Arcanaville

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This thread is legendary lets look at what we have:

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I believe the PS3 and Dracula are also in here somewhere. Plus, I think I'm being nerfed in I9.

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Not if you slot Foo inventions first.

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Actually, I think that is *how* I'm being nerfed.

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I'll just say one thing, though... what I and many others object to the most in terms of the Shivans and Nukes is that there's so much in the game where unless you have a very select set of ATs/power sets on your team, you -need- those Shivans/Nukes in order to succeed. Not every team is going to have several Rad Defenders. I'd be psyched if they became somewhat helpful, but not -necessary-. There should not be anything in the game that you cannot accomplish without temp powers.

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That's one way to look at it. But that presumes that there exists content that is specifically balanced with the thought "well, even if you don't have the best build, you can still do it with Nukes and Shivans." That's a guess. My guess is that that is not true. Which means the alternate viewpoint is that in the absence of nukes and shivans, hard content only doable by some with nukes and shivans will become impossible, not rebalanced.

If there is content that is too hard without shivans and nukes, then its too hard. The problem is convincing the devs that its too hard. Take the LRSF: its currently easier for a suboptimal team *without shivans and nukes* to complete it, than the original version would have been for the same suboptimal team *with shivans and nukes*. Its just designed to be super hard. That some things can do it and some can't is inevitable when you make things super hard.

The *way* it was made extremely difficult is, in my opinion, a mistake. But the fact *that* its difficult means there will always be some composition of teams and player skill and tactics that will be unable to complete it. Even my perfect balanced vision of the strike force wouldn't necessarily allow even the majority of all possible random team compositions to be able to complete it with reasonable certainty. But that's a separate issue, not the core issue of whether its intrinsicly too difficult, and whether shivans and nukes allow or force the devs to maintain that difficulty higher than desirable.


Put simply: nukes and shivans do not force the devs to make content harder. They do that because they want to.


On this specific subject:

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There should not be anything in the game that you cannot accomplish without temp powers.

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In any game where there is a diverse set of capabilities, and a diverse (and high level) set of difficulty levels, there will *always* exist a specific difficulty level which, for a specific player or team, is just out of reach ordinarily. And for such a player or team, *any* advantage that then puts that challenge in reach is, technically, necessary. Just because something is necessary in this specific sense, doesn't make it wrong, because this situation is inevitable in any system with any combat diversity.

In this case, the average team has a combat ability of 100, a lot of suboptimal teams have a combat ability of only 50, and highly optimal ones have a combat ability of 350-500. Most missions are designed to be a small challenge to a team with a 100 rating. Some are designed to be a challenge to teams with a 150-200 rating, like some trials and task forces. The LRSF is designed to challenge those with a combat ability of 400+. It would be so designed regardless of the existence of temp powers that can boost a team by 200 points. So the two questions you have to ask yourself are, voiced in these (possibly over-) simplistic terms:

1. Is it intrinsicly wrong to make at least some content balanced for teams above 200?

2. If its not, is it intrinsicly wrong to give teams below 200 the ability to buy themselves a temporary ability of more than 200.


The devs have decided that the answer to question 1 is no, and the answer to question 2 is no. You're suggesting that the answer to question 2 is yes, and I can only assume that is because you have the unstated opinion that the answer to question 1 is also yes. But I think, even if you think the answer to question 2 is yes, you should work on changing the devs' mind about question 1 first, because the two are not linked: changing their mind about 2, without first changing their minds about 1, means lower level teams get nerfed, but nothing else changes.

For the record, I believe the answer to both questions is no.

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This thread is legendary lets look at what we have:

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I believe the PS3 and Dracula are also in here somewhere. Plus, I think I'm being nerfed in I9.

Two things:

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Its like suggesting that Pizza Hut stop serving bell peppers, because not everyone likes bell peppers, and if they did, they could spend more time making their pepperoni and mushroom toppings better. Its totally irrelevant as to whether the statement is a true statement or not: the question is whether its a reasonable suggestion even if true.

