Diversity

[Brutal Justice]

Part of the magic of this game for me is the diversity of all of the power sets.  Altitis is a real medical condition and the only way to treat it is to scratch until you bleed.  I really hope the new devs exercise great care as to not homogenize all of us.  I fear that buffs are coming in from all directions.  Insta snipe is not as satisfying for me as old snipe, same with assassin strike.  They make great attacks and boost my toons performance but the satisfaction, the magic, is lost. 

 

I love being back and I love the level of powerset proliferation we have. All I want is a regen tank!  There are sets that underperform and could use some numbers tweaks.  However, I am not that into more global types of changes being made.  The IO system is great and I think works well because it’s optional.  That being said, I generally don’t softcap defense on toons unless they actually have a defense powerset.  I understand that hitting the softcap makes any toon extremely more durable, but again, I don’t want all of my toons to play the same.  I want people to be able to play how they want to play.

 

Global changes to powers, archetypes, or even system wide should be done under extreme caution. Even inherent fitness removed some level of diversity.  Quality of life changes to things like salvage storage, sg bases, auction house mechanics can be nice.  However, I feel like changes to power mechanics is very dangerous.  Adding diversity is a great thing, for me, removing diversity is very bad.  It’s the bumps and turns in a road that make driving fun.  Straighten and flatten the road and it gets boring real quick.

[Player2]

You want a regen tank, I want an energy melee scrapper.    8)

[Galaxy Brain]

Global fitness was done for diversity since literally everyone took it

[JusticeBowler]

As long as this isn't a complaint and just a strong cautionary word... I'm all behind it.

/signed

 

I think that, given they have all the magic keys and could have abused them to the ruination of all, we are in a good place mostly right now. I'm a little annoyed about the snipe only because I specifically took devices to gain a small favor from targeting drone and now I feel like devices slid behind on the balance bar.

 

This is my point: we have to keep in mind that everyone loses a little when one set or power is raised. There's no give without take. Some sets (I'm looking at you Bio Armor) are going to need a nerf and that's going to be hard for folks to take. Sentinels need some work but it isn't a solution to make them "peers" with blasters or scrappers, they need to be something else which isn't either.

 

I was on a PUG in PI last night with a scrapper tanking +4 full team radio missions without her health bar even moving. That's isn't actually fun. I don't know what that is. It means people don't need to make a tank I guess.

 

We need things that each AT can do and just as much we need things each AT can't do even with 1B INF invested in grapes.

 

But I disagree about Fitness. At the time that was the negotiated solution for a bunch of small QoL issues that couldn't be balanced any other way. There is a big difference between making a small recovery pool (25%) that can be buffed rather than buffing the base of everyone's recovery pool. While it feels like giving everyone stamina was watering things down, it actually avoided a bigger problem.

[Galaxy Brain]

As long as this isn't a complaint and just a strong cautionary word... I'm all behind it.

/signed

 

I think that, given they have all the magic keys and could have abused them to the ruination of all, we are in a good place mostly right now. I'm a little annoyed about the snipe only because I specifically took devices to gain a small favor from targeting drone and now I feel like devices slid behind on the balance bar.

 

This is my point: we have to keep in mind that everyone loses a little when one set or power is raised. There's no give without take. Some sets (I'm looking at you Bio Armor) are going to need a nerf and that's going to be hard for folks to take. Sentinels need some work but it isn't a solution to make them "peers" with blasters or scrappers, they need to be something else which isn't either.

 

I was on a PUG in PI last night with a scrapper tanking +4 full team radio missions without her health bar even moving. That's isn't actually fun. I don't know what that is. It means people don't need to make a tank I guess.

 

We need things that each AT can do and just as much we need things each AT can't do even with 1B INF invested in grapes.

 

But I disagree about Fitness. At the time that was the negotiated solution for a bunch of small QoL issues that couldn't be balanced any other way. There is a big difference between making a small recovery pool (25%) that can be buffed rather than buffing the base of everyone's recovery pool. While it feels like giving everyone stamina was watering things down, it actually avoided a bigger problem.

 

I don't think buffing sets automatically takes away from others. If you buff an under-performing set up, then its just usually at status quo without taking from anywhere else.

[JusticeBowler]

I don't think buffing sets automatically takes away from others. If you buff an under-performing set up, then its just usually at status quo without taking from anywhere else.

 

It depends on how you define "underperforming". There's a lot of debate on these forums as to what that means on a given set or power within a set or the relationships between what's possible given purple IOs and Incarnate powers.

 

Take for example Ice Blast. It has no snipe. If someone thinks that is under performing, so we add a snipe, then some other blaster might say, hey they get slows and holds and -rchg AND they get a snipe, that's not fair!

 

The gameplay is all relative: "how fast and how safe (and how fun) can I kill stuff" is a calculation with factors in it.

 

Using power X how fast and safe and fun can I kill a boss?

 

If I use power Y how much faster or slower, safer or riskier, more or less fun, is it to kill a boss?

 

If we buff power Y the relationship between X and Y changes. Even though X is unchanged, because we have a choice of which power to change, X is "less fast, less safe, or less fun" because Y has been improved.

 

Gameplay isn't absolute. Our brains are comparative machines. We all have a "gut feeling" how much Rad's -DEF is worth in terms of it's attack doing less straight damage than Fire which has no secondary effect.

 

If we took the absolute best power/powerset/AT/whatever in the game (if such a calculation could be made) and then tried to use some massive Excel spreadsheet and thousands of hours of testing and years of development to try to make sure every other set was as awesome as the best set....

 

Wait, we've done that. We've got 25 Issues of people trying to keep balance and fairness (and yet still diversity of utility) in the game and what we have is the result of all that. ALL of those changes were controversial to somebody. Resistance to change got so bad that the board moderators banned /jranger for heaven's sake.

 

I'm not opposing more change now, but I am pointing out that all change is relative and viewed by all parties differently. If you buff Brutes defensive sets even a fraction of a hair Tanks are going to point out that you are putting them out of business. If you make Stalkers crit too easily, scrappers are going to complain. That why we end up with weird stuff like buffing Defender damage when they solo, because it really was a problem, but you can't put Blasters out of a job.

 

I don't reflexively oppose change, but even "good/reasonable/arguable" changes have consequences for game balance for everyone else. And it is important to keep that in mind too.