Focused Feedback: Role Diversity Bonus

[Koopak]

Lurkers generally lurk and don't post until they feel strongly about something. Just a thought. 

 

Let's not fall down the rabbit hole of 'my side is bigger' or 'your side is intentionally organising' or whatever other tribalism. We will be here all year 

Edited January 24 by Koopak

[psylum1]

9 minutes ago, Gobbledigook said:

I have just been reading through some of the posts....

 

So we need to fill the roles to get a bonus Aether?

If we can not find a support for example we wait to find one?

If the AT needed to fill the role is completely under geared on SO's or DO's only we have to take them for the bonus?(sometimes this is possible depending on the rest of the team).

I can't get on a team because i don't fill the required role?  My Widow has an easier time getting teams than other AT's lol?

A corruptor is now not support although it is listed under the support section? Arachnos soldier is support but a Widow is not?

 

Seems a bit weird to me.

 

If you want to give a bonus aether then just give it once a day on a TF/SF per account (not character)or better still just give it us for free everyday, as i don't really care who has the Aethers or the market lol. 

 

 

If you're kicked off a team or can't get one because of a single Aether that team lead was a not great person and would have done it anyway. there are 5 roles to fill and room for 8 on a team. 

[Paradox Fate]

37 minutes ago, psylum1 said:

People are coming out of the wood work because this is more than likely a positive feature that will help new players get the resources to start building out their characters.

It's not rocket science. 

 

They do not need additional resources tied to a diversity bonus to get their characters built out. They just need to be a bit smart about what they have.

 

And for anything else, you gotta do content. Do Task/Strike Forces, Story Arcs, get Merits, get lucky on recipe drops, sell at and/or manipulate the market.

Heck, you even get 750k alone by just visiting the exploration badges in Atlas and cash the merits out for converters.

 

Edited January 24 by Paradox Fate

[Paradox Fate]

There's also the fact's it's a resource which value can fluctuate at the market - It can be expensive, so people enforce the role bonus, or be completely useless in value and be wasted development to create such a bonus.

 

-

 

Honestly though,

if you are that determined to bring in more Prismatic Aether into the hands of players, then provide a Daily Task system:

 

Offer three smaller tasks or one big task per day, per account, to complete and you receive your 1 Aether.

 

Smaller ones could be:

- Defeat X of Y, where the enemies are of even con.

- Assist citizens in need. Remember the thugs trying to rob people in Steel and Talos? Your time to shine.

- Do a number of radio/paper missions.

- Craft a thing and turn it over.

- Do one of the zone events.

 

Bigger ones can be:

- Finish a Task/Strike Force.

- Do a Story-arc that matches your level (or flashback into a selected one).

- Do x missions within a group of at least 4 people.

 

With that, players can decide what to do and with what character they like without being intrusive or limiting others with their decisions.

[arcane]

I’m probably defending this feature most because several people in my SG are looking forward to it, and so far the arguments against it have been either highly speculative (“I won’t be able to team”) or downright silly (“I’m being punished!”).
 

On my own, I’d still say it’s a fine change, but I can’t say I’m worried about missing the tiny reward if you guys really do manage to sink this.

[Dispari]

2 hours ago, Marbing said:

So to summarize, the people against this are afraid of the following happening:

 

1) It will ruin the spirit of the game by forcing people to play certain roles.

2) It will add way too many more PA into the market, which will cause a negative disruption of some kind.

3) It will cause people to be booted from teams at a much higher rate than before by team leaders chasing the bonus (which is limited to 1 PA per character per 18 hours).

 

Is there anything I am missing?

I am not saying I agree with these points. I am trying to clarify in a succinct way what the current fears around this change are. We have 7 pages of this so I felt it would be a good idea to consolidate those fears, for anyone just joining.

Also more stuff to learn and argue about, like why Corruptors aren't a support AT, or why my Night Widow is control despite not having a single mez power.

 

I think most of this would be solved by just asking a team to have at least 5 or 6 different ATs? That would say "diverse team" to me without anyone having to learn anything new. There would be nothing to argue about or fail to understand. It's pretty clear if a team has 5 different ATs or doesn't.

[KaizenSoze]

2 minutes ago, Dispari said:

Also more stuff to learn and argue about, like why Corruptors aren't a support AT, or why my Night Widow is control despite not having a single mez power.

The Widow AT is really weird in the sense that game really doesn't understand very well that there are two very different ATs under the term "Widow".

