Can someone explain Enhancement Diversification to me here?

[Black Gryphon]

See title.

[Maelwys]

40 minutes ago, Black Gryphon said:

See title.

 

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Enhancement_Diversification

 

((and after you're done pursuing the above, just use Mids and stop slotting more of X whenever you see the numbers start to turn red!))

 

 

Edited Saturday at 08:16 AM by Maelwys

[Snarky]

ED is serious.  Here is a PSA that can help.

 

[TheMoneyMaker]

The long story:

 

Back in the day people would 6-slot powers for damage, and they ruled like gods. The developers then decided that they needed a way to make people weaker, so the made it so that you could only gain the full benefit from slotting 3 of the same type of enhancement into a power, and anything beyond the third would get increasingly diminished returns. hence diversification, as you would need to diversify the types of enhancements in your powers.

 

And to make us feel better about lost power, they gave us the invention enhancement system, a new kind of enhancement that you wouldn't out-level and if you got 2 or more from the same set in a power then you would gain set bonuses to your damage, defense, regeneration, recovery, resistance, healing, to hit, etc. Those bonuses are small, however, and you need to get a lot of them to really make a difference.

 

ED took away a lot of the awesome feeling of being super powered and made the game into a more balanced vigilante force of differently abled heroes rather than superheroes.

[Jiro Ito]

Here's a quick visual example from Mids, of a Corrupter's Whirpool 6-slotted with Artillery.  The Damage bonus is 95.11%, which is reduced by ED from what it actually would be, 100.7%.  The more you overdrive an aspect, the more severe the reduction.  3% of my damage enhancement and 6% of my recharge enhancement are wasted by slotting this way.  Why do it then?  Because in this case I am stacking Ranged Defense bonuses provided by 6-slotting the Artillery set.

 

[FFTMime]

I wheeze uncontrollably as I play a controller around the time ED came out. I begin laughing. And wheezing. At the same time. I look at the scrappers and begin crying while laughing. I look at my own MA Regen scrapper nerfed three times in huge updates in less than a year.

The world burns with me. 

[Snarky]

12 minutes ago, FFTMime said:

I wheeze uncontrollably as I play a controller around the time ED came out. I begin laughing. And wheezing. At the same time. I look at the scrappers and begin crying while laughing. I look at my own MA Regen scrapper nerfed three times in huge updates in less than a year.

The world burns with me. 

Brutes feel your pain. And the Devs chortle and guffaw, looking for any excuse to nerf them again.  And buff Tanks, naturally.

[Jiro Ito]

29 minutes ago, TheMoneyMaker said:

a more balanced vigilante force of differently abled heroes 

 

lol "differently abled heroes" what a great line

 

It's amazing the reaction we still have to large-scale nerfs like ED and SWG's CU and NGE...it speaks to how people feel about the time they invest into a game, only to see it discarded for the sake of balance.  Maybe there's a lesson future-gamemakers can take away from that.

[Biff Pow]

When you enhance a category (Accuracy, Damage, End Reduction, etc.) over 70%, the value will start to drop. It goes off a cliff after 90%, making added enhancement almost worthless.

 

Certain categories (Defense, Resistance, Range) are lower enhancement rates, so the drop off starts at 40%, the cliff is around 55%.

[FFTMime]

27 minutes ago, Snarky said:

Brutes feel your pain. And the Devs chortle and guffaw, looking for any excuse to nerf them again.  And buff Tanks, naturally.

It's just, moments like this make me wonder why I worry about damage at all. The things I've done. The things I've seen. The controller main precontainment. The punished MA/Scrapper main who solo'd thanks to air superiority. It makes me want to laugh. Then cry cause I have consistent and strong proof that I have really shitty taste. 

[Black Gryphon]

Thanks to all who've responded. It's a lot clearer now.

 

[TheMoneyMaker]

Notethat there is a slight exception to the diminishing returns issue once you achieve Incarnate status and unlock your Alpha slot. Your choice of Alpha basically grants you a bonus to one (or more, depending on what tier you've earned) effects in all powers that it would apply to as if you had a bonus slot in all of them, and at higher levels you can retain half or even 2/3rds of the bonus in without ED limitations. So if you take damage, you can get up to a 45% damage boost, and at tier 4, 30% of that is unaffected by Enhancement Diversification.

[JJDrakken]

E.D. was needed for the longevity & health of the game.

