On the new CoT and council......the good and bad so far.

[KaizenSoze]

1 hour ago, Marshal_General said:

Am I the only one who looks at the Freak show tank I just downed and yells, "Get your ass up, I need the badge!"?

One of my best early memories of CoH was fighting Freakshow on a team. The spawn was down when suddenly half of them rez'ed up. I got chills and said "That is so cool!" out loud.

Edited March 4 by KaizenSoze

[Sunsette]

8 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I'm pretty sure that's the exact plan there.  Much like Freakshow who rez and then have to be fought again, it just slows down the steamroller a bit, mostly.  Like with the Freakshow rezzing-buff, this is all pretty much OK by me.

 

It seems pretty obvious that was the goal, yes

 

But I already find the Freakshow to be extremely boring (slow to kill, non threatening) to fight. 

 

When I look at the missions that HC added to Cimerora, too, I feel like they're leaning too much on making way too frequent random HP sponges that lack tactical counterplay to slow things down. I don't love warwalker enemies but at least the pop up messages and big targeting graphic give me some spice to make me keep moving. New council teleport you against your will I guess, but that was also used by the HC incarnate versions of Minotaurs and Cyclops.

 

I appreciate that they are trying to solve a difficult problem wrt grouping incentives for several ATs and I don't have a better suggestion at the moment, but I'm starting to get a little bit worried at the commonality of this design. I like some of these mechanics in general but I don't enjoy how they feel with the rhythm of trash encounters currently for most casually built teams.

 

Again, all of this is fine to me (good, in fact) so far in Task Force content, where there's more active team building than "Yeah, sure, whatever can come"

 

Also, tangentially: the people who are hoping that this will lead to players who know how to play better, it won't. Maybe a tiny bit but it won't be significant. The barriers to good play in this game rest primarily upon how much information (much of it obscured) must be processed. Any impedence to leveling rate will add slightly more time to process that information before 50, but not more incentive or facility to do so.

 

I've seen very good new players who got farmed to 50 because they like ingesting that stuff about whatever game they play. Also seen players who turn off general immediately, don't know what a farm or ouro are, level to 50 multiple times and are pretty clueless.

Edited March 4 by Sunsette

[tidge]

4 hours ago, KaizenSoze said:

A note about accuracy that I didn't really grasp until recently. The more accurate you are, the more likely the streak breaker is likely to fire, which is a good thing. What the hell is the Streak Breaker you ask?

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Attack_Mechanics#The_Streak_Breaker

 

Accuracy begets more hits, then if you miss, because of the streak breaker.

 

This is a bit of a mixed bag, at least when all of a character's attacks (including things that make ToHit checks, like auras) are at the 95% ceiling.

 

I appreciate that streak breaker exists, but hooboy it is possible to rack up a LOT of streak breaker forced hits, even on a single spawn.

[KaizenSoze]

20 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

This is a bit of a mixed bag, at least when all of a character's attacks (including things that make ToHit checks, like auras) are at the 95% ceiling.

 

I appreciate that streak breaker exists, but hooboy it is possible to rack up a LOT of streak breaker forced hits, even on a single spawn.

I'll stop the derail after this, but yes it can be 5-10% of your hits. Especially if you use a lot of AOE.

 

Also, Mastermind pets get streakbreakers. Possible other pets, not sure.

[Sunsette]

2 hours ago, tidge said:

 

This is a bit of a mixed bag, at least when all of a character's attacks (including things that make ToHit checks, like auras) are at the 95% ceiling.

 

I appreciate that streak breaker exists, but hooboy it is possible to rack up a LOT of streak breaker forced hits, even on a single spawn.

 

There is little quite so frustrating as when you have an enemy you have a 95% chance to hit and you trigger multiple streakbreakers in like, a minute. It's like running an unlucky D&D session at high speed.

Edited March 4 by Sunsette

[ZemX]

19 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

There is little quite so frustrating as when you have an enemy you have a 95% chance to hit and you trigger multiple streakbreakers in like, a minute. It's like running an unlucky D&D session at high speed.

 

I feel like I'm missing (haha) something important here.  What's frustrating about the Streakbreaker forcing a hit?

[Luminara]

6 minutes ago, ZemX said:

What's frustrating about the Streakbreaker forcing a hit?

 

You missed!
You hit!  The streak breaker forced a hit!

You hit!
You missed!

You hit!  The streak breaker forced a hit!

You hit!
You missed!

You hit!  The streak breaker forced a hit!