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It's really not like that. Asking for bell peppers to be no longer served is like asking for PvP to be removed from the game entirely.

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Yes, "it" is really like that, because the "it" the passage you quote specifically refers to the sentence immediately preceding it, which you didn't quote with this passage:

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If I absolutely hated PvP, I might tell the devs that, speaking as one person, I would prefer the game focus on other things. But I would not suggest that the game itself would be automatically better if it didn't have it, unless I had a much better reason than that.

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Also:

ZadkielSalubri:

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I'm not so sure that comparison is a very good one, Arc. The customer who orders bell peppers can't ruin the other customers' experience in Pizza Hut because they think it's a fun idea to be a jerk.

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That's also off the point of the analogy. The entire post being quoted in both places is in reference to a previous statement I made, which was:

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What is it about PvP that makes people justified in even suggesting that PvP-related rewards should be confined to PvP-related situations.

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Because *nowhere else* is it seen as remotely palatable to make such a suggestion. No one *ever* suggested that rather than nerf kora fruit, we just limit it to shadow shard missions. Because while few wanted them nerfed, virtually everyone would rather have rewards you can use everywhere, than even stronger ones that are extremely limited in where they can be used. *A couple* of people suggested that Hamidon enhancements be only useful against Hamidon himself, rather than reduced in effectiveness, and that was almost universally seen as a bad idea (and for similar reasons I think restricting shivans and nukes to the PvP zones would be an equally bad balance idea).

But my objection is not a balance objection: my objection is that such suggestions are extremely rare or non-existent in every context but in PvP, where they are common. And while I agree that essentially every PvP objection brought up in this thread is a valid issue with PvP, it nevertheless violates my sense of fairness to treat PvP (and by extension PvP players) in this way. I believe restriction suggestions like that proposed for Shivans and Nukes all implicitly have the premise that its ok to marginalize PvP. I don't agree: I believe they have to pass the same tests as all other suggestions do regardless of their involvement with PvP. Which means in this case, two things that seemingly are taken for granted by most I don't:

1. If Shivans and Nukes are seen as too powerful, why would anyone advocate allowing their use in PvP? PvP has stronger balance requirements than PvE, and if Shivans and Nukes are overpowered, the *first* place to ban them is specifically in the PvP zones. Suggesting the reverse, that they be used *only* in PvP zones, but allowed elsewhere, is untenable unless you believe PvP balance is irrelevant, because PvP is significantly less important, and its fine to make it the dumping ground for balance issues. Lets just say I happen to disagree.


2. The design *purpose* of the Shivans and Nukes is obviously to be allowed to use in the most challenging circumstances the player might face. Restricting them from being used in those situations circumvents their design purpose. Why continue to have them at all? The presumption is that the only people who get them are people who are willing to tolerate PvP, and such people don't count. Saying "you can still use them in PvP" is a discriminating brush stroke: it says "you are willing to get them, therefore you are a PvP person, so you shouldn't mind if we restrict some of your activities to PvP only."


I don't use shivans or nukes in PvP. Moreover, I would be totally happy if they were barred *from* PvP, because of balance issues. So for me, restricting shivans and nukes to the PvP zones only, is the absolute worst of all possible options. It only looks good because the dumping ground for the problems is largely in PvP, and that of course doesn't count.


The irony is that this suggestion takes something away from the PvE experience, but doesn't replace it with anything. Its an Anti-PvE suggestion, it just doesn't look like one because of (what I believe to be) the mistaken belief that without Shivans and Nukes, the devs would improve the PvE experience in ways a lot of people seem to believe they are currently *prevented* from doing, but which I would assess as having essentially zero probability of occuring. So its an anti-PvP suggesstion, and an anti-PvE suggestion simultaneously. I seem to be in a minority of one that sees it that way, though.

