High level enemy group revamps

[Eiko-chan]

5 hours ago, Shin Magmus said:

this is like 4 months too late to bring it up

This is not an answer or acceptable. Do you intend to say that people that have been in the hospital for 6 months aren't allowed to comment on changes? Are you intending to say that people deployed overseas, or any of a plethora of reasons why someone might be away from the game for long periods are incapable of commenting on changes?

[PeregrineFalcon]

20 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

This is not an answer or acceptable.

I agree, and I apologize if my earlier posts sounded like I was saying that you're not allowed to comment about this, or any other, subject. I should have worded my posts better.

[Glacier Peak]

43 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

This is not an answer or acceptable. Do you intend to say that people that have been in the hospital for 6 months aren't allowed to comment on changes? Are you intending to say that people deployed overseas, or any of a plethora of reasons why someone might be away from the game for long periods are incapable of commenting on changes?

This is literally the place on the Homecoming forums to bring it up - and there is no time limit on player feedback. We can discuss our agreements or disagreements on a particular suggestion or feedback, but unless a GM or member of the Homecoming team says otherwise, players can post those suggestions and feedback here regardless of when a change was made.

 

 

Edit: I will add though, based on my anecdotal experience, that feedback provided during closed and open beta is more likely to result in changes. If a player wishes to invest their own time for the benefit of this community, that would be where they would see the biggest impact (short of becoming a developer themselves).

Edited May 15 by Glacier Peak

[SeraphimKensai]

I fully recommend joining the Gold Standard Testers group, and test stuff the devs are actively working on. Then you can help test proposed changes and actually have discourse with the Dev team.

 

If there's a proposed change that you don't agree with you can voice that feedback, but I recommend having some detailed explanation why the proposed change is bad.

 

At the end of the day the HC team are players that are passionate about the game just as everyone else is.

[Bionic_Flea]

5 hours ago, Eiko-chan said:

This is not an answer or acceptable. Do you intend to say that people that have been in the hospital for 6 months aren't allowed to comment on changes? Are you intending to say that people deployed overseas, or any of a plethora of reasons why someone might be away from the game for long periods are incapable of commenting on changes?

 

There is absolutely no issue with you raising problems in the forums at any time.  Even if the Devs do not make changes to nuCouncil (I like that name), they might take note of your concerns when making future changes.

 

I have also done beta testing over the years both here and even live.  I have had some of my concerns directly addressed leading to modifications and sometimes my concerns are noted but they move on with their announced plan anyway.   While you can complain anytime about anything, the further out you are from implementation, the less likely you are to influence change.  And that makes sense.  It takes dozens if not hundreds of hours to learn this game's code and then dozens if not hundreds of hours to add changes.  And even more time to calibrate and fix any bugs.  So you might understand if by the time it gets to the live servers the dev or devs that created that new content think of it as their newborn baby.  But even at that, they sometimes do make changes after going live.  It doesn't happen often, nor is it easy.  But it does happen if you provide evidence of a problem.

 

I can also attest that beta testers play a variety of characters at multiple levels.  I will make something new, play it from 1 to 10 or so, and then play a mission and bump up a level or two so that it doesn't take forever.  I can also attest that America's Angel, who posted on the last page of this thread, specifically posted feedback on the difficultly of the new Council and CoT on MMs in particular during beta testing.  I don't recall if any changes were made based on that feedback.  But it was given.

 

Finally, I renew my suggestion made upthread that may have been buried in the comments:  I think you may want to consider team inspirations, specifically defense and break frees, to help you take out those Nazis!

Edited May 15 by Bionic_Flea

[Eiko-chan]

12 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I think you may want to consider team inspirations, specifically defense and break frees, to help you take out those Nazis!

I did actually enable team inspirations after your post. Thank you. 🙂

[Shin Magmus]

3 hours ago, Eiko-chan said:

This is not an answer or acceptable.

     K.  Well just so you know, the frequency of changes based on player feedback during open Beta periods and leading up to patch releases, is about 100x greater than the frequency of changes based on player feedback at any other time.  I'm sorry that you personally were very late to the party, but I'm just letting you know to temper your expectations and expect literally nothing to be done to the Council in the future.  I'd be shocked if they rolled back or nerfed any of the stuff they did to Council or CoT after sitting on the changes for this long.

Edited May 15 by Shin Magmus

[Doc_Scorpion]

37 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

  I can also attest that America's Angel, who posted on the last page of this thread, specifically posted feedback on the difficultly of the new Council and CoT on MMs in particular during beta testing.  I don't recall if any changes were made based on that feedback.

