Sweeping defense changes

[Brutal Justice]

It’s nice to see I can still get a bunch of thumbs downs from people who still think a defensive scrapper at 45% defense is in any way balanced with a resistance scrapper at 75% resistance.  

[Luminara]

4 hours ago, Haijinx said:

I'm saying that COX is essentially based on Dungeons and Dragons.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_System

[Troo]

45 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_System

 

yeah.. still likely goes back to kids with dice.

 

Champions intellectual property (IP) from Hero Games. First published in 1981

vs

D&D a variation of the 1971 game Chainmail serving as the initial rule system.

Dungeons & Dragons was the first modern role-playing game and it established many of the conventions that have dominated the genre. Particularly notable are the use of dice as a game mechanic.

 

 

Edited January 21, 2022 by Troo

[Luminara]

43 minutes ago, Troo said:

 

yeah.. still likely goes back to kids with dice.

 

Champions intellectual property (IP) from Hero Games. First published in 1981

vs

D&D a variation of the 1971 game Chainmail serving as the initial rule system.

Dungeons & Dragons was the first modern role-playing game and it established many of the conventions that have dominated the genre. Particularly notable are the use of dice as a game mechanic.

 

Tony Bath's miniature war game rule set, published in '56, preceded Chainmail.  Gygax took that, polished it up to create Chainmail, and later added wizards and lizards and sold it as D&D.

 

Polyhedral dice date back to the 2nd century BC.  Egyptians were rolling d20s ~2400 years ago.

 

The point of the link was to show that most of the concepts for the game came from the Hero System, not from D&D.  Obviously, the roll system couldn't have been adapted from the Hero System, since it's impossible to achieve a 5/100 when using six-sided dice (unless you roll 10/100/1000/10,000 etc. six-sided dice and divide the result by 6).  The archived information about the game's alpha stages clearly link to Champions, and the Hero System is the foundation of Champions.  We use a different rolling system simply because it was easy to implement a fractional 0.01-100.00 roll.  That roll system doesn't make this a D&D-inspired or -derived game.  It isn't.

[arcane]

Guys I don’t care how accurate this 20-sided die analogy is, comparing video games and tabletop games sounds dumb as hell.

 

Also, nerds.

 

Also I agree that some things will never be fixed. Challenge settings are nice but the regular content will probably remain a joke for eternity. For example, I do not think “x8” will ever come close to meaning “8 players recommended or risk (even the slightest) consequence”.

Edited January 21, 2022 by arcane

[Rudra]

Because that is not what x8 means. It means the game spawns mob sizes it would if you had a full 8-person team, not that it should take a full 8-person team to clear. It was implemented because players were able to face full team spawns solo and asked to be able to without having to recruit a full team to sit at the door while the player soloed the map.

[PeregrineFalcon]

See, that's where the problem lies, @arcane It's the perception that you, and a lot of people like you have.

 

Not everyone uses set IOs or even IOs at all. I regularly play CoH with a group of 2 - 5 close friends. Of them I'm the only one that has any set IOs slotted at all. And in my case it's usually just a Performance shifter proc and/or a Panacea HP/End proc.

 

Most of my friends don't have more than 1 level 50 character, and even that level 50 usually still has just level 25 non-set IOs slotted. And only then because I make the level 25 IOs, fill up the base storage with them, and I keep reminding everyone to not waste Inf on SOs and just slot the IOs once they reach level 22.

 

I can play at +4 x8 on exactly 1 character. My main, a tank with set IOs. But without other characters with me even that character will die eventually or take forever to complete a mission. I have another 50 with set IOs. A blaster. And that character isn't at the soft cap, having only 38% ranged defense.

 

The point being that a lot of people, including myself most of the time, and all of my friends, play this game casually and don't use the IO system at all. People have told me that it's more effort than they want to put into it and they'd rather just play on +1 x4 and have fun.

[Rudra]

Here's a dumb thought. Maybe we can have a third difficulty. So like +4/x8/x8. So mobs would spawn at +4 levels to the mission, as if you had a full 8-person team, and that spawns would be up to octupled times with no aggro cap.

 

So instead of a single team-sized spawn, the game would mass spawn a sea of +4 mobs up to 8x the normal team spawn size, and they will all attack. Maybe that would be better for you and others? (Additional edit for clarification: the aggro caps would only be lifted if you set the 3rd difficulty to x2 or higher.)

Edited January 21, 2022 by Rudra
Edited to add 2nd paragraph.

