issue 27 Focused Feedback: Attack Typing Adjustments

[Lazarillo]

2 minutes ago, KaizenSoze said:

I have been and it's not a big deal.

If it's not that big of a change, then isn't it still a waste to do it?

[Ston]

1 minute ago, Keen said:

Do all grenades have shrapnel? (Honest question)

 

I'm not sure. Just pondering why lethal instead of fire ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Although I think the only powers that give only lethal defense are Parry and Divine Avalanche anyway.

[Vanden]

Outside of Arachnos, the only issue I've found from my testing is Council/5th Column Marksmen. Their Cryonic Rounds are a major hindrance at low levels, showing up on mobs as low as level 10. Having lethal defense was a huge help against them before, but now they're typed Cold alone. That's the only attack I've found that I definitely think should be changed to Lethal.

Edited July 12, 2022 by Vanden

[KaizenSoze]

3 minutes ago, Crimsanotic said:

I can't imagine it has a minor effect if you enjoy soloing on +4/x8 on literally every character. No shot this doesn't make doing so significantly harder (and without spamming inspirations, potentially impossible on some characters) that could do it before, even if there was some difficulty with it.

 

Alternatively, characters that innately have defense, like Energy Aura, were uneffected (and Energy Aura was also buffed so it's even better lmao).

I tested this with various ATs. Blasters, tanks, defenders, corrupters, doms.

 

It does not make it significantly harder.

[Bill Z Bubba]

I like it. Makes sense.

[@Ghost]

Just curious (and not to suggest it's a good idea) but what was defense only mitigating the appropriate damage type ever considered/tested/possible in the game engine?

 

ie, a grenade hits 50 fire damage and 50 lethal damage. You have high lethal defense, so you dodge that component, and only take the 50 fire.

[Super Atom]

1 minute ago, @Ghost said:

Just curious (and not to suggest it's a good idea) but what was defense only mitigating the appropriate damage type ever considered/tested/possible in the game engine?

 

ie, a grenade hits 50 fire damage and 50 lethal damage. You have high lethal defense, so you dodge that component, and only take the 50 fire.

 

The ideal scenario if you were going to make a change like this.

[TheSonicBlade]

12 minutes ago, Crimsanotic said:

That's not really how that works. Defense doesn't equate to diversity. Additionally, there's not as many Energy/Negative/Ranged or Fire/Cold/AoE defense set bonuses as there are Smashing/Lethal/Melee so it doesn't even really encourage people to try and build for one of those other two things more than they already are. I'm also not sure how this change allows them to have "more freedom" with enemies either.

 

I appreciate the response! My understanding is that the defense calculation will target whatever your highest defense type is. In the case of an attack that does 80% cold and 20% smashing, your smashing defense will be used to calculate whether the attack hits if that's your higher stat. If this isn't the case, please let me know! 

 

That said, it's not about defense being the only thing attributing to the diversity. It's about the potential solutions to adversity. Currently, your most viable option to the game is to cap out your Smashing/Lethal/Energy defenses and you're set to handle a majority of the content. Why would you try to put defenses anywhere else when the other option is statistically superior? With this change in place, capping out those defenses isn't a one-size-fits-all scenario, so I feel more free to focus in other areas of my character. Will I be as powerful as I would be without this change? Definitely not, but I have other solutions whether it be attempting to max out other defenses, teaming up, or changing my general tactics depending on the enemy group. These other options are what I meant when I said it contributes to diversity.

 

In terms of freedom for the developers, this system seems like it'll give developers more dials and nobs to tweak when making new content. Creating an attack for an enemy has implications for resistance based characters just as much as it does for defense based ones. Designing an enemy that does Cold damage would be great for Ice Armor, but could potentially more powerful against other sets such as Fiery Aura. A way to try to balance it is to add one of those would be to add one of those common damage types, such as Smashing. But even if the Smashing component was only 10% in the current system, a typed defense based character would get the maximum benefit from their Smashing defense alone. It doesn't give the designer the luxury of designing this enemy without other implications, they can tweak the percentage anywhere between 1% and 99% Smashing to deal with resistance based characters, but not the typed defense one. With the new system, the designer can tweak it up to 49% before changes start taking effect. Not only do I think this makes sense mechanically, this makes sense to me narratively as well. Why would a character know how to perfectly defend against an attack even if it does only 1% of the damage your character specializes in defending against?

