A different thread for Mind Control

[Rudra]

4 minutes ago, PoptartsNinja said:

but should grant full XP for the damage dealt by the minions because confuse is mind control's thing.

The problem is in the code. In order for the confused targets to grant the player the XP they would normally take from the damage they do, those targets have to be part of the team. For instance, summoned pets and combat NPCs are part of the player's team even though they are not showing in the team window. How do you code random mobs to be part of the team while affected with a confuse effect? Notice that your own pets and teammates do not suddenly get removed from your team while they are confused. Also notice that any pets summoned by combat NPCs to help fight also take away from the XP the defeated targets normally grant because they are also not part of your team. (They are effectively part of your league, but not team. Not sure how they are coded, but again, they are temporary aid not part of your team.) So how do you temporarily add enemies to your team given the current state of the game's code?

[PoptartsNinja]

Track the damage done on an invisible pseudopet?

[Rudra]

7 minutes ago, PoptartsNinja said:

Track the damage done on an invisible pseudopet?

And how do you transfer the damage done from source A to tracker B? (Edit: Especially if the confuse were to wear off before a target was defeated making the assigned pseudopet go away.) We're dealing with some rather archaic code on a very old game engine. I'm not saying that can't be done. I'm not a dev and I don't have to sort through the mess they do. I would just be extremely surprised if that worked.

Edited November 28, 2023 by Rudra

[biostem]

A better solution would be to basically replace the target with a permanent "pet" - basically just copy the enemy but make them allied to the player, and treat any damage they deal as yours, like a regular pet.

[Rudra]

23 minutes ago, biostem said:

A better solution would be to basically replace the target with a permanent "pet" - basically just copy the enemy but make them allied to the player, and treat any damage they deal as yours, like a regular pet.

That would require the confused target to be forcibly despawned, and not the way Captain Castillo fails to do, and a duplicate 'pet' added to the party. That would also require a cap to be placed on the power or you could have a Mind Control controller with a map's worth of permanent pets following him/her/them/it around at the end of any given map, and that keeps growing because the confuse effect became a permanent effect. @PoptartsNinja's possible method is actually more feasible and would entail less bugs (such as a mind controlled pet defeating the invisible original so that the character gets the pet and the defeat reward).

 

(Edit: That would also preclude the character's ability to mind control (confuse) a target and watch that target attack his/her/its former allies with impunity as they would now be part of the party and the mobs would all immediately attack the confused target. It would also stop AoE confuse effects from having the targeted spawn simply tear itself apart as they all just now joined your party. And you would also lose the ability to damage the confused targets for XP/Inf' since they would now be part of your party. So there is a tradeoff regardless of how this may be addressed.)

Edited November 28, 2023 by Rudra

[PoptartsNinja]

6 hours ago, Rudra said:

And how do you transfer the damage done from source A to tracker B? (Edit: Especially if the confuse were to wear off before a target was defeated making the assigned pseudopet go away.) We're dealing with some rather archaic code on a very old game engine. I'm not saying that can't be done. I'm not a dev and I don't have to sort through the mess they do. I would just be extremely surprised if that worked.

I have no idea, I haven't seen CoH's code.

 

Ideally you'd attribute the damage done by the pet to the player directly, so instead of seeing:
Skull Brawler shoots Skull Brawler with Pistol you'd see <Playername> shoots Skull Brawler with Pistol.

 

I know it's not feasible, but that's why I called it a wishlist item not a practical solution to Mind Control's woes.

[golstat2003]

27 minutes ago, PoptartsNinja said:

I have no idea, I haven't seen CoH's code.

 

Ideally you'd attribute the damage done by the pet to the player directly, so instead of seeing:
Skull Brawler shoots Skull Brawler with Pistol you'd see <Playername> shoots Skull Brawler with Pistol.

 

I know it's not feasible, but that's why I called it a wishlist item not a practical solution to Mind Control's woes.

 

The xp penalty is not that big of an issue. I would prefer they spend time addressing anything else in Mind Control (the containment issue for Controllers) then spend time on something hacky that would probably require massive testing for little reward.

