Arcanaville

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I’m going to guess it’s the former.

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You'd be correct. In fact, the game doesn't really (in general) know the difference between a "buff" and a "debuff" - a debuff is really just a buff with the opposite sign (i.e. negative). So the game wouldn't even know when to do the latter type equation: its really just all adding up of buffs, some of which happen to be negative.

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Someone once claimed this was untrue for resists. They claimed a 50% buff and 50% resist debuff effectively resulted in 75% net damage. (ie, 100 pts became 50, then the debuff raised it to 75).

Can I get a denial?

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That's most definitely false. I believe its a misunderstanding based on the notion that at one time people thought resistance debuffs didn't just *look* like damage buffs, but were damage buffs in actual fact (they are not). A resistance buff combined with a damage buff *would* look like the calculation above, because those don't stack with each other (obviously) and therefore take effect independently and separately.

But since resistance debuffs are, in fact, debuffs, that's not what happens. Part of the confusion dates back to the time when it wasn't well known that resistance debuffs are *resisted* by damage resistance. So if you though it worked like this:

Net Damage = Base Damage * (1 - Resistance + ResistanceDebuffs)

that didn't work. So naturally, people thought it worked like this instead:

Net Damage = Base Damage * (1 - Resistance) * (1 + ResistanceDebuffs)

which actually does work. So they thought this term:

(1 - Resistance) * (1 + ResistanceDebuffs)

was how resistance debuffs worked. Except in fact, what was happening was this:

Net Damage = Base Damage * (1 - Resistance + (1 - Resistance) * ResistanceDebuffs)

In other words, the debuffs were themselves resisted. This simplifies to the expression above. How can we tell the difference? In PvP, with *unresistable* resistance debuffs. They work exactly like you would expect:

Net Damage = Base Damage * (1 - Resistance + ResistanceDebuffs)

Because the debuffs now operate without being resisted.

So technically, your resistance is this:

Resistance - ResistedDebuffs

which is:

Resistance - (1 - Resistance) * Debuffs

when they are resistable. This is actually true for *all* debuffs, not just resistance debuffs, but most players don't have a lot of resistance to other kinds of debuffs, so the first time they encounter this is with resistance debuffs. The whole:

Thing = ThingBuff - ThingDebuff

almost always works. But its really:

Thing = ResistedBuff - ResistedDebuff

Of course, we don't resist our own buffs all that often, so its usually:

Thing = Buff - ResistedDebuff

or just (Buff - Debuff) when there are no resistances in play.

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I’m going to guess it’s the former.

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You'd be correct. In fact, the game doesn't really (in general) know the difference between a "buff" and a "debuff" - a debuff is really just a buff with the opposite sign (i.e. negative). So the game wouldn't even know when to do the latter type equation: its really just all adding up of buffs, some of which happen to be negative.

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I would like ask where you got your formula for calculating a modified recharge rate. If a power's RECH is reduced by 33% (.33), then it means it will recharge 33% (.33) faster. Therefore, the formula should be [Modified RECH = Original rate - (Original rate X Boost %)]. So 10 - (10 X .33) = 6.7 not the 7.52 in your calculation which would only be 24.8 % boost. 6.7 is 33% (.33) faster than 10. Better example to illustrate my point is using 100 sec. 33% (.33) of 100 is 33. [100 - (100 X .33) = 67]. 67 sec is 33% faster than 100. Reduce the RECH by 50% (.50) and it will be twice as fast. [100 - (100 X .50) = 50]. 50 is 50% faster than (twice as fast as) 100.

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The way recharge works has been known for a very long time: far longer than I've ever been calculating numbers in the game.

The english descriptions for many things are ambiguous or strictly speaking mathematically incorrect, however in this case the english phrase "recharges 33% faster" is actually (probably coincidentally) correct.

If something has a recharge of 100 seconds, and its reduced to 67 seconds, then the proper way of describing that is that the power "recharges in 33% less time." That is *not* the same thing as "33% faster."

"Faster" is a word used to describe rates. A rate can be faster or slower. A time cannot be faster or slower. So the question is, what thing is happening that can happen faster when something is recharging. The metaphoric answer is, if you picture the power starting from zero, and "moving" towards being fully recharged, that rate is what's being increased by 33%. Basically, imagine if powers had recharge progress bars. 33% faster recharge has only one logical meaning: the progress bar moves from left to right 33% faster.

