Review of i28 P2 on Massively

[Yomo Kimyata]

Speaking for me, Homecoming is the only video game I play that keeps changing for reasons other than the profit motive.  I speak of it as an art project, but maybe I should use a metaphor of a poker game.  SCORE was holding a secret poker game for years, and they invited their buddies, and they played what they liked.  Eventually, they made the poker game open.  Now, to me SCORE and Homecoming seem to like to play poker like "Hearts Wild" where most of the players end up with five aces and they all high-five and split the pot.  That's fine, and that can be fun.  Me, I like to play things with a little more strategy, so I'll come to games and when it's my turn I'll ask, hey, can we play seven card stud?  And they're like, nah, but you can start your own table.  So it's up to me to put together my own table, and that's ok.  Listen, SCORE really likes to play Hearts Wild!

 

Poker may be a bad metaphor, since CoH isn't a zero sum game.  And Hearts Wild can be a fine game, but sometimes you run into house rules like "If you have blonde hair, you get an extra ace" or "Whoever sits closest to the fridge has to get beers for everyone else" and those might seem arbitrary.  But SCORE and their buddies still are struggling with adjusting those house rules, because they all have blonde hair and have their seats far from the refrigerator.  And I get frustrated when my suggestions to change some of those rules are seemingly ignored (and sometimes elated when years later some of those suggestions are finally implemented).

 

Now, the article seems to have written by a person who wants to play Plant Controllers Wild, because they are a plant controller kind of person.  That was a house rule that was pretty arbitrary (and IIRC was left over from Live) and finally has been revoked.  Now the author is absolutely right in describing the current state of play, and I'm not just talking about specific speed runs.  Any ITF you run, people dash through, gather up crowds with their blonde tanks for nuking, run on to the next objective.  Shoot, EVERY TF is like this to some extent.  I'm at the point that if I'm unfamiliar with a TF I'll just solo it with one of my optimized characters for the play experience, but that does take a long time.  I can try to recruit a specific slow team to learn together, but I'm a pick-up kind of entity, and the amount of time it takes to put together a slow team is untenable, even on Excelsior (and impossible otherwise).

 

I'm probably way too self-righteous about this, but I do accept how Homecoming works because I understand how and why it works, and I can't expect the devs to adjust the rules how I expect them to because they are not working for the profit motive.  And there is nothing I can do to change how they do what they do, so I accept it and try to make it work for me.  Eliot and Bree have not achieved my exquisite level of serenity about this, so I think the article is pretty dickish and self-centered.  but again, that's just me, in my glass house, throwing stones.

[Scarlet Shocker]

I read the article and it seems pretty viable to me

 

Here's the thing. I don't know what the balance changes were trying to achieve - it's like searching for a problem to fix that doesn't exist. The game has played pretty well and been stable for a long time. Sure there are niggles and imperfections but you get that with everything and it's also a personal perspective.

 

New content is always welcome but the powers changes? I'm not so sure they are necessary and I've yet to see anything that has persuaded me otherwise. Perhaps I'm missing something or perhaps the explanations are lacking.

 

But we are where we are. Devs have decided and we have two choices.

[Captain Fabulous]

17 minutes ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

Seeing how the IOs and Incarnates came after, that would seem to suggest that logically they are the problem.  The problem didn't exist until them.

They are what created the power divide that's plagued the game since their introduction and made true balance impossible so they absolutely are part of the problem. How does a dev team, any dev team, balance around players using SOs and maybe a few common IOs with those who have full IO set builds? You can't. All you can do is try to reign in powers and sets that are overperforming and shore up those that are underperforming. Sometimes that means the meta gets buffed, sometimes it means the meta gets nerfed. And it also means having to introduce new mechanics and update old ones that have become obsolete. Games have to evolve. The endgame in every MMO including CoH is grind, so it's really no surprise the focus is on doing as much damage as quickly as possible, because it's not about doing ITF for the 10000th time because you enjoy it so much, it's because you want the reward. This is really basic MMO 101 stuff that seems to have gone over the author(s) heads.

What keeps getting lost in this conversation (and by the author(s) of this "article") is that majority of the playerbase are not high end speed runners with fully optimized IO builds steamrolling thru +4x8 content. The majority still use SOs and common IOs and are playing at +0 to +1 at the default team size.