 

To me, this is really the same kind of change as the Enhancements Diversification. I understand that people were saddened by the change in power to their characters, but it gave them the ability to shine in other areas and be just as viable. In the content they couldn't solo anymore with their old builds, there were still alternatives. I think the number of alternatives, how they interact, and what we see in team compositions is what I'm excited for by this change.

 

[TotalThunder]

I think there's some disconnect in this discussion between two different types of players.

 

For people who play the game normally at +0/x0, and build characters for RP or theme, always play on teams, etc, this change doesn't seem that bad or seems like it doesn't change much.

 

For people who min/max characters, solo +4/x8, and try to push what they really can and can't get away with, this is a real real bad time. If this goes live, squishy ATs are essentially dead and we enter the Energy Aura/Shield meta.

 

Even resistance based sets will be much, much worse if this goes live. That 90% res cap seems great on paper, but you'll be taking dramatically more damage after this.

[arcane]

I for one am quite amused to hear that all endgame +4x8 players apparently build for soft capped S/L defense. /sarcasm.

[Ruin Mage]

I advise people test this.

It's not game-wide, but only specific groups.

Yes, those groups will tickle a little more. But it's not every enemy in the game.

[KaizenSoze]

6 minutes ago, TotalThunder said:

I think there's some disconnect in this discussion between two different types of players.

 

For people who play the game normally at +0/x0, and build characters for RP or theme, always play on teams, etc, this change doesn't seem that bad or seems like it doesn't change much.

 

For people who min/max characters, solo +4/x8, and try to push what they really can and can't get away with, this is a real real bad time. If this goes live, squishy ATs are essentially dead and we enter the Energy Aura/Shield meta.

 

Even resistance based sets will be much, much worse if this goes live. That 90% res cap seems great on paper, but you'll be taking dramatically more damage after this.

This is not true. Go test. You are arguing with out any data to support you assertion.

Edited July 12, 2022 by KaizenSoze
grammar

[Eldyem]

1 minute ago, TotalThunder said:

I think there's some disconnect in this discussion between two different types of players.

 

For people who play the game normally at +0/x0, and build characters for RP or theme, always play on teams, etc, this change doesn't seem that bad or seems like it doesn't change much.

 

For people who min/max characters, solo +4/x8, and try to push what they really can and can't get away with, this is a real real bad time. If this goes live, squishy ATs are essentially dead and we enter the Energy Aura/Shield meta.

 

Even resistance based sets will be much, much worse if this goes live. That 90% res cap seems great on paper, but you'll be taking dramatically more damage after this.

 

I really don't think either of those groups are the ones negatively impacted by this. Most +4/x8 builds can solo much higher than +4/x8 and I doubt they're going to be impacted at all, because +4/x8 was never the cap for what they can do.

 

It's the players who build character for RP and theme, players who are -ok- at absolute best at building, but who like to push to +2/x5 or whatever who are going to be upset by this, because they're going to have to turn down their difficulty (I would imagine these are the players most resistant to do so, as well) and - and this is the most important part - are the most likely to be impacted by joining a +4/x8 group where they're suddenly doing worse than they did before.

 

These are the people I largely play with, and I am overwhelmingly aware that these players, for the most part, do not use the forums, and I think these players make up a much larger portion of the userbase than many people realize.

[Doomrider]

I don't love it, but I'm sort of on board with it.
I will agree, It doesn't really make sense to be able to protect yourself from the majority of enemy attacks by only stacking one (s/l) defense type bonus. But I can also sympathize with people who feel like this change may shake things up too much for a game this old.

