UNfocused Feedback

[Ironblade]

I'm calling this unfocused feedback because it's not about any particular change in the beta patch notes.

It's not about any particular change in any of the recent updates.

 

It's about the annoying (to me) trend of making changes at a basic level that requires respeccing characters.

Adjusting stats on powers is fine.  Adding new powersets is great.  Proliferating sets is great.

 

Completely rewriting existing powers sucks.

If the devs could focus their efforts on other categories of 'improvements', that would be great.

[shatterpoint]

IF only the world would adjust to individual desires and needs.....

[Glacier Peak]

I can understand your point. My opinion is that respecs are the easiest that they have EVER been in the life of this game. I am not the only one who remembers running Terra Volta respecs before they started handing them out like candy. The game has come a long way to making the process of updating powers and letting players make their desired changes. Again, I can understand your point though.

[lemming]

I hate having to respec,  I still haven't made modifications on some of my alts from the travel changes.

 

A better respec process would help alleviate a lot of this stress I think.

 

Heck, if there was a way to upload a file with your build, and a way to do so with your power trays, that would help a lot.

 

Though I think there might be a way to do trays, not completely sure though. Looking into it.  I know I can place a macro in a tray of my choice.

[lemming]

2 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

I can understand your point. My opinion is that respecs are the easiest that they have EVER been in the life of this game. I am not the only one who remembers running Terra Volta respecs before they started handing them out like candy. The game has come a long way to making the process of updating powers and letting players make their desired changes. Again, I can understand your point though.

Oh, the ability of doing the respec, not an issue.  Screwing up a respec and needing to back up a ways is annoying, or the dang it, misplaced a slot, need to start over are my issues.

[Glacier Peak]

1 minute ago, lemming said:

Oh, the ability of doing the respec, not an issue.  Screwing up a respec and needing to back up a ways is annoying, or the dang it, misplaced a slot, need to start over are my issues.

I hear that! I used to have to delete characters if I messed slotting back on live in the old days. 😪 

[Ruin Mage]

Personally, it may be worth looking into a better respec UI/revamping the UI for Respecs.

Just an idea.

[Black Zot]

My opinions on the devs' trustworthiness (comma lack of) aside, my only real complaint about page 5 itself is the number of characters I'm gonna have to basically rebuild from scratch if I ever want to play them again.

 

MOST of the changes look pretty good, especially compared to the fiasco of page 4.  But that respec interface is just ...UGH.  Half the time I spend in Mids is for the sole purpose of NEVER DEALING WITH THAT SHITSHOW AGAIN.  In a lot of cases I find it easier to start over from the creation screen than endure the respec UI.

[Without_Pause]

I highly suggest never playing Path of Exile.

[Ironblade]

2 hours ago, shatterpoint said:

IF only the world would adjust to individual desires and needs.....

1.  This isn't an individual desire.  I've heard this from a number of people and that's what prompted me to start a thread.

2.  The devs SPECIFICALLY ask for feedback in order to ADJUST (your word) their plans for the game development.

[Ruin Mage]

3 hours ago, Ironblade said:

Completely rewriting existing powers sucks.

Necessary to bring certain sets up to par with Post-Freedom/F2P sets or otherwise make them not feel clunky/bad.
 

[Snarky]

There used to be something called the cottage rule.  While I disagreed with a LOT (not shocking I know) that the various Dev teams did, I could always find some respect for that concept.

 

Personally I look backwards. At what Brutes were.  It seems every change made to the game (with the exception of adding inherent fitness) has been to the detriment of the Brute class.  Sometimes blatant nerfs aimed at Brutes.  Sometimes massively buffing, oh, Tanks for instance.  Sometimes tweaking a power that Brutes use, but always making it less useful.  Adding massively large damage patches that Melee characters have no answer for. I swear Sentinels do have a purpose.  It is the end goal of the collective Dev Teams to make Brutes a melee version of Sentinels.  And on they march to the goal, here a power nerf, there a broad spectrum downgrade, now buff another melee class, quick nerf that specific Brute power.  