Those are all good reasons for not liking PvP, and I'm not ignorant of them. But those are not good reasons for imposing that dislike upon the game design arbitrarily. I recognize that we all advocate for what we want, but there are limits. When I am advocating for what I personally want, I specify that, separate from when I'm advocating for what I think will be good for the game as a whole. In both cases, they are a matter of my opinion and judgement, and I might be wrong, but I make the distinction nevertheless.

If I absolutely hated PvP, I might tell the devs that, speaking as one person, I would prefer the game focus on other things. But I would not suggest that the game itself would be automatically better if it didn't have it, unless I had a much better reason than that.

Its like suggesting that Pizza Hut stop serving bell peppers, because not everyone likes bell peppers, and if they did, they could spend more time making their pepperoni and mushroom toppings better. Its totally irrelevant as to whether the statement is a true statement or not: the question is whether its a reasonable suggestion even if true.


As an aside, most of the objections to PvP refer to the influence of PvP on the game community, and individual players exposed to it. But really, you can turn off your chat window and make a run for the badges in the PvP zones, and pretend the other players are really good NPCs populating the zones. I think a lot of the distaste for PvP is really manufactured: many players see the game as "us" players verses "them" the developers, and they see players hunting players as a form of treason. If NCSoft hired a bunch of employees to control the NPCs in a special zone that had similar rewards as the PvP zones, with strict instructions to kill as many players as possible, I don't think most players would see that situation in the same light as PvP, even factoring out the trash talk. Because now the humans doing the killing are "just doing their jobs." Its not a form of treason, its just another form of game challenge.

An amazing form of perspective reversal, just because of a paystub.

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In the end, just restrict all PvP gained powers to the PvP zones.

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How about this: once you zone into the PvP zones, you can't zone back out again. That would prevent powers, badges, influence, experience, inspirations, and salvage gained in those zones from ever leaving.

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/signed.

Carebears must die.

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Ok, first of all, neither of those comments make sense. For being someone that's good with numbers and thinking logically, your suggestion makes no sense Arcana. I don't know if you were trying to be funny or trying to sarcastically disagree with my idea, but if you were, you can just say so.

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What is it about PvP that makes people justified in even suggesting that PvP-related rewards should be confined to PvP-related situations. If someone said Amy should only work in Croatoa task forces, they'd be laughed off the boards.

There's lots of things I don't necessarily enjoy in the game, but I don't go around projecting the attitude that its defacto justified to marginalize them, and everyone associated with them. Shivans and Nukes are not PvP rewards. They are rewards that happen to have their prerequisites in PvP zones. Not only do I not want Shivans and Nukes to be restricted to PvP zones, I don't want *any* rewards restricted in specifically that manner without some very good justification for partitioning PvP and PvE in that way.

Its all one game to me. I would hope the devs are smart enough not to make it 150,000 meta games that happen to share the same servers.

I PvP occasionally, but infrequently. I am never going to be confused with a hard core PvPer. If PvP was never added to the game, or if it disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn't shed a tear. But its here, a percentage of the game's population enjoy it, and I respect them. Because of that, I have an extremely high hurdle to any suggestion that has as its fundamental premise marginalizing that element of the game. When you eliminate the PvP baggage associated with it, the notion that its a good idea to restrict Shivans and Nukes to the PvP zones doesn't actually make any sense at all. For one thing, good PvP balance would actually suggest the opposite: that if you are going to restrict them at all, they should be barred *from* the PvP zones. Because PvP combat requires more balance considerations than PvE combat. For another thing, the premise behind those rewards is similar to inspirations: they are intended to be used against the most difficult content that the players are likely to encounter, so barring their use from things like task forces and trials is counter productive: they would be being banned from the specific content they exist to be used for.


If the problem is the belief that some content is deliberately designed to be too strong for the average player, because the devs are taking into account the fact that players can use these temp powers (something I do *not* believe), then I do not see why singling out Shivans and Nukes are especially helpful. Inspirations are equally useful, and players with tricked out inspiration trays are equally unbalancing. They should be disallowed also.

