Aett_Thorn

No, it doesn't necessarily have to have that. The term Tank-Mage has been around a lot longer than this game, and doesn't imply being a Tanker, or having Tanker-level defenses.

It only implies a class or AT that can dish out high amounts of damage (typically at Range and Melee, though sometimes only range) and take high amounts of damage. That doesn't necessitate Blaster-level attacks and Tanker-level defenses. Scrappers can take a lot of damage themselves, even though they don't have Tanker-level defenses. Considering that most enemies in this game only have very weak ranged attacks, having any Defenses to them at all can increase your survivability greatly.

Then there's the damage part. Take a look at SoAs, especially Crabs. They are the ones most often compared to Tank-Mages in this game, and they don't quite have Blaster-level damage.

Okay, so just because no AT is needed, we should create an AT that can do everything by itself?

In any MMO, you want to avoid creating a class or AT that is hands-down the 'best' for everything. An AT that can not only throw out lots of ranged (and since there's no penalty for using ranged attacks in melee, lots of Melee damage, too), and have the survivability to take any incoming damage as well becomes out of balance. You basically create an AT that makes all of the other ATs seem useless. So, you end up trending towards a single-AT game, where everyone in the game chooses that one class, because it's better than the others a great majority of the time.

Whether this game is based on a holy trinity or not is completely irrelevant to the discussion. Because it's not about a class that can do everything okay, while the other ATs do one thing well, and something else only decently. It's about an AT that can do everything well, while other ATs only do one or two things well.


Take a look at other games where a "Tank-Mage" type class has been put in. Has that class ever survived long in that kind of fashion?

Actually, in my former profession, I wrote EAs and EISs (environmental documents for the government), and we sent them out for comments on them, to try to make them better. WE would first send them to other government agencies, that tended to have an interest in our projects. These comments tended to be quite good. Then, we sent them out for public comment. These comments tended to be quite bad, as the public generally had little knowledge on the subject, put in opinions in place of facts, and, in general, wanted things included that we couldn't possibly include. However, some public comments were good. But when you have to slog through several hundred public comments, and only get one or two useful comments out of it, it's not quite as handy.

This is what is is called the signal to noise ratio. There is a reason that you might want 5 people to review your document, but you probably wouldn't want 500 to review it.

Not true. Good ideas generally get supported here. Ideas that need a lot of work tend to be told so. Ideas that are just bad tend to be shot down. That is the point of these forums. Even items that are full of flashy new stuff can be shot down, if people think that they would make the game worse overall.

Also, there is no unbiased voter base. It just can't be done, unless you take a group of people that are completely unfamiliar with a certain subject. As this is a game, and we'd only be sending it out to people who play the game, our results would come back biased, since all of the voters would have knowledge of the subject, and had formed opinions of the game already.

Okay, now here is where your idea gets into real trouble. If the devs present the poll like this:

Would you like feature X in the game?

The general results will always go for including that feature in the game. Every. Single. Time (unless it was a really bad idea). Why? Feedback bias. The people who answer the poll will be those who have the strongest feelings for whatever feature X is, either positive or negative. However, people with strong negative emotions towards it don't always respond negatively, as many just ignore it. However, those with strong positive feelings on it tend to respond. Those with no feelings on it either way tend not to respond.

So you get a situation where whenever the Devs put out a poll, they get told to include it, since that is how the 'majority' vote. However, unless you get responses from the entire CoH community voluntarily, you will have bias in your feedback to a large degree.

Now, if they put out a poll such as this:

We are planning on including one of the following four features in I21. Which would you prefer?

Feature W
Feature X
Feature Y
Feature Z

Then, you tally the votes, and they come in in this order of popularity: Y, W, Z, X. So, the Devs start working on Y. Except, as they work on it, they find that it is not feasible. Uh oh! What do they do now? Well, the work a bit on Feature W, and find that it can be done pretty easily. Except, they've basically told people that Feature Y was the most popular, and that they'd be working on it. Now, they can't, and can only give us Feature W. Well, the people aren't going to like that.


[/quote]Also, let me stress this point again:

The poll would in no way be binding to the developers. If 95% of voters say they want farming again, the developers could easily say no and move on.[/QUOTE]

If this is the case, then the polling would be seen as having little overall value. If the Devs, after the poll, can just dismiss the results for any reason, then the poll would be seen by many as inconsequential, and they're voting schemes would then trend towards the most 'fun but crazy' option, if not the one that they wanted the most.

For instance, if you knew that the Devs were going to throw out anything that they didn't really want to do, and we got this question:

Which powerset would you most like to see in I21?

A) Dark Control
B) Psychic Buff/Debuff
C) Laser Blast
D) Carp Melee

I'm betting that you'd get a lot more Carp Melee requests than you otherwise would, simply because we know that they're going to throw it out (the request, not the carp. Who throws out perfectly good carp?). The actual results from the other sets are therefore not an accurate sampling of what the players actually want, since many people voted for Carp Melee instead. So now which one do you, as a Developer, make, since your input isn't good?

The forums are open to all players. And all players are welcome to post any suggestions that they want for the game here. The Devs have been very open to accepting player feedback and ideas for what they want in the game.

Also, the players might not always vote in their best interest. I'd say that the recent AE experiences are tantamount to that. Being PLed from 1-50 in a few hours might be fun for a while, but pretty quickly, you get bored and stop playing. So, people were doing something that would result in quicker boredom, and hence quicker leaving of CoH. Yet, if people were given the option, I'd bet that they'd vote to be able to do it again. That isn't really in their best interest, long-term.

They might also vote for things that the Devs could not do, then they'd be mad at the Devs for not being able to do them, despite the fact that they tried. They'd get angry at the Devs for not doing what the players wanted. Right now, you might get the same complaints, but there was no indication that the Devs were going to try to get function X into the game at all.

Not to mention most of his fortune would be gone in the process, as well.

No, it's not. It gives the Brute (self) and the team the same defense bonus, which is what it is saying.