 

As someone who has been deeply using Mind toons the pat 6 months, the xp penaltyf or confuse is a drop in the bucket versus other issues in this game. Not worth the time and effort for the hacky suggestions made, especially with this game's terribad spaghetti code.

[Luminara]

There is no "XP penalty".  Confuses grant bonus XP, and having Confused foes increases kill speed.  The only way you're losing XP is if you're standing there with your thumb up your ass, doing nothing but watching.

[TheZag]

You get an average of 25% xp bonus from enemies damaged by confused enemies.  There is no penalty.  If you do 50% of the damage and a confused enemy does 50%,  you get 80% of the xp instead of 50% (a 30% bonus).

 

 

[Rudra]

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

There is no "XP penalty".  Confuses grant bonus XP, and having Confused foes increases kill speed.  The only way you're losing XP is if you're standing there with your thumb up your ass, doing nothing but watching.

 

1 hour ago, TheZag said:

You get an average of 25% xp bonus from enemies damaged by confused enemies.  There is no penalty.  If you do 50% of the damage and a confused enemy does 50%,  you get 80% of the xp instead of 50% (a 30% bonus).

 

 

While I was not aware of the bonus XP, I've already pointed this out. And this has been pointed out on every thread where someone complains they are suffering an XP penalty for having confused mobs. And some of the people saying that are the same ones on multiple threads, so they apparently don't care about what is actually going on or what extra benefits are involved. They only care that their character is not getting 100% of the target's XP and Inf' value.

[biostem]

2 hours ago, TheZag said:

You get an average of 25% xp bonus from enemies damaged by confused enemies.  There is no penalty.  If you do 50% of the damage and a confused enemy does 50%,  you get 80% of the xp instead of 50% (a 30% bonus).

It's a matter of perspective - compare the XP gained vs you doing 100% of the damage, which is the norm.  Having a confused enemy deal some damage is actually the outlier...

[golstat2003]

On 11/28/2023 at 3:10 PM, biostem said:

It's a matter of perspective - compare the XP gained vs you doing 100% of the damage, which is the norm.  Having a confused enemy deal some damage is actually the outlier...

 

Either way not worth worrying about. It's not enough for the devs to spend time on some wonky solution. Time that could be spent elsewhere.

[AgentForest]

My biggest concerns with Mind Control:

1. Setting up Containment: Because so many of the powers cause Fear and Confusion, things that don't proc Containment damage, and the rest of the powers focusing on Sleep, which only procs Containment damage once, this set pretty much only works well on Dominators.  For Controllers, this means you're basically playing a slightly weaker Defender who gave up their mediocre ranged attacks for control options.
    
2. Sleep Reliance: This plays into point #1, but is still an issue all its own.  Sleep is a very good soft control, but falls flat in teams, and team combat is what this game is built around.  A soloing Dominator may not care much, but dropping an AoE Sleep only to have the blaster immediately wake them all up, or the tank's damage aura snap them out of it, doesn't really feel good.  The best solution I can think of for this is to give some sort of benefit to every sleep power when the enemy is awakened by force.  Like, for Cold Snap, add a Foe(-Speed, -Rech) effect to the ability, then when an enemy is broken out of it, apply another stack of the debuff.  Possibly even add some damage when sleep is broken (or move the initial damage of a sleep move to when a foe is awakened and increase that damage a bit to compensate for the delay).  I could see the sleep power for Mind Control having a placate effect for the caster when broken as that sleep move's special niche.
    
3. Superior versions of powers in other sets: Mind Control -> Levitate is objectively worse than Gravity Control -> Lift.  Lift deals the same base damage, but increases that damage if the enemy is affected by the single-target hold, creating some synergy within the powerset, encouraging players to combo their moves better, and rewarding them for doing so.  The single-target Confuse in Electric Control chains to other enemies.  The location AoE sleep move for Electric Control keeps reapplying, slows movement and recharge, has a shorter cooldown, AND burns through enemy endurance.  Almost every other fear effect lowers enemy ToHit chance.  Other Control sets get a T9 pet.  It honestly wouldn't bother me if Mind Control's T9 just gave you an AI pet with the kit of some enemy from the targeted faction.  Target a Circle of Thorns enemy and summon a Death Mage under your control.
    