 

You get folks pining, bitching, and looking at everything before E.D. with rose tinted glasses coated in shit.  Bemoaning about the before times.  But overall, it extended the game. Improved it's overall health and did bring in more folks.

 

After it, they brought in Recipes, put in the Rules of 3 & 5 for said recipes. (Not counting Unique). Then several have Global effects.(Meaning they just need to be in a power somewhere you get the buff no matter if it's on or not).

 

Overall.  Just mechanical changes.

[OmegaOne]

Agreed - Enhancement Diversification was a much-needed change to the game. The main issue with it is that the balancing factor (enhancement sets and other adjustments) came later instead of simultaneously.

[biostem]

17 hours ago, Black Gryphon said:

See title.

This link also gives a good breakdown.  To put it as simply as possible, (and using rough numbers here), but once you get to where you can slot Single-Origin Enhancements, (SOs), you get full benefit from the 1st two of the same type, slightly less value for the 3rd of that same type you slot in the same power, and much less from any after that, (again, of the same type and in the same power).  It's gets a little more complicated once you are talking about Invention-Origin enhancements, (IOs), but if you look at the value should you try to slot the 3rd+ of an enhancement, note the % benefit listed, (before placing said enhancement), and compare it to what's listed on the enhancement itself...

[TheMoneyMaker]

2 hours ago, OmegaOne said:

The main issue with it is that the balancing factor (enhancement sets and other adjustments) came later instead of simultaneously.

Yeah that definitely sucked hard

[tidge]

I feel that it was once CoH 'unlocked' levels 41 through 50 that the pre-ED effects of many-slotting of (Single-Origins, cuz that was the best we had) on game balance became painfully obvious. It was not just four more powers (in an era when the Fitness pool was not inherent and travel powers had to be unlocked) but all those extra slots(*1).

 

I 100% agree with @JJDrakken that there are some serious rose-tinted perspectives on the pre-ED days. I won't deny anyone's good feels they got from ambitious slotting of certain powers, but like a lot of the early game this was IMO one of those elements that wasn't originally well-considered. I know it took a little while for the players to have characters that crept back towards (corner cases of) pre-ED performance, but long before Live's sunset we had that capability... and with HC making it straightforward for everyone to achieve just about whatever they want from the Invention system... there is no IMO reason to feel nostalgic specifically for pre-ED slotting(*2).

 

(*1) I find it hard to describe just how much the extra slots and power picks from Issue 1 meant for *my* characters. I suddenly became less bothered about fitting Hurdle/Swift, Health, Stamina, 2 powers from a travel pool, and Hasten for quality of life... or investing slots in those to improve their performance, since I knew I'd get all those extra slots at higher levels. The Invention system (with globals and set bonuses) and the inherent Fitness pool IMO assuaged at least 95% of whatever grief folks should feel about "Enhancement Diversification".

 

(*2) Unless of course, a player's "Regen" character was affected... but bluntly: I think the pre-ED ability to slot the Regeneration set is almost entirely the reason that set became an eternal target for the nerf bat.

[High_Beam]

I don't look back at the ED implementation on live with any degree of anything, good bad or neutral as it simply didn't affect me or my game play.  I played Blasters almost exclusively with the exception of 1 of each hero AT and two Villain ATs.  30 Blasters and I had just as much fun, played just as fast as before, felt just as super.  Maybe I was lucky, maybe my expectations were different.  I certainly was no min-maxer or pvper so it just didn't matter.  And when the Invention system came in, only 1 character had any of the Sets and that was just a few.  It just didn't impact MY play.

 

That said, Homecoming has done a great job of opening up options for more power, now all of my toons are kitted out with Set IOs giving me the opportunity to play with variables, take or not take powers,  Yet I sell all purples, because being teh ubar was never my game play goal, fun was and sweating the load over a percentage or 2 isn't fun.

 

I had friends though, they were pissed.  I also had one SG mate who I enjoyed listening to spin out of control in anger over it (we were not pals) . . . sometimes you wanna watch the world burn 🙂

[Captain Valiant]

I will admit that I was a bit disappointed when ED was introduced, and the subsequent invention system added, as it made the comfortable game I enjoyed unduly complicated and, consequently, less entertaining for me.
Do I understand that it was done to nerf the powers of players so that progression would be slower and, therefore, NCSoft was able to draw more income from renewed subscriptions without having to pay Cryptic for actual new content? Of course.
Do I use it? Not unless it fits with the character's theme; so, no, not very often.
Are my alts among the most powerful in the game? Usually only when posing for a group selfie.

