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 March 30 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

[Healix]

[Snarky]

Edited April 3 by Snarky

[Nightseek]

On 3/29/2025 at 11:34 AM, 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. 

And don't forget the devs did this after they explicitly said they were done with major nerfs. I left the game for a year after ED.

[Snarky]

On 3/30/2025 at 11:17 AM, TheMoneyMaker said:

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.

[Major_Decoy]

What was the joke? "They would think of three different solutions to the problem and then implement all three"

[FFTMime]

Sounds right to me. I remember now. How awful. And again, this is the guy who FAKED A RECORDING to pass by a nerf. 

[Zect]

Any discussion involving Jack is obviously going to be very polarized, because of the strong negative feelings some people have against him. However, without ED there would be no IO system. And for all its flaws, the IO system is one of the more unique things that modern Coh has to offer players. Sure, there's a meta, but MMO's where you have this degree of freedom over character design are very rare (I'd say only DDO and maybe EVE come close - lmk if you know of more). I credit the IO system for being responsible for the immensely fun game we all enjoy today.

 

On 3/31/2025 at 8:02 PM, srmalloy said:

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.

 

FFXIV and WoW (and especially the former) have made entire endgames out of this kind of challenge, and both are far more successful, critically and commercially, than Coh ever was. This kind of content is still challenging because even after the solution is known, being able to execute it is not always easy for the average player, since MMO's usually demand elements of situational awareness, some twitch skills, managing the mental stack, or coordination and teamwork, unlike purely intellectual/logical puzzles. (Furthermore, even after discovering one viable solution you can go further and optimize for better ones, which is its own challenge.) You can enjoy playing music, even if you don't have the skills to compose.

 

For players who truly want the challenge of solving the puzzle, nothing stops them from avoiding spoilers. I had a blast solving all the investigation missions in TSW myself and I never allowed the notion that the answer is a google search away to get in the way of fun.

[Doc Spectre]

There is no way in hell I would trade in what we have now to go back to the pre-ED CoH.

[golstat2003]

6 hours ago, Zect said:

Any discussion involving Jack is obviously going to be very polarized, because of the strong negative feelings some people have against him. However, without ED there would be no IO system. And for all its flaws, the IO system is one of the more unique things that modern Coh has to offer players. Sure, there's a meta, but MMO's where you have this degree of freedom over character design are very rare (I'd say only DDO and maybe EVE come close - lmk if you know of more). I credit the IO system for being responsible for the immensely fun game we all enjoy today.

 

 

FFXIV and WoW (and especially the former) have made entire endgames out of this kind of challenge, and both are far more successful, critically and commercially, than Coh ever was. This kind of content is still challenging because even after the solution is known, being able to execute it is not always easy for the average player, since MMO's usually demand elements of situational awareness, some twitch skills, managing the mental stack, or coordination and teamwork, unlike purely intellectual/logical puzzles. (Furthermore, even after discovering one viable solution you can go further and optimize for better ones, which is its own challenge.) You can enjoy playing music, even if you don't have the skills to compose.

 

For players who truly want the challenge of solving the puzzle, nothing stops them from avoiding spoilers. I had a blast solving all the investigation missions in TSW myself and I never allowed the notion that the answer is a google search away to get in the way of fun.

And all this makes me glad we have COH. Where I can take breaks from the mental stack craziness of games like FFXIV and come here and relax.
 

As epic as FF14 can get at times (minus the trash story of the latest expansion) I still much prefer the more open and relaxing nature of COH. So much so that I avoid the trials gear grind of 14 and simply buy my gear after farming the necessary Gil (currency in FF universe), of its auction house equivalent.

 

As to the discussion on Jack and this game, all I’ll say is that his next game (Champions) went free to play eventually and is currently a hollowed out husk in maintenance mode that hasn’t gotten any serious story or expansion content in years. And the first year of its existence was pretty much even more nerf heavy than what was experienced in COH.

