Arcanaville

Typically, people do that, or sometimes honestly they just PM me.


I cannot speak to specific details that are not generally known, and some of the mechanics of level shift aren't finalized yet, but to the general points:

1. Sidekicking code temporarily adjusts actual levels. The SKed player is temporarily actually level 49 and using level 49 tables (otherwise a level 1 SKed to level 49 would still have only 100 points of health). The critters also have an intrinsic level, they are level 50 and 51. So they are even and +1 to the 50, and +1 and +2 to the SKed 49. If the level 50 possessed level shift, the critters would be -1 and even to him. They would still be +1 and +2 to the Sked 49, because the SKed player would still be 49, because the level 50 would still be level 50, at least that is the scenario if the devs do not deliberately change that situation.

2. In scenario 2, the critters would be level 53, three levels higher than the players. If the players had four levels of level shift, those critters would be -1 to them in effective combat level. They would still be +3 to the level 50 that did not have level shift. This requires interpreting what you mean by "set to be +3 to them." In the past, there was only one way to do that: set the critters to spawn three levels higher than the players, in this case 53. In the end game, the devs have a second possible technique: they can give the critters level shifts of their own. Under those circumstances, things get more interesting, and more complex.

Also, its worth noting that at the moment, the only known sources of level shift are the Alpha slot rare and very rare powers, some temp powers that were leaked, and some special items such as a level shift inspiration that we may or may not ever get our hands on (it might have been just for testing purposes). Leaked information about the next few Incarnate slots did not show level shifts in them. There are people assuming that eventually we will have ten incarnate slots and ten levels of level shift. That's extremely unlikely. Such players would be +10 to the standard level 50 content, which incarnate powers work on, which would be ludicrous.

I believe you're seeing the advantage of a diminishing returns system (although I don't like the name) over just leveraging the purple patch. The observation you're making is precisely one of those I made with regard to using the purple patch to make the LRSF difficult when it was first introduced. At +5 tier one pets would have been in the ultra-deep end of the purple patch pool at -7.

Of course, this is not the fault of level shift. Its the fault of using level 55s to simulate diminishing returns because the playerbase would go ape-**** if the devs added DR to PvE. Or to be more specific, a segment of the forum population would. This lends itself to an obvious observation I won't bother expressing.

Its also theoretically fixable, or at least addressable in some fashion. I have no specific information on this matter, but in theory the devs could add a mastermind fix to all Alphas with level shift by playing games with Bodyguard. It would probably require some tech to do it, though.

Well, there are PMs of mine from 2007 that Matt hasn't answered yet, so I wouldn't get your hopes up there. Fortunately, there are people who understand the game mechanics well enough to answer this question on the forums.

Please don't make Positron follow up on that threat to start looking at the powers spreadsheets.

It won't. My point in mentioning them was to remind people that the whole notion of "combat levels" is itself something that is artificial. The game only treats that level 54 as being +4 to my level 50 because it is told to do so. To be even more blunt, 54 minus 50 is only 4 because we say so. Level shifting is simply going to alter that math. When you are running a +1 level shift, 54 minus 50 will be 3. Because the game says so. It won't *make you* a level 51. It will make +4s use the +3 row in the combat modifier tables. Nothing else changes. Things like side kicking, level pacts, and all that other stuff won't be affected because it won't even know its happening. You will still be level 50. The target will still be 54. The purple patch will be using the +3 values. That's it. Its an offset in the combat modifiers table that affects nothing else besides the combat modifiers table. There's no reason for it to do anything else.

Giant Monsters and invasion critters are just told to ignore combat modifiers, so you get no bonuses and no penalties for attacking them no matter what your level is and no matter what their level is. In essence, they are told to make the level modifier always zero. Level shift tells the game to make the level modifier always +1 to the possessor of the shift (for +1 level shifts).