You hit!
You missed!

You hit!  The streak breaker forced a hit!

You hit!
You missed!

You hit!  The streak breaker forced a hit!

You hit!
You missed!

 

Now imagine that every miss is one of your best attacks.

 

When it starts doing that to me, I stop and wait for the attack to recharge so it gets the forced hit.  Not because I believe it resets the streak breaker or anything of the sort, but because it pissed me off and I am going to make it do what I want.

 

That's not even the worst it can do.  I regularly miss 3+ times in a row even with everything well over 95% hit chance, by mixing single-target attacks with AoEs/PBAoEs/cones (when the streak breaker checks AoE hit rolls, it does it in a specific order, which means the target you just missed with your single-target attack is only guaranteed a forced hit if it's the very first target in that specific order (which it isn't, in my case, most of the time), thus allowing the AoE to miss that target, and you can then miss it again with the next single-target attack because, again, specific order for AoE checks, and again with the next AoE... the miss streak can continue until that one target is all that's left, at which point the streak breaker has run out of ways to fuck you over and has to force a hit on it).

 

I can also do it by using an attack with a Sleep (the change to Sleeps which made them auto-hit, but still requiring a hit roll on other aspects of the power, causes the streak breaker to ignore the attack with the Sleep).  The power itself will hit every time, because that's what auto-hit powers do, but the damage part can miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss...

 

When the day comes that I log out of the game and delete it, it'll be because of that lying piece of shit that we call a streak breaker.  I hate that bitch so much.

[Sunsette]

45 minutes ago, ZemX said:

 

I feel like I'm missing (haha) something important here.  What's frustrating about the Streakbreaker forcing a hit?

 

Luminara gave a good detailing, but the short version is that I'm not frustrated at the streakbreaker, I'm frustrated at the missing so often at 95% hit chance. 

 

The human brain doesn't do percentages well. The Fire Emblem series has most of its games lie to the player, using a two roll system where you take the better result above 50% chance and the worse below 50% chance. Ever since it started lying to the player in this way, it has done a much better job comporting to player expectations of frequency based on those numbers. 

[ZemX]

So... what you're both saying is that my being too lazy to pay any attention at all to my hits and misses while playing... has finally paid off?

[KaizenSoze]

Nothing is more annoying on my Night Widow then to Build Up->Placate->Slash and MISS!

[Sunsette]

11 minutes ago, KaizenSoze said:

Nothing is more annoying on my Night Widow then to Build Up->Placate->Slash and MISS!

 

"Okay, so these are tough pulls, but it's entirely doable if I take this specific enemy out first before letting loose with the Nova."

 

Aim+Build Up-->Snipe, and miss, opening multiple encounters in a row. 

 

😅

[Luminara]

27 minutes ago, KaizenSoze said:

Nothing is more annoying on my Night Widow then to Build Up->Placate->Slash and MISS!

 

Inner Light -> Incandescent Strike -> You missed!

 

[Sakura Tenshi]

Absolute Zero take: I can live with stealth strikes like with /nin on sentinel and blaster, SoAs, and some others missing.

 

but a Build and Assassin’s Strike from proper hidden status should really be auto-hit.

[WumpusRat]

CoH's rng has always been loopy. That's why they added the streakbreaker in the first place, because you'd often see 6-7 misses in a row even with a 95% to hit. 

 

[KaizenSoze]

1 minute ago, WumpusRat said:

CoH's rng has always been loopy. That's why they added the streakbreaker in the first place, because you'd often see 6-7 misses in a row even with a 95% to hit. 

 

That actually means it's pretty random. Streaks are a sign of randomness, a lack of streaks is artificial.

[FlammeFatale]

7 hours ago, KaizenSoze said:

That actually means it's pretty random. Streaks are a sign of randomness, a lack of streaks is artificial.

 

Yes. There could still be randomness, but the process would not be purely binomial.

 

Edited March 5 by FlammeFatale

[tidge]

21 hours ago, KaizenSoze said:

That actually means it's pretty random. Streaks are a sign of randomness, a lack of streaks is artificial.

 

I am reasonably confident that the CoX RNG is pseudo-random, where RNG tries to uniformly fill the number space between 0 and 1. I'm not sure which, if either exact value of 0 or 1 is allowed. So not random, but pseudo-random.

 

Historically: There are biases in RNG, but they are small and difficult to demonstrate (and observe!) related to all sorts of things... I want to invoke "scale-invariant priors" but that's a limb I don't want to climb out on. In the olden times, folks would point at "seed" values.

