Arcanaville

I thought for a moment that the fact that all of your assumptions were false might have some bearing on your conclusions. I forgot who I was talking to. Nothing has any relevance to your conclusions. You're like the game balance equivalent of a photobomb.


But what the heck, I've got a few minutes. The question was:

And my answer was: this question is irrelevant, because its *always* irrelevant. Powersets get things because they need them, not because everyone else has them also. This is a simple statement of fact you seem incapable of accepting.

You make it sound like the other sets were "allowed" to have debuff resistance as if it was some sort of privilege. Defense sets got it because of the existence of cascade failure, something which mathematically does not exist for regeneration or for recharge as it functions in the regeneration set. It wasn't Halloween candy the devs had to give out to everyone once it gave them out to the powersets that actually needed them for a specific reason. Other protections, like recharge protection, actually trade their roots to when Quickness was given recharge debuff protection because the power was considered too weak with its original design. Quickness' competition was powers like Quick Recovery. +20% recharge vs +30% recovery? No contest.

From there, powersets received debuff protection specifically when they were buffed due to underperformance. At *no time* after the defense debuff resistances were put in to address cascade failure was a powerset given debuff resistance "just because."

So the answer to your question: what makes regen so special? The answer is: it has never suffered any of the problems all the other sets did that granted them debuff protection. Simple as that. To grant it debuff protection, it is necessary and sufficient to demonstrate Regen suffers from a problem that specifically warrants debuff resistance. Either a mechanical problem or a performance problem.

"Feeling left out" is neither a mechanical or performance problem.


And in case you didn't notice when I last mentioned it:

My tolerance for such statements from people like you currently borders on the non-existent. I'm asking nicely for you to cease. I won't ask again. If you have a case, make it. If you think you can contradict my case, do so directly. Don't make implications that you're somehow the safeguard of rationality. I frankly find that insulting in more ways than one, not the least of which is that your arguments tend to fall apart every single time I challenge them, and yet you keep claiming victory time and time again.

Not really. Level-gated content has been the norm from launch to ten minutes ago last I checked. The vast overwhelming majority of content is level-gated. The vast overwhelming majority of content that has ever been added is level-gated. At no time have the devs signaled a trend away from level-gated content. Virtually all content is targeted for a specific level range, and usually doesn't scale outside of that range.

I hope the pronouncement of the announcement produces an inducement of advancement and doesn't require the enforcement of retracement under threat of replacement. Or is my displacement of embasement simply cause for bemusement?

Yeah, I'm aware of that. Although I'm thinking of a very specific implementation of it.


For the most part, this isn't a "tech" thing, its more of a design and UI thing, although there is a significant amount of work in modifying the data in the powers system to make it simpler, at least as I'm envisioning the change. Although with just a tiny bit of tech that would not be difficult to add, it would literally be as simple as flipping a switch.


That's the intent, yes. The problem with zone is that unlike arena matches for which the rules can be agreed upon by the participants at match time, the zone rules have to be the same for everyone. This opens the door to asking the question which PvP rules make the most sense. This is a non-trivial question to answer with certainty. Implementing the arena settings could offer a way to settle that question definitively or at least as definitively as possible. If literally *everyone* who PvPs consistently chose the same settings or almost always chose the same settings, that would in effect be a vote for those settings among all players who PvP, whether they discuss the matter publicly or not. It would be strong evidence that those settings should be the ones deployed at the zones. In effect, the people whose vote matters the most would be the people who actually PvP. And the counter to the objection that people would PvP if the rules were different is defused by offering those rules, and seeing if anyone actually takes advantage of them. If no one does, that would seem to settle the matter. If people do, it also similarly settles the matter that different rules would indeed attract more PvPers. Then it becomes a matter of resolving the differences for the shared zones.


I would do it if I was in charge of it, based on my own (admittedly rough) estimate for the amount of effort it would take. But I have very little credibility to push for it on behalf of anyone.

Its not speculation to state that its obvious from a design perspective that level-gated content is one of the bedrock principles of the progression system in City of Heroes, and that the exemplar system is explicitly designed to be a compromise between the level-gating aspect of content and the cross-level teaming feature they want to encourage when reasonably possible.

Whether that compromise resolves in a particular way for a particular piece of content is not easy to predict without directly asking the devs, and even I do not tend to get direct answers to questions of that form often (that I can repeat). But its true as a principle that the desire for content to be as widely accessible as possible is not absolute, and is balanced against the desire to provide unique content at different level ranges. As is usually true, the question is one of where specifically the line is drawn.

No one with a brain thinks we don't need new content at all levels. The objection is to the notion that the specific type of content the complainer demands is obviously what the devs should have made their singular priority.