Do I love City of Heroes? You Betchya!

[Captain Fabulous]

23 hours ago, TheMoneyMaker said:

The long story:

 

Back in the day people would 6-slot powers for damage, and they ruled like gods. The developers then decided that they needed a way to make people weaker, so the made it so that you could only gain the full benefit from slotting 3 of the same type of enhancement into a power, and anything beyond the third would get increasingly diminished returns. hence diversification, as you would need to diversify the types of enhancements in your powers.

 

And to make us feel better about lost power, they gave us the invention enhancement system, a new kind of enhancement that you wouldn't out-level and if you got 2 or more from the same set in a power then you would gain set bonuses to your damage, defense, regeneration, recovery, resistance, healing, to hit, etc. Those bonuses are small, however, and you need to get a lot of them to really make a difference.

 

ED took away a lot of the awesome feeling of being super powered and made the game into a more balanced vigilante force of differently abled heroes rather than superheroes.

Exactly this. And it wasn't "the developers", it was one single lone developer.
 

 

22 hours ago, Jiro Ito said:

lol "differently abled heroes" what a great line

 

It's amazing the reaction we still have to large-scale nerfs like ED and SWG's CU and NGE...it speaks to how people feel about the time they invest into a game, only to see it discarded for the sake of balance.  Maybe there's a lesson future-gamemakers can take away from that.

ED and the slew of nerfs that quickly followed weren't for balance. They were to soothe one man's ego.

 

19 hours ago, JJDrakken said:

E.D. was needed for the longevity & health of the game.

 

You get folks pining, bitching, and looking at everything before E.D. with rose tinted glasses coated in shit.  Bemoaning about the before times.  But overall, it extended the game. Improved it's overall health and did bring in more folks.

 

After it, they brought in Recipes, put in the Rules of 3 & 5 for said recipes. (Not counting Unique). Then several have Global effects.(Meaning they just need to be in a power somewhere you get the buff no matter if it's on or not).

 

Overall.  Just mechanical changes.

Respectfully, this is <redacted>. ED did none of these things. The only purpose of ED (and the GDN, travel suppression, target caps, etc etc etc etc etc) was to enforce Jack's ass-backward obsession that we play his game in accordance with his Vision™️ (1 hero = 3 minions) and it infuriated him that people were able to solo AVs and herd entire maps. The mass exodus from the game at the time made it clear players were NOT happy, and it's no secret Jack's slew of narcissistic nerfs nearly killed the game. IOs were added as way to stem the hemorrhaging after CoV failed to bring players back long-term, and after Jack moved on to Marvel/Champions. AE came shortly after that, again, as a desperate attempt to keep players that came back. All this is evidenced by just how clunky and unpolished both systems were (and don't get me started on Incarnates).

And before anyone chimes in with "but ED was necessary for IOs and Incarnates to exist", I again say <redacted>. Getting some kind of crafting system was inevitable, as was some kind of post-level 50 achievements, as both serve to keep players grinding away month after month. Neither system has anything to do with ED. And I will go so far as to say without ED, the invention system and AE likely would have been far more streamlined and polished than what we inevitably got, because it wouldn't have been a mad rush to shoehorn them into a dying game.

[Glacier Peak]

Procs ain't got nothing on 6-slotting damage back in the day! BIG NUMBERS BABY!!

[Maelwys]

2 hours ago, tidge said:

(*2) Unless of course, a player's "Regen" character was affected... but bluntly: I think the pre-ED ability to slot the Regeneration set is almost entirely the reason that set became an eternal target for the nerf bat.

 

Last I ran the numbers the survivability performance ceiling of a pre-ED Regen was roughly equivalent to what they can achieve these days when IOed up even without Incarnates. The rest of the game has simply experienced so much power creep that it feels worse...

[Erratic1]

On 3/29/2025 at 10:17 AM, TheMoneyMaker said:

Back in the day people would 6-slot powers for damage, and they ruled like gods.

 

Did they hit anything, or were they confining themselves to even con opponents?

 

Some sort of recollection on the need of the developers to nerf player overperformance demonstrated by showing a developer taking on a +5 foe and defeating it being followed up by people asking how the developer so reliably hit the +5 target and the need then by the developers to backtrack comes to mind as occurring before ED, as well as there being a movement amongst some of the players complaining about how everyone slots in the same manner.