4. Loss of Experience Points: This may be a bit controversial, but I hate the implementation of Confuse in CoH.  I was one of the bug reporters responsible for a major fix in the original game's implementation (confusing a support enemy used to not make them cast support moves on your allies, like Tsoo Sorcerers who would keep healing other Tsoo when confused).  Luckily, they did address that issue.  I like the idea that it makes area moves hit both friend and foe alike.  However, it costs players experience points for doing their job.  That's just not an ideal feedback gameplay should provide players.  The problem is that if you just made all damage dealt by confused enemies count as player damage, the moves would be overpowered.  Mass Confusion could clear entire rooms by itself with no player input or skill required.  You could script a bot to just cast confusion moves from max range while farming AE missions and nobody wants that kind of automated grinding.  I feel like the best solution would be to reduce a Confused target's damage and healing by about half, then cause every power they activate to immediately be duplicated on a nearby target of the opposite faction.  Heal an ally, and an equivalent heal happens to an enemy.  Damage an enemy, and equivalent damage happens to an ally (counting as the confuse caster's damage).  It might be challenging to implement, but it would honestly help Confusion remain useful while eliminating many players' aversion to using it.  As it stands now, you trade experience for safety.  Some players will deliberately target confused enemies just to limit the amount of lost XP, and some only use confuse powers as panic moves to avoid a team wipe.  Both are problems for a set built so heavily around Confusion powers.  [Edit: I know the chart exists and people have made the point before that it's not a huge loss, and while that's true, it still causes tensions in the community that don't really need to be there.]
    
5. Old Design Lacking Identity: The set is a bit dated.  Newer sets have more niche specialties and a signature flare to them that older sets lack.  Many of these older sets got some redesigns, like Electric Blast, Forcefields, and the Sentinel armor sets.  Mind Control honestly needs a once over.  Mind Control could let you summon a stationary pet that draws enemy attention with taunts, sort of like how the Spectral Terror is essentially a stationary fear turret.  Halt could be a T1 single-target immobilize dealing psychic damage replacing the otherwise useless Levitate power.  Your single-target control powers could all have a small chance of applying Placate to the target.  You could have a Command Silence aura that when toggled on lowers enemy damage and recharge, while also weakening any secondary effects like heals, buffs, debuffs, and control effects, as you basically stop enemies from communicating with each other in a large radius around you.  Mind Control as a concept is so much more broad than CoH ever included, mainly because it was a power set made in the early 2000s.  The capabilities of this game engine have improved since then, and the design philosophy of more modern power sets just leaves Mind Control in the dust.

Edited January 21 by AgentForest

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, AgentForest said:

Sleep Reliance: This plays into point #1, but is still an issue all its own.  Sleep is a very good soft control, but falls flat in teams, and team combat is what this game is built around.  A soloing Dominator may not care much, but dropping an AoE Sleep only to have the blaster immediately wake them all up, or the tank's damage aura snap them out of it, doesn't really feel good.  The best solution I can think of for this is to give some sort of benefit to every sleep power when the enemy is awakened by force.  Like, for Cold Snap, add a Foe(-Speed, -Rech) effect to the ability, then when an enemy is broken out of it, apply another stack of the debuff.  Possibly even add some damage when sleep is broken (or move the initial damage of a sleep move to when a foe is awakened and increase that damage a bit to compensate for the delay).  I could see the sleep power for Mind Control having a placate effect for the caster when broken as that sleep move's special niche.

What reliance on sleep? Mind Control has 2 sleep effects. A ST one and an AoE one. It has 3 hold effects, 2 confuse effects, a damaging knock up effect, and a terrify effect. That is not a sleep effect reliance.

