Focused Feedback: Role Diversity Bonus

[BrandX]

I like it.  It's not like the reward will have me chasing after it, but if I happen to get  a team that fulfills it, sweet, a little bonus.

[StarkWhite]

48 minutes ago, InfamousBrad said:

the reward's too good to risk not getting.

Most play sessions, I have a good chance of making more prismatic aether from soloing story arcs than I would get from this reward. 

[Arcadio]

I'm not willing to sit here for 6 pages and argue, but I like the bonus. I like being encouraged to bring a different character out of my arsenal. 

[Reiska]

On 1/21/2024 at 8:16 AM, ranagrande said:

You should ditch the role system entirely and give the bonus to any team with at least five different ATs.

 

14 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

If the consensus here is that this change will be a negative for the game, we can simply remove the free bonus and drop this feature.

The sense I'm getting from reading feedback is that many feel like any attempts to influence the nature of team assembly is antithetical to the nature of City of Heroes.
 

 

I think the concept comes from a good place, but I'm old enough to worry that it'll lead to a measurable increase in toxic behavior on the part of team leaders.  So I think it's best that it not go live in this form.

 

On 1/21/2024 at 10:04 AM, Lunar Ronin said:

 

The only reason you "need" specific ATs for hard modes is if you care about getting the rewards as quickly as humanly possible.  Hard modes can be done with any AT just fine.  All you need is some balance.  Been there, done that.  But too many of the Homecoming player base have convinced themselves otherwise.

 

It's basically impossible to keep players from optimizing the fun out of games, sadly.

 

15 hours ago, Blackbird71 said:

Sorry for the double-post, but given the subject matter I thought this deserved to be kept separate from other thoughts:

 

 

I think that HC would do well to follow it's own rules and avoid "controversial political content."  In modern political parlance, the words "diversity" and "inclusivity" both carry heavy political connotations primarily used by one side of the political spectrum as a positive, and by the other as a negative.  These are "charged" words in the current environment, and if HC wants to truly avoid controversial subjects, they should be avoided.  What's more, they are current "buzzwords," and are likely to fall out of fashion in time, and when that happens any reference using them will appear dated.

 

 

15 hours ago, Blackbird71 said:

 

Open a thesaurus.  Call it a "versatility" bonus, a "variety" bonus, a "complimentary" bonus, whatever.

I think the immediate "thumbs down" reactions on my other post emphasizes just how controversial and divisive the suggested terms are.

 

No, that would be demonstrated by a mass of thumbs up reactions.  The mass of thumbs down reactions emphasizes how transparently you making that argument was in bad faith.

 

9 hours ago, Koopak said:

I'm sorry i'm clearly not understanding your point.

Are you trying to argue that if the diversity bonus goes live as is, and then is reworked to simply be a 1 aether reward for your first TF of the day regardless of team composition the community will 'scream bloody murder'?

 

No, they were arguing that if the diversity bonus goes live as is and then was *removed* the community would scream.  Which they would.

 

7 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

So the only thing a team leader has to do is invite other players to start a Task Force or Strike Force - they don't have to do anything else they wouldn't normally already do when forming their team - and this optional reward is automatically applied for those that want to incorporate the ATs stated?

 

What am I missing in this feedback?

 

As far as I can tell there is a handful of ways for players to receive Prismatic Aether rewards: the Auction House, randomly from mission completes, and from completing certain content at specified settings. The stated change will add one more way to receive them. Is there some testing done somewhere from the folks who are in disagreement with this change I'm missing? My understanding is a player either gets the reward or they don't, but it doesn't affect the outcome of the mission. 

 

You're missing that there will inevitably be some people who form teams and reject people because they don't have the right AT to get the bonus PA.

[Ruin Mage]

This is one of those changes that need live data more than anything. We won't know what effect it has until P7 is live.

We can speculate, humbug, and whatever else we're doing here - but predicting how people are going to act with forming teams based on this is not that good of an idea.
 

[Parabola]

I'm a bit undecided on this whole idea. I see the potential for people to behave crappily using this as justification but then again people can gatekeep team composition now. I think the bigger problem for me is just that this game has such a hybrid role structure that the categorisation is always going to be a bit wonky. On balance I'm probably more keen on the 5 different AT's idea.