In the standard game I would tend to agree for the most part: force multiplication is the reward for less solo ability in the standard game. In the end game, however, that argument carries zero weight, because no advantage or disadvantage in the standard game should dictate the specifics of encounter design in the end game, or in special case content (i.e. Hamidon, LRSF, STF, etc). The rules for balance are different in the two kinds of content, which makes it illegitimate to cross over advantages and disadvantages without review.

Put directly, if force multiplication is too high in the end game, then it gets balanced out, period. Whatever anyone paid to have force multiplication in the standard game, their reward was using it in the standard game. Their money is no good in the end game. To treat things any differently is to invite intractable game design problems. Solo specialists can still be solo specialists, and force multipliers can still be force multipliers, but recalibrated to the new end game requirements. Part of having a clear distinction between end game content and just more level 50 content is to specifically provide for this renormalization in complexity, difficulty, and balance levels.

Was that a really long time ago? Dark Armor has resisted drain for quite a while now. And these days if its just one you can probably brawl them to death even fully drained.

Ironically, PvE has had a diminished effects system in place since I1: we just call it "the purple patch." The devs diminish effects every time they make the critters higher than even con. The thing about fearing PvP-style DR is that such a system would, if the numbers were set correctly (they aren't, in my opinion, in PvP in many cases) be a lot better than just making everything +5 all the time.

After all, with a DR system one debuffer is worth one debuffer, but eight debuffers might be worth only three times one debuffer. With the purple patch, eight debuffers are worth less than three debuffers by making one debuffer worth only 0.3 when fighting +5s.

Diminishing returns would be better, when talking specifically about advanced or end game content, than just setting everything high enough combat levels above us to nullify debuffs (and damage, and everything else).

I doubt it would be retroactively implemented in standard content. But treating DR as radioactive technology for end game content is pretty silly, when its so much better than the other alternatives. Level shifting itself is a way to dodge the DR question. I actually suggested level shifting as a way to address difficulty issues with the LRSF when it debuted, and even I think its a bandaid for a problem that is essentially what a DR system is supposed to address.

If it were me, though, I wouldn't use the PvP DR functions. I would use normalized linear return functions for most effects (i.e. mitigation), and shallow log returns for certain limited ones (i.e. damage) and no DR function for effects already bound by bounded pseudo-linear returns (recharge).

Among my favorite memories from the perma-elude days. Right up there with going nuts in the old school infinite Infernal portals.

They have a melee stun, but their ranged attacks are endurance-draining and recovery debuffing, not mezzing. Which is just as lethal in many respects, if not moreso, to melee archetypes without drain protection than it is to squishies.


Protip: Performance Shifter +End is not technically endurance recovery.

No, actually, it didn't occur to me to simultaneously demorecord it and video record it. Usually bugs like this show up oddly in the demorecords. When it happens again, and I'm sure it will, I'll try to.

When did this happen, exactly?


80% of all mobs across all types now possess mez with sniper ranges? Even if I set aside the issue of what "near snipe range" means and just focus on ranged mez, the number is far lower than that. Not counting knockback attacks, its probably half that number across all critter types counting all mez attacks, including attacks that have only a small percentage chance of triggering. For example, Carnies are one of the most mez-heavy factions, and among the minions there is actually only *one* ranged attack with conventional mez: the Attendant's ring toss. Its a 10% stun. The only other ranged "mez" is the knockback in the Strongmen's hurl powers. The Malta are another mez-happy faction, and actually *none* of their minions has a genuinely ranged mez unless you count the web grenade immobilize as a mez. Its the stun in the stun grenades - used by LTs - that is the ridiculous mez (and probably too long in duration).

The serious mez tends to arrive with LTs, not minions. Even so, only the Illusionists have genuine ranged mez among Carnie LTs, unless you count KB again. All Malta LTs have genuine mez, but interestingly they also tend to have so many attacks they only infrequently open with them.