[Ghost]

22 minutes ago, arcane said:

Guys I don’t care how accurate this 20-sided die analogy is, comparing video games and tabletop games sounds dumb as hell.

 

Also, nerds.

 

Also I agree that some things will never be fixed. Challenge settings are nice but the regular content will probably remain a joke for eternity. For example, I do not think “x8” will ever come close to meaning “8 players recommended or risk (even the slightest) consequence”.

Hate to say this, but it kinda sounds like you created your own problem.  

[PeregrineFalcon]

16 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Here's a dumb thought. Maybe we can have a third difficulty. So like +4/x8/x8. So mobs would spawn at +4 levels to the mission, as if you had a full 8-person team, and that spawns would be up to octupled times with no aggro cap.

The developers have already developed a new difficulty system that they're in the process of proliferating throughout the entire game. Do you seriously want them to create a third difficulty system on top of all of that?

 

Maybe what would be better is if people either went and played the Aeon SF with the new difficulty system and/or AE 801 missions and stopped spending time on the forums complain that "game too easy, bruh!"

 

There are ways to challenge yourself that do not involve unslotting your Incarnate abilities and/or set IOs. How about you all use those systems instead of starting another "game too easy, bruh" thread?!?

[Rudra]

Here's another dumb thought. Some incarnate trials have mobs that are all +7. Increase difficulty from +4/x8 to +X/x8 where X is the new level shift cap with a minimum of 4 higher than incarnate level shifts. When everything is again purple to you, maybe you'll be happy with the challenge.

[Rudra]

5 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

The developers have already developed a new difficulty system that they're in the process of proliferating throughout the entire game. Do you seriously want them to create a third difficulty system on top of all of that?

 

Maybe what would be better is if people either went and played the Aeon SF with the new difficulty system and/or AE 801 missions and stopped spending time on the forums complain that "game too easy, bruh!"

 

There are ways to challenge yourself that do not involve unslotting your Incarnate abilities and/or set IOs. How about you all use those systems instead of starting another "game too easy, bruh" thread?!?

I hear you and I agree. However, that does not seem to satisfy people on this thread. I did say my ideas were dumb, too.

[A Cat]

5 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Here's another dumb thought. Some incarnate trials have mobs that are all +7. Increase difficulty from +4/x8 to +X/x8 where X is the new level shift cap with a minimum of 4 higher than incarnate level shifts. When everything is again purple to you, maybe you'll be happy with the challenge.

Careful, you are about to combine this bum fight with the bum fight over nerfing farming.

[arcane]

1 hour ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

See, that's where the problem lies, @arcane It's the perception that you, and a lot of people like you have.

 

Not everyone uses set IOs or even IOs at all. I regularly play CoH with a group of 2 - 5 close friends. Of them I'm the only one that has any set IOs slotted at all. And in my case it's usually just a Performance shifter proc and/or a Panacea HP/End proc.

 

Most of my friends don't have more than 1 level 50 character, and even that level 50 usually still has just level 25 non-set IOs slotted. And only then because I make the level 25 IOs, fill up the base storage with them, and I keep reminding everyone to not waste Inf on SOs and just slot the IOs once they reach level 22.

 

I can play at +4 x8 on exactly 1 character. My main, a tank with set IOs. But without other characters with me even that character will die eventually or take forever to complete a mission. I have another 50 with set IOs. A blaster. And that character isn't at the soft cap, having only 38% ranged defense.

 

The point being that a lot of people, including myself most of the time, and all of my friends, play this game casually and don't use the IO system at all. People have told me that it's more effort than they want to put into it and they'd rather just play on +1 x4 and have fun.

“The problem” what problem? All these TO-slotted friends of yours have the entirety of the game already catering to them. Telling people to go run Aeon over and over does nothing to change the fact that 99% of the game remains tremendously easy. If your friends don’t agree with me, they are in luck, because there is no shortage of “easy mode” difficulty settings. Let’s see, you’ve got -1/x1... then there’s +0x1... heck, there’s even -1x2! In total there are 47 other level/spawn size combinations available to all your friends who don’t find +4x8 to be easy. Why on earth should we believe that they’re at any risk of being left behind?

 

I don’t know why you are content for challenge seekers to only have one TF while you have an entire game designed around YOUR casual speed. I think the risk of this game becoming too difficult overall is precisely zero, but your reactions seem to indicate you feel otherwise and I haven’t the foggiest idea where you’d get that.