Under that perspective, "33% faster" does not mean "recharge is 33% less time" it means "recharge at 33% higher rate" which is mathematically "recharge in 75% of the original time." Similarly "100% faster" does not mean "recharge in zero time" it means "recharge in half the time" because that's what would happen if the recharge progress bar moved twice as fast.

Your own post actually shows the fact that even you wouldn't ordinarily describe 50% less time as 50% faster:

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Reduce the RECH by 50% (.50) and it will be twice as fast. [100 - (100 X .50) = 50]. 50 is 50% faster than (twice as fast as) 100.

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"Twice as fast" and "50% faster" are not synonymous. "Twice as fast" is 100% faster. That situation is "twice as fast" and "executing in half the time." Its not "50% faster."


The person who wrote the text descriptions for many things erred in many ways (most notoriously: confusing "percent" and "percentage points") but in this case, he got it exactly correct.


Now, as to what confirmation I have that the equations are correct: I have three:

1. My own testing confirms that recharge works the way the formula specifies
2. The devs have confirmed that is the way recharge is intended to work.
3. The devs have also confirmed that my understanding of the mechanics of the game scheduler are correct, which means this is the *only* way that recharge can work.

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I can imagine the player created missions being non-reward until they are approved in some way.

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Well I can see it being defaulted like normal mishes. If we are able to put our own AV's in the arc then they should reward properly. I mean an AV is an AV and the minions, LTs, Bosses already have their coding for xp + difficulty settings I am sure, so I don't see where there can be an issue with rewards.

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Picture someone deciding that their TA/A defender is levelling just a bit too slowly.

Now picture a mission with nothing but rooms full of minions with little or no range, each with a door too narrow to exit, but wide enough to shoot through.

Now picture Oil Slick Arrow being fired into those rooms and ignited, one after the other, over and over, while otherwise staying out of line of fire.

And at the end of the mission, an AV with no flight or leaping and minimal range at the bottom of a hole, while the defender stand up here next to the cluster of green and blue buff crystals.

I can just imagine what a PL farming team would make, if they could make their dream mission.


There's all sorts of fun things that might be possible if they give us enough lattitude, but that same lattitude will make the mission content itself highly exploitable.

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I wonder if they'll give our build interface the sophistcation necessary to do things like changing the mission objective when a certain objective (not necessarily one that is obvious to players) is completed, or allowing us to add NPC Combatants as pets/allies. Also, will we be able to incorporate named Bosses, Elite Bosses, or AVs/Heroes, or maybe even Giant Monsters?

Imagine building a "King of Monster Island" mission, where your party is transported to an instance of Striga Island. Once there, they have to find a "glowie" that gives the person who clicks it a temp power, "Control Monster", which would cause that monster to be instantly defeated and respawned as a friendly "Pet" version of the same GM, which would then follow the party around the island, as they lead him/her/it to hunt down and destroy all the other Giant Monsters on the island. Of course, all the great *City of* Giant Monsters would have been transported to various sites around the island themselves (Much to the chagrin of various Council, Family, & Warrior NPCs also placed as more mundane challenges. The goal is of course for "your" monster to destroy all the others. if "your" monster is defeated, the mission fails.

Now if only there was a way to implement player made badges to go along with this. Then when you help Jack In Irons to defeat the others, you get the Master of Jack In Irons badge. Furthermore, when you have gotten all the "Master of" badges for each monster in the mission, you get the Master of Monster Island Accolade.

Of course, even if we aren't given this level of freedom, I might suggest that the devs themselves are welcome to build my Monster Island mission

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I doubt the devs will initially allow any player-created mission to offer any significant rewards, because that's far too exploitable in the general case, and allowing players to make badges could explosively increase the number of badges that exist: I think it makes more sense if the devs add a parallel "accomplishment" tracker that would allow players to track which player-created missions they completed, more like a mission diary than a badge. Players could register their missions just like we now register supergroups, and other players that complete them could record that fact in the mission diary.