 

CoX is notoriously complicated w.r.t. to RNGesus because there are a LOT of things that a single player can do to force ToHit checks. Auras are known to be a huge "hidden" culprit, I'm not sure if it is easily demonstrable that the "interior ToHit" checks for %procs (in attacks, which are separate from the %proc chance) may or may not count as part of "player streakbreaker math", but they definitely fill up the RNG space. As these sorts of ToHit checks populate the pseudo-random space, and no one really can tell (or care) if an aura (or a %damage proc, if applicable) got a "miss"... and when a bunch of them have populated the "less than 0.900" space of RNG, the pseudo-random nature of RNG makes it that much more likely that the player's attacks are going to fall in that > 0.900 space. Usually players are mashing buttons faster than aura ticks.

 

I honestly can't remember what the code is doing (we discussed and reviewed this a long time ago in these forums) with respect to: "when it is time for streak breaker to fire, is that ToHit check consuming an RNG roll or not?" If that ToHit check is also consuming an RNG roll, the pseudo-random flat nature of RNG implies that (for characters at the 95% ceiling) that a MISS (due to >0.95 roll) would have been more than likely to have been less than 0.95 at odds better than 20:1 anyway.

 

I think the streak breaker/RNG combo is completely fine, and it is almost certainly having the sort of intended effect for characters with lower overall ToHit chances in their powers. I do think that RNG manifests a small, but observable bias. Demonstrating it with the logs at a high level of significance would take some effort, and lots of data. It's relatively easy to show the "flat" distribution of the RNG (use a damage aura), my guess as to the scale of the "bias" in RNG ToHit checks would above 0.95 would be that it is on the order of a fraction of a percent. I do think there is some observation bias, because as I wrote above: players pretty much only get UI MISS! notices on attacks.

 

EDIT: I don't expect anyone to come back and read this post, but here is a potential study design for testing if RNG is giving "too many" misses. I haven't done the experiment (because frankly, there would be nothing to do about it) but it's supposed to be a tenet of (some?) science that you post the study design first and then collect the data,

Spoiler

Pick a level 50 character with a (set of) AoE attack(s) to use. Slot the attacks for max Accuracy. They can be slotted for other things to, but we need max Accuracy to guarantee a 95% chance ToHit.

 

Remove all %damage procs, don't use toggles that check enemies in range. Don't use any %procs. Don't use Auras.

Attack only con-grey enemies that won't debuff you, to keep Hit chance at the ceiling of 95%

 

I would toss out all forced hits by Streak Breaker, for simplicity. I suggest looking for MISS because streak breaker doesn't force misses, just hits.

 

The (null) Hypothesis H0 is the proportion p0 of misses from every ToHit roll will be p0 = 0.050 <-This should be the maximum value, if we believe 95% = 95%.

 

Sidebar: This is assuming the "flat RNG" which has been observed and documented. With Streak Breaker in play, this should actually be less than 0.05, something like 1/21 ~= 0.0476, but lower values of p0 only make this test easier to check. See notes towards the end.

 

The alternate Hypothesis H1 is that there is some slightly larger proportion of "MISS!" from all attack rolls. I assume it is only a tiny bit larger, to establish what the sample sizes would need to be. I will arbitrarily set it at p1 = 0.055 <- 10% "worse" than the null hypothesis.

 

If I use an exact binomial test (no Normal approximation used, so this will be conservative), and pick Confidence = 0.95 and Power = 0.80, my calculations are that if we see 653 MISS after 12251 ToHit checks, we could reject the null hypothesis.

 

Sidebar: 0.95 / 0.80 is a somewhat typical choice. Higher values of either increase necessary sample size.

Confidence = 1 - α, where α is type Type I error (incorrectly rejecting the null hypothesis)

Power = 1 - ß, where ß is the Type II error (incorrectly failing to reject the null hypothesis)

 

If someone cares less about the type two error, and wants Confidence = 0.95 and Power = 0.50 , my calculation is that 178 MISS in 3230 rolls would be enough to discriminate between 5% and 5.5% chance ToHit. (*1)

 

If the difference between the null Hypothesis and the alternate hypothesis increases, fewer samples are needed to see the difference. (*1)

 

For example: p0 = 0.05, p1 = 0.06 with Confidence = 0.95 and Tolerance = 0.80 only needs to see a minimum of 181 MISS after 3198 ToHit checks.