That being said, it does seem to hurt certain builds more than others and maybe that's where most of my issue with it stems. 
In a team environment however, where def values are usually high due to team buffage, not much changes tbh. 
The impact will likely be felt more so by people who've adopted +4x8 solo as their primary focus.
For those I say you may need to lean on insps a little bit more depending on your build and playstyle and what factions you're facing.

[skoryy]

Two things I found out in testing:

1. The new aggro rules are going to be more of a problem than defense changes.  Attracting attention from two spawns can be bad.
2. I'm going to have to figure out a respec now that I don't get Siphon Insight's bonsues in Beta Decay. 😛

[Marshal_General]

Bubble users/givers will surely rejoice now that they can give something that will be needed at all levels of the game.

 

I could be wrong, my coffee hasn't kicked in yet.

[KaizenSoze]

1 minute ago, skoryy said:

Two things I found out in testing:

1. The new aggro rules are going to be more of a problem than defense changes.  Attracting attention from two spawns can be bad.
2. I'm going to have to figure out a respec now that I don't get Siphon Insight's bonsues in Beta Decay. 😛

Yes, I suspect there will be a lot of "what the hell happened" when folks stroll into three groups expecting only 17 mobs to attack.

[Bill Z Bubba]

9 minutes ago, KaizenSoze said:

Yes, I suspect there will be a lot of "what the hell happened" when folks stroll into three groups expecting only 17 mobs to attack.

 

I like it. I faceplanted with my main. Beware rooms with 3 spawns now!

[McSpazz]

23 minutes ago, TotalThunder said:

I think there's some disconnect in this discussion between two different types of players.

 

For people who play the game normally at +0/x0, and build characters for RP or theme, always play on teams, etc, this change doesn't seem that bad or seems like it doesn't change much.

 

For people who min/max characters, solo +4/x8, and try to push what they really can and can't get away with, this is a real real bad time. If this goes live, squishy ATs are essentially dead and we enter the Energy Aura/Shield meta.

 

Even resistance based sets will be much, much worse if this goes live. That 90% res cap seems great on paper, but you'll be taking dramatically more damage after this.

 

There's been a few people that have said things similar to this and I want to make an argument against it that doesn't simply rely on telling them to try the beta.

 

First, the fact that you could min/max by focusing on just two stats (smashing/lethal) was part of the problem. This isn't just a question of defense characters getting access to capped smashing/lethal defense, this applies to all player characters. A defender can get the survivability of a scrapper by focusing entirely on smashing/lethal because that's the defense that is currently checked the most. If you are really into end game +4/x8 content, you should REALLY consider this a problem because it means that any new end game hard mode content is going to be fundamentally flawed. They are going to be looking at the +4/x8 madlads, see how they are building, and be left with only two options: higher to-hit or higher debuffs. Either way, it's not an actual solution. You aren't fixing the actual problem. If the only way the devs can introduce a fun challenge to players is by nerfing defense via enemy effects, you are basically doing this but worse.

And I kind of find it amusing you'd say this makes squishy AT's useless because...well. The exact opposite is true!!!

The hard mode TF's ALONE gave powersets like Empathy more purpose because people were actually suddenly in need of heals and even revives. Defense and resistances OTHER than smashing/lethal becoming important actually gives all squishies more reason to exist. Forcefield defenders will actually have a reason to play in teams, additional resistance buffs from /sonic controllers now have a clear role to play. Hell, it gives tankers more reason to actually be tanks, scrappers a reason to focus their efforts on picking off random enemies that change their focus to squishies, brutes more reason to do both. Stalkers....well, they just do whatever they do. Stalkers be stalkers.

And all of this is under the presumption that the end effects of the change are having a HUGE impact on gameplay. Which, based on feedback, doesn't seem to be the case. It just means that you can't focus everything on smashing/lethal, makes squishies actually live up to their name, and gives support archetypes more reason to actually support.

The new meta, if this does force a new meta, is going to encourage people to diversify their roster and builds.