Edited October 6, 2022 by Snarky

[VinceBlood]

If this is unfocused feedback, I would like to point out that Assault Bot's fire rockets do a massive magnitude fear and completely ruin grouped-up enemy clusters.  This feels bad.

 

Also, The Cottage Rule makes me sad and Player Power Fantasy should come first, not a sideways forum post that said "What if buildup made a house?  Bad, right?  Change is bad."

Edited October 7, 2022 by VinceBlood

[Yaliw]

I'm glad to see the devs are willing to rock the boat at all. I was fearful... of... something I dunno how to describe it but seeing them make larger changes to MM pets and the level-thing makes me happy.

 

Some changes I agree with. Some I do not. But the fact there are changes at all and so bold is refreshing and I'm thankful there are people willing to dedicate their free tike to attempt to make the game better.

 

Enough kissing ass though, MM's still have issues that I'm not sure these changes will address. We'll see. 

 

I'm looking forward to spaming arrows on a ninja/trick arrow MM to crank the crit rate up and watch ninjas push their single target dps to new highs.

 

Edit p.s. the cottage rule wasn't even a rule. It was a single post used as an analogy by an older dev. It's not an argument against change and never was one.

Edited October 7, 2022 by Yaliw

[VinceBlood]

36 minutes ago, Yaliw said:

It's not an argument against change and never was one.

 

Disagree there.  It absolutely was, and was used for years by forumgoers during Live to try and swerve threads away from power changes.  It was a poor analogy from a senior systems designer who worked directly on the game's powers and mechanics, so let's not undersell the weight that held.

 

That said, see above post about robotics and fire in agreement with the sentiment of MMs needing more looking at.

[MistressOhm]

I'm on the fence here (which yes, makes me a pain in the ass). 

 

On the one hand, tweaking numbers here and there to balance things out, without changing the Way The Powers Work, is to be expected, from time to time.   Fixing bugs (which also means closing exploits based on those bugs) is to be expected, from time to time.  The point is to set things up so there is no "I Win" button, no specific build that Everyone Goes To if they want to accomplish a set goal, be that pwn all in PvP, solo most of the content without having to do the Run of Shame from the hospital, or farm merits at the highest rate per hour.   You should (!) be able to do any of those things with any archetype, any powerset, within reason.

 

On the other hand, rearranging how powers work at their baseline, without an in depth discussion on "hey this is why we want to do this" is really yanking the rug out from under.  I get wanting to make travel powers less of "you have to burn a pick HERE to get this cool travel power THERE" and also shifting powers everyone takes into an inherent pool for everybody.  Those make sense, they let people actually get creative with their powersets, and not insert pools that are absolutely essential for the rotation to work.   

 

But, just as an example, I don't 'get' why Electric Blast now has these Static charges that ONLY seem to do any good if I put a hold on a target with a big chain of them. It's a gimmick! And I don't understand why can't I have a hold that works just as a hold, and not an AOE besides.  It seems like this was a "Wouldn't it be cool if... ?" and no one bothered to ask if that was anything that people were asking for in the first place.  Now, granted, I've leveled a couple of characters with it, and I can see how it'd be useful, but... it still seemed like a 'change for the sake of change' rather than either a Fix or a QoL update.   

 

And yes, I see that there's a bunch of other powers that do similar things... okay... so for balance, we added this... it just seems like someone said "hey let's link it to the hold because it'd be a cool chaining effect off the Tesla ball".  I wasn't privy to the lead-up to this change, so not knowing those details it seems ... arbitrary.

 

Which brings me 'round to the closing point:  It's obvious that the people doing the dev work do not know how we all play.  They can datamine the logs and find out prevailing trends, they can post threads up asking people to test and provide commentary, or... they can change stuff "because it would be cool" or "it makes more sense" or "it's a more efficient way to code the powers, making them more portable for later" or whatever.   We're not privy to their process... and it appears, they aren't always privy to ours.

 

Take that as you will.   Me, I'm going to see how many Skulls I can shock with a Tesla coil.