If someone says "I think the devs should make sure the new content they are developing gets eventually balanced across all levels" well you know, they might be right. If someone says "the devs were idiots for making content everyone blows through in minutes anyway and everyone hates" then no, they aren't right. And while I don't personally tend to ask such people to quit, I'm also disinclined to go out of my way to save them from the inevitable and deserved backlash.

If that's all it takes for those players to go berserk, I can't imagine they are good for the long-term health of the player population. It won't be the first or last time the devs do something that sets them off into deciding to share their misery with their peers.

Actually, when I find myself thinking I might want to look at PvP again, before the meds kick in, I find the two suggestions I made to the devs when the PvP adjustments were being made are still basically the same two suggestions I would pursue now:

1. Cross server arena
2. Arena settings to enable/disable five PvP effects separately: DR, Movement suppression, PvP damage adjustments, Heal suppression, and Mez conversion.

Both of these are theoretically doable. I'm less able to guestimate how difficult #1 is, but I am capable of doing so for #2. It would be significant work, but wouldn't require additional tech beyond the ability for the programmers to whip up relatively quickly. I still believe them both to be achievable and reasonable requests.


There's actually a whole logical argument I started to make regarding #2 that had to do with introducing PvP changes using that system, and using the arena settings statistics to essentially datamine what PvPers who actually PvPed found both fun and fair. If they are optional, you can introduce any wild settings you want because the players can always choose to ignore them, but conversely it also allows PvP subcultures to choose their own versions of PvP mechanics without having to obey the majority opinion. It allows PvP balance changes to evolve ten times faster than PvE changes as a result because change control is less critical.

And how many times have you canceled and returned to cancel again, or are you a new friend?


You didn't need to convince me you were PP's friend with odd non-sequitors: I would have taken your word for it.

I'm personally a fan of the special episode at the end of the first season of JLU, which is, in a sense, the Last Batman Story of the Timmverse DCAU.

I was just making up numbers for the example. Actually, now that I think about it, cones like Slice typically have 5 target caps anyway. But AS specifically is not really specifically intended to be a direct replacement for AoEs per se. Its meant to be a burst damage attack which allows you to eliminate or significantly damage a single target before the fight really "starts" which is actually a form of damage mitigation. Its sort of intended to be the melee ranged version of a blaster alpha with a sniper blast.

Do you even know what a filler is? Seriously?


This is not the first time I've read this from you. Either you have a revolving door of friends, or this won't be the last chance to recapture them.

I believe the devs consider this to be a bug, but not a punishable exploit. However, I wouldn't fall in love with it. In theory, they added tech intended for the Incarnate system that *could* fix this problem at any time if they decided to retrofit for it. If they do, I believe the devs have the right to do so without warning or explanation, because it is still technically acknowledged as a bug.

Anyone who thinks the devs should provide ample warning before making such a change, should consider this ample warning. I have no knowledge of the devs actually considering this, but the fact that the technology exists to fix it now and the devs' primary reason for not addressing the problem in the past was a lack of tech to do so should cause everyone to assume this bug is no longer a safe bet in the long term. Whether it happens tomorrow or two years from now, it should not come as a surprise to anyone.

I *think* what he means is that if an AoE can hit many targets and rack up lots of damage, single target attacks should be capable of generating similar levels of damage just concentrated onto a single target. In terms of AoE factor balance, AoEs are typically balanced around hitting something between 2 and 3 targets, in terms of their recharge and endurance costs relative to single target attacks. So if you can hit 6 or 8 targets instead, your AoEs will be doing perhaps three times the damage for the cost that a single target attack is allowed to do. So to compensate, he's suggesting that single target attacks generate that much damage so that a set of single target attacks kills ultimately just as fast as something with a lot of AoEs.

The example, though is specifically stated to be one-shotting a +3, which for a stalker requires an attack almost as powerful as total focus when slotted to +95% damage, and also requires that attack crit for (near) double damage on top of that.

This line of thought is wrong on so many levels. Mostly because few offensive powersets can make reasonably full attack chains with nothing but AoEs. Ultimately, everyone uses single target attacks sometimes, and the AoE advantage is diluted somewhat because of that. And not everyone faces the large numbers of targets necessary for AoEs to reach those levels of efficiency. By attempting to balance single target attacks based on the maximum amount of damage that AoEs can deliver, you end up being forced to grant ridiculous amounts of damage to those single target attacks.

I'm not sure I could give a specific numerical example which would make this make sense, because I'm not sure one exists. But if you wanted to follow this line of thought - and as I said, I don't buy it myself - the logical way to approach it is something like this. Pick two sets to compare, say MA and Broadsword (just to keep things a little simple, I'm leaving stalkers out of it for a second because they have additional quirks to their offensive sets). MA has the one AoE, Dragon's Tail. Broadsword has two: whirling sword and slice (not counting headsplitter here). If we say that DT and WS are similar enough, MA falls short of BS on AoE potential, because it has no corresponding AoE to Slice.