Plus. Let's be REALLY real right now. +4/x8 is intended for EIGHT people with enemies tailored to be FOUR levels higher than you. The fact that anyone can do better than +4x4 is impressive enough.

[Enamel_32]

Is there a reason to not apply individual defense types against individual damage types for a given attack? For example, maybe you'd block the lethal damage from the grenade but not the fire damage if you didn't had enough fire defense. Anything else (and I'm including both pre- and post-update defense mechanics here) feels like the attacks are being misrepresented and skews survivability above/below what a corresponding set of resistances would do.

[skoryy]

16 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

I like it. I faceplanted with my main. Beware rooms with 3 spawns now!

 

I brought over my S/L/E capped DP/Fire blaster since I didn't want to waste an hour respec-ing.  I had her run a Council radio at +4/x8, didn't have problems beyond having to be more careful with aggro, and only faceplanted at the end when I got too cocky and tried the boss spawn with half of another.

 

Yeah, I don't think the defense changes are changing much.  

Edited July 12, 2022 by skoryy

[Crimsanotic]

27 minutes ago, McSpazz said:

If you are really into end game +4/x8 content, you should REALLY consider this a problem because it means that any new end game hard mode content is going to be fundamentally flawed. They are going to be looking at the +4/x8 madlads, see how they are building, and be left with only two options: higher to-hit or higher debuffs. Either way, it's not an actual solution. You aren't fixing the actual problem. If the only way the devs can introduce a fun challenge to players is by nerfing defense via enemy effects, you are basically doing this but worse.

 

I think there's a flaw this way of thinking. CoH isn't easy because characters can solo +4/x8 with little to no difficulty.

CoH is easy because it's a math game. Do you mathematically take negligible damage from this enemy? Do you mathematically do more DPS than it can regenerate? If yes, you win. And that's the entire game.

I personally don't care about the difficulty of trash mobs (underlings, minions, lieutenants, and bosses) because they're just that. Trash. Some of them do some interesting things, like the level 50 Awakened (which I'm not even sure how many people know exist). But for the most part, they don't really do anything fun. They stand around and you defeat them and that's it. But what I do think is fun is mowing through an army of goons. That's the entire reason why games like Dynasty Warriors are popular. And the old devs seemed to eventually lean into this. The giant groups of enemies in the ITF, endless waves in villain Reichsman, a majority of the LGTF, etc, etc.

Unfortunately, Elite Bosses, Archvillains/Heroes, and Giant Monsters behave literally the exact same way. Pretty much even in Incarnate Trials. What is supposed to be the hardest content in the game is still the same math game as level 5 trash enemies. The most exciting "mechanic" they have is jump away from the boss when giant red letters tell you to. Every thing is a tank and spank and always has been. Other than very fringe scenarios, of which there aren't enough of, positioning doesn't matter. Team comp doesn't matter. There's not really any player skill so to speak because, again, everything is literally just a tank and spank. No mechanics, no telegraphs, nothing.

Some of the later content in the game is a lot more exciting, like Sutter TF, but even that's "don't stand on these spots". Which, compared to 95% of the AVs in the game, is way cooler than DPS them down in 1 minute.

Essentially, what I'm saying would add actual difficulty would be to make AVs/Heroes, GMs, and to some extent EBs, a lot more difficult and interesting. Though I doubt that will ever happen.

Edited July 12, 2022 by Crimsanotic
typo

[McSpazz]

Just now, Crimsanotic said:

I think there's a flaw this way of thinking. CoH isn't easy because characters can solo +4/x8 with little to no difficulty.

CoH is easy because it's a math game. Do you mathematically take negligible damage from this enemy? Do you mathematically do more DPS than it can regeneration? If yes, you win. And that's the entire game.