 

 

 

Edited October 7, 2022 by MistressOhm

[Sanguinesun]

Interestingly I'd posted this in the Beta forums but it seems applicable here because I do think there is increasingly an issue with feature creep and change for the sake of change(or for someone to tack on their "I added this" to the game:

 

 

[Yaliw]

7 hours ago, VinceBlood said:

 

Disagree there.  It absolutely was, and was used for years by forumgoers during Live to try and swerve threads away from power changes.  It was a poor analogy from a senior systems designer who worked directly on the game's powers and mechanics, so let's not undersell the weight that held.

 

That said, see above post about robotics and fire in agreement with the sentiment of MMs needing more looking at.

It was used by forumgoers, not actual developers so I'm not putting any weight into it. It was a poor analogy for a reason and it is continuously being used as some sort of Holy grail to shut down any attempt at change (for better or worse).

 

It's not an argument. It's a philosophical stance- and an extremely weak one- 'let's cling on to what exists now because we have no proof something new could be better'.

 

The cottage rule isn't a rule and it should be dropped from our discussions on... anything.

[Snarky]

18 minutes ago, Yaliw said:

It was used by forumgoers, not actual developers so I'm not putting any weight into it. It was a poor analogy for a reason and it is continuously being used as some sort of Holy grail to shut down any attempt at change (for better or worse).

 

It's not an argument. It's a philosophical stance- and an extremely weak one- 'let's cling on to what exists now because we have no proof something new could be better'.

 

The cottage rule isn't a rule and it should be dropped from our discussions on... anything.

Or we could trash what we like, Brutes for instance, in the hopes that will make the game more enjoyable for the world at large.

[Yomo Kimyata]

This feedback is more unfocused than a 120 degree Shadow Maul.

[Yaliw]

44 minutes ago, Snarky said:

Or we could trash what we like, Brutes for instance, in the hopes that will make the game more enjoyable for the world at large.

 

This has nothing to do with the cottage rule but a great example of how people use it:

 

An excuse to change nothing because change is always bad. Brute changes wouldn't have happened if they obeyed the never-wrong-no-counter-argument cottage rule, right?

 

Well according to the cottage rule, brutes are the way they are now and we shouldn't change them or else they would no longer function like a cottage... or whatever. Sentinels should be deleted and all the MM changes with overwhelmingly positive feedback shouldn't happen either because they change the way the MM functions in a vague way.

 

I hope others see how silly and nonsensical invoking this mythical 'rule' is. Cottage rule isn't a rule. Let it die.

[Zhym]

16 hours ago, Shadeknight said:

Personally, it may be worth looking into a better respec UI/revamping the UI for Respecs.

Just an idea.

 

Yes.  If I were lead dev, my prime directive would be, "No powerset changes until the respec system is revamped."

 

I am getting a big hit of nostalgia, and not in a good way.  It's taking me back to the days of the forums complaining about each round of changes and Jack Emmert saying, essentially, "This is the game design I want; deal with it." 

 

It would be great if the process of making changes to the game involved the players more.  Beta seems lately to be purely testing to see whether anything breaks; maybe it's only my impression, but feedback about planned changes seems more likely to lead to minor tweaks than big changes.  Maybe we need an Alpha server where the devs can have players try things out and see what we think before committing to them. 

 

The actual Page 5 changes mostly look good to me at first glance, FWIW.  But it would be nice if the dev process were more, "Here's what we're thinking of doing, what does everyone think?" and less, "This is what we're going to do."

Edited October 7, 2022 by Zhym

[Tachstar]

59 minutes ago, Zhym said:

Jack Emmert

 

Maybe it IS him! Maybe he's the proverbial man behind the curtain!

/e sings "It was Jack Emmert ALL ALONG!"

Maybe he nerfed Sparky, too...

[Six-Six]

Sorry, can someone kindly explain the Cottage Rule? I googled it and all I got was the allowance of selling non-pasteurised home-made foodstuffs.

[Astralock]

1 minute ago, Six-Six said:

Sorry, can someone kindly explain the Cottage Rule? I googled it and all I got was the allowance of selling non-pasteurised home-made foodstuffs.

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Cottage_Rule