The conceit that allows players to make up any mission they want and yet coexist with the current game would be to place them in alternate dimensions: all player-created mission arcs could start with a zone into an alternate dimension through Portal Corp, Naylor's portal, or some other form of dimensional travel. They could then be identified by dimensional coordinates, plus an arc title. So instead of registering a supergroup, players would "register" a new dimension, and then create the story arc within it.

Actually, doing that allows an additional feature: players can award any sort of temporary powers or abilities they want within a story arc, and the game could automatically remove them at the end of the arc when they "return" to the current dimension. This gives players more flexibility in mission content without the danger of "polluting" the mainline game.

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one of the things I can talk about is a feature that we are planning. Similar in concept to our character creator, it allows you, the players, to create missions and story arcs for your characters and others to participate in. You’ll be able to pick the map, villain group, and objectives, as well as write the dialog and any clues needed for the missions. When you are satisfied with it, you can upload it and have other players across all servers play it and rate it.

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Whoa.


I'm in.

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New Hires at NorCal (so far):
1. Jimmy the IT Guy
2. Teressa (HR/Office mom)
3. BAB's animation minion
4-5. Castle's powers minions
7-8. Moderators 11 and 419?
9-10. Kick [censored] concept artists
11. Graphics programmer

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Fixed for you.

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Hopefully, fixed for you too.


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Now our sounds are being handled through NCSoft in Austin

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Thats interesting.

(/em points finger at BaB: pew pew pew)

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I'm guessing the numbers behind the Psi/Mind powers will be tweaked downward to balance this set.

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Fixed that for you.

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So unless you are talking like less than defender level damage I just dont see how. Damage will suck so bad no one will want to play it anyways?

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Psychic Shockwave for Dominators is an AOE power which does damage as it if it a single target power. For Blasters, this will not be the case -- the AOE divisor will be in place. In other words, divide damage by 4.75.

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... so, divide the 1.96 scalar by 4.75? So it's doing .41 scale, roughly? So about 25-26 damage at level 50?

That's ... that's atrocious. That can't mean what it sounds like, that would be a terrible power. What did you mean?

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That's what it means. Probably for blasters, the power is intended as a damaging mez/debuff, not a nuke.

Its shaping up to be a weird set. PSW is looking to be a relatively mediocre power. DP, just the opposite, although actually I'm waiting for Castle to say that DP won't self-stack next.

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I'm guessing the numbers behind the Psi/Mind powers will be tweaked downward to balance this set.

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Fixed that for you.

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So unless you are talking like less than defender level damage I just dont see how. Damage will suck so bad no one will want to play it anyways?

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How can there possibly be only two options: overpowered, and trivially weak? There should be some values between those two. Even Goldilocks figured that one out.

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Subdual – Subdual deals moderate Psionic damage and may leave the targeted foe Immobilized for a brief time. Immobilized foes cannot move but can still attack. Damage: Moderate, Recharge: Moderate

Mind Probe -- Grip the minds of your foe with a Mind Probe. You must be in close proximity to pull off this attack that wrecks havoc on your foes synapses, dealing moderate Psionic Damage while reducing his attack speed. Damage: Moderate, Recharge: Moderate

Telekinetic Thrust – A focused attack or intense mental power that violently sends a nearby foe flying. Deals minimal damage, but can be very effective. Damage: Minor, Recharge: Moderate

Psychic Scream -- This howl of Psionic energy resonates in the minds of all foes within its conical area of effect, inflicting moderate damage. Damage: Moderate, Recharge: Slow

Build Up – Greatly boosts your attacks for a few seconds. Slightly increases Accuracy. Recharge: Long

Drain Psyche – You Drain the Psyche of you nearby foes, thus weakening their Hit Point Regeneration and Endurance Recovery and boosting your own. Recharge: Very Long

World of Confusion – This toggle powers allows you to cause psionic damage and cause confusion within a group of foes, creating chaos. The chance of confusing an enemy is lower than then chance of damaging them, and it may take multiple hits to affect stronger opponents. All affected foes within the area will turn and attack each other, ignoring all heroes. You will not receive any Experience Points for foes defeated by Confused enemies. Recharge: Moderate

Scare – You entwine a single foe within his deepest fears and cause him to helplessly tremble for a brief while. Recharge: Medium

Psychic Shockwave – Psychic Shockwave is a devastating Psionic attack that wracks the minds of all nearby foes. Affected foes may have a reduced attack rate and may be left Disoriented. Damage: High Recharge: Slow

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Interestingly, the first thought that crossed my mind when reading this was: Psionic Scrapper. My guess: people will be begging for this to be "proliferated" to the melee archetypes before it even exits beta.