Edited January 21, 2022 by arcane

[Rudra]

99% of the game is also well beneath an incarnate's time to even think about. It is the noob hero/villain growing up to reach god status.

 

And has already been pointed out, more content for you is on the way.

Edited January 21, 2022 by Rudra
Edited to add last line.

[arcane]

The constant misrepresentation in this thread is so dumb. Imagine thinking you’ve read my posts and still thinking my characters are all meta builds with soft capped defense. Let me give you a hint: you haven’t been reading.

[PeregrineFalcon]

2 minutes ago, arcane said:

“The problem” what problem? All these TO-slotted friends of yours have the entirety of the game already catering to them.

I specifically said SOs or level 25 non-set IOs, not TOs. Way to use hyperbole to dismiss the point that I made. Pro tip: people aren't going to want to respond to you when they see that ignore the completely legitimate points they are making.

 

3 minutes ago, arcane said:

I don’t know why you are content for challenge seekers to only have one TF while you have an entire game designed around YOUR casual speed.

What part of the "devs are proliferating this system" did you miss? It's been mentioned in this thread at least 3 times. It's going to take some time, just as implementing any suggestion will. If the devs do decide to nerf IO sets just as you want them to, that'll will take time to code and implement too.

 

And at no point did I ever say that I am content for challenge seekers to have only one TF to play. I even suggested other challenges as well. At this point you're not even responding to the statements that I'm actually making. Instead you're deliberately twisting every point I make. That being the case I'm done wasting my time responding to you. That may change if you ever decide to start responding to the words that I've actually written instead of just making stuff up as you have been in this thread.

[arcane]

1 minute ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

If the devs do decide to nerf IO sets just as you want them to, that'll will take time to code and implement too.

Please show me your source. Because I think you’re a good dude but you’re kinda making shit up.

[Burk]

On 1/19/2022 at 8:47 AM, Bill Z Bubba said:

Fun fact: Pylons use an AoE attack but it's typed Range. I've never understood why.

 

Made double weird because it's listed as Area Lethal under Attack Type but at the top of the page it shows Ranged Lethal +KB.

https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=rikti.war_zone_pylon.swarm_missile&at=boss_archvillain

 

There's probably a LOT more weirdness like this than we'd care to know.

 

 

Just to clarify, the top of the page just shows the flavor text. Flavor text in this game is frequently wrong. The Homecoming devs have done a decent job fixing some of it, especially player powers, but there's a lot of enemy powers that are still incorrect. The info under Attack Type is actually the info that the game uses during combat, so Swarm Missile is correctly typed AoE and Lethal.

[arcane]

9 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Pro tip: people aren't going to want to respond to you when they see that ignore the completely legitimate points they are making.

 

Do you want me to provide a list of each time this tactic was used against me before I got frustrated enough to say something hyperbolic myself? Or can we acknowledge that and move on. Reprimanding someone for something your cheerleaders engage in is not an effective way to convince me of anything.

[Ignatz the Insane]

14 minutes ago, arcane said:

The constant misrepresentation in this thread is so dumb. Imagine thinking you’ve read my posts and still thinking my characters are all meta builds with soft capped defense. Let me give you a hint: you haven’t been reading.

I can kinda see where people get this idea.  The following are just from this thread.

 

On 1/19/2022 at 7:08 AM, arcane said:

I think it’s probably too late for a revamp the OP wants. That being said, I would like to pick at something.

 

The current problem with difficulty in this game is that, yes, you can choose your difficulty, but, as long as you avoid the absolute hardest content and enemy types, *+4x8* is actually considered part of the easy end of the spectrum, *even when solo*. If you understand what that 4 means and what that 8 means, that should be a ludicrous statement. And yet it’s not if you know how god damn easy CoX is. That’s slightly messed up.

 

On 1/19/2022 at 8:25 AM, arcane said:

And +4x8 council only exist to give drunk people and small children a reason to press buttons without getting into any danger

 

On 1/19/2022 at 2:22 PM, arcane said:

Every powerset combo in the game can solo +4x8 with caveats (IO/Incarnate up, AV’s not guaranteed to be included in package, absolute worst combos ever may struggle with a number of enemy groups). So this here is kind of just plain incorrect.

 

On 1/19/2022 at 6:50 PM, arcane said:

This. Obviously completion rates will vary wildly, but under this definition every combo can solo once a *solo-friendly build* is completed at level 50. And yes, I have an Ice Controller. And a Force Field Defender. And some Masterminds.