I personally don't care about the difficulty of trash mobs (underlings, minions, lieutenants, and bosses) because they're just that. Trash. Some of them do some interesting things, like the level 50 Awakened (which I'm not even sure how many people know exist). But for the most part, they don't really do anything fun. They stand around and you defeat them and that's it. But what I do think is fun is mowing through an army of goons. That's the entire reason why games like Dynasty Warriors are popular. And the old devs seemed to eventually lean into this. The giant groups of enemies in the ITF, endless waves in villain Reichsman, a majority of the LGTF, etc, etc.

Unfortunately, Elite Bosses, Archvillains/Heroes, and Giant Monsters behave literally the exact same way. Pretty much even in Incarnate Trials. What is supposed to be the hardest content in the game is still the same math game as level 5 trash enemies. The most exciting "mechanic" they have is jump away from the boss when giant red letters tell you to. Every thing is a tank and spank and always has been. Other than very fringe scenarios, of which there aren't enough of, positioning doesn't matter. Team comp doesn't matter. There's not really any player skill so to speak because, again, everything is literally just a tank and spank. No mechanics, no telegraphs, nothing.

Some of the later content in the game is a lot more exciting, like Sutter TF, but even that's "don't stand on these spots". Which, compared to 95% of the AVs in the game, is way cooler than DPS them down in 1 minute.

Essentially, what I'm saying would add actual difficulty would be to make AVs/Heroes, GMs, and to some extent EBs, a lot more difficult and interesting. Though I doubt that will ever happen.

 

Okay, first of all, I wouldn't compare this game to Dynasty Warriors. This became a mob wrecker in the vein of Dynasty Warriors as power creep set in and even more so as Incarnate content was added. Because that's what this is, Crim. Power creep. The reason why this is a fundamental flaw and not a feature is because the game's combat mechanics were never designed for you to play the game like Dynasty Warriors. If you want an MMO built around that idea, look at Black Desert Online. Even Dynasty Warriors wouldn't let you go AFK in the middle of an enemy of mobs above your level without any risk of defeat.

And the reason I know it's power creep and not a design decision is because, even setting aside how the game was originally designed, it's clear that the devs were struggling to keep the challenge going in Dark Astoria. I remember my Super Reflexes character getting absolutely wrecked by attacks that went right at what we are all talking about: his defenses.

 

And I want to point to something you said that REALLY points out the issue I was getting at.

City of Heroes was not always a tank and spank as you are describing it. You weren't always able to run into a mission at +4x8 as a blaster and mow through it nor was it a situation where you were all powerful. This changed when invention origin enhancements with set bonuses were added to the game. It became far more feasible to build a character that could be the hero of a Dynasty Warriors game where you just walk through mobs. Except without the game design to back it up. When AE was introduced, it became far easier for people to make builds which meant making a crazy powerful character became far more accessible to everyone. The Incarnate system just added to the power creep which left only enemies explicitly designed for incarnate content any threat to you since they were designed to face up against people who had broken defenses. A band aid.

As I said earlier, there's currently no solid reason to play a healer. The fact that there is a powerset entirely dedicated explicitly to healing (empathy) which sees little traffic points to a fundamentally flawed system.

And...I feel like you might be missing the plot a bit. There are mechanics at play here beyond button smashing. The recent changes to sonic, several sets having extra affects if you do certain things (like dual blades, street justice, energy melee, etc), and there's probably other things coming down the pipeline. Heck, literally the ENTIRETY of the new Aeon Strike Force utilizes custom mechanics to make the enemy groups and bosses more interesting.

 

Lastly, one last last final point? When you say that the team composition doesn't matter, don't see that as necessarily a good thing. If no healers are needed, why would you build a healer? If no control is needed, why would you build a controller except to serve as DPS? Literally the only support set I see people get hyped to see in their team right now is a kinetics and that's because it increases everyone's recharge time and, thus, their individual damage output.

 

The fact that right now everything is just a different shade of solo DPS in the eyes of many is part of the problem. Again, it doesn't even look like the changes are going to affect things in a major way. But in what little way this might change things, giving people a reason to be something other than some form of mindless DPS can only improve things if you ask me.

