Can someone explain Enhancement Diversification to me here?

[TheMoneyMaker]

1 hour ago, El D said:

 

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).

 

See, that's the problem. It was always his sandbox, but we got hooked on the fun but he kept talking about how it wasn't fun to be super. One of the main points of contention I had with his arguments was an anecdote about sitting on a plane with a handheld electronic game that was frustrating him, leading him to the "brilliant" realization that dying = fun, and then he started really leaning into the formula of 1 hero = 3 minions, etc.

 

Challenge is fun. Being OP and wading through an army is fun. Face-planting? Not fun. He was wrong and kept pushing it until he decided to leave, and after ED dropped I didn't return until after he left to do his Marvel/Champions project....and I was grateful to see him go. Not just glad for new creative vision; specifically grateful that he was gone completely. If he stepped down as lead but continued to work on the game in another capacity, I probably would have stayed away because I do very much have a resentment for him. That's why I never went near Champions. Well, I looked at it, but only to see how awful he would make that so I could laugh.

[TheMoneyMaker]

Players were having fun. Jack just didn't like how we were having fun and decided that he knew better. I don't know if it was malicious or ignorance, but I'm just glad he left.

[Maelwys]

4 hours ago, tidge said:

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...

 

That's the thing though... we have plenty of high HP characters running around now with bigger numbers across the board than those old pre ED Regen Scrappers ever had.

 

I ballparked oldskool Regen capping out at about ~167 HP/Sec (with accolades and Perma Dull Pain and IH + Integration + Fast Healing all 6-slotted with Heal SOs). Nowadays the same powerset on the same AT can easily reach the same health regeneration numbers whilst IH is running (so about a 50% uptime) plus things like Panacea Procs and Defense / Damage Resistance set bonuses; and a much better panic button in "new" Moment of Glory. And that's not even considering things like Rune of Protection and Barrier/Rebirth Destiny and Melee Core Hybrid.

However Regen as a set has been utterly left in the dust defensively by things like Bio Armor (which beats it even in terms of Health regeneration) and almost any build these days will have sufficient endurance recovery to spam their attacks repeatedly so Regen has lost most of its old niches despite it still being roughly equivalent in performance to pre ED.

 

And offensively it's not even close. The best a Regen Scrapper used to be able to achieve was about ~3.0x base damage (with their attacks 6 slotted for damage) with Focused Accuracy and Quick Recovery and 6-slotted Hasten to keep them hitting and ticking. Nowadays Scrappers will be sitting at ~2.3x base damage (attacks at ED capped damage aspect plus Musculature Core) plus ATOs and Damage Procs and -Res Procs and Reactive Interface and Assault Hybrid and oodles of non-Hasten-reliant global recharge.

 

I honestly think it's a case of Rose Tinted lenses combined with new enemy groups and higher difficulty sliders. ((And that's before Challenges and Hard mode and "cheating" mobs that deal oodles of -Regen or -MaxHP like the infamous Crimson Prototype in Market Crash!)). Remember that before ED hit the toughest things we were fighting were stuff like Freakshow, Redside didn't exist yet and AVs/GMs still didn't regenerate a notable amount of health.

 

Edited Sunday at 08:25 PM by Maelwys

[srmalloy]

On 3/30/2025 at 11:15 AM, TheMoneyMaker said:

One of the main points of contention I had with his arguments was an anecdote about sitting on a plane with a handheld electronic game that was frustrating him, leading him to the "brilliant" realization that dying = fun, and then he started really leaning into the formula of 1 hero = 3 minions, etc.

As I recall, he specifically commented about how, to him, 'fun' was throwing yourself at the end boss again and again, dying over and over, until you found the one technique (I don't want to use 'trick', because I loathe the clickbait "this one trick" videos on YouTube) that lets you beat them. And his commentary shows that he was clueless about how the Internet worked, not understanding that, within a very short time after someone beat the boss, how to do it would be plastered across a half-dozen or more websites for anyone to find out, meaning that at most only issues of timing things to happen at the right moment need to be worked out. It is a challenge to work out the solution up until the first person does it, then it's just following the recipe. This is why so many end bosses in MMOs and FPSes are mostly just sacks of hit points; it's hard to design a boss fight that doesn't boil down to following a picky script (or, even harder, isn't the same on subsequent runs, and even then there is a limit to how many different ways you can build into the game), and it's much easier to just cram in a ton of HP.

[FFTMime]

Remember, that's the same man who faked evidence via faked replay to justify nerfs. 

[JasperStone]

 

oops... wrong ED