If the problem isn't one of the strength of those powers, but rather their prerequisite, then I'm sorry but the fact you need to enter a PvP zone to acquire them - but have no specific requirement to actually engage in PvP combat - is no more impressive to me than that you have to hunt a thousand Rikti monkeys or a ton of Master Illusionist decoys to get an accolade.

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but yeah nerf Arcanaville.

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I can take it: I've played MA/SR since release. Pain is my middle name.

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oh you will RUE the day! yes the RUEfullness will be mighty and the RUEing will leave you with this expression.

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The MA/SR scrappers have elected a new representative to bring their concerns to the devs. Take it up with him.

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but yeah nerf Arcanaville.

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I can take it: I've played MA/SR since release. Pain is my middle name.

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In the end, just restrict all PvP gained powers to the PvP zones.

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How about this: once you zone into the PvP zones, you can't zone back out again. That would prevent powers, badges, influence, experience, inspirations, and salvage gained in those zones from ever leaving.

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I cannot see why you find this soloing. You used a temp pet (Shivan not to mention). It's not like you did EVERY hit and debuff yourself, lol... Gratz for beating her though, lol

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Shivans are very strong in terms of their support, but separate from that I do not see the difference between soloing with Shivans, and soloing with a tray full of inspirations, or soloing with accolades, or soloing with veteran powers, or soloing with controller pets. As I've said before, there are no official rules for soloing, so I don't see where this is a disqualifier.

Is it more impressive for a tank to solo a tough AV without a Shivan, than a blaster with one? How about a defender with nukes verses an Ill/rad without them? Each accomplishment is a separate achievement that you can compare against each other, but that doesn't invalidate one over the other.

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The move itself is pretty ingenious if only because of how unusual a move it is in itself.

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If castling is a novel move, en passant must seem like devil worship.

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When you do, doesn't it give you a much better defense, especially when you manage to do it pretty early in the game?

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No. Its never a good idea to execute a castle too early in the game, giving the opponent the opportunity to concentrate on developing an attack on the castle's weak side. Its useful as a defensive move provided the game proceeds normally with the primary focus on the center of the board. But there are strong castling moves, and weak castling moves. Generally, neither are "ingenious." Ingenious implies non-obvious. A castle that turns into a non-sacrificing fork-check: that's ingenious (and your opponent is an idiot).

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Nerf Arcanaville!!

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I tried, but she baffled me with logic and I ended up buffing her instead. *shakes fist*

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Wait, did you just call me Optimus? I noticed you quoted my response.

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D'oh! My bad! This is a Prime example of what happens with lack of sleep!

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So, uh... My middle name is Arcanaville, and I know a few if->then statements. I'm also overpowered...

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Well, you will be after everyone slots Foo inventions.

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And before more people jump on Optimus, we've known those powers were over the top since they were created.

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I can solo an AV with my energy blaster, a tray full of inspirations, and the biological nuke; and correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the bio nuke buffed after its initial release?

So either energy blasters are overpowered, inspirations are overpowered, or I am.

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From my understanding and some of this is based off of replies from Arcanaville, whom I find very knowledgable about stuff pertaining, animations are not (atleast at this time) factored into balance.

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To be specific: its clear they are attempting to be systematic about some elements of cast times and rooting, but the devs do not have any sort of specific rules about individual powers being strength-balanced around their activation times. For example, eagle's claw takes longer to cast than headsplitter, but headsplitter does more damage. This is not considered a problem as far as how those attacks are designed.

Alternatively, when I say evasion takes almost three times longer to activate than the average toggle, and that should be reduced, the devs are very likely to consider that a quality of life suggestion, and not a balance suggestion.

Since the animators are busy working on toggles and clicks, any chance they might have an explanation for why Super Reflexes toggles take a day and a half to bring up, and most of the animation frames for those toggle activations aren't even of us like, doing anything special animation-wise? Could we maybe get some of the extra time squeezed out of those extra long animations (specifically, focused senses and the insanely long evasion)?