[skoryy]

5 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

What keeps getting lost in this conversation (and by the author(s) of this "article") is that majority of the playerbase are not high end speed runners with fully optimized IO builds steamrolling thru +4x8 content. The majority still use SOs and common IOs and are playing at +0 to +1 at the default team size.

 

The conversation misses it because it doesn't line up with in-game experiences. It'd help to show how you know the majority is running as you say.

[TheMoneyMaker]

I think reviewing the changes negatively before the changes are off the test server is a bit premature. Sure, you can get a general idea of what's going on, but until everything is done, it's like complaining about how your omelet tastes while it's still in the skillet.

[battlewraith]

4 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

What keeps getting lost in this conversation (and by the author(s) of this "article") is that majority of the playerbase are not high end speed runners with fully optimized IO builds steamrolling thru +4x8 content. The majority still use SOs and common IOs and are playing at +0 to +1 at the default team size.

 

How do you know this? I’m not saying it’s not true, but the content that I typically do it seems like it’s the norm to have a fully IOed build that is in some way optimized for steamrolling +4x8. I consider the “high end” people to be optimized for hard mode content or set up to carry a team of lowbies through +4x8 missions.

[Glacier Peak]

42 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Speaking for me, Homecoming is the only video game I play that keeps changing for reasons other than the profit motive.  I speak of it as an art project, but maybe I should use a metaphor of a poker game.  SCORE was holding a secret poker game for years, and they invited their buddies, and they played what they liked.  Eventually, they made the poker game open.  Now, to me SCORE and Homecoming seem to like to play poker like "Hearts Wild" where most of the players end up with five aces and they all high-five and split the pot.  That's fine, and that can be fun.  Me, I like to play things with a little more strategy, so I'll come to games and when it's my turn I'll ask, hey, can we play seven card stud?  And they're like, nah, but you can start your own table.  So it's up to me to put together my own table, and that's ok.  Listen, SCORE really likes to play Hearts Wild!

 

Poker may be a bad metaphor, since CoH isn't a zero sum game.  And Hearts Wild can be a fine game, but sometimes you run into house rules like "If you have blonde hair, you get an extra ace" or "Whoever sits closest to the fridge has to get beers for everyone else" and those might seem arbitrary.  But SCORE and their buddies still are struggling with adjusting those house rules, because they all have blonde hair and have their seats far from the refrigerator.  And I get frustrated when my suggestions to change some of those rules are seemingly ignored (and sometimes elated when years later some of those suggestions are finally implemented).

 

Now, the article seems to have written by a person who wants to play Plant Controllers Wild, because they are a plant controller kind of person.  That was a house rule that was pretty arbitrary (and IIRC was left over from Live) and finally has been revoked.  Now the author is absolutely right in describing the current state of play, and I'm not just talking about specific speed runs.  Any ITF you run, people dash through, gather up crowds with their blonde tanks for nuking, run on to the next objective.  Shoot, EVERY TF is like this to some extent.  I'm at the point that if I'm unfamiliar with a TF I'll just solo it with one of my optimized characters for the play experience, but that does take a long time.  I can try to recruit a specific slow team to learn together, but I'm a pick-up kind of entity, and the amount of time it takes to put together a slow team is untenable, even on Excelsior (and impossible otherwise).

 

I'm probably way too self-righteous about this, but I do accept how Homecoming works because I understand how and why it works, and I can't expect the devs to adjust the rules how I expect them to because they are not working for the profit motive.  And there is nothing I can do to change how they do what they do, so I accept it and try to make it work for me.  Eliot and Bree have not achieved my exquisite level of serenity about this, so I think the article is pretty dickish and self-centered.  but again, that's just me, in my glass house, throwing stones.

What a metaphor! I have never played any card game besides canasta, but I felt like I could understand exactly what you meant in comparing it to this game and community. 

[Troo]

Oh geez.

 

If folks can't see any story, any attention, as a good thing then folks might be missing the point. 

City of Villains/Heroes is still here AND new things are happening.

 

The rest of the opinion column tagged "previews" and "community" is just that.