So, we take Slice and we guestimate in some manner (or just pull numbers out of thin air if we need to) how many targets we believe Slice should be "balanced for." Suppose we say six. Slice does scale 1.23 damage. Hitting six targets it would do Scale 7.38 damage. So we say ok, to compensate for MA missing an analogous cone, we'll take Storm Kick, say, and buff that attack to deal 7.38 damage but with only Slice's end costs and recharge not what the formula would predict (which would be 44s of recharge and 38 endurance). Its a single target attack with the damage potential of an AoE and the costs of an AoE. And if that's high enough to one-shot a +3 minion, well, that's cool (on a scrapper it would one-shot an even LT and come very close to one-shotting a +1 LT, and with Build Up it would blast away more than half the health of an even level boss at level 50).

As I said: I don't buy this theory. But this is the version of the theory with numbers attached.

Indeed, that was always one of the intents. And I wish the original discussion threads for the four iterations of those articles (from I3ish to the latest version which is reposted at the links when the originals were purged) could have been saved. They would have been fascinating to read through now. In some cases, with the advantage of unambiguous hindsight, incredibly amusing also.

And I said I was confused as to what the difference was between a solo mission, a "mini" 4 player task force, and an 8 player task forces was, if all of them were going to scale from one to eight players and not restrict the minimum team size. It seemed to be skywriting with invisible smoke.

Also, scaling per person rewards upward based on team size in that dramatic a fashion would just put us back to fillers rather than scalers. That would be counter-productive.

Honestly, I'm completely confused as to what an "8 man task force" that automatically scales to the size of the team is. Isn't that just a one man task force that scales *up* to the size of the team?

Plus, there's no way the devs will *force* end game content to require teams or teamed content. They'll go so far as to require participation in zone-wide events, but I can't imagine the devs shooting themselves in the head having mandatory teamed paths for end game. They went to great pains to say that this *wasn't* going to be a requirement for the end game system in beta.


I could see the end game system mature in to a giant "200 mission" series of story arcs and other content eventually, but I think players would be setting themselves up for disappointment if they were thinking anything remotely on that scale was possible or reasonable for Issue 19. I think a reasonable target is something on the size and scale of the combined Tina/Maria Praetorian arc, plus a couple of task forces and zone events, plus a bunch of ancillary one-shot missions and short arcs (ala RWZ), at least to start.

A lot of people forget, actually.


Yes, and yes. And just to be clear, as mentioned above whenever the combat engine makes a tohit roll on your behalf, even if it isn't strictly speaking to see if an attack actually hits, you'll see those messages in your combat chat. So overpower, scrapper crits, percentage chance stuns, any effect that has a less than 100% chance to hit will likely show a roll in the combat chat which states whether that specific effect actually occurs or not. It does not affect random rolls that are unrelated to a power hitting a target.


The streakbreaker is built into the combat engine. Anything that attacks anything is affected by it.

The streakbreaker doesn't affect tohit rolls. If the streakbreaker decides your next attack will be a forced hit, the game engine doesn't bother making a roll at all. The SB doesn't "modify" the tohit roll to force the hit: that attack essentially becomes an autohitting attack.

The streakbreaker affects attacks not players or critters, and affects all attacks that must make a tohit roll to hit the target (i.e. attacks that are not autohit). The streakbreaker only affects miss-streaks: it will break a streak of misses and inject a hit if the miss streak exceeds its parameters (which vary based on your worst tohit requirement of the miss streak as described above) and does not affect hits: it will never convert a hit into a miss.

The intent of that ginormous set of articles was more to document the methodology and what some of the advanced computational techniques were saying about the simpler approximations. The closest I've come to redoing that was the mitigation powerset proliferation spreadsheet (which now that I think about it, I have to upload somewhere new because the old link to it appears broken). I don't think a rehash of the same thing with updated numbers would be as interesting for the effort, and if I were to do something on that scale again I would probably focus on situational debuffs and critter faction issues. But those articles were a culmination of several hundred hours of work, including mandatory testing all four secondaries in-game at all level ranges. Testing *all* the mitigation powersets under all critter faction situations would be an order of magnitude more work.

The bottom line on those four secondaries is that they are now a lot closer in performance than they were back when those articles were first conceived, at least with standard SO slotting. Inventions have changed the situation somewhat at lower levels, and more dramatically at the end game and higher levels of performance. Regen's downtime and other advantages have been significantly diluted by Willpower, but Shields has done that to a lesser degree for SR. Most of the interesting discussion on balance comes from proliferated and new powersets that didn't exist for scrappers back then: Fiery Aura, Electric Armor, etc.