 

1 hour ago, AgentForest said:

Loss of Experience Points: This may be a bit controversial, but I hate the implementation of Confuse in CoH.  I was one of the bug reporters responsible for a major fix in the original game's implementation (confusing a support enemy used to not make them cast support moves on your allies, like Tsoo Sorcerers who would keep healing other Tsoo when confused).  Luckily, they did address that issue.  I like the idea that it makes area moves hit both friend and foe alike.  However, it costs players experience points for doing their job.  That's just not an ideal feedback gameplay should provide players.  The problem is that if you just made all damage dealt by confused enemies count as player damage, the moves would be overpowered.  Mass Confusion could clear entire rooms by itself with no player input or skill required.  You could script a bot to just cast confusion moves from max range while farming AE missions and nobody wants that kind of automated grinding.  I feel like the best solution would be to reduce a Confused target's damage and healing by about half, then cause every power they activate to immediately be duplicated on a nearby target of the opposite faction.  Heal an ally, and an equivalent heal happens to an enemy.  Damage an enemy, and equivalent damage happens to an ally (counting as the confuse caster's damage).  It might be challenging to implement, but it would honestly help Confusion remain useful while eliminating many players' aversion to using it.  As it stands now, you trade experience for safety.  Some players will deliberately target confused enemies just to limit the amount of lost XP, and some only use confuse powers as panic moves to avoid a team wipe.  Both are problems for a set built so heavily around Confusion powers.  [Edit: I know the chart exists and people have made the point before that it's not a huge loss, and while that's true, it still causes tensions in the community that don't really need to be there.]

I am so tired of this argument. The mobs are not your character and to the best of my knowledge, cannot be coded to suddenly be part of your character. The mobs are not part of your team. They function like pets from pets such as Dream Doctor's phantasms. They are inflicting their own damage and the game cannot track that damage as belonging to your character or team. For that reason, the devs applied a multiplier for confused mobs that you cite to deal with that.

[arcane]

Anyone implying that you should get full xp when using confuses… will get a thumbs down. You’re just plain wrong, sorry.

[AgentForest]

34 minutes ago, Rudra said:

What reliance on sleep? Mind Control has 2 sleep effects. A ST one and an AoE one. It has 3 hold effects, 2 confuse effects, a damaging knock up effect, and a terrify effect. That is not a sleep effect reliance.

No other power set has 2 sleep moves (except for the new Arsenal Control set in beta), and they're also some of your lower cooldown moves.  For most control sets, your lower cooldown control moves are immobilizes, which are both shorter cooldowns and more persistent effects allowing for better synergy with Containment and less chance of teammates ending your conditions early.

Sleep as a condition is fine, as it's a great control effect for solo play, but falls off hard on teams.  One of the better suggestions people have been discussing to fix this is to give every sleep move some sort of lingering effect that makes them still provide value after enemies wake up.  This would also be a way to help distinguish all sleep moves from one another.  My examples being how Cold Snap has a Foe(-Speed, -Rech) effect.  Mass Hypnosis doesn't, making it just inherently worse as a power.  And for Mind Control to have TWO powers relying on this condition, it impacts them more than other control sets.

[AgentForest]

37 minutes ago, arcane said:

Anyone implying that you should get full xp when using confuses… will get a thumbs down. You’re just plain wrong, sorry.

Oh, absolutely.  That would break the game.  As the Confuse condition stands right now, you could never have it grant full XP.  It would need a redesign before even considering granting XP.  That's why my suggestion is more about a redesign of the condition itself so that it still meets the same power fantasy goals while not causing division among players who see it as impacting their rewards.

[AgentForest]

43 minutes ago, Rudra said:

I am so tired of this argument. The mobs are not your character and to the best of my knowledge, cannot be coded to suddenly be part of your character. The mobs are not part of your team. They function like pets from pets such as Dream Doctor's phantasms. They are inflicting their own damage and the game cannot track that damage as belonging to your character or team. For that reason, the devs applied a multiplier for confused mobs that you cite to deal with that.

I also didn't ask their damage to be coded as yours.  I suggested for there to be damage that procs from that enemy's location that counts as yours (doable).