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*starts placing bets on the number of people who will still lodge complaints about this 'upcoming feature'*

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As long as they don't mess around too much with my Freem/Biff blaster, I'm cool with it.

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With the slider to see how it scales with level? ZOMG! The coolness... it's... it's too much! I think I need to have a little lie down for awhile.....

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You're welcome.

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I just have one question for you Arcanaville, why the heck aren't you working for NCSoft yet? I'm getting the impression that you had a hand in helping pohsyb with all these Real Number implemations.

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I suggested the slider. The other 99.999% is all pohsyb. And he, you know, did all the actual writing of code and stuff. He should get at least half the credit.

(Actually, there is one other suggestion I made that is in there, but the slider is the cooler one)

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With the Power Information...will there be a way to view this info outside of character creation or levelling up? Possibly more detailed information on your Enhancement Screen or with the hover over on your Powers tab?

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The detailed power info will be available in the power selection screen, level up screen, respec screens, enhancement screen, and as another tab on the info window for powers.

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With the slider to see how it scales with level? ZOMG! The coolness... it's... it's too much! I think I need to have a little lie down for awhile.....

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You're welcome.

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Dr. Brainstorm,

I keep hearing everyone complaining about villians not getting Illusion and Masterminds not getting a primary. I was just thinking that Illusion would make a great Primary for mastermind. The tweaking would be extensive. But something too look at.

1 - Spectral Wounds
1 - Phantom Army
2 - Propel (from Gravity... make some of the damage heal back like spectral wounds)
6 - Solidify (see below for what it adds to minions)
8 - Group Invisibilty
12 - Spectral Terror
18 - Agnise (see below for what it adds to minions)
26 - Phantasm
32 - Psychic Scream (From Dominator Psionic)

You would have to tweak the minions powers... (more damage but have some of it heal back in time to keep the feel)
Basic Minion Art would sorta look partially invised. Solidify would make them solid. Agnize would give them an aura.


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If I was under time constraints, I would do something closer to:

1. Spectral Wounds
2. Phantom Army (not flagged untouchable)
3. Mental Blast (from psionic blast)
4. Upgrade 1
5. Deceive
6. Spectral Terror
7. Blind (reduce hold to mag 2)
8. Phantasm
9. Upgrade 2

The upgrades wouldn't be too difficult to make, since the PA already have a variety of attacks you could use the animations from, as does the Phantasm. I'd give the PA spectral melee attacks at base, real melee attacks at upgrade 1 (i.e. no heal back) and real ranged attacks at upgrade 2. The phantasm could have single target blast at base, torrent at upgrade 1, and cast decoy at level 2. The spooky is a bit problematic, since it has no attacks. I'd probably add damage to its terrorize blast to provide more damage to the mastermind, and also to soften the fear (losing some total control in trade). A psionic tornado-like power would be an interesting power to give spooky on upgrade.


Incidentally, Castle is aware of the Illusion template for a mastermind primary. But he says it would take more time to design and balance all the attacks that would have to be redistributed among the various pets and upgrades than he had time for. That doesn't mean he's going to do it when he has the time. That doesn't mean he's not going to do it when he has the time. It just means he's aware of the parallels between Illusion control and the mastermind summons.

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THIS ISSUE HAS NOT BALANCED THE SIDES. IN FACT, I WOULD SAY THE HEROES NOW ARE MORE OPed THAN VILLS. Prove me wrong.

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Prove your right.

Until the issue goes up on test, we have NO CLUE what changes, adjustements, and other things are going to be done to the sets. So until then, nobody has any way to prove how good OR bad the sets will be on the AT's they are being added to.

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Proof I'm right. NP!

Psy/ Blasters with boost range, and buildup, and power boost.
Anyone that has ever fought a rad/psy before will know what powerbuildup will dom does (immediately drops toggles and ignores ur bf). So, powerboost (perma-able on a blaster) and boost range and buildup on will dom, and then all the other psy powers. So, ok sure, its strong. How will villains counter. We all get the psy mastery shield in our epics! oh wait, no we don't that's heroes. Oh yea, and we couldn't respec into it if we even wanted to, because hey, we can't respec patrons.