I think the devs are simply hamstrung by the code in this case. You are right Night Widows, are not controllers.

[Dispari]

That's kinda the crux of the debate. A lot of the ATs aren't straightforward or could fill two, three, or even five different roles. Night Widows are not Fortunatas. What a HEAT does depends on how you built it. I would never argue a Corruptor is a damage AT before a support one. A Mastermind could be literally anything. All of these definitions are wobbly and fiddly, and you end up with situations like realizing there are really only two control ATs, and so you have to shove something in there even if it's not. Because you're trying to force all the ATs into neat little boxes that they refuse to fit in, and were never designed to fit in.

At least asking for a variety of ATs is easy for everyone to understand, there's nothing to track or disagree with, and nobody can argue with the results.

[Doc_Scorpion]

1 hour ago, Paradox Fate said:

Honestly though,

if you are that determined to bring in more Prismatic Aether into the hands of players, then provide a Daily Task system:

 

Offer three smaller tasks or one big task per day, per account, to complete and you receive your 1 Aether.

I kind of agree with you, but *shudder* that brings in a lot of bad juju from gatcha games.  I'd rather see it extended a to a week so there's less pressure to do it NOW.

[Paradox Fate]

21 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

I kind of agree with you, but *shudder* that brings in a lot of bad juju from gatcha games.  I'd rather see it extended a to a week so there's less pressure to do it NOW.

 

That's fine by me. Just something to do on your own you can tackle aside the Weekly Strike Target, which is a (mostly) strict group activity.

[Gobbledigook]

1 hour ago, KaizenSoze said:

The Widow AT is really weird in the sense that game really doesn't understand very well that there are two very different ATs under the term "Widow".

I think the devs are simply hamstrung by the code in this case. You are right Night Widows, are not controllers.

Nightwidows are also support. They bring as much support as a Bane Soldier anyway.

 

A Brute is not a melee damage yet PB/Veat are? lol

 

The roles need opening up a little more at least. A Blaster could fill ranged and melee damage for example as they have both.

[Doc_Scorpion]

48 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

I kind of agree with you, but *shudder* that brings in a lot of bad juju from gatcha games.  I'd rather see it extended a to a week so there's less pressure to do it NOW.

In fact, the more I think about it, I'd be a lot more comfortable with the proposal if the window were expanded from from 18 hours to (say) 48 hours or a week.  That will markedly reduce the FOMO pressure that dailies (18hourlies) can produce on players.  The pressure the current proposal can generate to log in daily and get in on a TF speed run will not (IMO) be healthy for the game as a whole.

[Andreah]

I would not want to see anything like "dailies" being added.

 

However, if there were an activity that I feel should be rewarded, it's having the star. Give the leader a Prismatic for completing a mission, any mission, anyone's mission, with a full team of eight., if it's the first time they've done so in a day. But even that, meh, I would prefer not to try to lead people by the nose to do things they would not otherwise do.

 

I feel like two candidate problems are attempting to be addressed with this one system:

 

1. Teams aren't diverse enough by Role as determined by Archetype
2. Not enough Prismatics are being awarded

 

I believe (1) is just plain false, is not a problem, and trying to address it in any way is distortive of play.

And, well, (2) could be addressed easily in many other ways, quite a few of which have been touched upon in this discussion already.

 

This game already rewards technical and tactical diversity, from powers, slotting, archetypes, and roles inherently. It needs not have an artificial and overly simplistic system tacked on top. This will only distort play in ways I see as being entirely negative. It does not matter to me that it would be easy to fulfill, or that to us wealthy veterans the reward is small, it's still a negative with no upsides. The idea that the prismatic reward is the upside is a distraction -- more prismatics could easily be rewarded for other non-distortive reasons, or even just at random. There is no reason they need to be coupled to this system at all.

 

Edited January 24 by Andreah

[arcane]

3 minutes ago, Andreah said:

Teams aren't diverse enough by Archetype

Diverse by Archetype does not mean diverse by role. Don’t confuse the two. For example a squad of 1 Tanker, 1 Scrapper, 1 Blaster, 4 Corruptors, and 1 Defender. 5 AT’s, yes. But zero crowd control AT’s. Not that diverse by role.

[Andreah]

1 minute ago, arcane said:

Diverse by Archetype does not mean diverse by role. Don’t confuse the two. For example a squad of 1 Tanker, 1 Scrapper, 1 Blaster, 4 Corruptors, and 1 Defender. 5 AT’s, yes. But zero crowd control AT’s. Not that diverse by role.

