BrotherMu

I like these changes, more or less (I mean, the numbers may not be quite right, but I like the direction).

Lightform is a real mixed bag now, going it a lower duration while keeping the duty cycle about the same is a really nice idea IMHO. It's a bit like the MoG fix.

These changes might make them OP in PVP though, (who cares right!?).

Blasters > trollers in pvp. Adding the hold procs makes this clear as day.

If only the damage procs were on the same scale of utility... oh wait that would make blasters even better

They are busted as far as I can tell (for pvp). But then again, so is kock out blow.

They're not arc's so much as strait lines, cut into sections

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And they have mentioned that, without doing a huge rebuild of various systems, the only other way to have it really work right would increase the CPU usage of ALL powers, pet and player alike, by 50%.

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And you realize, of course, that this so-called "better solution" would have the EXACT SAME EFFECT that the current solution does. You would no longer be able to slot Recharge in powers that do not take Recharge, and Recharge would not be passed on to pets. So LS's behavior would still be exactly the same as what everyone is complaining about.

The only thing this would "fix" is that targettable pets would still be buffable, but no one complaining about LS is complaining about that. (That's a totally separate issue)

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I actually am annoyed on three levels, basically in reverse order:
- I don't want to lose my LS recharge, I considered it a feature
- I don't want to lose my buff and debuff abilities on REAL pets, which is i think is the biggest bad-effect from this change.
- Esthetically, I think the solution poses a false dichotomy. I think there is code that needs to be fixed. There is AI code that needs work, and there is enhancement code that needs work. There should be other ways to fix this that do not add 50% overhead to the fast-path power activation code. I suggested one above... there must be others. All the 'right' solutions require expensive code changes. The unwillingness to invest in that bugs me more than anything. If you don't want to do that, then don't change anything until you can. Kludges like this tend to backfire, i can think of dozens I've witnessed in my career.

Hopefully AI is still stupid even without extraneous +recharge -- maybe that will ultimately force 'the right thing' to happen.

This is my last post on the issue, I need to move onto other things. I'll keep my fingers crossed that something good happens. There seems to be a lack of experience, or maybe a kind of mono-culture in the Dev team ATM (not sure which, maybe both). Hell, if I were Castle, I'd be pissed that my time was worth less than that of the people with commit access to the source....

Either way, I can't stand the discussion anymore. The energy wasted has been greater than the amount needed to implement the fix Alas, there is no way to harness it to that end.

(obligatory speeling nerf)
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Mu

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Castle himself said that being able to slot multiple type Enhancements in a power that doesn't take them is a "bug" and that it remains that way only because the fix is unacceptable. I wouldn't make the assumption that no other solution is ever going to come along.

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Wait... It's a bug that I can slot three of a set, that say gives me:
dmg
dmg/acc
dmg/acc/end


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It is a bug if that power does not TAKE Acc or End Enhancements. (I'm guessing it has to take Dmg, or it wouldn't take those particular IOs)

Or to be more precise, it is a bug if the power is effected by those Enhancement types that it doesn't take. It should be able to slot them, but the Acc and End just won't have any effect. (And obviously, if the power is autohit or costs 0 end it won't have an effect. The problem is if the effect is being disallowed for some reason, but if slotted it takes effect)

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Yeah, so far I don't see how my understanding differs from yours. Let me try again -- and I'm sorry in advance for being so verbose. The 'bug' is that slotting an enhancement, or more specifically allowing something to inherent it, requires that you use it's entire effect.

When you apply this logic to a pet power, anything that is not intended to enhance the power should be filtered out (not passed) to the pet. This is easy with ENH that only target one attribute, just don't copy them. However, when you have something that effects something you DO want to allow, but also effects something you do not, there is no way to avoid propagating it's entire effect. It's all or nothing. Hence a dmg/recharge unintentionally enhances the recharge of all the pets powers that 'take' dmg enhancements.

The only way to mitigate this, is to make the powers unaffected by that class of enhancement. The value is still there, just not considered (the SoW treatment, we are calling it), which sadly effects their global +recharge buffs as well. This is why SB AM etc, will no longer be useful. Since recharge is a single effect, making a power immune to it also makes it ignore debuffs of that kind -- hence we can no longer debuff that attribute of the power either.