 

If the intention is to look at ways of helping newcomers and low level characters in general fund their basic builds then in my opinion the place to look is at drop rates in teams. As it stands you can make all the inf you'll need if you level up by soloing content set for multiple people and hoover the drops up. However, if you level up in teams (which a newcomer is probably more likely to do), you basically remain poor. I think recipe and salvage drops should be boosted relative to the number of actual players on a team (if you have the tech to tell the difference between actual players and multi boxers all the better).

[PancakeGnome]

2 hours ago, Parabola said:

I'm a bit undecided on this whole idea. I see the potential for people to behave crappily using this as justification but then again people can gatekeep team composition now. I think the bigger problem for me is just that this game has such a hybrid role structure that the categorisation is always going to be a bit wonky. On balance I'm probably more keen on the 5 different AT's idea.

Prismatics are hard to get, so it's actually kind of a big reward (especially for those leveling up alts). I run a lot of task forces as leader, and it would make go from organizing with "sure play whatever you want, let's have fun" to "sorry we need a tank role to get the bonus". 

Which really sucks. I love that teams in CoH is just "let's have fun, play who you think is fun, we will figure it out". Turning it into this checkbox for a bonus..... is..... very against what city of heroes has always been. 

I don't know why there is an urge to try and "teach" new players that the game revolves around strict roles.... when it doesn't...... all because they are more used to the idea of strict roles and team make ups IN OTHER GAMES?

[Uun]

10 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

Why wouldn't "Controllers" be under the "Control" listing? 

This makes no sense to me.

 

I agree that Corruptors would make more sense to be listed under Support.

 

When you compare Stalkers, Scrappers, Brutes, and Tanks, Brutes definitely fall more on the Tank side. I think Brute should be under the Tank listing.

 

As far as the Tanks listing, I would think that a Mastermind deserves to be there more than it does under the Support listing, and moving them would make room for Corruptors under the Support listing.

My thought was that controllers, corruptors or brutes could fill more than one role, much the way that VEATs do. Alternatively, the player or team lead could select which of two roles those ATs were filling for purpose of the bonus. 

[Reiska]

53 minutes ago, PancakeGnome said:

Prismatics are hard to get, so it's actually kind of a big reward (especially for those leveling up alts). I run a lot of task forces as leader, and it would make go from organizing with "sure play whatever you want, let's have fun" to "sorry we need a tank role to get the bonus". 

Which really sucks. I love that teams in CoH is just "let's have fun, play who you think is fun, we will figure it out". Turning it into this checkbox for a bonus..... is..... very against what city of heroes has always been. 

I don't know why there is an urge to try and "teach" new players that the game revolves around strict roles.... when it doesn't...... all because they are more used to the idea of strict roles and team make ups IN OTHER GAMES?

Thinking on it more, I would worry not only about team leaders rejecting people because they won't contribute to a bonus prismatic, but also worry about people bailing on TF teams before they start because the team has the wrong archetypes.

 

I get that there's a desire to add another reward vector for PAs; what if we made it a reward for running a WST more than once in a week (still on an 18 hour cooldown)?

[Glacier Peak]

5 hours ago, Reiska said:

You're missing that there will inevitably be some people who form teams and reject people because they don't have the right AT to get the bonus PA.

To me this sounds a lot like speculation, not testing. I could just say the opposite - "this change will inevitably lead to some people who form teams and accept people because they have the right AT to get the bonus PA."

 

What can we, the player base testing out this new feature, identify as broken, nor working as intended, or otherwise provide as feedback information that is actionable to the dev team? 

[Marbing]

I think one thing that is being lost in here, because I keep seeing it brought up, is that this change wouldn't pigeonhole or force anyone into any role. Just because the game says Defender is typically support doesn't mean you are forced to play it as support. It just means it would be represented as support for the purposes of the bonus. The character creation screen already lists Defender under support and that hasn't done anything to force anyone playing a Defender to only ever be support. That choice is entirely up to the player, the powersets/powers they choose and/or the style in which they play their character. 

 

[EmperorSteele]

I wonder if, instead of requiring "roles" (some of which are arbitrarily assigned... MMs and their buff/debuff modifier of 0.5 as "support", lol), the system just checks for at least 5 different ATs. That would alleviate some of the concerns listed here, and not "pigeonhole" villains into the "wrong AT" or over-favor EATs.

