Bring Balance to Homecoming

[tidge]

4 hours ago, Lines said:

I think we need to do something about all these suggestion threads pretending to be general discussions.

 

But, but... the suggestions forum is only populated by negative-minded gate-keepers who only derive purpose in life by tarnishing the brilliant ideas of right-minded folks!

[Seed22]

10 hours ago, dukedukes said:

 

Could you be any more vile?

Uh oh! Someones not being excellent! Googly, do the thing!

Edited August 7 by Seed22

[Snarky]

5 hours ago, Lines said:

I think we need to do something about all these suggestion threads pretending to be general discussions.

 

*Picks up a chair to herd the thread back into the box*

i think you might get stuck mid plan...

[battlewraith]

I can sympathize with what I take to be the OPs complaint--that almost everything in the game revolves around damage spam and that emphasis leads to absurd outcomes (eg players relying on insps for def) and a general devaluing of roles for different ATs.

 

Personally, I see this as the outcome of too much balance. The game is structured so that pretty much any AT or team composition can do perfectly well in the majority of the content.

Early on in the development, there may have been a time when the devs could've really embraced the notion that different ATs were necessary for something. Maybe there would've been content where controls were necessary for the successful completion of a mission, for example. I would've even liked to see a scenario where your character origin actually mattered. Maybe your science based character actually needs a magic-based support character to empower them to deal with certain threats. That ship has long since sailed. What we got was an emphasis on convenience and accessibility--if your character has a limitation it's trivial to find a way to patch it over. 

 

Ultimately, I don't think tweaks to the current state of affairs would really do much to address that issue. It would just aggravate people who are used to the way things are now.

[Snarky]

Yes the game, in the basic, relies in DPS.  Spoiler, every combat video game does.  
 

My “best” toon is a Fire Fire Fire Blaster.  I can tank 4/8 ITFs on it.  DPS wins. I play it regularly, it is not my main. 
 

My main is a Dark Dark Corruptor that is what I think my Snarky Vampire would be in game.  
 

What this game is, to me, is creating the characters in my head.  Not massive DPS or “beating da game” or w/e.  Badges are a fun group activity, and being helpful to the team is cool. But it is seeing my creations in game is the huge win.  

[skoryy]

5 minutes ago, Snarky said:

What this game is, to me, is creating the characters in my head.  Not massive DPS or “beating da game” or w/e.  Badges are a fun group activity, and being helpful to the team is cool. But it is seeing my creations in game is the huge win.

 

Can I hear an 'Amen!'

 

And can I get you over on Everlasting? Your snarky vampire and my young werewolf can go find an Abbott and Costello to terrify.

[dukedukes]

1 hour ago, battlewraith said:

Personally, I see this as the outcome of too much balance. The game is structured so that pretty much any AT or team composition can do perfectly well in the majority of the content.

Thank you for giving me hope in this forum, you brought up great points.

 

You're treating balance as nebulous here, really it's two different approaches: solo viability as a result of power creep (everyone does good damage and is tanky) vs AT identity (you excel at a specific thing). I only point this out because it's an unfair dismissal, the issue is created by the former approach while people are arguing for the latter, while both are 'balance'. A more balanced game toward improved AT identity and viability would arguably be a more interesting game in isolation, at least for people who like overcoming challenges. In reality though it's more complicated.

 

1 hour ago, battlewraith said:

Early on in the development, there may have been a time when the devs could've really embraced the notion that different ATs were necessary for something.

The position it's too late to change anything doesn't stand the test of time given things do change. A common dismissal of balance changes brings up the most extreme example someone can think of to point to the balance change as being 'pointless'. You're kind of doing this here by bringing us back to the early days of balance and potential decision making. The topic is not asking for 2004 COH, they're asking for smaller changes that push things in a direction they view as fostering better gameplay. They're not asking for a complete overhaul.

 

What I'm seeing the HC devs do in their approach is increase challenge with new content. Enemy revamps, new enemy types and mechanics. If enemies are more dangerous the AT roles become relevant again. We're going to see more changes in this direction and I think that's awesome, it's the best approach.
 

1 hour ago, battlewraith said:

Ultimately, I don't think tweaks to the current state of affairs would really do much to address that issue. It would just aggravate people who are used to the way things are now.

