (i.e. 96 - 40 = 56.  56×1.4×1.5 = waaay over the clamp of 95)

 

     Relentless is only reasonable when the hard caps allow for team/support buffs to actually contribute to raise defenses to help counter the base to hit boost the foes gain on the higher difficulties.  Basically they need to be soft with respect to defense not hard.

 

     It's pretty clear to me, both the OG Live Devs and the HC team are looking at increasing the foes to hit (typically base to hit, but also via buffs) as the go to for countering player soft cap defense.  They are very unlikely to directly nerf player defense though I wouldn't rule out a nasty potent defense debuff.  Heck that's what Melt Armor is especially with the purple patch making it nastier yet. 

Edited January 24, 2022 by Doomguide2005

[Lazarillo]

4 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

 It's pretty clear to me, both the OG Live Devs and the HC team are looking at increasing the foes to hit (typically base to hit, but also via buffs) as the go to for countering player soft cap defense. 

Which is a damn shame because that just ends up hurting people who don't minmax even harder.

[golstat2003]

9 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

Which is a damn shame because that just ends up hurting people who don't minmax even harder.

 

Well no as the content they would see that in is optional.

[Wavicle]

11 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

Which is a damn shame because that just ends up hurting people who don't minmax even harder.

imagine being able to run the hardest difficulty content in any other game without getting the best loot first.

[Doomguide2005]

6 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

 

Well no as the content they would see that in is optional.

     Not only is it optional but the big picture goal is not per se increasing the difficulty in and of itself but to do so in a manner which promotes both teaming and the roles played by support ATs.