Mobs also do not function like pets.  Pets grant players full XP as though you dealt the damage.  Mastermind, Controller, even Blaster pets follow this rule.  This is the main problem with Confusion as it's currently implemented.  People WANT the power fantasy that those controlled enemies are their pets, but you can't MECHANICALLY give them that power fantasy because it would break the game.  If confused enemies granted full XP, you'd just have bots running AE teams spamming confusion moves to auto-clear maps while everyone else soaks up the XP.  That's just bad design.  But at the same time, it's how everyone tries to defend the powers.  "Mind Control doesn't get a T9 pet because confused enemies ARE their pets."  No, they aren't, and you just admitted they aren't, because the damage isn't considered yours.

Even the people defending the current implementation of Confuse can't seem to pick how they want it to work other than "unchanged because change scares me."  Either Mind Controllers need a real pet, or there should be a way to help mitigate the inconsistency between the power fantasy and the reward given.  I address a lot of that in my other points.  I could honestly build a solid Mind Control powerset without a single "Confuse" condition and have it still meet the power fantasy without breaking the game or making players feel like they're giving up something for doing their job right.  The chart for XP gain compared to % of team damage dealt is merely showing how the current implementation of Confusion is a band-aid fix to limit losses for doing one's job, not to make doing one's job feel rewarding.  Just less detrimental.  It's outdated and flawed game design to make a player feel like they deserve less of a reward for doing their job properly, and if at all possible, you should make every power in every set feel rewarding to use without breaking game balance.  Like, that's the goal.  Diminishing the losses isn't a real solution.

As someone who mained Controllers for most of the game's existence, Mind Control was always the one that felt the least rewarding in every way.  At any time, another player could just make you feel useless to the party by waking up sleepers and complaining that the party would have gotten more XP if you weren't there.  Regardless of how the math actually reduces a portion of those losses, it's still just not a good design philosophy.  There's still that animosity within the community around the condition.  That alone provides ample ground for a redesign consideration.

[Rudra]

10 minutes ago, AgentForest said:

Mobs also do not function like pets.  Pets grant players full XP as though you dealt the damage.  Mastermind, Controller, even Blaster pets follow this rule. 

Note that the quote you have says "pets from pets". Any pets summoned by pets, such as mobs that join your team including the Dream Doctor, do not grant players full XP as though you dealt the damage. They grant 0 XP for the damage they do. Any pets summoned by your character or your teammates are still part of your team and their damage counts as damage inflicted by the team. Any further pets do not. They are no longer part of the team. Their damage is part of the team's. They award nothing to the team for the damage they contribute.

 

10 minutes ago, AgentForest said:

I could honestly build a solid Mind Control powerset without a single "Confuse" condition and have it still meet the power fantasy without breaking the game or making players feel like they're giving up something for doing their job right. 

Of course you can. Just like I can construct a solid Mind Control power set that is all confuses and still have it meet the power fantasy without breaking the game or making players feel like they're giving up something for doing their job right. You are talking about a power set that has 9 powers from a theme with hundreds of variations across comics, anime/cartoons, and games. The Mind Control power set does a very good job of presenting players a wide variety of standard mind control effects to choose from and make their characters with.

 

13 minutes ago, AgentForest said:

, and if at all possible, you should make every power in every set feel rewarding to use without breaking game balance.

Like the reward and satisfaction of being able to put targets to sleep while you focus on higher priority threats? Like the joy of watching your enemies tear themselves apart like many mind controllers across several comics, anime/cartoons, and even movies do? You are focused on a single interpretation of what mind control means, and so you want the rest of the set to conform to that very specific iteration.

 

16 minutes ago, AgentForest said:

At any time, another player could just make you feel useless to the party by waking up sleepers and complaining that the party would have gotten more XP if you weren't there.  Regardless of how the math actually reduces a portion of those losses, it's still just not a good design philosophy.  There's still that animosity within the community around the condition.  That alone provides ample ground for a redesign consideration.