On non-pet powers, this isn't an issue, since you can generally just lock that type out, or make it immune to attribute buffing in the extreme case (SoW, and melee cones are an example of the latter, and Mind Link an example of the former).

My problem here is that i feel it's unacceptable to break pet buffs by globally applying the 'norechargebuff' flag to all of their attacks (which is the solution posed on test).

Why can't the pet spawning code (which is not in the 'fast path' i assume) be burdened with creating some kind of virtual enhancements for each of the pet powers from the set of allowed values in the players power? We obviously have the ability to have continual buffs from IOs/sets, maybe they could be kludged together as those types of 'continual buffs' instead...

That might require updating pet powers to explicitly state what enhancements they take. Or it might be easy, since that's already the logic they use to decide which enhancements get copied over...

I'm starting to speculate a lot about how the code is written now though -- and since my background is not MMOs that's maybe not the best thing to do. I just cannot for the life of me believe a better solution cannot be created. One that stops the unintended effect, without breaking something players expect to be able to do -- buff their pets! (and debuff others player/NPCs pets!)

(Hey Castle, how about posting the code for the power activation system so we can stop guessing how it works )


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mu

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I don't mean, work around them getting the enhance multiple effects carried through to their attacks...

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I don't either. Castle himself said that being able to slot multiple type Enhancements in a power that doesn't take them is a "bug" and that it remains that way only because the fix is unacceptable. I wouldn't make the assumption that no other solution is ever going to come along.

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Wait... It's a bug that I can slot three of a set, that say gives me:
dmg
dmg/acc
dmg/acc/end

Then slot a level 50 DMG and two level 50 recharge IOs?

That can't be right...
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Mu

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Dropping RIP sets of course... One can work around not having them with other slotting options. I can't work around not being able to take advantage of some of my better secondary powers on those pets.

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Well, I guess another possibility would be only to lock the recharge of psuedo-pets, and leave it alone for the unlimited duration pets, like MM henchmen.

Note also that if you can "work around" the problem, likely the devs will continue to try to find ways to stop you from working around it. Just removing RIP sets doesn't mean other sets wouldn't get the tweaking treatment.

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By work around I mean, I can slot recharge from other sources, or otherwise frakenslot to get the summon time down. A level 50 io with a few pet damage IOs would give me the same effect as many of the RIP sets can do now (set bonuses, and procs aside, assuming they are working at all, etc).

I don't mean, work around them getting the enhance multiple effects carried through to their attacks...
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Mu

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they can't leave things as they are.

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Hmm, can't they? I think that's really a matter of opinion.

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Yeah, but it's their opinion, so unfortunately it carries more weight than the rest of us. They are also getting paid for it and encouraging sales of it, which despite all the threats to quit over this, seems to make them lean towards continuing to fix issues they see as a problem.

Note that the devs HAVE NOT left this problem alone, they have been constantly breaking the RIP sets trying to get them to work around this known bug. They can't just "leave it as it is", they will continue to try to come up with a solution until they either do finally find one (which they seem to be saying they have) or they drop RIP sets from the game entirely.

Which do you prefer?

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Dropping RIP sets of course... One can work around not having them with other slotting options. I can't work around not being able to take advantage of some of my better secondary powers on those pets.

In this particular case, IOs have taken precedence over at least two power-sets (rad and kin, any others?) that's just not acceptable considering they're supposed to be optional content.

I forgot to add, the fact that you can't debuff pet recharge anymore. That sucks for some powers that do that too. Also to get around a weakness very much exposed by IOs

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Mu

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Ultimately, the second most unacceptable solution was decided to be acceptable because it helped with the henchmen AI problems. It caused problems as well, it caused true pets to be unbuffable, and also made them immune to debuffs. (Which is a good thing, for player pets, at least in PvE) But they can't introduce the lag, they can't drop every IO that gives Recharge, and they can't leave things as they are.

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Hmm, can't they? I think that's really a matter of opinion. They're opting to break one thing to fix another. If this were limited to stopping the back-door enhancement of the pets though IOs, I think I'd be fine with it. It would be comparable to the changes that made melee attacks immune to range change (dmg/rng HO in shadow maul ftw).