[Yoru-hime]

I agree that the CoV ATs were deliberately designed to straddle the lines between these boxes. Trying to shove them into one feels clumsy and forced. Controllers as well.

 

Overall, I feel like this is a solution looking for a problem. Giving more PAPs to players is fine, I don't really care about or object to the rewards, it's more a question of do we really want/need to incentivize this particular behavior? Becoming a good CoH player means embracing how fluid our ATs and powersets are and all the innovative ways they can work together. The team composition being rewarded here is "Training Wheels CoH" to me. Teams that are safe, functional, and generally make for a pretty dull evening of gameplay.  Encouraging players to stay in that little box of "good teams" inhibits their learning and growth.

 

Does the data mining suggest a problem with failed TFs due to bad team composition? Personally, I've always seen plenty of players who were both aware of the team composition and willing to change in the rare case a team was truly unsuited to a task.

[golstat2003]

14 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

To me this sounds a lot like speculation, not testing. I could just say the opposite - "this change will inevitably lead to some people who form teams and accept people because they have the right AT to get the bonus PA."

 

What can we, the player base testing out this new feature, identify as broken, nor working as intended, or otherwise provide as feedback information that is actionable to the dev team? 

 

People already pointed one obvious one: Have some ATs count for more than one role.

Controllers definetly should count under Control. Iol

[Troo]

On 11/22/2023 at 8:55 AM, The Curator said:

 

 

"oops we already have ______"

/kick player

 

it's like a meme of when diversity and inclusion backfires.

 

19 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

However, the first time someone kicks me or tells me that I have to change my character because "I brought the wrong AT" is the time I stop thinking of it as a happy bonus.

 

Edited January 23, 2024 by Troo

[Glacier Peak]

Just now, Troo said:

 

 

"oops we already have ______"

/kick player

 

it's like a meme of when diversity and inclusion backfires.

And another made up example is:

 

"Wow, we have a full set of Archetypes and we get something for free!"

 

It's an example of when inclusion works well. 

 

But what did your testing actually show? Are you kicking players because you don't want their AT? Are you on teams on the beta shard where the team leader is doing so?

[Andreah]

35 minutes ago, EmperorSteele said:

I wonder if, instead of requiring "roles" (some of which are arbitrarily assigned... MMs and their buff/debuff modifier of 0.5 as "support", lol), the system just checks for at least 5 different ATs. That would alleviate some of the concerns listed here, and not "pigeonhole" villains into the "wrong AT" or over-favor EATs.

I think the system should be removed; that's my first choice.

 

However, failing that, how about the Yahtzee! method:

A) Any five unique AT's on the team

B) Any five of the same AT on the team

 

Then, superteams and near-superteams would get a perk, too.

 

I'll offer more possible options:

C) Qualify if the leader of the Team is in the level band of the TF.

D) Qualify if there's a team member who started on the TF at the lowest level allowed to join it.

Edited January 23, 2024 by Andreah

[Bionic_Flea]

3 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

But what did your testing actually show?

 

While I always encourage testing, I don't think that this particular wrinkle can be properly tested until it's live with hundreds and perhaps thousands of teams being formed.  It's hard to get a team together on test and when you can it's some dedicated players looking to test a specific thing.

[Glacier Peak]

Just now, Bionic_Flea said:

While I always encourage testing, I don't think that this particular wrinkle can be properly tested until it's live with hundreds and perhaps thousands of teams being formed.  It's hard to get a team together on test and when you can it's some dedicated players looking to test a specific thing.

Exactly Flea! That's the point I was trying to make about speculation. 

[Reiska]

31 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

And another made up example is:

 

"Wow, we have a full set of Archetypes and we get something for free!"

 

It's an example of when inclusion works well. 

 

But what did your testing actually show? Are you kicking players because you don't want their AT? Are you on teams on the beta shard where the team leader is doing so?