 

On 1/19/2022 at 7:24 PM, arcane said:

Played around a little on my ice/time troller in a +4x8 farm because of this thread.. not the best example because time is OP butttt at least it does force you to take the controller epic with power boost that contributes crap to your offense. And yes ice control is “sub-optimal” too. Anyway, I am killing at an acceptable rate for me as long as I pull bosses together once their minions are dead. I have 23 damage procs and 2 -res procs on whatever this build is supposed to be, but I think I could do better if I wanted to build it more for soloing.

 

Now on to some time with my grav/sonic, which I already know melts mobs with its build.

 

On 1/20/2022 at 5:46 AM, arcane said:

You keep using hyperbole to describe the speeds of slower characters, and it only shows that you can’t fathom what a properly built one looks like. Most likely explanation is you’re probably bad.

 

On 1/20/2022 at 7:08 AM, arcane said:

Oh not this crap again. Grow up and use your brain.

 

People are allowed to want challenges on maxed out characters, not just gutted ones. You can disagree but it only means you don’t know how video games work. No game is intentionally designed with “well if they wanted a challenge they would obviously opt out of every feature in the game” as its approach. People need to stop repeating that tremendously stupid idea.

 

On 1/20/2022 at 7:31 AM, arcane said:

Are we anywhere close to a universe where CoX is like this....

 

I’m sorry for attacking you, but you keep minimizing all of our real experiences with the game and it’s annoying as hell. “Uh, no, you can solo +4x8 even with an Ice controller, I’m doing it right now.” - “LoL i BeT eVeRy MiSsIoN tAkEs A mOnTh LoL”.

 

On 1/20/2022 at 7:56 AM, arcane said:

And I like it that way dammit. If I have to gut my character of all the things that make it fun to build etc... well I’m just not going to do that ever because it’s a ludicrous suggestion.

Again... and I’ve said this surely a hundred times on this forum in the pasr year... playing maxed out characters and having engaging and challenging content are not mutually exclusive things. Any post that pretends they are must immediately be regarded as illogical.

 

Btw you say “and yea, sure, a bunch of procs” like it’s a relatively small piece of the puzzle. But considering I don’t have Fire Ball or Psi Tornado or anything, I would have nearly zero DPS on that character without damage procs (and yes Judgement). Considering Jack is dead half the time at that difficulty, the only thing I have left is literally Block of Ice / Frostbite base damage. So yeah, basically nothing without procs.

 

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Burk said:

Just to clarify, the top of the page just shows the flavor text. Flavor text in this game is frequently wrong. The Homecoming devs have done a decent job fixing some of it, especially player powers, but there's a lot of enemy powers that are still incorrect. The info under Attack Type is actually the info that the game uses during combat, so Swarm Missile is correctly typed AoE and Lethal.

 

If true, then it was fixed at some point. Easy to test. I'll go turn off evasion, see if I get hit a lot. Then do the same with focused senses.

 

All toggles on, Rikti Swarm missile has a 7.8% chance to hit.

Turn off Evasion (AoE Defense) Rikti Swarm missile has a 40.59% chance to hit.

Evasion on, FS off, drops back down to 7.8%.

 

So yes, it got fixed. I have no clue when but thanks for that!

Edited January 21, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba

[Haijinx]

3 hours ago, arcane said:

Guys I don’t care how accurate this 20-sided die analogy is, comparing video games and tabletop games sounds dumb as hell.

 

 

That's the point.  They had this hugely powerful computer availible to impliment a system you couldn't pull off easily on a Tabletop.  And they went with a Tabletop level one anyway.

 

They should have used a non-linear system.  Allowing for diminishing returns.  Thus reducing the unbalancing power of "gear" (or skills or incarnates or IOs or whatever) 

 

[macskull]

8 hours ago, Brutal Justice said:

It’s nice to see I can still get a bunch of thumbs downs from people who still think a defensive scrapper at 45% defense is in any way balanced with a resistance scrapper at 75% resistance.  

Your defense overhaul was a bad idea when you first suggested it, and it's a bad idea now.

 

It's also worth pointing out any character at its defense cap with no resistance has the potential to get insta-deleted by a few lucky hits, which will never happen to a character at its resistance cap.

[arcane]

50 minutes ago, Ignatz the Insane said:

I can kinda see where people get this idea.  The following are just from this thread.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where did I say I have all meta builds with soft capped defense in any of those posts? Interesting to me that Peregrine Falcon has more ranged defense on his one blaster than I have in ranged or S/L defense on any of my ~15 blasters, but I guess you guys know me better than I do, right?