[Crimsanotic]

1 minute ago, McSpazz said:

 

Okay, first of all, I wouldn't compare this game to Dynasty Warriors. This became a mob wrecker in the vein of Dynasty Warriors as power creep set in and even more so as Incarnate content was added. Because that's what this is, Crim. Power creep. The reason why this is a fundamental flaw and not a feature is because the game's combat mechanics were never designed for you to play the game like Dynasty Warriors. If you want an MMO built around that idea, look at Black Desert Online. Even Dynasty Warriors wouldn't let you go AFK in the middle of an enemy of mobs above your level without any risk of defeat.

And the reason I know it's power creep and not a design decision is because, even setting aside how the game was originally designed, it's clear that the devs were struggling to keep the challenge going in Dark Astoria. I remember my Super Reflexes character getting absolutely wrecked by attacks that went right at what we are all talking about: his defenses.

 

And I want to point to something you said that REALLY points out the issue I was getting at.

City of Heroes was not always a tank and spank as you are describing it. You weren't always able to run into a mission at +4x8 as a blaster and mow through it nor was it a situation where you were all powerful. This changed when invention origin enhancements with set bonuses were added to the game. It became far more feasible to build a character that could be the hero of a Dynasty Warriors game where you just walk through mobs. Except without the game design to back it up. When AE was introduced, it became far easier for people to make builds which meant making a crazy powerful character became far more accessible to everyone. The Incarnate system just added to the power creep which left only enemies explicitly designed for incarnate content any threat to you since they were designed to face up against people who had broken defenses. A band aid.

As I said earlier, there's currently no solid reason to play a healer. The fact that there is a powerset entirely dedicated explicitly to healing (empathy) which sees little traffic points to a fundamentally flawed system.

And...I feel like you might be missing the plot a bit. There are mechanics at play here beyond button smashing. The recent changes to sonic, several sets having extra affects if you do certain things (like dual blades, street justice, energy melee, etc), and there's probably other things coming down the pipeline. Heck, literally the ENTIRETY of the new Aeon Strike Force utilizes custom mechanics to make the enemy groups and bosses more interesting.

 

Lastly, one last last final point? When you say that the team composition doesn't matter, don't see that as necessarily a good thing. If no healers are needed, why would you build a healer? If no control is needed, why would you build a controller except to serve as DPS? Literally the only support set I see people get hyped to see in their team right now is a kinetics and that's because it increases everyone's recharge time and, thus, their individual damage output.

 

The fact that right now everything is just a different shade of solo DPS in the eyes of many is part of the problem. Again, it doesn't even look like the changes are going to affect things in a major way. But in what little way this might change things, giving people a reason to be something other than some form of mindless DPS can only improve things if you ask me.

I've played this game since literally Issue 1. People were herding x8 maps since the dawn of time. Empathy was never needed back then. Before the aggro cap, Scrappers could herd the entire werewolf map and also solo it.

Mechanics in power sets, like Street Justice, Staff Fighting, etc. are cool and good. What I mean are mechanics that make the enemies themselves more interesting.

Also, I'm not saying team comp not mattering is a good thing.

[dzyp2]

1 hour ago, TotalThunder said:

I think there's some disconnect in this discussion between two different types of players.

 

For people who play the game normally at +0/x0, and build characters for RP or theme, always play on teams, etc, this change doesn't seem that bad or seems like it doesn't change much.

 

For people who min/max characters, solo +4/x8, and try to push what they really can and can't get away with, this is a real real bad time. If this goes live, squishy ATs are essentially dead and we enter the Energy Aura/Shield meta.

 

Even resistance based sets will be much, much worse if this goes live. That 90% res cap seems great on paper, but you'll be taking dramatically more damage after this.

I like playing challenging content solo, mostly melee, and I've stopped chasing high levels of defense on res-based toons anyway. Without DDR my defense usually melts in any case. 

 

I think this is a good change. Doesn't seem like a huge deal, adds a tiny bit of extra challenge, and makes sense logically and thematically.