That's fair. But it doesn't change that the proposed system is still entirely based on archetypes. I'll make an edit.

[warlyx]

ppl are saying that this is for new players .....is this thing is really for new players?

 

new player join ,role selection pops what he/she would choose? a tank / support char (in other games low dmg ) or whatever looks like damage? 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 24 by warlyx

[Indystruck]

New Players are most likely to be told by Old Players that they can pick anything. Which is true, once you're all kitted out you can just blow through whatever at +4/x8 and be fine. Now for 8 new people who decided they want to be controllers, petless masterminds, etceteras who have expired DOs in and are like "hey let's try a Synapse", it may be a little different.

Edited January 24 by Indystruck

[Troo]

5 hours ago, Marbing said:

Is there anything I am missing?

 

You forgot players might drop from the team after strike forces start and they realize only then there won't be a bonus.

 

..and the 'roles' not being consistent with the character creator or various sources.

 

..there might be some other stuff too..

 

 

 

Edited January 24 by Troo

[scottocamp]

As someone who tries to lead at least one team event each evening (usually a TinPex or weekly) - this just seems to add another, admittedly small, level of complexity and perhaps stress to the whole process of recruiting and filling a team and trying to deal with folks who can already be a bit demonstrative in expressing themselves even without an additional 3 million at stake.  It almost seems like a small punishment for those attempting to lead a team.  I would gladly *pay* an Aether just to not deal with a mechanic that complicates the recruitment of players.

[arcane]

2 minutes ago, scottocamp said:

As someone who tries to lead at least one team event each evening (usually a TinPex or weekly) - this just seems to add another, admittedly small, level of complexity and perhaps stress to the whole process of recruiting and filling a team and trying to deal with folks who can already be a bit demonstrative in expressing themselves even without an additional 3 million at stake.  It almost seems like a small punishment for those attempting to lead a team.  I would gladly *pay* an Aether just to not deal with a mechanic that complicates the recruitment of players.

Good news. If you’re the team leader, you have all the power and can play how you want.

[ranagrande]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

Diverse by Archetype does not mean diverse by role. Don’t confuse the two. For example a squad of 1 Tanker, 1 Scrapper, 1 Blaster, 4 Corruptors, and 1 Defender. 5 AT’s, yes. But zero crowd control AT’s. Not that diverse by role.

That's a perfectly good team though.  Having crowd control is nice, but it is not strictly necessary.  None of these roles are.

 

One of my favorite things about group content in this game is that you often get lopsided teams and have to find ways to adapt to get the job done.  It's always possible in the end, and in my opinion, is more fun than always having the perfect team composition with perfect answers.

 

I was on three teams yesterday.  None of them would have qualified for this bonus.  Two of them lacked control, and one lacked melee damage (according to the list here; there were two brutes).  All three runs were successful.

 

"Role Diversity" is unnecessary and should not be encouraged in this manner.  It doesn't take long to go from encouraged to required.

[arcane]

Just now, ranagrande said:

That's a perfectly good team though.  Having crowd control is nice, but it is not strictly necessary.  None of these roles are.

 

One of my favorite things about group content in this game is that you often get lopsided teams and have to find ways to adapt to get the job done.  It's always possible in the end, and in my opinion, is more fun than always having the perfect team composition with perfect answers.

 

I was on three teams yesterday.  None of them would have qualified for this bonus.  Two of them lacked control, and one lacked melee damage (according to the list here; there were two brutes).  All three runs were successful.

 

"Role Diversity" is unnecessary and should not be encouraged in this manner.  It doesn't take long to go from encouraged to required.

Great. So we agree that you can continue playing without the bonus because it’s perfectly doable. 

[Andreah]

As has been said several times, playing without the bonus will be seen as playing with a penalty; that's just human nature.

[scottocamp]

2 minutes ago, arcane said:

Good news. If you’re the team leader, you have all the power and can play how you want.

Perhaps you run missions differently - but I try not to be dismissive of the requests people present when offering to join a team.  If folks want to go for a badge, then we try for the badge.  That sort of stuff.  This adds another layer of complexity to all that.  Which will certainly make the experience of leading a team more difficult - at least for me.  

[psylum1]

Well then it's a good thing you can only get one per day, then you don't have to worry about it.