Probably the most interesting development since those articles were written regarding the original four is that Dark Armor is a much less controversial powerset than it once was. DA used to be a highly polarizing subject: some thought it was awesome, the rest thought it sucked. Now, the more moderate viewpoint on DA seems to be the norm. Its usually seen to have situational strengths and situational weaknesses, and nowhere near as many people think its broken or unplayable due to knockback weakness or endurance costs.

Hmm, maybe there is an article or two in there somewhere. Never say never.

Yep, yep, and yep.

Something must make the devs want to hold off and think about it, though, because that's been known for years now (I'm certain, because I PMed that to Castle when Rage was being tweaked back then).

Last I checked, nothing altered the chance to crit on CS: not hide, and not the teaming bonus. It was a flat 20% always.

That's still pretty good, though.

Translation: I think stalker attacks should hit about as hard as total focus would, if total focus had a guaranteed critical for full damage.

(No, as a matter of fact that's not really much of an exaggeration: at level 50 to do this would require a melee attack that did scale 6.17 damage, more if the target has resistances, and the closest thing to that would be total focus at 3.56 scale, if it always did double damage which would be 7.12).

Sure, why not. Heck, why not just make stalker attacks just do Cur -1.0 damage, so they always kill their targets by setting their health to zero. Then we wouldn't have to worry about all that ugly math and numbers and junk and stuff. While you could kill giant monsters that way, you could only kill one of them at a time, so that's cool.

The Streak Breaker should prevent that unless your net tohit drops below 40%.

Important to realize that the streakbreaker honors the *lowest* tohit within your current miss streak. An example illustrates the point. Suppose you attack something with an attack that has a 95% chance to hit, and you get unlucky and miss. Many people assume the streakbreaker now *guarantees* the next attack will hit, but that's not exactly true. It will *if* the next swing *also* has a 90% or better net chance tohit. If so, then the SB will guarantee that swing hits, because the SB prevents miss streaks longer than one miss from attacks with higher than 90% net chance to hit the target.

But suppose you swing with a lower accuracy attack, one with a net overall chance to hit the target of only 85%? Well, you have one miss in a row, and your current attack only has 85% chance, and the SB will tolerate as many as two misses for such attacks, so you're still allowed to miss. And what if you then swing with an even worse attack, and it has only 75% chance to hit the target? That's right, you could miss again.

What's more, the SB factors in the *worst* attack in the chain, not the best and not the most recent. So suppose you swing with brawl, and brawl has nothing slotted into it at all and somehow Brawl only has a 15% chance to hit the target. According to the streakbreaker, you can now be allowed to miss up to one hundred times in a row before it is willing to step in and force a guaranteed hit. So even if the next 99 swings are with ultrahigh accuracy and you have a 95% chance to hit the target, if you really are that unlucky that you keep rolling snake eyes, you'll keep missing. Of course, to miss 99 times in a row with an attack that has a 95% chance to hit the target would make you the unluckiest person on the planet, but the streakbreaker will not bail you out. Not on that particular miss streak, because it has been "poisoned" by that very low accuracy attack.

This sometimes confuses people who don't know how the streakbreaker works. They fire a really high accuracy attack, and then a veteran attack with no accuracy, and miss both. Then they start swinging with nothing but high accuracy attacks and while they eventually hit they wonder how they could miss three or four times in a row when the streakbreaker is supposed to make it impossible to miss twice in a row with high accuracy attacks. And the answer is, the SB doesn't take about the two misses in a row with the high accuracy attacks. It cares about the four misses in a row with the one crappy accuracy attack, which allows for longer miss streaks.

Well, good luck with that.


And that. I already did my zero-assumption analysis years ago (at least as it pertains to mitigation mechanics). When a competitive analysis even appears, I'll be happy to put it up against it. Until then, I'll stick with my analysis over your random guesses.


Also, these are the relevant passages from my scrapper analysis articles:

From part one:

And from the discrete analysis in part two:
Your grand realization was old news back in 2005, and conclusively driven into the ground in 2006.

Castle seems to agree with me that this is *just* a teeny bit overboard. I've suggested returning most or all of the interruptible window to cast time and maybe suppressing some of the damage to make it more like a crit than just an attack that does a megaton of damage, but (as always) its up to the powers team to decide what they want to do with that from a balance perspective. I've suggested looking at all of them though, not just Mangle (and Mangle actually uses the generic hero/villain powers - like the ones used to spawn the bosses that appear in bank robbery ambushes - so be on the lookout for this kind of thing with lots of named but not signature villains).

By the way, its +100%, not +200%. Its always been that, at least as far as I can recall.

Still shreds defense either way most of the time, but theoretically speaking its possible to buff your defense with stacked bubbles or inspirations so high that you can overcome the buff. If it was +200% then it would be basically impossible to overcome the buff because everyone's defense hard caps wouldn't go high enough (a tanker could get to about 225% defense and cut critters down to 25% tohit after the buff).

Whoever designed those at the beginning of time wasn't fooling around.