This is the same argument made by those demanding KB go away and be replaced with KD. Just because other players don't know how to leverage an effect, especially when they are willingly negating the effect such as with sleeps, does not make a power bad. For crying out loud, players often prioritize debuffers' debuff anchors for elimination. It doesn't matter if you target a minion off to the side or the AV in the group. Where ever the debuff player places their debuff anchor, immediately half the team (or more) turns and blasts the anchor to oblivion, and then complain that you did nothing to help. Or how players skilled at using KB can herd mobs into the team's kill zone, but because they dared to use KB, they are inundated with hate for it. So who cares what they say? You can't win with those people, so ignore them and just play.

[AgentForest]

10 minutes ago, Rudra said:

This is the same argument made by those demanding KB go away and be replaced with KD. Just because other players don't know how to leverage an effect, especially when they are willingly negating the effect such as with sleeps, does not make a power bad. For crying out loud, players often prioritize debuffers' debuff anchors for elimination. It doesn't matter if you target a minion off to the side or the AV in the group. Where ever the debuff player places their debuff anchor, immediately half the team (or more) turns and blasts the anchor to oblivion, and then complain that you did nothing to help. Or how players skilled at using KB can herd mobs into the team's kill zone, but because they dared to use KB, they are inundated with hate for it. So who cares what they say? You can't win with those people, so ignore them and just play.

Eh, not really the same thing.

Knockback has uses that Knockdown doesn't, and those uses can be leveraged to your team's advantage.  Yes, you can use them to troll your own party, but that can get you kicked off a team if you're doing it on purpose.  Deliberately knocking enemies away from the tank toward the squishies is usually pretty obvious griefing behavior, and isn't the intended use of the feature.  A person properly using knockback is a godsend.  Good players both notice and appreciate it.

The problems people have with Confusion are baked into the condition itself, even when used optimally.  People dislike the condition because no matter how good you are at using it, you still cause those around you to have to give something up.  We can argue until the heat death of the universe over whether the benefits outweigh the costs, but there ARE inherent costs, no matter how you justify it.  And that just isn't going to sit well with all players.  You're going to be spitting on someone else's fun no matter what, as Confuse currently stands.  Unless there's a single enemy standing there alone, something is being sacrificed.  That just inherently is going to create animosity in the community and tension within a party.

Tensions that just don't need to exist.  This is why I'm not demanding that the current implementation grant full XP.  I'm merely suggesting an alternative mechanic that doesn't require lost XP in order for its gameplay balance to function properly.  Because if we could manage that, you'd never have to hear this argument again, while still getting your power fantasy.  There are solutions that could make both sides happy.  Refusing to consider these solutions, or even let them have a fair discussion, is as toxic as the people who would kick you from their team for confusing their enemies and costing them XP.  I'm only asking that we end this fight once and for all so that ALL players in the community can be having fun simultaneously.  Your solution is to maintain this endless argument and the tensions it causes on teams, and my solution is to just make the argument a thing of the past.

[Rudra]

1 minute ago, AgentForest said:

Knockback has uses that Knockdown doesn't, and those uses can be leveraged to your team's advantage.  Yes, you can use them to troll your own party, but that can get you kicked off a team if you're doing it on purpose.  Deliberately knocking enemies away from the tank toward the squishies is usually pretty obvious griefing behavior, and isn't the intended use of the feature.  A person properly using knockback is a godsend.  Good players both notice and appreciate it.

Welcome to City of Heroes where simply evidencing you have KB powers can get you booted from the team.

 

2 minutes ago, AgentForest said:

The problems people have with Confusion are baked into the condition itself, even when used optimally.  People dislike the condition because no matter how good you are at using it, you still cause those around you to have to give something up.  We can argue until the heat death of the universe over whether the benefits outweigh the costs, but there ARE inherent costs, no matter how you justify it.  And that just isn't going to sit well with all players.  You're going to be spitting on someone else's fun no matter what, as Confuse currently stands.  Unless there's a single enemy standing there alone, something is being sacrificed.  That just inherently is going to create animosity in the community and tension within a party.

Unlike KB, I haven't seen people complain about Confuse except here on the forums. So you lost me.