 

You're right, nerfs aggravate people, and balance changes in this direction should be treated very carefully. Let's not forget though the hypothetical world where nerfs don't happen does not exist. We recall tankers were nerfed last patch? So nerfs happen. Devs have several tools to try to improve the gameplay and nerfs are one of those tools. Sometimes you can solve an issue with other tools but every now and then a nerf is what makes the most sense, unfortunately for some. You can disagree on the root issue of a nerf but arguing against nerfs as a tool is a lost cause.

[Troo]

22 hours ago, Mopery said:

Why insist on buying a Yugo, when you have the means to buy a Ferrari?

 

"the Yugo is gaining ground on the collector car market"

"they can be fixed “with a butter knife and a rubber band.”"..

 

 

.."Some will argue that’s a good thing, because it needed mechanical attention on a regular basis."

[ZeeHero]

The OP is just a fun hater and I hope the devs are intelligent enough to ignore him.

I do partially agree about MM though, it still needs help. Mostly in pet management QOL than anything else.

[Ukase]

23 hours ago, Lunar Ronin said:

Limit the /ah command to game masters only.

Why in the blue hell would you want to do this? And why would a GM even need this if the players can't use it? Is that a case of rank having privileges? That's a slippery slope. 

How in the world do you think this would add balance to a game that has never had any balance? What does that word even mean? I'll tell you. It means about 5,368 different things to the 5368 people that play this game. And yeah, I pulled that number out of thin air. 

 

23 hours ago, Lunar Ronin said:

Lower the in-game e-mail storage back down to 20 like it was on live.

Let's reduce the inf cap to 100k while we're at it. Dude, what in the world am I supposed to do with the inf I have stored in those emails? Buy a bunch of winter packs that will take me even longer to open? I still haven't opened all of them from the last time they were on sale! I know, I'll bid on non-existing items like Iron Will, and next patch, they'll get snuck in and I'll have blown 700 Billion on Iron Wills. Yay me. 

 

23 hours ago, Lunar Ronin said:

Make non-weapon ranged damage power set nukes crash again.

I don't really care what they do with procs, but some consideration needs to be considered about them. Is it rational to have a proc in a power where it won't fire but the minimal 5% of the time? No. So why is it in that set that goes into that power? If you can slot it in a power, it should work every time it passes a toHit check. And that should all be clear to the player before they slot it. 

Let me get this straight. You want people to log in, and not enjoy the game. Am I smelling what you're cooking? 
If that's what balance looks like, I don't want it. 

As for MM pets being the same level, that's a no-brainer, and should have been done before they were released.
Incarnate stuff being only in incarnate content? Fine by me. I rarely use them outside of incarnate stuff because when I'm 50, other than the labyrinth, I'm only doing incarnate stuff. (except maybe for a weekly, but even then most of those are sub level 45 and you can't use them anyway.)

 

Controller ranged modifier increased? Fine by me, but it doesn't need to be increased. Why? My plant/natty and plant/dark were chewing up mobs at 0/8 at level 26-28. Couldn't quite handle +2 with the natty, but the dark had more options for more recharge, and chewed through the +2 easily. Granted, not every controller primary is plant, but if you raise it across the board, some other adjustments would need to be made. 

And all of that effort would just result in masses of people despising the changes. For what? Balance? None of those changes would balance the game. Blasters would still be king of damage. Tanks would still be kings of survivability. Corruptors would still scourge. All your proposed balance changes would do is piss off 90% of the players. And the other 10% should probably remind themselves of how boring it was with 2 accs, 3 damage, 1 recharge or some similar variation in their slotting. 

CoH somehow rose from the ashes mainly because of it's people. Not because of the game balance that never existed. (at least, not for me) 
Right now is as close as anyone can get to feeling super in this game, and you want to take it away? How does that help you have more fun? 


Say you got all those things, and suddenly your version of balance is in game. How does that help me have more fun? Or you? Does my accessing the AH from a remote floating island in ouroboros foul up your playing experience? 
Does my blaster using blizzard and then having to retoggle everything help you enjoy your game in some way? How? 

How does limiting emails have anything to do with game play? I hear about people putting ultimates and such in their email. I've never done it. I don't have room for that trash. I have an insp tray for that garbage. I doubt many people use email for that. In battle, they open their email and have to scroll through and find the right insp? That's just madness. It doesn't even make sense why anyone would need to do that. But hey, people do things that don't make sense to me all the time, and I can't assume my experience is typical. But that's the only thing I can think of that you're trying to prevent - people using email for inspirations. There's easier and better ways to stop that. 