 

"Now, first and foremost, I want to be clear here: CoH is an incredibly big game with a ton of moving parts. I am well aware that everyone who is working on the game is doing so in a volunteer capacity. And these balance changes are not apocalyptic by any means." - the linked article

 

"These balance changes are what people think of as the way the game is supposed to play." - again, the linked article

 

and then Bree's (another massively/coh person)

 

"I genuinely cannot imagine volunteering for a developer team on a free MMO and then spending my time nerfing things (especially ATs already in trouble) when I could be building new sets or giving real love to problematic sets that have only been given lip service. I would be giddy at the prospect of making people happy after all these years. And you know that’s what the people writing arcs and building new sets are feeling. They’re gifting their time and energy to all of us."

 

I have no problem with someone saying more new sets rather than revamping existing character's sets. It's an opinion.

I have no problem with someone saying Kinetic Melee or similar could use some attention rather than revamping xyz. It's an opinion.

I have no problem with someone pointing out the lack of a road map or stating goals. It's an opinion.

I have no problem with complaints about revamps of existing powersets forcing respecs, changing the nature of existing power sets, and/or changes driving changes in play style. It's an opinion. Wait, sorry, that's my opinion and as such it is gospel.

 

Quit making me defend stupid shit.

 

Bottom line: A preview of new stuff potentially coming soon™ is a good thing.

 

 

Edited Saturday at 05:23 PM by Troo
added: Quit making me defend stupid shit.

[macskull]

1 hour ago, Captain Fabulous said:

The majority still use SOs and common IOs and are playing at +0 to +1 at the default team size.

To the author's point, those are the players who are most hurt by negative changes to their existing characters. The "high end speed runners" just go "oh, okay" and have a completely new character leveled and built within a day or two of the patch dropping.

 

I don't necessarily agree with the author on everything, and I think it's weird it's the Plant changes they're choosing as their line in the sand, but it seems like the author and others are finally starting to see what some of us have been seeing for the last six years.

Edited Saturday at 05:28 PM by macskull

[Captain Fabulous]

1 hour ago, skoryy said:

The conversation misses it because it doesn't line up with in-game experiences. It'd help to show how you know the majority is running as you say.

 

58 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

How do you know this? I’m not saying it’s not true, but the content that I typically do it seems like it’s the norm to have a fully IOed build that is in some way optimized for steamrolling +4x8. I consider the “high end” people to be optimized for hard mode content or set up to carry a team of lowbies through +4x8 missions.

Because this is what the development team, both live and HC, have repeatedly told us thru the years, and why the game has always been balanced around SOs, because that's what the majority uses.

If this has changed recently and someone from the dev team wants to chime in and confirm it's no longer the case I'll happily issue a mea culpa.

 

1 hour ago, TheMoneyMaker said:

I think reviewing the changes negatively before the changes are off the test server is a bit premature. Sure, you can get a general idea of what's going on, but until everything is done, it's like complaining about how your omelet tastes while it's still in the skillet.

Writing a "review" based solely upon patch notes and not having actually played the beta is like reading the list of ingredients off the menu and deciding the omelet is going to taste like shit without even trying it.

Edited Saturday at 05:34 PM by Captain Fabulous

[tidge]

38 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

What a metaphor! I have never played any card game besides canasta.... 

 

Canasta... the card game with the most grind. IMO, YMMV.

[Captain Fabulous]

1 minute ago, macskull said:

To the author's point, those are the players who are most hurt by negative changes to their existing characters. The "high end speed runners" just go "oh, okay" and have a completely new character leveled and built within a day or two of the patch dropping.

But what in this patch is hurting those people? The Tanker changes are a wash IMO, Controllers are getting a huge buff that will be great for "normal" players (the only big nerf here is Seeds), Regen will be playable again for the masses, lots of little changes and buffs for a myriad of other sets with a few small nerfs. Lots of changes in the way some powers work (which arguably will make those power better), so people will have to adjust. But that's not necessarily a hurtful nerf.

[skoryy]

13 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Because this is what the development team, both live and HC, have repeatedly told us thru the years, and why the game has always been balanced around SOs, because that's what the majority uses.