I think there's overwhelmingly adequate evidence from the live servers - given the way a lot of people already act about forming 4* Advanced Mode groups - that this sort of thing will happen, because people's psychology just works that way, unfortunately.  Players at large *never* regard a "bonus" as a bonus; they regard missing out on it as a penalty, every time.  I've seen it over and over and over in other games, and as much as I think our community is nebulously better than other games' communities I don't think we're *that* much better.  *gestures vaguely at Sentinel discourse*

 

It probably won't be widespread.  But I guarantee you that it will happen to someone, sometime, somewhere.  And it never ever should.  That's the problem to me: if even a single team leader ever kicks someone from a team a single time over this, it is a problem.  Can you guarantee that it will never ever happen?  Because if you can't, then I don't think this is a good idea.

Edited January 23, 2024 by Reiska

[Marbing]

31 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Exactly Flea! That's the point I was trying to make about speculation. 

Fear is a powerful motivator. I am on the side of let it roll and see what happens. It can always be adjusted later. The bonus isn’t huge, and it’s one prismatic per day… if it’s taken away I don’t think people will miss it.

 

 

 

Edited January 23, 2024 by Marbing

[Andreah]

1 minute ago, Reiska said:

Players at large *never* regard a "bonus" as a bonus; they regard missing out on it as a penalty, every time. 

Exactly.

[Cyclone Jack]

The more I think about this, the more I dislike it.

 

First off, as has been stated throughout the thread, the Roles are all wrong.  In fact, calling this "Role Diversity" while ignoring the diversity of the ATs themselves is a disservice to what makes CoH so unique.  IF, and this is a big if, IF this must be built around Roles, then the Roles used *must* match what is in the character creator.  If a player creates a new character, clicks on Support, then picks a Corruptor, its safe to assume that they would probably think that their character would fit the Support Role.

 

Second, outside of a tiny amount of end-game content, nothing in CoH forces a minimum team size.  All TFs/SFs (and even Non-Incarnate Trials), to the best of my knowledge, can be started with any number of players; some are even designed to be ran with as few as 3 or 4 players.  Heck, you can solo TFs if you want to.  Forcing a minimum team size goes against what makes CoH so unique.

 

Third, if the goal is to help new players get some Inf, while also adding some more PAs to the market, why not just add a bonus reward of 1 PA to TFs/SFs, obtainable once per character every 18 hours (or w/e the time frame is), regardless of the team composition?  Also, just giving a new player a PA does nothing by itself.  I would guess that most new players won't know the value of the PA, nor will they think "I can sell this on the AH".

 

Additionally, since TOs were removed so long ago (which I still consider to be an abysmal decision, specifically because it leads directly to the issue this feature is attempting to solve), and since one of the main goals is to help new players have the Inf to SO their characters, why not just rescale the cost of DOs/SOs?  For example, a L10 Acc TO is 1,056 Inf whereas a L10 Acc DO is 4,214.  That's 4x the cost for 2x the buff, and the SO is 12,672, 12x the cost for 4x the buff.  On top of that, spending all of your measly Inf on a handful of DOs early on (because let's be honest, there's no way a new player is going to be able to keep up with DOs early game, let alone SOs), only to outlevel them so quickly, will most likely cause the player to feel that they wasted the Inf on those Enhancements.  I would recommend cutting the costs of all Enhancements in half up until L20 or so, then scale the prices back up to the current price at L50.

[Reiska]

I've not shared anecdotes from other games of similar player psychology out of a desire to tightly stay on topic, but the closest analogue immediately coming to mind is the way players often behaved in FFXIV: A Realm Reborn's endgame story dungeons (which you were strongly incentivized to run daily with a large once-per-day reward bonus) until the devs made the cutscenes unskippable. 

 

Or, for an anecdote from this game, a substantial part of the reason we have cooldowns on merit rewards from repeating the same TF over and over again in a short period of time is because once upon a time, the most efficient way to farm reward merits was to repeatedly speedrun Katie Hannon's TF in Croatoa, because at the time it was the shortest TF in the game.  (And before that, Paragon made it deliberately give too few merits for its time metrics to try to discourage it, as I recall.)

 

If this change does go live, I would expect team composition toxicity to disproportionately hit extremely short TFs (like Katie Hannon and Penelope Yin), as people will be most likely to form them first thing in the day to get the bonus before moving on to longer form content.

[Reiska]

Apologies for the double post; Jack posted while I was writing the last one and had good points I wanted to respond to.