I kind of think this whole post was just trolling, it's just so bad. Balance? Madness you mean. Insanity. 

[skoryy]

8 minutes ago, Ukase said:

I kind of think this whole post was just trolling,

 

Bringing real balance to Homecoming would be disabling 'Win Of The Day' and any tracking of reactions and replies.

[macskull]

49 minutes ago, skoryy said:

Bringing real balance to Homecoming would be disabling 'Win Of The Day' and any tracking of reactions and replies.

Entirely nuking the forums would

probably be a simpler and better option, since the GMs seem to have zero desire to actually action bad apples in any meaningful way.

[Fade]

One thing I agree with the OP about is the issue of inspiration storage. I think it is bad to allow players to ignore the inventory limit on inspirations as long as they are dedicated enough to load up their email ahead of time. It incentivizes monotonous actions to play at the optimum levels with what I would consider to be an abuse of a communications system.

But I wouldn't try to solve it the way the OP does, which puts a limit on everyone else's capacity to use the email system. Instead, I'd propose a limit to accessing email attachments to wherever the /ah command is currently accessible, which I believe is only in the "publicly accessible" city/isles zones. This wouldn't completely eliminate the playstyle of using inspirations as the primary mode of defense, which I think is the OP's goal (although I think the OP's proposed changes wouldn't be able to do that either), but I think it would at least make it harder to ignore a hard limit on the number of inspirations you're allowed to have stocked up in a single mission. Players would still be able to reload all of their inspirations between missions (which I think is a fair and intended behavior, considering the availability of inspirations from NPCs and the auction house), and they could even leave a mission partway through to reload their inspirations if they needed to (which would be absolute anathema to speedrunners and highly efficient players).

 

If you really wanted to curb the power of defensive inspirations, you'd actually have to address the source - the defense inspirations themselves. Maybe some kind of diminishing returns on stacking them. I don't think that needs to be implemented, though. Players who want to play with defensive inspirations should be able to do so. They just shouldn't be able to bypass a limitation the rest of us have while they do it.

 

I'm not going to go line-by-line on the OP's post, but I think I disagree with most of the rest of it.

Edited August 7 by Fade
I have to remember to put more line breaks between paragraphs for legibility

[macskull]

1 minute ago, Fade said:

They just shouldn't be able to bypass a limitation the rest of us have while they do it.

Every player has the exact same limitations. You refusing to do something because you don’t like it is not the same as that option being unavailable to you.

 

At the end of the day though, does it really matter if a player is using emails as inspiration storage? All that extra work for slightly faster completion times? No.

[ZeeHero]

1 hour ago, skoryy said:

 

Bringing real balance to Homecoming would be disabling 'Win Of The Day' and any tracking of reactions and replies.

Yeah it serves no purpose. a popular opinion is not neccessarily a correct one.

[Ghost]

32 minutes ago, ZeeHero said:

Yeah it serves no purpose. a popular opinion is not neccessarily a correct one.

The award is not for the most correct opinion of the day - it’s for the one that generates the most reactions.  This, the most popular.

[Bionic_Flea]

On 8/6/2025 at 1:03 PM, Lunar Ronin said:

• 1- Procs: Revert the proc system back to what it was on live, a flat percent chance.  On top of that, make damage procs respect AT damage modifiers, and respect damage buffs and damage debuffs.
• 2 - Limit the /ah command to game masters only.
• 3 - Lower the in-game e-mail storage back down to 20 like it was on live.
• 4 - Make non-weapon ranged damage power set nukes crash again.
• 5 - Restrict the Alpha Incarnate ability's +1 level shift to Incarnate content only.
• 6 - Limit the Interface, Judgment, Destiny, Lore, and Hybrid Incarnate abilities to Incarnate content only.
• 7 - Raise the Controller ranged damage modifier to match Defender at 0.65.
• 8 - The hardest part of the list: Re-balance the Mastermind AT so minion and lieutenant henchmen are equal level to the Mastermind PC.

 

1 - Hell no on modifiers, unsure on flat percent chance but I don't think that will be beneficial.  We'll just go back to slotting 4 or 5 in the quickest activating powers.

2 - HELL NO.  I use /ah.  A lot.

3 - No thank you.  I'm not sure how many I'm currently using, but I remember 20 being too few.