I think I was on several of her runs against the nuCouncil, sidekicked up on at least one to better simulate a typical PI PUG.  Yes, changes were made (IIRC notably toning down the AOE when a nuCouncil bites it).  Not as far as we wanted, but so it goes.

[Bionic_Flea]

1 hour ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

I think I was on several of her runs against the nuCouncil, sidekicked up on at least one to better simulate a typical PI PUG.  Yes, changes were made (IIRC notably toning down the AOE when a nuCouncil bites it).  Not as far as we wanted, but so it goes.

 

Now that you mention it, I think FREEEM KB was also toned down based on feedback from her and others.

[lemming]

10 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Now that you mention it, I think FREEEM KB was also toned down based on feedback from her and others.

It was.  I forget what the mag was prior, but I want to say it was unresistable.

[Eiko-chan]

Anecdotally, my (now) level 41 Strong/Pretty War Mace/Energy Aura Brute is having no problem with nuCouncil, despite me not having gotten the slots into Power Shield to shore up her Dark Energy defence hole. So these changes don't really seem to be having a huge effect on high-defence builds at all.

[golstat2003]

12 hours ago, Shin Magmus said:

     Thank you.  The amount of comments on this thread that are *just* OP making incorrect assumptions about beta testers, and people correcting them, are too high.  Listen... OP... Eiko, if you really have such a huge issue with Council and CoT now: this is like 4 months too late to bring it up.  Everyone had the same opportunity to spend a little bit of their time testing things on Beta and providing feedback about it.

 

     Sometimes, the feedback does result in positive changes that make it into the game before stuff goes live.  Other times, you get Beanbagged.  That's not important though, what's important is the effort itself.  I respect the concept of putting forth effort.  If the game changed in a way that bothers you this much: put forth more effort next time to get involved in beta testing and at least try to voice your concerns when changes are still likely.  For all the futility of the struggle, I did see a couple positive changes made to Arse Control between Open Beta Ver1 and what we have now on live: so it's not hopeless.

 

Yep, I should also point out that there were some updates to Council that never saw the light of day out of beta because some players pointed them out.

 

EDIT: Amazingly I posted the above before reading any of the stuff others posted earlier lol Glad other folks have a better memory from

beta testing than me. 😁

Edited May 16 by golstat2003

[Shin Magmus]

5 hours ago, lemming said:

It was.  I forget what the mag was prior, but I want to say it was unresistable.

     I homestly don't even know why someone on the dev team thought that a common enemy group being unique to have RANDOM unresistable KB would be fun for anyone.  Here's a list of unresistable KB off the top of my head: special AV attacks on a few Trials/TFs (Admiral Sutter etc.), the defeat explosion of The Crimson Prototype, and ???Every Single NuCouncil Boss???  That was a genuinely baffling idea. 

[tidge]

FREEM! knockback can be protected against, IIRC it is magnitude 20.

 

My melee types have been targeting 14 points of KB protection via build/power choices, a +10 point KB protection from a SG base buff (90 minutes duration) seems to nullify FREEM!

 

I'm ok with the FREEM! addition, as magnitude 12+ KB is a rather rare type of enemy control, typical seen only on unique individual critters.

 

If we need a head-canon reason for it, let's just pretend that it is where all the knockback from slotted KB->KD enhancements go.

[KaizenSoze]

6 hours ago, tidge said:

FREEM! knockback can be protected against, IIRC it is magnitude 20.

 

My melee types have been targeting 14 points of KB protection via build/power choices, a +10 point KB protection from a SG base buff (90 minutes duration) seems to nullify FREEM!

 

I'm ok with the FREEM! addition, as magnitude 12+ KB is a rather rare type of enemy control, typical seen only on unique individual critters.

 

If we need a head-canon reason for it, let's just pretend that it is where all the knockback from slotted KB->KD enhancements go.

FREEM! checks against KB resistance first I believe, which only some armor sets provide. Then it checks KB mag protection.

 

Which is why my Widows never get FREEM! even though they only have mag 10 KB protection.

 

None of the KB protection IOs provide any resistance as far as I know.

Edited May 16 by KaizenSoze

[KaizenSoze]

On 5/15/2024 at 5:49 PM, Shin Magmus said:

     K.  Well just so you know, the frequency of changes based on player feedback during open Beta periods and leading up to patch releases, is about 100x greater than the frequency of changes based on player feedback at any other time.  I'm sorry that you personally were very late to the party, but I'm just letting you know to temper your expectations and expect literally nothing to be done to the Council in the future.  I'd be shocked if they rolled back or nerfed any of the stuff they did to Council or CoT after sitting on the changes for this long.

 When folks say Council and CoT are too hard now. Oh sweet summer child. You should have seen the first couple of iterations.