So, what is the vill side resistance to a psy/ blaster? thermal shields do nothing, sonic shields do nothing. Defense has always done nothing to a blaster with 1 fort. (ask any /sr or /nin stalker how well defense does against heroes) The only toons that have any type of resistance to /psy is /dark, and /wp. um, yay, that's a joke.

But we vills have psy damage, yea, in our doms. LOL!. the squishiest of squishies. Vs, your defenders and now blasters. Very "even and balanced" right?

resistance sets for a stalker is a joke saying one mastermind pet will keep you out of hide for an entire match. LOL! Electric melee for stalkers, I'm guessing is a joke. High animation times for lower damage than EM/. great.

Brutes getting more lethal/smash is NOT going to make them better at pvp. and also, if /EA brutes are a joke, then what makes /SR any better? besides the fact that you have no heal or +hp at all?

ice/cold corr vs ice/cold defender. Let's see, Defender wins because his slows and debuffs are UNRESISTED, they get Power Boost or hibernate or TK. Vills get yay webnades, which does compliment ice/cold. However, in the long run scourge and webnades does NOT win against unresisted debuffing, power boost or hibernate, and better endurance usage in a high endurance set.

So, villains get storm now. Hero storm vs Vill storm. Stormies are massively heavy on endurance. Heroes can buff endurance with SB + RA + AB. Vills get SB. Heroes also can counter storm with their boost range blaster. Vills get to counter the -range with NOTHING, oh yea, I gotta kiss someone to get in range for a heal. Great.

ele/ blast is a joke as kin/elec is way stronger defender side than v-side so, uhm lol?

So, did I miss any evidence? How in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM can you call this balanced. This has given the heroes the upper hand (again) and the few advantages villains once had are slowly disappearing as well. AGAIN PROVE ME WRONG!

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1. I've never seen powerboosted (PBU) Will Domination "immediately drop toggles and ignore breakfrees." WD is a mag 3 sleep: it'll drop toggles if you have no sleep protection with or without PBU. Conversely, PBU does not increase the magnitude of the sleep, only the duration, which also doesn't affect how break frees work.

2. Dominators are not unambiguously squishier than Defenders. In fact, with more controls available they are not unambiguously squishier than blasters either.

3. SR has significantly higher protection than EA. In fact, including the passive resists, SR is stronger than EA in Energy attacks. EA trades defensive protection for endurance management and drain capability.

4. Not all defender debuffs are unresisted. In fact, essentially none of them in secondaries are unresistable. And not even all debuffs in primaries are unresistable either (see: radiation infection, snow storm, liquefy). There's no way to know which cold debuffs will be unresistable and which will not be.

5. I don't even know how to comment on the jumbled comments about storm.


I'm generally willing to get on-board the suggestion that the villain-side needs more ways to buff psionic protection, because I think there's a rational basis for that complaint. But when I see who I have to share the back of the truck with, I tend to want to jump off, really really really fast. Most of the faction arguments I've seen just give me a headache. I can't imagine the devs are doing any better.

*If* psionic blast was ported over without major powers tweaking and *If* the devs didn't normalize the ranges of the attacks to blaster levels and *If* the devs *also* significantly buff the cast time (i.e. lower) of Mental Blast to blaster tier1/2 norms and *If* the devs preserve all of the psionic blast status effects *then* there might be issues with psionic blast blasters in faction PvP and I'll make it a point to make my opinion about that known. But that's too many ifs for me to make a prediction without seeing it first, and I'm not afraid of predictions in general: I'm already comfortably predicting the performance of Tanker Dark Armor.

Just a suggestion, and not to anyone in particular: exaggerating is good when you're trying to make a joke, or become one. Be certain you're aware which one seems more likely to readers.

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In my opinion, a "true" fix is to fix the ingame content itself(for pve).

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A "true fix" of that nature would allow players to keep a lot of tohit in PvE, but take a lot of it away in PvP. There exists no way to do that, because there exists no way to tell a self buff how to behave based on what you shoot at.