4 - Hell no.  While I understand that crashless nukes seem like power creep, that ship has left port and circumnavigated the globe several times now.

5- Hell no.  But I do think it should be limited to 50 and over.  We should not be able to use incarnate powers at level 45.

6 - Hell no, see above.

7 - Not sure it's needed, but not strictly opposed.

8  - I'm not sure if that would make MMs too strong or not.  I'd have to see, but generally not opposed.

Edited August 7 by Bionic_Flea

[Krimson]

On 8/6/2025 at 11:03 AM, Lunar Ronin said:

I contemplated placing this thread in the Suggestions & Feedback sub-forum, but it's more of a discussion because odds are none of the following will ever be implemented.

 

 

How to bring balance to the Force Homecoming:

 

• Procs: Revert the proc system back to what it was on live, a flat percent chance.  On top of that, make damage procs respect AT damage modifiers, and respect damage buffs and damage debuffs.
• Limit the /ah command to game masters only.
• Lower the in-game e-mail storage back down to 20 like it was on live.
• Make non-weapon ranged damage power set nukes crash again.
• Restrict the Alpha Incarnate ability's +1 level shift to Incarnate content only.
• Limit the Interface, Judgment, Destiny, Lore, and Hybrid Incarnate abilities to Incarnate content only.
• Raise the Controller ranged damage modifier to match Defender at 0.65.
• The hardest part of the list: Re-balance the Mastermind AT so minion and lieutenant henchmen are equal level to the Mastermind PC.

 

Implementing all of the above suggestions would make Homecoming a much more balanced game, and bring more value to all roles and functions in the game, instead of the current damage meta to the exclusion of all else.

So, how quickly did you want the player base to quit the game? If you want a vacant server with all of these fun things, Rebirth currently has a whopping 33 players online.

[Skyhawke]

Four pages?! Man, I gotta refill!

 

 

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

Please refrain from insults.  Discuss the topic, not each other.

[Lazarillo]

On 8/6/2025 at 12:03 PM, Lunar Ronin said:

• Procs: Revert the proc system back to what it was on live, a flat percent chance.  On top of that, make damage procs respect AT damage modifiers, and respect damage buffs and damage debuffs.

That just turns things around and makes buzzsaw and proc-brawl the meta again and whatnot.  Keep the respect of AT modifiers, and raise the chances of most/all procs to be close to 100%...but make it so that only one would fire per-target-per-power-activation.  That gets things back to encouraging the use of them as part of sets, as they're designed to be part of.

[Clave Dark 5]

22 hours ago, Indystruck said:

Ignore those farming chores, skip your market homework, play any power sets that you want (so long as you only pick two characters to do it with or you can't engage with any endgame content), and ignore anyone who says otherwise.

 

Signature probably won't work as well if that idea goes into effect.

In case it was lost or missed, that was my point yes.  Incarnate powers, perhaps because their numbers are more limited often end up being much more cookie cutter.

[ScarySai]

12 hours ago, macskull said:

since the GMs seem to have zero desire to actually action bad apples in any meaningful way.

 

They also actively punish the wrong people, lol.

 

As for the topic at hand, I genuinely don't see the need to overbalance this game. What's the end goal, exactly? Going back to the game as Emmert had it simply isn't going to get you anything short of a dead server.  Buffs to underperformers and making the game fun for everyone, as Synapse said, is simply the only viable path forward.

 

Blasters were buffed because they were the worst AT in the game. Snipes were buffed because they sucked, and nukes were made weaker and crashless because the crash made them essentially suicidal to use. Yet, some people if they had their way would revert all of the QoL because they have a skewed view of how balance actually works.

 

Incarnates are incredibly strong - as intended, the only really flaw with them was that the bulk of the content that was made with them in mind never actually launched before sunset. But we have quite a few things that would be difficult for the average forum poster in the game now, so I don't really see the problem. If you want to stop one person from carrying the group, that's simply something you can't fix, incarns or no incarns.

Edited August 8 by ScarySai

[lyra]

more ideas:

 

no debt, just minusxp so you downlvl if you die a lot

make travelpowers only work in caves

max playtime per day limited but you can pay real money for xtratime.

 

 

[tidge]

28 minutes ago, lyra said:

more ideas:

 

max playtime per day limited but you can pay real money for xtratime.

 

Hey, maybe the server should be paying *us* to play, because you know... 20 year-old-game with no sense of balance or fun?

 

/s