As an aside, I'm actually testing a new build for my Energy/Energy blaster that is range-focused: after six years of being a blapper, I'm going back to the range-focused roots I started with when I rolled that character. And I'm testing it in, among other things, x1 and x2 missions with Carnie and Malta, just to get a feel for how its going to deal with mez when I'm not constantly opening with bonesmasher and total focus. Actually, I'm finding I like it: even though I end up mezzed more often, with both Power Bolt and Power Blast on fast cycles it also doesn't matter as much as it used to. I don't know how far higher I can crank up with mez-happy factions with limited counter-mez of my own, but it'll be interesting to see. Plus, I only just started the new build, so most of the enhancements are SO placeholders for the eventual IO build, so its not at anywhere near full strength yet.

Not really. One of the toughest scrappers in existence is Katana/Invuln. Divine Avalanche buys soft-cap levels of defense to melee and lethal, and Invuln itself has both significant resistances *and* significant defenses in tough hide and invincibility.

Also: mitigation sets normally considered "resistance-based" ** can buy temporarily ultra-high defense relatively easily with four small lucks. Mitigation sets focused on defense cannot as easily buy the resistance cap with inspirations.

In real world terms, Dark Armor, even with just SOs or common IOs, can approach and even exceed the net survivability of a soft-capped SR scrapper under many conditions. Soft-capping is a popular means of achieving high performance, but its not the only way. And soft-cap alone without very strong regeneration, healing via a power like aid self, or significant resistances, is actually not as strong as people think it is.



** There really isn't such a thing as a "resistance-based" set. The closest we get is Electric Armor, which still has energize. Basically all other sets considered "resistance-based" have extremely powerful alternate mitigation: Fiery Aura, for example, has the strongest autohitting self heal. Dark Armor has the strongest heal period, and two mez toggles. At one time, there was a set that was literally all defense: SR. And Ice was close. But at no time has there been an all resistance set. The set most identified with resistances - Invuln - owes more than half its total strength to heal, +health, and defense. And even in the perma-unstoppable days, the name "perma-unstoppable" was slightly misleading, because over 60% of the strength of the build came from invincibility, not unstoppable itself.

45% def = 1 out of 20 mobs hitting for full = 90% resist.

With 45% defense and 0% resistance, 1 out of 20 mobs hit you for full (assuming we're talking about even con minions without tohit buffs: higher ranks and higher levels complicate the math, but don't change the relationship until you get past +5 level difference).

With 0% defense and 90% resistance, 10 out of 20 mobs hit you for 10% damage, which is the same amount of damage as 1 mob hitting you for full. Ergo, on average, 45% defense will be equal to the damage mitigation of 90% resistance assuming we're talking about comparing totals, and not incremental buffs on top of pre-existing protections. Note the three sections in italics, they are important.

It'll do none of those things. It'll place an offset into the combat modifier table. Good lord you'd think with half a decade of giant monsters walking around and all the Rikti and Zombie invaders that basically use the same game mechanics, people would figure out how this would work without too much difficulty.

Think: its level 30, but it cons even to a level 50. Do all the sidekicks in the zone suddenly explode? Tada.

Why people guess instead of asking, and why they seem so confident in their guesses, is something I haven't figured out.

(PS: None of this is specifically covered by NDA, at least not for me: jeez I suggested level shifting to Castle back when the LRSF was first introduced, using literally identical mechanics on the open forums no less. So I'm not too worried about discussing how it might work mechanically.)

Elite Bosses have -6 protection. Mag 7 or higher will mez them. Basically, three controller mezzes. Also, most controller holds are mag 3, single target and AoE.


This is less by coincidence, and more by deliberate design. Active/Offensive/Reactive mitigation is always supposed to have this property in this game. The difference is that passive protections affect only the character, not the team. Active mitigation protects everyone on the team. But passive protections typically are always on, active mitigation requires more effort to deploy.


Except that isn't true in-game. In-game, archetypes like controllers and defenders are not completely defenseless to mez, or they would not function. But even though our playerbase cannot consistently play blasters effectively (at least prior to I13) without dying to mez, that is not true for defenders and controllers. Your theory that the mez divide is really this binary has to somehow account for the fact that the devs datamined a different situation: that of the three non-melee hero archetypes - blasters, controllers and defenders - only one was radically underperforming both solo and teamed, only one of them was datamined to have significant debt loads, and only one of them appeared to be killed by mez at much higher frequency than the others. If your theory was correct, then under soloing conditions all three would be experiencing roughly the same bad performance. In fact, blasters having higher solo damage should have had a slight edge in leveling speed if all three were under the same threat due to mez.