Since there's too much tohit for PvP, but there's no good reason to eliminate it in PvE, there's no way to mess with tohit itself to fix that problem. You have to change the targets, not the attackers.


And as previously mentioned, this is just one aspect of the issues surrounding tohit and defense mechanics. Another one is stacking. It would be nice to be able to make combat jump offer, say, 10% defense to squishies, which is only 20% damage mitigation (about 30% if its slotted). But you can't do that when SR scrappers and Ice tankers can use it to go perma-elude with no effort. The problem is, rather like the previous problem, there's no way to "tell" the power pool powers to do different things to different characters based on their pre-existing defense.

The posted suggestion is designed to solve all of these kinds of problems. Not perfectly, but sufficient to make it worthwhile.

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If Dr. Brainstorm appeared in the game, I wonder what his Strike Force would be like...

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Permadeath for all characters who attempt it and fail. And, of course, the good Doctor would turn out to be a robot duplicate anyway.

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Actually, I expect him to turn out to be Bunsen Honeydew in disguise. Most of Dr. Brainstorm's research seems to come straight out of Muppet Labs.

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Apologies Arcanaville for posting this here, since I know this thread is about your thoughts on fixing defense, but I had a question that I really couldn't find an answer to and didn't really think it merited starting its own thread. Plus I figured this would be the best place to find the answer.

The question is: Has using the ED calculations, or ED like calculations, ever been considered in trying to solve the whole defense issue?

For example:

The tohit equation: NetToHit = (InherentAttackAccuracy) * (1 + AccuracyEnhancement) * [ BaseToHit + ToHitBuffs - ToHitDebuffs - (Defense - DefenseDebuffs) ]


Suppose you take the [ BaseToHit + ToHitBuffs - ToHitDebuffs ] part of the equation (Assuming ToHits are what's skewing things) and run it through an ED calculation and then re-insert it. It seems to me that you should be able to come up with a decent ED formula that would allow for a more gradual scaling then what currently is used.

Anyway, I was just curious and this seemed like the best place to ask since my searching proved fruitless.

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In the general case, the issue is that it suggests the problem is simply that tohit buffs are too strong, and the problem would be solved by simply making them weaker (at least in PvP, and perhaps in other situations as well). But its a more complex problem than that, in that the effects of tohit buffs are different for people with different levels of defense. This gets to the root of the problem, which is the intent of having defense, or tohit buffs. The intent does not seem to be for tohit buffs to have such strong effects on defense, and in the way it does across the different levels of defense you can have, in all cases (probably in most cases). But its not easy to make up equations where tohit buffs automagically scale themselves to reasonable values for all levels of defense, and in all situations (some of which may suggest doing nothing at all).

The proposed solution, in effect, attempts to do just that, but in a much simpler way than modifying the strength of tohit buffs themselves in a complex and situational way. Instead, the change is on defense, and how it interacts with tohit buffs, so the tohit buffs can continue to behave in the same way, except for cases where the target is given versions of defense that interact differently.

In a way, its a way of handing out "tohit buff resistance" in a way the game will actually support. Its more complicated than that (because there are problems it solves that have nothing to do with tohit buffs at all), but that's one way to look at the tohit buff aspect of what the proposal does.

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I know this is a little necro, but I didn't see this addressed.

supposed you have floored the to-hit at 5% with defense (as is easy to do with an ice tanker) but you have a total of say...60%
now, the lowest to-hit is 5%. this 'minimum' is applied Before or After the accuracy multiplier?
I mean, does this mean that a malta gunslinger, with a 2.0 accuracy modifier, have a minimum to-hit of 10%? (5%x2.0)

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Actually, this was sort of addressed in the post in the section "Side Effects" questions 1-3, but the short answer is that there are two places where floors and ceilings are obeyed: first, when all tohit buffs and defense buffs are resolved, and second after everything else (basically, accuracy factors) are resolved.

So the answer to your question is that the lowest that defense can bring tohit to, *before accuracy* is 5%. Then accuracy gets to work on that minimum 5%: the gunslinger would have a 10% minimum chance to hit you.

Even if the gunslinger had fifty bazillion accuracy, they couldn't increase their net chance to hit you above 95%, because the final, final chance tohit also obeys the same 5%/95% floors and ceilings.

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In real life, if you ask me what is the difference between to-hit and accuracy, I probably don't know.

