Focused Feedback: Role Diversity Bonus

[Tigraine]

1 hour ago, Andreah said:

Join a team or form a team -- problem solved! I have never seen someone not invited to a team because they're a Kheldian.

 

I have.  Less so on HC with the reduction of Kheldian-specific enemy spawns, but it still happens.

[Wavicle]

2 hours ago, Wispur said:

...that's kinda the point of this whole 14 page discussion. 😅

There's a fear that people will start being excluded from teams because of their AT's not being the correct role.

(Besides, I wasn't complaining or anything, I was just explaining to Paradox why the devs did what they did regarding Kheldians)

 

 

I definitely could imagine, with this change, seeing calls like "LFM, need Def, MM, or Arachnos Soldier", "Troller, Dom, WS, or Widow".

Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I don't know. Obviously some people hate the very idea of it. Frankly, we ALREADY see similar calls, so this wouldn't be ALL that different except it would change which ATs are getting called on SLIGHTLY.

[warlyx]

8 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

 

I definitely could imagine, with this change, seeing calls like "LFM, need Def, MM, or Arachnos Soldier", "Troller, Dom, WS, or Widow".

Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I don't know. Obviously some people hate the very idea of it. Frankly, we ALREADY see similar calls, so this wouldn't be ALL that different except it would change which ATs are getting called on SLIGHTLY.

 

I expect LFM tank support PST 

 

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, warlyx said:

 

I expect LFM tank support PST 

 

 

which is, like I said, similar to what we see now

[Dispari]

30 minutes ago, warlyx said:

I expect LFM tank support PST 

Except, a Corruptor is support, but not according to this system.

[warlyx]

1 minute ago, Dispari said:

Except, a Corruptor is support, but not according to this system.

 

yep , makes no sense

 

guess ppl will say LF2M tank support for bonus PST 

Edited January 29 by warlyx

[arcane]

I assume players will learn what “LF support for bonus” for example.
 

I don’t believe for a second that new players will so fully absorb this to the extent that they don’t know that Corruptors can provide support with their secondaries. That’s assuming a lot of stupidity that I don’t believe is really there.

[gameboy1234]

7 hours ago, Wispur said:

If this diversity bonus is going to make it to live, I still like this solution the most.

5 different AT's in the group?  You get the Bonus.
And then the remaining 3 slots can be duplicates.

 

 

Thing is, we don't need "diversity" to play the game well.  8 Defenders, 8 Masterminds, 8 Tankers (I miss Tanker Tuesday), 8 Corruptors, 8 Dominators, 8 Brutes, are all equally likely to be a "good" team as one with 5 different ATs.  Some suggestions up-thread had suggestions for "all same AT" as well as "5 different ones."  That would encourage players to experiment and actually learn to play the game, rather than jut accepting the idea that one requires different ATs in order to do well.  More "diversity" in the types of teams that the game encourages you to try would help people learn more.

 

 

 

[Catalyze]

On 1/23/2024 at 3:14 AM, Reiska said:

 

 

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.

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

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.

 

This post saved me a lot of time. I agree fully with what is reposted above. Newer players are coming from games where specific callouts are common. This won't do anything but continue their familiarity with reward based team compositions.

[arcane]

15 minutes ago, gameboy1234 said:

8 Defenders, 8 Masterminds, 8 Tankers (I miss Tanker Tuesday), 8 Corruptors, 8 Dominators, 8 Brutes, are all equally likely to be a "good" team as one with 5 different ATs. 

That really isn’t true and you can prove it with clear times.

[ranagrande]

15 minutes ago, arcane said:

That really isn’t true and you can prove it with clear times.

A theme team will usually do better than a random assortment.

 

Regardless, not everyone cares about speed.  Taking a little longer to complete a mission does not make a bad team.

 

In fact, a common complaint I see from new people is that teams move too fast for them to understand what is going on.

[Indystruck]

48 minutes ago, gameboy1234 said:

 

 

Thing is, we don't need "diversity" to play the game well.  8 Defenders, 8 Masterminds, 8 Tankers (I miss Tanker Tuesday), 8 Corruptors, 8 Dominators, 8 Brutes, are all equally likely to be a "good" team as one with 5 different ATs.  

 

This is not coming from the point of "an average player," this is coming from a point of "we're all tricked out and playing our faves".

[Thraxen]

I don’t much care for this at all. I know it’s a bonus and optional but I bet a lot will make it required to do the tf. It drives me crazy when people involve a minimum level for random mission teams. This change will just add more of that type of stuff. 
 

One of the worst things about other games is the queue time for dps is generally longer than tank or healer. This game doesn’t have it. Which is great. Why add it?????

[Doc_Scorpion]

13 minutes ago, ranagrande said:

Regardless, not everyone cares about speed.  Taking a little longer to complete a mission does not make a bad team.

Precisely.  And almost all the "excessive time" runs I've seen have been because where were too many lowbies sidekicked up too far and too high a difficulty setting means they're fighting purples that they can barely hit and barely scratch when they do hit.  Those are true drudgery.  Everything else, nah.  They might be "slow" by some arbitrary standard, but they aren't by any reasonable measure.

[Wavicle]

9 minutes ago, Thraxen said:

It drives me crazy when people involve a minimum level for random mission teams.

it drives me crazy when I get invited to a team 30 levels over me, or a team filled with SKs 30 levels under me.

[warlyx]

wondering if the HC  team is going to advertise the server  , so we gonna see a huge influx of new players? because i can see they are working hard on new player experience (NPE), and this role diversity bonus....

 

 

[Indystruck]

They don't have to, the news was advertisement enough. There's been a lot of new players who need some walking through the general game concepts and returning players trying to get their legs back underneath them on teams I've been on for the past week.