 

(*1) I included these comments because if a typical player had an intrinsic belief at 95%/50% levels, and thought that the true MISS rate was more like 6% instead of 5%, I think they could believe this (at those levels of confidence and power) if they saw as few as 51 MISS from 845 ToHit checks. I haven't kept precise logs myself... but using AoE attacks on large con grey spawns with 8+ mobiles in an AoE, it doesn't take very long to target ~100 groups... think Troll Tunnels, Sewer Network, Perez Park for a level 50... I personally wouldn't be surprised to log 51 misses.

 

 

Edited March 6 by tidge
Added a study design, for the lulz

[KC4800]

Sorry, late to the convo.

 

I solo ran a Colleen Nelson's Council Arc at +2/3 yesterday. It was on my Rad Melee/ Energy Aura Scrapper that is lvl 41.

 

I was okay with the Boss transformations. I did die once as a LT rezzed and stole some of my health right at the end of a prolonged battle. So be it. It has to happen to you once, or else you don't even know that it could happen. I'll be aware now, and a better player because I know some dark enemies can do that.

[UltraAlt]

On 3/3/2024 at 2:32 AM, DrunkFlux said:

Mostly just the CoT and the overkill to-hit debuff making focused accuracy a requirement which I kind of hate if i'm being honest, as it feels like all the new pools added just as well have not been added at all to the game.  Bad design there as a few others mentioned so far in this thread.

 

I don't think it is bad design.

I could make a team of to-hit debuffers, so I'm not seeing why that isn't something the enemy could do.

I could do things to resist the debuff, increase a character's to-hit, or even my accuracy.

 

The debuffs stack, so if you make the mob bigger and you are the only one getting the debuffs, then, yes, they are going to be devastating.

If you as a player aren't adapting and changing tactics and just want to steamroll the game then - of course - any change from the norm is going to seem to be bad game design to you.

 

A handful of players is a very small minority of the player base.

[Sunsette]

The CoT to-hit is pretty overkill imo on low to mid level characters, esp. on defensive ATs. On high level characters, I didn't even realize the CoT got a buff initially. 

 

Anything balanced around cascade effects is very particular and not easy to solve though. 

 

One of my suggestions would be that enemies that drop to hit debuffs have unusually low melee and moderately low ranged defense with standard AoE defense. This would reward knowing and prioritizing your targets rather than nova spam while minimizing cascade whiffing.

Edited March 5 by Sunsette

[UltraAlt]

On 3/4/2024 at 1:45 AM, Cheli said:

I don't know about OP but I never complained about the game not being challenging enough.

 

There are plenty of players that have.

As I said, those players now have what they were asking for.

 

On 3/4/2024 at 1:45 AM, Cheli said:

I don't think all that many people did,

 

Enough that they made the hard mode taskforces

 

On 3/4/2024 at 1:45 AM, Cheli said:

and most who did are probably satisfied with hardmode TFs and stuff like that.

 

The 1337 always want something more difficult to make sure that they are the 1337.

 

On 3/4/2024 at 1:45 AM, Cheli said:

Is there anyone on here with a history of complaining about the game not being challenging enough, now complaining about it being too challenging?

 

I don't bother about hunting down their threads. I have run into them and mention of them enough times.

I know it's a 1337 thing and it doesn't interest me.

The group of players that I play with a couple days a week periodically crack on the players that say that the game isn't difficult enough.

 

On 3/4/2024 at 1:45 AM, Cheli said:

Okay but this game has been one where you can fight 6 zillion guys one-on-one for the better part of two decades. Why exactly does that need to change now? Because you want it to?

 

lol

Of course, try to make it personal because you are having issues adapting to the content changes.

 

First off, you can't fight 6 zillion guys "one-on-one" unless they fight you one at a time - which has never been a thing - unless you have really been taking your time and extremely good at pulling enemies away one at a time without aggroing any other opponents.

 

Why does what need to be change now?

Being able to steamroll +4/8 with no effort?

Being able to pick enemies that are known to be weaker and less challenging simply so you can do that?

All the DEVs are trying to do is to make sure that there is no significantly underpowered end-game enemies that can be easily farmed or are always the go-to because they are easily defeated. 

 

How often did you see the calls for PI Council Radio missions?

 

And, no need for personal attacks, it has nothing to do with what I want.

If you have anyone to blame, it is the part of the player base that was always going on about the game not being difficult enough.

 

On 3/4/2024 at 1:45 AM, Cheli said:

it's always the same weak, lame arguments trotted out to be nasty to people making fairly innocent comments about changes.