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"In real life" I think the concept of "Accuracy" (as the game defines it) and Elusivity (as I define it) make contact with reality. Its not difficult to imagine something that improves the accuracy of an attack by 50% regardless of its original accuracy (which is how accuracy works) and it contrawise isn't difficult to imagine something that reduces the accuracy of an attack by 50%, regardless of its original accuracy (which is how Elusivity works). Its actually Defense and Tohit(buffs) that don't make contact with reality.

Making tohit and defense mechanics that "do the right thing" is not quite as simple as it sounds, because in "reality" the "effort" required to do certain things doesn't obey simple linear math. We all intuitively know this: we know that in many situations bounded by limits, its often impossible to actually reach the limits: we can only approach them. Hitting or missing a target is one of those kinds of situations: we intuitively know that its easy to alter the chances to hit or miss something when the odds are near 50/50, but as we get close to 100% or close to 0%, it takes increasingly higher amounts of effort (usually) to approach those limits without ever exactly hitting them.

We even know that how hard it gets, and how fast it gets that hard, depends on situation. It takes a certain amount of effort to get increasingly accurate hitting a golf ball towards a flag, in a much different way than it takes to get increasingly more accurate hitting hitting the ball with the club at all. Deriving game mechanics that reflect that intuitive view of "hitting" is not easy in the general case.

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There is one inherent flaw on this, and its that its as prone to overstacking as everything but HP buffs. If we are going out and making an all new mechanic, why not go ahead and make sure its not as prone to overstacking? I bet there are many more ways of making different types of curves, but why not instead doing something like:

(1+ ACC) * (1- (1/(1+AAC))) * 50%

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Its prone to overstacking if you convert all defense powers into it. If all the "big ones" in the primary and secondary sets are explicitly balanced based on their maximum possible values, and all the "little ones" in power pools and invention bonuses remain conventional defense, as a practical matter it will be impossible to overstack conventional defense, because the powers will be too small, and it will be impossible to overstack AA/Elude, because there won't exist any to overstack with.

If the plan was in fact to transition all defense powers to AA/E, something I'm not sure is a good idea (insights and lucks have issues with balancing against each other in a move-countermove manner in PvP, and that would mean critters would have AA/E as well, which sort of defeats the purpose of adding AA/E in the manner I describe), you'd want to address the stacking issue in one of two ways. One way is essentially what you describe: that equation has diminishing returns. The other way is to use multiplicative stacking (1 - AAE1) * (1 - AAE2), which has constant returns.

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Now I ponder though, you say there are 2 flavors of buffs in your grouping:

heal/regen
res/+hp

but def sits alone. Why don't you count -tohit as a pair to it? the only difference I see in that grouping is that both stack, but they do are two different mechanics, one involves making you elusive, the other to make the attacker elusive. Off course, then we have -damage, that would couple with resistance. What about -recharge, that in a sense is its own mechanic without pairs.

Or is it that you are only accounting for self buffs for simplicity? Usually ATs with self buffs may have access to -tohit, so simplicity or it's stack ability are the only reasons I see right now to exclude it.

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Its not just a question of simplicity: foe debuffs are tricky for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that you actually have to hit your attacker with them. If I have defense, resistance, or regeneration, I can presume that those protection mechanisms work against all attackers they are designed to work against mechanically. However, foe debuffs require application, and cannot always be said to be in force against all attackers.

Foe debuffs are also subject to effect scalers, like the purple patch, and actual resistances to the effects. There's no way to "resist" my defense or my resistance in that sense.

Moreover, there are the specifics to tohit buffs themselves. If you count -tohit as a form of defense, you have to count +tohit as a form of anti-defense that doesn't exist in the same form for any other effect: unresistable resistance debuffs are comparable to unresistable defense debuffs are comparable to unresistable regeneration debuffs are comparable to unresistable health debuffs (although you're extremely unlikely to encounter such a thing normally: it exists in only a few very rare places). +Tohit stands separate from them, and in addition to them. So opening the door to counting -tohit forces you to take into account +tohit in some form.

And then there is the question of opening the door to all "offensive" damage mitigation: (recharge) slows, holds, knockdowns and similar effects, all of which alters damage in a different way.