 

CoT could spawn 4 mages in a single group. And usually they were all different types. Earthquake, Tar Patch, healing, mezes, and four different damage typed nukes.

 

I got two shotted on my fully built Bane at 1x8 due to rapid recharging Bane and Night Widow LTs placate/crit hit powers

 

As Shin says, the devs do listen.

[Warboss]

On 5/16/2024 at 4:23 PM, KaizenSoze said:

As Shin says, the devs do listen

 

Not based off the feedback I just received. It seemed tone deaf and displayed a lack of understanding of game mechanics. I think we're stuck with the changes. I don't like them as they seem to impact Resistance based sets more than the Defense based ones.

 

I'd like to add that not every enemy group needs to be "A" tiered (or above). Having enemy difficulty diversity allows for players to advance in the game at their own speed. Upping difficulty of all the enemy groups limits the enjoyment of people casually playing, or just getting into the game. Also "more debuffing" is a pretty bad way to "balance" a game. From what I can tell, the only way to make your voice/option heard is "vote" with your donations...

[Laucianna]

9 hours ago, Warboss said:

 

Not based off the feedback I just received. It seemed tone deaf and displayed a lack of understanding of game mechanics. I think we're stuck with the changes. I don't like them as they seem to impact Resistance based sets more than the Defense based ones.

 

I'd like to add that not every enemy group needs to be "A" tiered (or above). Having enemy difficulty diversity allows for players to advance in the game at their own speed. Upping difficulty of all the enemy groups limits the enjoyment of people casually playing, or just getting into the game. Also "more debuffing" is a pretty bad way to "balance" a game. From what I can tell, the only way to make your voice/option heard is "vote" with your donations...

As mentioned multiple times in the thread, you can lower the difficulty down so you are fighting at the level suited for you and your current character, if your settings are any more then +0/x1 then you have actively chosen to make the game harder, not the devs or anyone else ❤️

Also the whole "vote with your donations" thing is utter nonsense, anyone can join the beta and voice their opinion, there are no paywalls in any part of Homecoming.

[Glacier Peak]

13 hours ago, Warboss said:

From what I can tell, the only way to make your voice/option heard is "vote" with your donations...

That's a terrible thing to imply without any evidence. Can you share how you came to this conclusion - particularly without being a member of the Homecoming Team?

[Shin Magmus]

Who am I?

[Shin Magmus]

Y'know... when I make a personal attack against another poster: I'm subject to immediate retaliation.  Ghost, PeregrineFalcon... an escalating series of personal attacks against each other does literally nothing but summon @GM_GooglyMoogly to delete your comments and tell everyone to "Be Excellent To Eachother".  I've used pattern recognition over the past few months and learned a few things.  You guys have fun.

[PeregrineFalcon]

1 minute ago, Shin Magmus said:

Y'know... when I make a personal attack against another poster: I'm subject to immediate retaliation.

You and me both, and I have the Warning Points to prove it. It sure is a good thing that I've been careful to not make any personal attacks.

 

But hey, you feel free to report my posts. It's ok. I'm used to it.

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

What the heck is going on?

 

Oh.  I see now.

 

Quote

an escalating series of personal attacks against each other does literally nothing but summon @GM_GooglyMoogly to delete your comments and tell everyone to "Be Excellent To Each Other"

 

You know me so well.  B.E.T.E.O.

Edited May 22 by GM_GooglyMoogly

[ZacKing]

16 hours ago, Warboss said:

I'd like to add that not every enemy group needs to be "A" tiered (or above). Having enemy difficulty diversity allows for players to advance in the game at their own speed. Upping difficulty of all the enemy groups limits the enjoyment of people casually playing, or just getting into the game. Also "more debuffing" is a pretty bad way to "balance" a game.

 

I very much agree with this, especially the first sentence.  The direction of content being driven by a very select few seems to be inching more and more toward the WoW model where every team is a must-have tank/heal/support/damage teams to do anything.  Not every player is following the latest meta to build purple IOed out to the gills characters with every last drop of resist/defense/DPS squeezed out of it.  I can confidently say this because I team with a lot of random folks on PUGs and can see the lack of set bonuses on their characters. 

 

I'll also echo the sentiment that feedback is taken into consideration, but it does seem very, very, very heavily slanted toward feedback that's praising changes.  More often than not, feedback that runs counter are shouted down and/or hidden from view.  It's HC's server so they can do whatever they want, just providing an honest opinion on that. 

[Shin Magmus]

I believe the topic was supposed to be something along the lines of how enemy groups getting revamped was handled?  Are they too hard now, when and how does OP give feedback on how they dislike NuCouncil and such?  I think the feedback is historically most likely to cause changes during the Closed/Open Beta test periods.  I think that's a good thing to talk about.