If this has changed recently and someone from the dev team wants to chime in and confirm it's no longer the case I'll happily issue a mea culpa.

 

That'd be helpful, yeah. An alternative to what I posted upthread, maybe a dev Q&A might not be a bad idea either.

[macskull]

20 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

But what in this patch is hurting those people?

I'm not talking about just this patch, I'm talking about Homecoming's design philosophy as a whole. Making NPC groups harder or player powers/powersets weaker has very little impact on the "high end" of performance, but it does make things more difficult for players who are already running into hard spots.

[lemming]

22 minutes ago, macskull said:

I'm not talking about just this patch, I'm talking about Homecoming's design philosophy as a whole. Making NPC groups harder or player powers/powersets weaker has very little impact on the "high end" of performance, but it does make things more difficult for players who are already running into hard spots.

I'm seeing more that there's less impact, but I'll admit that's just how it feels to me.

 

On the mention that speed runners are getting the most out of this, I'm not sure of that.  The complicated task trees and walls of text sort of run counter to that.

 

On speed runs in the game, most of the speed I see are with people that have run that content numerous times.

[macskull]

1 minute ago, lemming said:

On the mention that speed runners are getting the most out of this, I'm not sure of that.  The complicated task trees and walls of text sort of run counter to that.

I'm not saying they get anything out of this, just they tend to be less affected by nerfs.

[PeregrineFalcon]

10 hours ago, Faultline said:

What parts of the article do you agree with?

So there's really a couple of issues here. The first one is that Eliot wrote an article where he's clearly upset that Controllers, especially plant controllers, are being nerfed. Second, is where he compares the Council of Thirteen to Paragon Studios by saying: a complete failure to understand or establish whom the game is being balanced for, much less why.

 

And I'd like to point out that he's completely correct about that. In the past we've asked for a 'roadmap', or whatever you'd like to call it. A dev even told us there'd be a roadmap, but there's no roadmap. Now if the Council doesn't want to publish a statement, a roadmap, or whatever you want to call it because plans change then that's completely understandable, but then you can't complain when someone says "we have no idea what the devs plans are and we're not sure that they have any idea either."

 

I think the bottom line is: either publish a statement with your plans and/or goals for balance and game direction (it doesn't have to be super specific) or just come out and admit that there is no plan and you're just doing whatever strikes your fancy. Either one is fine, but please say something.

 

10 hours ago, Faultline said:

What parts are you unsure about, and would like to clarify how you're taking that information?

Next issue is a comment on the article written by Bree. Now normally a comment wouldn't really be worth discussing, but the person who wrote this comment, Bree, is the editor in chief of MOP and Eliot's boss.

 

In this very long comment she basically claims that, in the Homecoming Discord, the players who are there advising the devs and in closed beta are a bunch of "short-sighted", "arrogant", and "toxically positive" people with a "fuck you I got mine" attitude, to use Bree's words, who shout down any critical feedback, and call anyone critical of any change as haters or old players who hate change.

 

Now I'm not on the Homecoming Discord server anymore, haven't been for awhile, but my experience when I was doesn't allow me to disagree with her claims. And my experience on this forum certainly matches her statements to a 'T'. My concern is that by being surrounded by these toxically positive yes men has put the devs in a bubble where they no longer understand what the community wants.

[Vanden]

16 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I think the bottom line is: either publish a statement with your plans and/or goals for balance and game direction (it doesn't have to be super specific) or just come out and admit that there is no plan and you're just doing whatever strikes your fancy. Either one is fine, but please say something.

 

Homecoming did publish a statement with their long-term balance goals, over four years ago.

 

 

[macskull]

7 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

And I'd like to point out that he's completely correct about that. In the past we've asked for a 'roadmap', or whatever you'd like to call it. A dev even told us there'd be a roadmap, but there's no roadmap. Now if the Council doesn't want to publish a statement, a roadmap, or whatever you want to call it because plans change then that's completely understandable, but then you can't complain when someone says "we have no idea what the devs plans are and we're not sure that they have any idea either."

Can't deviate from the plan if you never have a plan in the first place!