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Anyway, your Grandfather was right; if you are not willing to do it right then you should not even try. But then who is to say what is right or not in CoX.

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The devs point at the target, and the devs voluntarily fire. They do not get to say, afterwards, that the target was not in the right place to intercept the shot.

You can argue that they should not be held to my standards, but they should at least be held to theirs. They reduced the damage of thunder kick by 16% because it didn't fit a formula that is provably irrelevant to balance in the first place, just because its the formula they happened to use to design the powers originally. In other words, their excuse for nerfing a power isn't that it was unbalanced, or made MA too good, or because it was typographically wrong. It was changed because it didn't fit a formula, period. By sixteen percent.

If they can tell me that is reasonable, their "mathematical precision" cover is blown: they have no right with me to suggest that other numbers cannot be balanced based on other, much more legitimate, balancing equations.

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"Does everything have to be so mathematically precise after all?"

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You should hit what you aim for. Costumes do not need to be mathematically precise. Teleportation speed does not need to be mathematically precise. Burst damage vs sustainable damage does not need to be mathematically precise.

But if you care at all, you should care enough to get it right. If the devs don't care about balance, they shouldn't shove balance in my face when they talk about changes. If they do care about balance, then the things they care about should actually balance.

The one thing I don't approve of is thinking you are being graded on a curve, and specifically shooting for "not provably bad." And worse: missing that.

I've said before: its possible to make a superhero themed MMO in which *nothing* is balanced. But only if you actually aim for that, and Cryptic didn't. And I'm considered extremely unrealistic for saying it.


Hit what you aim for. Or stop shooting.

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You make this stuff too hard sometimes Arcana. I know you enjoy it and the intellectual exercise it presents, but any good former Dungeon or Game Master could fix this problem.

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If I didn't care what anyone else, including the devs or you, thought, I could fix the MoG problem in six seconds. I could fix the tohit problem in six minutes.

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MoG is broken. There simply shouldn't be powers like MoG in the game.

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Of course, the same statement is essentially true for all defense powers in the presence of tohit buffs, which is why I advocate fixing that situation and them in the process, and not simply adding alternative protection mechanisms into sets that experience the problem.

For me, saying "defense is a lost cause: SR should just get other stuff and call it a day" is no different than saying "MoG is a lost cause, be thankful you get instant healing ten levels earlier than everyone else gets such a powerful power and call it even."

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I'd love to see a similar analysis for Brute secondaries.

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This look at scrapper secondaries is not just numerical: I also do a lot of comparisons to in-game testing (most of it implicit and not detailed in the posting, but discussed at length in the threads this and other earlier versions appeared in). I can do that because I've played all four secondaries to high levels. I haven't done so with all the brute secondaries, so it will probably be some time before I am willing to go into as much detail with them, especially in judging whether the other non-damage mitigating effects of the defensive sets override the damage mitigation conclusions or not. I can say that to the extent that non-damage mitigating effects have an effect on scrappers, they're not high enough to override the damage mitigation conclusions, from direct experience. But I do not have that direct experience with all the brute secondaries.

In the back of my mind, I've thought about doing a lesser look at scrappers, tankers, brutes and stalkers combined, but it'll have to wait until I either complete my look at blaster effectiveness (which is a stop and go thing I'm putting occasional time into) or get sick of it and decide to take an extended break from it.

Starsman has done some extensive cross-AT damage mitigation comparisons between the different melee ATs, though.