My experience playing controllers and defenders is quite a bit different from yours, I believe. I can understand, to a point, complaints about FF defenders. But debuffing defenders have extremely powerful mitigation. And most actual controllers have plenty of mez to spare, even when ambushes occur, except perhaps at low levels or if the controller is cranked up to very high difficulty counts while solo.

I don't recall saying that specifically about Recluse. AI has been tweaked in a couple of ways within the last year or so, but I don't have information on the specific AI Recluse uses which might be different from the standard AI. In either case, I don't think anything that's changed recently would affect taunting directly, at least not that I'm aware of.

The main change to AI I'm aware of is that standard critters should no longer, or only rarely, stand around with loads of powers recharged while puzzled over which one would be the best one to use, and as a result use none of them or the same one over and over. You used to be able to run around in circles about a critter or group of critters and they would often just stare at you and not know what to do about it. They should now just shoot you in the face and figure it out later.

Uh, not exactly. The defensive passives in particular were not rebalanced because of a vocal minority of players complaining the game was too easy. Someone went spreadsheet-crazy at the last second, something I thought they would have learned their lesson not to do from City of Heroes. They did that here, with Super Reflexes one day before launch. They then made the same mistake in CO, but with every defensive power in existence simultaneously. Progress.

And they did it completely wrong. I still have the notes to prove it. But that wasn't what hurt CO. What hurt CO was the massive content gaps and horrific assumptions about playable content the devs seem to have made throughout the entire game. Once again, something I thought they would have learned their lesson not to do from City of Heroes. Except instead of the intermittent gaps that existed in CoH at launch, there was just plain content cliffs in CO. Once again: progress.


It was all over by then. Long before that, Jack checked out of CO to oversee STO, just as he checked out of STO to oversee the next thing. But more importantly, if you think either of them had any significant impact on the details of CO's implementation or design, well you must not have been in the CO beta. Or for that matter, understand how MMOs are developed. Or, for that matter, know anything at all about Jack Emmert. No one who's had even one conversation or PM exchange with Jack would make that mistake. Jack is not, how to put this, a details-oriented games designer.


Trust me, it does. I have a knack for remembering such things. You said you thought Champions Online would benefit from the fact that based on exchanges you had with Jack, he agreed with your assessment of tankers.

That's neither here nor there, because even if that quote isn't recorded anywhere, I'm absolutely certain it wouldn't be hard to find multiple quotes of you saying CO was going to fix the ills of this game by allowing people to feel "super." I'll let you in on a little secret: I was in the beta from almost the beginning, including when you were making those statements. And wishing I had a way to convey just what a train-wreck the CO development cycle was without breaking NDA.


Except I don't know anyone faster. I've been in over a dozen MMO betas since first starting to play this one, and I'm familiar with more MMOs on top of that. I haven't seen the MMO dev team that can execute anything significant on a time scale of weeks rather than months, or launch anything on a time scale of months rather than a year or more.

I'll say this for Cryptic: CO and STO were cranked out very fast as industry standards go. Which only means they took two years. And still launched with not enough content to fill a thimble between the two games combined.

Is this team fast? Honestly, no, not really. And I'm on record as saying if Paragon Studios was a high school student, it would flunk basic algebra. But you know there's three superhero MMOs out there, and I've seen them all very closely, and I'm inclined to say that about all three. Having said that, I think this dev team does pretty well with what they have given the competition. It never happens as fast as I would like, but I think they have the right idea.

So many things players said this game needs I've seen one of the other two do, to their detriment. Cryptic did me a great favor by doing so much of what other players have said over the years CoX needed to do, and demonstrated it either wasn't unambiguously a good idea, or patently a bad one (which is not to say all of their ideas were bad: some were actually very good).