 

Take from that history lesson what you will.

I’m glad Positron, War Witch, Backalley Brawler and the rest of the crew who followed Jack, ended up being more interested in making an actually fun game.

[srmalloy]

23 hours ago, Zect said:

Any discussion involving Jack is obviously going to be very polarized, because of the strong negative feelings some people have against him. However, without ED there would be no IO system. And for all its flaws, the IO system is one of the more unique things that modern Coh has to offer players.

I'd have to go back and look up the specific dates, but I seem to remember that ED was put into the game after Paragon Studios was split off from Cryptic, which means that at the time ED was implemented, Jack had already gone off with the rest of the staff remaining in Cryptic for their own work on other games.

[PeregrineFalcon]

47 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

I'd have to go back and look up the specific dates, but I seem to remember that ED was put into the game after Paragon Studios was split off from Cryptic, which means that at the time ED was implemented, Jack had already gone off with the rest of the staff remaining in Cryptic for their own work on other games.

Nope.

 

ED was added with the release of Issue 6, in 2006. Paragon split from Cryptic in 2009. Jack was completely in charge of, and responsible for, ED. I remember some of the arguments where Jack was trying to convince people that ED was a good thing and was overwhelmed with the amount of flamage and negative responses and finally stopped posting on the forums altogether.

[tidge]

JE certainly didn't come across well in light of the ED discussions. I have a narrow list of gripes relating to his leadership/game choices, and ultimately ED is pretty low on my personal list of gripes. If other Dwarven clans want to carve his sins into their Book of Grudges, I can't take that away from them.

 

I'm amazed at just how much fun the game was (and still is) despite having huge amounts of pain early (the potential for crushing debt, the inability to truly FLY until level 14, gasping at the Blue bar, travel between zones, etc.) and the painfully tacked-on things like PVP, AE, and the Incarnate path/system, Shadow Shard, not to mention some later power sets with peculiar balance choices. I'm quite surprised that the IO crafting turned out to be as good as it *is*, but that took the fungible marketplace (including merit purchases) to really hit its full potential IMO.

[PeregrineFalcon]

Ok, so I checked Homecoming Wiki and apparently my memory was wrong. Issue 6 went live on October 27, 2005. I do remember that I started playing in May 2006 with City of Villains and Issue 7 came and after I started playing. I guess maybe I thought Issue 6 came then? I don't know what I was thinking but I was clearly wrong. Feel free to make fun of me for it.

 

Anyway, I read tons of stories on the retail forums about what the game was like prior to Issue 6. Dumpster diving for XP, tanks herding entire maps, etc. Honestly, none of that ever sounded fun to me at all and I'm glad that I missed all of that. That being said, Jack posting fake videos to justify the GDN, and lying to paying customers about it, and lying about ED, and lying when he said "we didn't cut CoH back to a skeleton crew", all of that is completely inexcusable.

 

I still think the game is better with Enhancement Diversification.

[Major_Decoy]

3 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Anyway, I read tons of stories on the retail forums about what the game was like prior to Issue 6. Dumpster diving for XP, tanks herding entire maps, etc. Honestly, none of that ever sounded fun to me at all and I'm glad that I missed all of that. That being said, Jack posting fake videos to justify the GDN, and lying to paying customers about it, and lying about ED, and lying when he said "we didn't cut CoH back to a skeleton crew", all of that is completely inexcusable.

 

I still think the game is better with Enhancement Diversification.

 

The "fake video" incident I recall was a Regeneration Scrapper video to show how, but it was made without the purple patch changes or something like that. It wasn't in defense of the global defense nerf, but one of the targeted regeneration nerfs.

 

Dumpster Diving and herding the entire map was not address by either Enhancement Diversification or the Global Defense nerf, Dumpster diving was kind of addressed by giving Warwolves ranged attacks and later address with the aggro cap, which is what finally did in herding the whole map too.