 

And more personal attacks to use to justify your position.

 

I'm sorry you feel personally hurt by the changes so much so that you have to insult other people to make yourself feel better.

 

You might be able to insult and belittle other people into not posting, but I'm not one of them.

Your best result would be to force me to put you on ignore, but won't stop me from responding to other people.

[KaizenSoze]

I am one of those people who asked for the high end general content to be made harder. So, blame me. 😛

 

I have been on level 50 radio or mission teams, where I could not fire more than 2-3 attacks off. Before the spawn was gone. That isn't a challenge, that's boring. My defenders got shelved, because they were useless on most 50 teams. Same for controllers. Now, they are getting dusted off.

 

Most of my main chars run at 4x8, now it's actually a fight in PI. My Bane due lack of DDR, cannot solo CoT at 4x8 anymore, lowered to 4x6. I am fine with that.

 

 

[Cheli]

46 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

 

There are plenty of players that have.

As I said, those players now have what they were asking for.

 

 

Enough that they made the hard mode taskforces

 

 

The 1337 always want something more difficult to make sure that they are the 1337.

 

 

I don't bother about hunting down their threads. I have run into them and mention of them enough times.

I know it's a 1337 thing and it doesn't interest me.

The group of players that I play with a couple days a week periodically crack on the players that say that the game isn't difficult enough.

 

 

lol

Of course, try to make it personal because you are having issues adapting to the content changes.

 

First off, you can't fight 6 zillion guys "one-on-one" unless they fight you one at a time - which has never been a thing - unless you have really been taking your time and extremely good at pulling enemies away one at a time without aggroing any other opponents.

 

Why does what need to be change now?

Being able to steamroll +4/8 with no effort?

Being able to pick enemies that are known to be weaker and less challenging simply so you can do that?

All the DEVs are trying to do is to make sure that there is no significantly underpowered end-game enemies that can be easily farmed or are always the go-to because they are easily defeated. 

 

How often did you see the calls for PI Council Radio missions?

 

And, no need for personal attacks, it has nothing to do with what I want.

If you have anyone to blame, it is the part of the player base that was always going on about the game not being difficult enough.

 

 

And more personal attacks to use to justify your position.

 

I'm sorry you feel personally hurt by the changes so much so that you have to insult other people to make yourself feel better.

 

You might be able to insult and belittle other people into not posting, but I'm not one of them.

Your best result would be to force me to put you on ignore, but won't stop me from responding to other people.

 

The change has 0 impact on how I play the game; I don't do PI radios except occasionally to stress-test a freshly IO'd 50, and I mentioned multiple times in my post I've had no problems with them, even on characters using fairly meh powersets. The projection here about "insults" is strong; from your first post and this followup it seems you're really jonesing to throw out snide and condescending replies to people fairly innocently discussing the state of the game, even if it requires you to build strawmen. Like you did in this very post, by shifting from "well some people somewhere complained but I'm not going to dig their threads up" to accusing me of being one of them, even after I explicitly said it didn't effect me (going so far as to cut out the part of the post where I said I wasn't even opposed to the change if it's done for logically sound reasons), so you can get your digs in.

 

Reading is your friend.

[UltraAlt]

1 hour ago, Cheli said:

The change has 0 impact on how I play the game

 

If that is the fact, I have no idea why you are continuing to discuss this.

 

1 hour ago, Cheli said:

The projection here about "insults" is strong; from your first post and this followup it seems you're really jonesing to throw out snide and condescending replies

 

And your point here being that you aren't intentionally trying to make personal attacks?

 

Your claim that you aren't making personal attacks is ...

 

1 hour ago, Cheli said:

strawmen

 

So. I'm done.

I'll make it easy for you and put you on ignore so you don't have to feel like the bad guy.

Edited March 5 by UltraAlt

[skoryy]

On 3/4/2024 at 9:15 AM, Sunsette said:

When I look at the missions that HC added to Cimerora, too, I feel like they're leaning too much on making way too frequent random HP sponges that lack tactical counterplay to slow things down.

 

Shaking up the S/L defense meta and making fights more tactical?  Cool, I can dig that.  My Rad Armor tank can finally flex at the Invulnerables!

 

Spawning massive bags of HP that can barely touch me?  That's just wasting my time face-rolling my rotation until the bad doggo goes plop. There's little strategy involved, he's going to spawn regardless, and almost every spawn as well.  That's really not all that fun.