[Xiddo]

There'd been some talk earlier in the thread about 'not knowing how it would effect teams until it was live' (or stuff of that ilk) so I thought I'd try a bit of an unscientific test to see if random PuG TF groups (on current live) would tick off the bonus requirements. None of these teams had people alt, in two of them the leader joked that we'd be heavy on certain things (control and lack of support in the TinPex) but completed all.
I also did this cos I wanted to test my own biases. I was pretty confident earlier in the thread (around page 10) that most players would get a bonus without teams needing to change things. It's just a theory craft, on a small sample size, to do a sort-of-test on team compositions ticking off a passive bonus. I know that this does not test the possible problem of people not inviting certain ATs if they have one of that kind.

 

Group 1 - TinPex
1 blaster, 1 tank, 1 widow, 1 stalker, 2 scrappers, 1 defender, 1 PB.
Bonus: yes

Group 2 - ITF
2 controllers, 1 PB, 1 dom, 1 brute, 2 corr, 1 scrapper
Bonus: no

Group 3 - Post 1
1 PB, 1 def, 2 brute, 1 widow, 1 controller, 1 corr, 1 dom
Bonus: yes

Group 4 - Ice Mistral

1 brute, 1 dom, 1 sent, 1 PB, 1 def, 1 blaster
Bonus: yes

Group 5 - Yin
2 blaster, 2 controller, 1 PB, 1 tank, 1 brute, 1 corr
Bonus: no

So in three of the five I did, the team would get a bonus. These were all on Excel, at not peak times (I'm in the UK so there are often fewer people around when I'm on).

[Shin Magmus]

16 hours ago, PoptartsNinja said:

One of the purposes of this seems to be to separate out Defenders and Corruptors, to encourage people to play Defenders more in high level content. So the question is: what about high level content is hostile to Defenders (and Masterminds, and Kheldians)?

MM weaknesses are myriad and range from fundamental weaknesses that basically cannot be fixed (enemy pathing on stairs, in caves) to actually stupid unfair bullshit that should be fixed (pets are destroyed by KB and can't slot an IO to prevent this, forcing MMs to rely on Clarion for KB protection).  MMs are on the struggle bus.

 

But Defenders don't struggle at all: they're a close sidegrade from Corrs in almost every situation and Corrs are the meta in Hard Mode.  Defenders are really close to being the most meta AT and a few overzealous numbers tweaks would make them monsters.

[Uun]

2 hours ago, Xiddo said:

Group 2 - ITF
2 controllers, 1 PB, 1 dom, 1 brute, 2 corr, 1 scrapper
Bonus: no

This team has support out the wazoo, yet it fails to get the bonus due to lack of support. 

[ranagrande]

And as for the epic ATs, they are much rarer than their basic counterparts.  Not because they're weak, but because (ironically for this topic) they lack diversity.

 

Every basic AT has over 100 different combinations of primary and secondary powersets.  The VEATs have 2.  The HEATs have 1.

 

CoH is an extremely alt-friendly game, but there is little reason to make alternate *EATs.

[Xiddo]

2 hours ago, Uun said:

This team has support out the wazoo, yet it fails to get the bonus due to lack of support. 

I agree! Found that one quite confusing. I wonder if there'd be a way to do a check of "if there are more than X-number of Y-AT then it counts as [base role] and [alternative role]".
e.g. 3 controllers = control [base] and support [alternative] ticked off, 3 corrs = ranged damage [base] and support [alternative], 3 defs = support [base] and ranged damage [alternative].
That wouldn't work for certain ATs I think... I don't know which other role you could tick for more than 3 blasters, for example, because you can't guarantee that any of them would have a melee power so it'd tick "Melee damage". Whereas most Controllers' secondary sets have some kind of power which supports the team (either positively by helping teammates or supporting the team via debuffing the enemy). It also doesn't account for play style: I've teamed with Robot/Storm MMs who are definitely not 'Support' but are damage, and with one memorable demon/empath MM who only used their secondary on their pets.

I'll run a couple more to try and keep track. Doing these 5 and recording it changed my opinion from being "this is like a 85% good idea, get it out" to maybe nearer a 70-ish% because there are a couple of caveats. I still think the baby should not be thrown out with the bath water.

[BrandX]

2 hours ago, Uun said:

This team has support out the wazoo, yet it fails to get the bonus due to lack of support. 

 

Thusly, rename it to Group 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5...then you don't have people able to say this.  Then it's a matter of something else...not all from every group.

[Uun]

1 minute ago, BrandX said:

Thusly, rename it to Group 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5...then you don't have people able to say this.  Then it's a matter of something else...not all from every group.

It's not the name, it's the role. Just because a controller's primary is control or a corruptor's primary is ranged damage doesn't negate the fact that their secondaries are support. You aren't lacking in those roles just because you don't have a defender, mastermind or Arachnos soldier on the team (don't get me started on how Arachnos soldier gets to check the Support box but controllers and corruptors don't). There needs to be recognition that some ATs beside HEATs and VEATs are designed to fill multiple roles.

[BrandX]

8 minutes ago, Uun said:

It's not the name, it's the role. Just because a controller's primary is control or a corruptor's primary is ranged damage doesn't negate the fact that their secondaries are support. You aren't lacking in those roles just because you don't have a defender, mastermind or Arachnos soldier on the team (don't get me started on how Arachnos soldier gets to check the Support box but controllers and corruptors don't). There needs to be recognition that some ATs beside HEATs and VEATs are designed to fill multiple roles.

 

Yes, but you also know they want the basic ATs to just count for one role.  

That's why I said change it from Support to Group 1.  Then you can't say "It's not just support!"  As it's just ATs broken into groups