 

I think the game is better with enhancement diversification, but only in the sense that the invention system only came into being after enhancement diversification. For the time when we had enhancement diversification without the invention system, I think the game suffered.

 

I still think that they should go through and add two to four more enhancements to every set (without increasing the number of set bonuses) so that not every "six slots of Hecatomb" end up with the same bonuses.

[biostem]

13 minutes ago, Major_Decoy said:

The "fake video" incident I recall was a Regeneration Scrapper video to show how, but it was made without the purple patch changes or something like that. It wasn't in defense of the global defense nerf, but one of the targeted regeneration nerfs.

This is my recollection as well;  Fighting like +5's or such without the "purple patch", thereby removing the steep drop-off in player tohit and the dramatic increase in enemy damage, or some-such...

[srmalloy]

34 minutes ago, Major_Decoy said:

The "fake video" incident I recall was a Regeneration Scrapper video to show how, but it was made without the purple patch changes or something like that. It wasn't in defense of the global defense nerf, but one of the targeted regeneration nerfs.

As I remember it, it stemmed from complaints about Regen being grossly OP, finishing fights completely undamaged (a huge misperception, because people were only looking at how the Regen scrapper was at the end of the fight, and not seeing how they would typically drop close to defeat about 25% of the way into the fight, before they could reduce the incoming damage below their regen rate before they ran out of HP -- and when you rapidly heal the same damage over and over and over again, by the time you finish the last opponent, you will be virtually completely healed) and being able to solo +8/x8 content without risk (a much more impressive feat in the days of just SOs). The devs set up a test on their internal test server, and reported that their tests showed that a Claws/Regen Scrapper could, in fact, solo that content with impunity, to the retorts of the forum community alleging shenanigans. I may be misremembering, but based on @PeregrineFalcon correcting me on the relevant dates, I believe this was when we got Jack's understatement of the year, "Concern = small tweak", followed by a radical gutting of the Regen powerset with the subsequent update, and after the devs had to cough up an admission that the server they'd run their test on did not have the 'purple patch' installed, meaning that the Regen scrapper was taking 1/10 the damage they should have and doing 10x the damage, they refused to roll back the changes, claiming they were 'necessary'.

[BlackSpectre]

For the record, I NEVER felt that way when I was on a team with a herding tanker back then. See, my job as a blaster was to take all those gobs of mobs down fast! Although there wasn't an aggro cap, there was no way a tank could stop a group of 90 mobs from attacking and killing the rest of the team.  It took teamwork to make it work, and when it did it was incredibly efficient... and exciting!  As a defender, it was my job to keep everyone safe, and that wasn't easy when 90 mobs are attacking in full aggro. Same for a controller. For scrapers, it was like wailing away in a mosh pit! Freakin exhilarating! Not at all risk free. Frankly, it was this that started me to evolve stronger and stronger toons, no matter what AT I was playing. 

 

If the team made one misstep, teammates would die... and fast!  Herding made it ridiculously dangerous! And when we prevailed, we had bested something BIG! A huge gaggle of berserker mobs!  Timing was extremely important. The team had to wait until all the mobs were focused on the tank or the team would wipe. As it was, after the first attack, mobs would always peal off of the tank and hunt other teammates down.

 

As a herding tank, it was super important to not just stand there and let the mobs pummel you, but rather jump around to intercept mobs about to attack teammates. It was hectic! And fun!

 

That's said, I ran with a team who understood the tactics and the danger involved. I had a great SG filled with expert players. However, Herding on a PUG was often a disaster. Many players were unfamiliar with the tactic. So many PUG players were overwhelmed by the huge group of mobs. The mob's onslaught was brutal and fast! These PUG players hadn't built their toons to survive a situation where 30 mobs could turn and rush them. Many PUG teammates died instantly. Some quickly learned how to make the situation work, while others quit, thinking that what the tank was asking of them was crazy! "No one could survive that!" they'd say and quit the team pissed.  