 

Jokes aside, I think the "Game Balance & The Endgame" thread from almost five years ago is the closest thing we have to a public-facing roadmap. The closed beta forums and Discord are chock-full of dev comments on things they'd like to do but it's often impossible to tell whether those comments are simply spitballing by the dev in question. Some of the issue, I think, comes down to the absolutely glacial pace of updates over the last couple years. Since the NCSoft license announcement almost a year and a half ago there's been a total of one major update - yes, I27P7 went live about a month after the announcement but that update was supposed to be out months earlier. The HC powers team seems to have an attitude of "nerf things now to support buffs later," which I can understand even if I don't agree with it, but when there's only one or two updates a year "later" is some unknown point in the future and it just means you have things stuck in limbo until "later" actually comes around. An example of this: Arsenal Control was designed with the deep sleep mechanic in mind, but deep sleep got pushed back from that update, so the set launched in a pretty rough spot and is only now going to function as it was actually intended a year and a half later.

 

20 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

In this very long comment she basically claims that, in the Homecoming Discord, the players who are there advising the devs and in closed beta are a bunch of "short-sighted", "arrogant", and "toxically positive" people with a "fuck you I got mine" attitude, to use Bree's words, who shout down any critical feedback, and call anyone critical of any change as haters or old players who hate change.

There is definitely some of that going on, but there are still players who are critical of changes even in closed beta. Unfortunately some of those players lack the tact necessary to have their feedback taken seriously, which doesn't do anyone any favors.

[Seed22]

1 hour ago, macskull said:

I'm not talking about just this patch, I'm talking about Homecoming's design philosophy as a whole. Making NPC groups harder or player powers/powersets weaker has very little impact on the "high end" of performance, but it does make things more difficult for players who are already running into hard spots.

Always putting it more eloquently than I could, Mac. 

 

This has been the big issue and there used to be more threads highlighting this point until the cheerleaders shouted them down. 

 

Yes, I wont be affected. But thats really besides the point. Until they make +4 ×8 not able to be solo'd, the high end will never be affected, but that guy soloing +1×6? Weell....

Edited Saturday at 07:32 PM by Seed22

[Scarlet Shocker]

2 hours ago, tidge said:

 

Canasta... the card game with the most grind. IMO, YMMV.

 

 

Awww you just made my hearts meld

[PeregrineFalcon]

42 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Homecoming did publish a statement with their long-term balance goals, over four years ago.

Yes, I'm aware of that. I'm also aware that that was over four years ago and a dev since said that they'd post another road map, but that never happened.

[Glacier Peak]

14 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Yes, I'm aware of that. I'm also aware that that was over four years ago and a dev since said that they'd post another road map, but that never happened.

Content roadmap?

 

Quote

 

2025 Development Goals:

 

Now, let's get to the "fun" stuff and take a look at the upcoming calendar year! The team has been hard at work on several projects to make 2025 an exciting year! While we can't disclose all of the details yet, due to the fact it's a volunteer project and people's availabilities fluctuate, as well as the simple fact everyone enjoys a cliff hanger...

 

We did want to share some tentative plans with you!

Seasonal Event Updates:

• In 2025 we will be making some updates (varying in degrees) to all of the seasonal events hosted during the year! First up will be our Spring Fling event, which is set to run tentatively starting February 4th - March 4th.

Issue 28, Page 2:

• We hope to release Page 2 of Issue 28, continuing on the exciting building blocks of Page 1, in Early Spring 2025!

Issue 28, Page 3:

• Assuming everything goes to plan, we look forward to releasing Page 3 by the Fall of 2025!

 

 

[macskull]

7 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Content roadmap?

To be fair, "early spring" has come and gone and by the time Page 2 actually goes live it'll basically be summer. There's a good chunk of stuff in Page 2 that was originally slated for Page 1 - at the time this was supposed to mean a faster turnaround for Page 2, but here we are ten months later and it's just now gone to open beta.

[Glacier Peak]

Just now, macskull said:

To be fair, "early spring" has come and gone and by the time Page 2 actually goes live it'll basically be summer. There's a good chunk of stuff in Page 2 that was originally slated for Page 1 - at the time this was supposed to mean a faster turnaround for Page 2, but here we are ten months later and it's just now gone to open beta.

Fair gripe.