While -tohit can be handled mathematically as a form of defense given a very specific set of circumstances, I normally consider "defensive" and "offensive" mitigation separately. Occasionally I will consider "offensive" damage mitigation when I think I can constrain the situation enough for that to be practical (for example, considering Ice Tanker slows to be essentially a form of defensive mitigation, albeit a more complex one than resistance or defense).


In this case, though, the specific observation is a design one, not a mathematical one. There were two different ways the original game designers created to make a target intrinsicly more resilient to incoming damage: Resistance and +Health. They function differently in a lot of respects, but not in the core respect of damage resilience. The same thing is true of health recovery: both heals and regeneration ultimately serve that purpose: they do so in somewhat different ways, but ultimately serve the same purpose.

I do not believe its reasonable to say that the devs explicitly created -tohit to be a form of personal defense. Its obvious that -tohit only exists because the attribute "ToHit" exists, and -tohit is nothing more than the way to describe debuffing it. I don't think you can say that they specifically wanted a second form of defense, invented -tohit, and then invented the attribute (tohit) it would be applied to. Resistance, Defense, Regeneration were all purposeful inventions.

Even +Health is a purposeful invention. You might think that its just like +tohit or -tohit: its just a way to buff health. Except +Health doesn't buff Health, it actually buffs MaxHealth which is rather unique. There are not very many instances of a power buffing or debuffing a Cap. It would be as if a scrapper power buffed the scrapper resistance cap from 75% to 80%. Sounds weird even saying it, but that's how "weird" +Health powers are: the devs actually had to make a very explicit decision to make powers like Dull Pain.

And actually, the semantics of "Dull Pain" also suggest a root concept of +Health being a form of damage resilience, and therefore (whether the mathematics were clearly understood or not) +health and +res have a conceptual connection in terms of the original intent of the powers. They do seem to be different ways to achieve a similar conceptual result (but with some mechanical variety).

In other words, Resistance and +(Max)Health are cousins. Defense and -ToHit are lookalikes that are not related.

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dev diaries are marketing?

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They are a carrot to dangle in front of us to make us want i12.

Thus, marketing.

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Like we have a choice if we want it or not?

Dev diaries should be released yearly because the makers of a game are interested in letting their enthusiast fan base in on the development process. not some jaded marketing tactic.

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And the devs should develop the game because they love us just that much, and not because its their jobs or anything.

Plus, releasing designer accounts a year after the actual development isn't a dev diary, its practically dev archeology.

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Check out most blaster primary power (example) to see that attribute in effect .. all the defiance effects have allowStrength=0, which is displayed as "[Ignores Enhancements & Buffs]"

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Aren't those are the per-attribute strength flags? I was referring to the per-power strength flag that disables strength modifiers from affecting any attributes of that power. Increase Density, Reconstruction, and Unyielding have it set to name just a couple examples.

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Yup, seems that field isn't in the current version yet.

Edit: I should mention that powers have *two* settings related to this. There is an "IgnoreStrength" field, which is a binary flag. If its set, then the power will ignore *player attributes* that might buff the power: in other words, PlayerStrengths. However, the power will still be enhanceable: enhancements slotted into the power will still work. So lets say I make an attack with this flag set. If I slot a damage enhancement in it, the power's damage will go up as you would expect. But if you cast build up, the attack will ignore BU and will not be damage boosted by it.

There is another field called "StrengthsDisallowed." This field is a list of all strength buffs that the power will absolutely ignore, regardless of where they come from. Originally, this field was added to powers definitions so that people couldn't slot a ton of Centrioles into a melee attack and turn it into a ranged attack: most melee attacks specifically have "Range" listed in the "StrengthsDisallowed" field so that even if you somehow get a range enhancement in there, it won't do anything. Strength of Will (Willpower) specifically lists "Recharge" in this field, which is how the devs prevent *anything* from speeding up SoW's recharge.

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With all the rickrolling going on in the boards, I decided I should try my hand at it, and of course I went for the biggest fish I could find. Since both devs and community reps have already fallen for it, I decided to go for the evilest guy around: Lord Recluse himself!

Here's a photo for proof of the rickrolling, and I even got a surveillance video (also at w00tstudios and a high-quality WMV download). Top that, noobs!

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Finally, something for the skills system to do.