 

Now my SG might have been a little odd. We liked to pull the entire mission map at once. Get a TON of mobs in the mosh pit! We didn't mind waiting around for the tank to do it because the coming battle was going to be a doozy! Freakin awesome! The special effects flying everywhere alone was awesome! It took many small battles, and made them EPIC!

 

But not everyone did as we did. Some saw how much easier it was to keep a team safe by herding, and although they didn't herd the entire map like we did, they still used the technique for small groups. Let the tank herd. Let the tank take the alpha attack. And here I can see where some would get bored. I know I would. With a small group of mobs the tank was able to keep all of them on him without fail.  The payoff was the EPICness of the coming battle, but if it was never epic, then yeah. I can see that. 

 

Still, I'm sad they took away the ability for us to turn many small battles into one epic one when the aggro cap was implemented. But whatcha going to do? COH is still a good game, and everyone once in a while a battle does still become epic.  Just saying, it wasn't bad for everyone, and indeed wasn't all bad.

 

[TheMoneyMaker]

48 minutes ago, BlackSpectre said:

Still, I'm sad they took away the ability for us to turn many small battles into one epic one when the aggro cap was implemented. But whatcha going to do? COH is still a good game, and everyone once in a while a battle does still become epic.  Just saying, it wasn't bad for everyone, and indeed wasn't all bad.

 

Fortunately, we do still have some epic stuff with things like the player run Saturday Night Synapse event with a dozen or more giant monster babbages herded together and taken down, though it is a league (or two) effort, and takes way more time standing around and watching as the gms are herded to the chosen battle site.

[tidge]

9 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Anyway, I read tons of stories on the retail forums about what the game was like prior to Issue 6. Dumpster diving for XP, tanks herding entire maps, etc. Honestly, none of that ever sounded fun to me at all and I'm glad that I missed all of that.

 

"Dumpster Diving for XP" *was* a peculiar (IMO) choice, but it was essentially the same idea as "Asteroid AE Farm". It didn't become a thing until Peregrine Island was available and it required things like "bridge" characters to spread the XP around.  It was MOSTLY for power-leveling, as the only thing to spend Inf on were store-bought SOs.

 

The "fire farming" of those early days was due to the AI of enemies like DE Swarms, which would glom onto fire tankers and yield easy XP, starting at Talos Island.

 

I missed the lack of an Aggro cap but only for silliness like herding all the Rikti monkeys (and sometimes Giant Monsters) to Portal Corps. The game is better with the aggro cap IMO.

 

8 hours ago, srmalloy said:

As I remember it, it stemmed from complaints about Regen being grossly OP, finishing fights completely undamaged (a huge misperception, because people were only looking at how the Regen scrapper was at the end of the fight, and not seeing how they would typically drop close to defeat about 25% of the way into the fight, before they could reduce the incoming damage below their regen rate before they ran out of HP -- and when you rapidly heal the same damage over and over and over again, by the time you finish the last opponent, you will be virtually completely healed) and being able to solo +8/x8 content without risk (a much more impressive feat in the days of just SOs).

 

*This* is closer to my (pretty much) faded memory about the whole "Nerf Regen" narrative.  I had been somewhat turned off from the CoH forums *long* before this... my recollection is that I felt there were some serious imbalance issues among power sets and complaints were not tolerated... even if many of those imbalances were later addressed (ehem, Invulnerability). The "Regen Scrapper" rings true-ish to me because even before CoV existed it was pretty much the case that Scrappers were out-performing Tankers for everything except "herding entire maps/GMs" once levels 41-50 were available... and bits of my memory are reminding me how annoying it was that the Live devs were pretty much only addressing a narrow issue (Regeneration on Scrappers) and kinda missing the bigger picture (Tanker performance).

 

I know there are Brutists who see the HC changes to Tanker melee as a "nerf to Brutes", but as a player since day 0 I'm impressed that the HC changes for Tanker Melee channel a lot of my pre-aggro-cap feels about Tanker utility that have been missed for a very long time.