Oh hell no.

Revisionist history. The "standard content model" for this game has evolved over the years, and I've been there every step of the way. Its always been the case that the standard difficulty was intended for "core, standard content." There has *always* been exceptions to the standard difficulty guidelines, whether its been Maria, or the LRSF, or the respec trial. The end game is another exception, and a predictable one. I've been saying this very thing since before any details of the end game system or end game content were released.

I also think its amusing to see you reference "dynamic CO content." Firstly, because of the notion that if the devss want to add more sophisticated content to the game, its because they have to be copying CO. It can't be, say, that they've been thinking about it for years before Cryptic went off to make MUO and then CO. Castle once posted in the open forums, in reply to a post I made regarding the reluctance the devs have for making certain kinds of advanced content, that in fact the devs are always looking for ways to do that, but practical limits of the game and the resources available to them were the limiting factors, not their will to do it (the specific subject: permanent dynamic environments).

Secondly, because of all those posts where you said CO was going to clean CoX's clock for a variety of reasons, most hilarious of which was that you knew based on conversations you had with him that Jack (Emmert) shared your game design philosophy and perspective on comic book gameplay. That's a quote I wish I kept, but I don't think I did, mores the pity.

The Incarnate system and the end game is really an outgrowth of the NCSoft buyout of 2007, when the shift to larger game system expansions than had been previously possible became priorities. Real Numbers, the Architect, Praetoria, and the end game and Incarnates are all fallout from that moment in time.

Development cycles are looooong. Most of this stuff goes back at least eighteen months if not more. The plans for end game probably predate CO's launch.

To be fair, I did it wrong. SR can practically run right out of double-stacked caltrops, but once they get quintuple stacked or worse, you're a dead man walking unless you can kill enough of them fast enough to open an escape hatch. You're not supposed to let yourself get surrounded on all sides by KoA, especially if you've decided to play at x8.

I just made a mistake, and paid the price for making a mistake. It happens. At least, it happens to me. Often enough to know when a claim of invincibility has to be due to either luck or an exaggeration or a statement from a robot.


Interesting thing about caltrops, though. Caltrops deal 0.05 scale damage per second, and that is considered "trivial damage." Worth noting: a standard scale 1.0 attack has 4 second recharge. If the attack has about 1.0 second of cast time - fairly short as critter attacks go - a scale 1.0 attack would have 5 second cycle time and generate 0.2 scale damage per second. Except even minions only hit about half the time, which means that 0.2 scale damage per second is actually only about 0.1 scale damage per second of damage that actually lands. Caltrops, which are described as doing "trivial" damage, actually deal about half the damage as a minion with one attack would do. Typical minions have two attacks, which means a single patch of caltrops does about 25% of the damage of a typical minion. Another way of looking at it is that a KoA minion with caltrops is about as dangerous as a +1 minion (which would hit 11% harder 10% more often: 22% more damage). The difference between even con and +1 is essentially being described in the caltrops description as "trivial."

I thought it was possible also, I just didn't realize how costly (in some way) it would be when I said it.

Nobody really won the fight over the AE.

Also, the mechanical problems with the AE are fundamentally just numbers. Numbers are fixable. The more fundamental problem with the AE, in my opinion, haunts every aspect of its design and usage. Its design imperative was to be as inclusive as possible for authors. That's fundamentally wrong. Its design imperative should be to generate as high quality content as possible. If a hundredth of a percent of the players end up writing content that everyone wants to play, the AE is a success. If ninety-nine point nine nine percent of the players write content that no one wants to play, the AE isn't.

And really, when you get down to it, the difference between the two philosophies is the difference between seeing AE authorship as a privilege, and as a responsibility.

One PvP IO is a little expensive. 26 PvPOs is something else entirely. I think it would be cheaper to bribe Lord Recluse to take a dive in your task force.

78% wouldn't be enough. I was thinking inventions could get you within striking distance of 90%, but now that I think about it the only way to do that is to sell out your offense completely and go with Shield Wall + Analyze Weakness.