 

And while it is fuzzy, I am pretty sure my preferred slotting was more along the lines of 2 Accuracy + 4 Damage. But like I said, its been a long time.

[tidge]

Well-motivated vitriol is one thing, but this is where I think the vitriol is confounding the argument (and the hate!)

 

51 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

And before anyone chimes in with "but ED was necessary for IOs and Incarnates to exist", I again say <redacted>. Getting some kind of crafting system was inevitable, as was some kind of post-level 50 achievements, as both serve to keep players grinding away month after month. Neither system has anything to do with ED. And I will go so far as to say without ED, the invention system and AE likely would have been far more streamlined and polished than what we inevitably got, because it wouldn't have been a mad rush to shoehorn them into a dying game.

 

Anyone who remembers pre-ED should also know that the invention system and the Incarnate system came after ED.

 

"Crafting" was always IMO a weird sort of add-on to CoX, since the nature of the character engine and gameplay was such that "looting" is pretty much one-sided: players can collect loot from defeating enemies, and can only "lose" loot by their own actions. And the original loot was pretty much Enhancement drops (and Inf). "Base Crafting" was IIRC the first attempt at crafting (beyond combining enhancements) and with the brief period of PvP "base combat" this was I think the only way players could actually "lose" something crafted.

 

I mention the "crafting" because despite whatever weirdness was attempted to be bolted onto CoX, landing on craftable enhancements was a pretty good innovation IMO. I'll disclose that I *hated* the craftable enhancement system on Live (but lurv it on HC) because without a fungible approach to ingredients and recipes there was simply too many unique combinations (recipes + ingredients) to be viable for a majority of players.

 

As for Incarnates and grinding... absolutely the Incarnate system was established as a mechanism to keep players 'grinding'. I really did not enjoy the Live days of Incarnates. I remain cold to the Incarnate part of the game even today. Many players love it! Some don't feel "complete" without it... so implementing the Incarnate system clearly was a success (by some measures). The only obvious positive I see from the Incarnate system is that whatever dopamine hits it provides end up have zero affect on the level 1-45 game, as experienced by players.

 

6 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

Last I ran the numbers the survivability performance ceiling of a pre-ED Regen was roughly equivalent to what they can achieve these days when IOed up even without Incarnates. The rest of the game has simply experienced so much power creep that it feels worse...

 

It really should be no mystery that the game's engine can't really provide a scalable challenge to high-HP characters with a ("pre-nerf") Regeneration set... especially if any sort of Resistances are in play, let alone minimizing enemy ToHit chances via "Defense Softcaps" or what not. There would have to be new/updates to enemy groups 35+ to do combinations of -MaxHP, -Regeneration, -Healing in order to provide a challenge... a small amount of this was added in the HC era but not enough (by my judgement) to balance a never-dying-because-always-healing character. Those sorts of targeted debuffs would murder pretty much all ATs!

[El D]

1 hour ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Exactly this. And it wasn't "the developers", it was one single lone developer.

 

Prefacing this that I didn't agree with Jack's approach to on-going design for CoH (or his particular methods of interacting with CoH's playerbase), but categorizing him as 'one single lone developer who forced his personal vision onto the game' is bit of a stretch when his position was 'lead dev for the entire game whose whole job is to execute their vision of what the game should be.' We were always playing Jack's vision of the game because at the time he was the head dev in-charge of development. CoH was his sandbox, for better or worse, and he was within his capacity as the lead dev to modify how it worked (RIP to all the OG regen scrappers and freakshow herding dumpster diving tankers).

 

Also, the Invention System has been around for going on 10+ years now. That's the vast majority of the game's playable lifespan. No IO's ED was a thing for about a year and a half and pre-ED was also about a year and a half. I know gamers love to hold grudges but the majority of the game has been with ED in-place along with wide swathes of better content and character progression. I was around back at launch so I get the formative memories and emotional attachments to what first drew folks into CoH, but I also remember what CoH played like back in 2004. I much preferred 2012 CoH to that and prefer 2025 Homecoming to that, too. IO CoH's game design of 'any decently balanced team is a steamroller on cocaine where everyone can contribute something' is a lot more fun than 'watch the tanker herd the whole map, watch the blaster blow them all up, repeat' (or 'watch tanker use energy transfer, kill the mobs and die themselves, get rezzed, repeat').

Edited Sunday at 04:25 PM by El D