Fact is, it's not though, it outright breaks the buffability of every single already buffable pet. It also breaks the debuffablity of them (which could have huge pvp implications). It generally shifts the rules of the game quite a bit, with bad side effects for some people who've done nothing that wasn't 'intended' (buffing and debuffing pet recharge with powers designed to do that).

At the _VERY LEAST_ they should pull this fix until they can wrap it with some other form of 'give back'. They should also make sure the powers are changed on pets in pvp zones to play like they do now...
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Mu

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We need to keep in mind this is a game, and ultimately, players enjoyment (and continued subscriptions) are the goal.

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Since when does your sub mean more than mine?

With the characters I have, and how I play, I only benefit from this. You, apparently, do not. Maybe we will be able to convince the devs of some pet attack recharge buffs, but just because you do not like it all the results, or at least prefer the current live state, doesn't mean everyone will.

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If you're going to look at it that way, clearly your sub is worth more, this change is already a done deal. Maybe it will ultimately makes more people happy than sad, it doesn't seem that way to me ATM.

The point was, fun is subjective, but subscriptions are objective. Breaking peoples builds must always take some toll on the former...

I actually don't care about the change that much, since only one of my toons is effected -- the method by which it has arrived is bugging me.
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Just a couple months ago I had a customer ask if they should load a particular patch to one of their systems. My answer was nope. Then last month they ran into a problem, and I recommended they load the very same patch. They asked me why I didn't recommend the patch earlier, and the answer was simple: that patch has side effects that made it not worth it back then, but with the appearance of the new problem (which was not directly mentioned in the patch, but turns out to be resolved by it) the patch now became worth it, in spite of those side effects (which I subsequently had to resolve after patching).

It would be easy to characterize decision-making like this as either confused or inconsistent, but its actually precisely what happens with any complex system when proper risk analysis is performed. These decisions are almost never simple binary decisions, and they are almost always subject to modification when new information changes the equation.

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Of course, in that case, the user had a bit more control over the decision. This is what I find increasingly frustrating. I'm not sold that the problems are worse than the fix.

Engineering projects, particularly the kind that involve computers, often require trade-offs, and different ways of looking at the problem (the AI in the context of MMOs discussion is a good example of that). Sometimes the solution is to outright defer the solution.

We need to keep in mind this is a game, and ultimately, players enjoyment (and continued subscriptions) are the goal.

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Mu

I think the fix may be worse than the bug. You've replaced one counterintuitive behavior with another. It makes me curious how you decided this new behavior was preferable. In other words, why is this a net positive for the players?

On the downside, It seems to me that this change narrows the usefulness of a bunch of buffs (powers and IOs) that players have intentionally selected. In cases where we were 'sneaking' +recharge into pet used powers, maybe I could consider this a fix. But it doesn't stop there, it also effects specific IO procs, and entire buffing sets.

I don't even want to think about how this effects MMs in pvp. To the extent that they are fighting debuffers (if there are any).

The upside is that four or so pets now have better AI. Though, really, we already knew how to avoid the problem for most of them. (Which is ugly, since it's not new player friendly).

(edited for speeling)
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Mu

Seriously, I just made the choice that I wanted that web grenade... Yup, to stop fliers and jumpers from getting away from me in pvp, and in PVE. I suspect you'll find that people who DO pick that power are picking it because they are very sure they want it. What good is hitting if they run off anyway?

I guess that's unavoidable to some degree, but... blah i hope there is some kind of pvp movement change to go along with this.
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mu

... I love Fire Base Zulu too

Pet AI in general, yes that could use some work. It is however a global issue in almost every game i've ever played, so I do forgive them some.
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Mu

- Please do not touch the hollows, it's one of the best zones inthe game IMHO. I learned how to pull, and avoid detection there, you also quickly learn how cool it is to have a party member with recall friend. Maybe add a hospital there?

- NPCs in PvP: I hate them. When I take my /rad troller out, i always end up with max debt after a few hours. The idea that there are mezing/immobing/two-shotting mobs in pvp zones, who can take you out in passing, is extreamly off-putting. No to mention the debt that creaps in when your target runs around aggoring things with your debuffs.

I have many more ideas about how to improve pvp, but i'll spare you. In general though, the way the proper build, with the correct insps, can take out any squishy, and get away consistantly is slowly driving me away from pvp. Combinations of extream moblity, high damage, and excellent defenses (think some stalker builds, and SS brutes).

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Mu