 

3 minutes ago, Cyclone Jack said:

The more I think about this, the more I dislike it.

 

First off, as has been stated throughout the thread, the Roles are all wrong.  In fact, calling this "Role Diversity" while ignoring the diversity of the ATs themselves is a disservice to what makes CoH so unique.  IF, and this is a big if, IF this must be built around Roles, then the Roles used *must* match what is in the character creator.  If a player creates a new character, clicks on Support, then picks a Corruptor, its safe to assume that they would probably think that their character would fit the Support Role.

 

Yeah; the inconsistency here is a problem, to say the least.

 

3 minutes ago, Cyclone Jack said:

Second, outside of a tiny amount of end-game content, nothing in CoH forces a minimum team size.  All TFs/SFs (and even Non-Incarnate Trials), to the best of my knowledge, can be started with any number of players; some are even designed to be ran with as few as 3 or 4 players.  Heck, you can solo TFs if you want to.  Forcing a minimum team size goes against what makes CoH so unique.

 

Nitpick: Nothing in Homecoming forces a minimum team size.  Plenty of TFs did force a minimum team size on the Paragon-era servers, usually at least 4 but sometimes more.

 

3 minutes ago, Cyclone Jack said:

Third, if the goal is to help new players get some Inf, while also adding some more PAs to the market, why not just add a bonus reward of 1 PA to TFs/SFs, obtainable once per character every 18 hours (or w/e the time frame is), regardless of the team composition?  Also, just giving a new player a PA does nothing by itself.  I would guess that most new players won't know the value of the PA, nor will they think "I can sell this on the AH".

 

A valid concern; it also won't mean anything to returning veterans because it's a new currency and there isn't really much in-game tutorialization on what the heck a PA is.  When I first came back again after being away from the game for about 2 years, it took me a little while to figure out what they were on my own research.

 

3 minutes ago, Cyclone Jack said:

Additionally, since TOs were removed so long ago (which I still consider to be an abysmal decision, specifically because it leads directly to the issue this feature is attempting to solve), and since one of the main goals is to help new players have the Inf to SO their characters, why not just rescale the cost of DOs/SOs?  For example, a L10 Acc TO is 1,056 Inf whereas a L10 Acc DO is 4,214.  That's 4x the cost for 2x the buff, and the SO is 12,672, 12x the cost for 4x the buff.  On top of that, spending all of your measly Inf on a handful of DOs early on (because let's be honest, there's no way a new player is going to be able to keep up with DOs early game, let alone SOs), only to outlevel them so quickly, will most likely cause the player to feel that they wasted the Inf on those Enhancements.  I would recommend cutting the costs of all Enhancements in half up until L20 or so, then scale the prices back up to the current price at L50.

 

For what it's worth, way back in the Paragon days, I usually needed to seed my new alts with around 2 million influence to afford SOs at levels 25 and 30, but by the time they were due for level 35 SOs (or generic IOs) they were earning more influence from defeats and selling useless drops than maintaining the SOs was costing.

 

Obviously, that's no longer really the case on Homecoming, since most players run with double XP from the P2W vendor and thus are gaining 0 influence from defeats.  I still find that if I run story arcs or TFs, cash in the merits for converters or unslotters (whichever happens to be selling better that day), I can sustain a character on their own earnings, but it takes more seed money to get them going than it used to; I typically seed my alts with at least 5 million now.

 

All this is absolutely a problem.  I *do* agree with the decision to remove TOs (the values on them were so negligible that they were never actually worth buying), and I'm skeptical that even DOs are worthwhile to have in the game, but I'm not sure reducing a major influence sink (which enhancements are) is healthy.  I'm also not sure increasing the influence flow (by reducing the Inf* penalties on XP boosters) again is a good idea either, although the thought of tweaking the penalties there did cross my mind (my thought was reducing the inf* penalties by 25%, multiplicative, so instead of -25%/-50%/-100% you'd have -18.75%/-37.5%/-75% for 1.25x/1.5x/2x XP).

 

Otherwise the next best solution that comes to mind would be something like making every door mission clear drop a random +3 SO from a pool determined by AT that matches your origin.  This would be a superficial break to the fiction of SO drops corresponding to the origin of the enemies you're fighting, but could be reconciled with the headcanon that your contact is giving it to you.