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My question is, knowing that some melee types take Aid self, how does it affect survivability as compared to tough/weave, or other efficiency/survival maxers? Also, how about when comparing a 100% success rate with a 75% successful heal rate using said power? (as aid self is interruptable)

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The short answer is "a lot." But Aid Self is not a simple power to analyze, because of its long activation time and even longer cool-off time. In the time it takes to cast and complete, you can actually take as much damage as aid self recovers, especially in situations where you need aid self in the first place. Many melee characters have significant offensive damage mitigation (parry, knockdown, fear, debuffs etc) that in effect gets locked out when aid self is used. That "cost" to aid self is difficult to factor into a quantitative analysis, sufficiently so that its an analysis unto itself. But players who use aid self can tell you that the effect exists: against a single hard hitting target like an AV or a boss, it tends to be highly effective. Against larger numbers, it tends to be less so, not just because its more likely to be interrupted, but also because its more likely the "time-out" cost is likely to hurt more, because in a larger group stoppage of offensive mitigation is likely to be a more significant factor in survivability.

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*bump forever*

If this doesn't stay right under the stickies, then your job becomes clear.

Bump it until a Dev responds. Ridiculous that they have yet to do so.

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They've responded to both me and Stupid Fanboy and probably others.

Short version: No approval to change MoG. No further updates. Keep the faith.

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Really? I did a double check by "Threading" the thread, and noticed no red names.

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You're not going to, either. But EvilGeko is correctly describing the situation as it currently exists for improving MoG.

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This thread is solely for discussions regarding the the new defense scaling system. From the Issue 7 Training Room patch notes:


Modified PvE critter accuracy. Defense powers will now work equally well against critters, regardless if they have higher accuracy. For instance, your defense powers will work equally well against a Boss or any critter up to 5 levels higher than you, as it does for an equal level minion. Previously, a more accurate critter could circumvent much of your defense, but this will no longer happen. This change is designed to alleviate the disparity between Defense and Damage
resistance powers (for instance, a player with super reflexes will now be more effective against a high level critters, a boss or Arch villain) This change has no effect on a player who does not have any Defense. More accurate critters may have a greater chance at the extreme low end of the To Hit scale than previously due to this change. For instance, an Archvillain whose To Hit previously was set at the 5% minimum, will now have a 7.5% chance to hit. This change does not affect PvP.

All off topic posts will be removed. Please do not post bugs/feedback/balance issues before testing this content.

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Cricket:

The only problem with this is with ED in place, it cuts the defensive bonuses by 40% since the inherent defensive bonus is weaker than the other enhancements. So I propose you raise the enhancement bonus from 5%, 10%, 20% to 8.3%, 16.7%, 33.3%. This would allow us to have better defenses.

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One has nothing to do with the other. The I7 change is not a change to Defense, and is not intended to directly strengthen defense sets specifically. Its intended to ensure that critters do not have unintentionally common ways to bypass defense.

As I've put it in the past, prior to I7, every LT, Boss, AV, and +1 and higher, has had the defensive equivalent of unresistable damage. I7 takes it away. Yes, it makes Defense sets hurt a lot less when fighting those things, but they were never meant to hurt disproportionately more in the first place.

The change has nothing to do with actual defensive set strength: all it does is ensure that whatever strength defensive sets have, they continue to have against all I7 critters in exactly the same way that resistance sets have the same strength against those same critters.


Put more directly: this change should have been in place right at release, regardless of the strength of defense sets at release. Whether defense sets need to be buffed, nerfed, or kept the same, this I7 change is how it was always supposed to be.

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Note however, that if you're averaging over time, a couple of shots at lower health will disproportionately increase your damage. Put in semi-mathematical terms, the average boost from defiance is larger than that boost would be at your average health, because the damage ramps up so steeply at low health.

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Two things complicate matters further. First, large boosts can be capitated by the fact that they get expended on a target for which the boost is overkill. This is much more likely to happen to big boosts than small ones, and its much more likely to happen near the end of fights instead of at the beginning. Both hurt large defiance boosts more than criticals (but smaller defiance boosts less than criticals). Second, any boost above 300% or so is obviously irrelevant to a higher level blaster with SOs, except for powers that happen to be not fully slotted at that moment. Criticals are never capitated in that fashion, because they are not damage boosts and are unaffected by the damage buff cap.