Clan_Jericho

Arcanaville, you're my hero. Well, you and Captain Marvel are my heroes. But at least you're in good company.

~Gabriel

Well, going back is obviously not an option, and I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting it. Most of us are lamenting, not hoping.

It's interesting that people keep mentioning the Superman/Batman dichotomy in an attempt to justify the difference between level 50 heroes and AVs. If people were OK with being outperformed - which we'll accept for the sake of argument - you wouldn't be bitter at having spent a year and a half getting outperformed by Invul. You would have accepted that they were better heroes, and you were a lesser, more Batman-ish hero.

Clearly people don't work that way. Nor, in my opinion, should they. There's no denying that the game is more balanced now - just balanced at what is, to my mind, much too low a standard.

~Gabriel

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Y'know, I've been reading this thread ever since it was resurrected from the last page, and the same thought keeps occuring to me.

Man, I'm so glad those days are long buried.

See, as an Ice Tanker, I never got into those groups where people were blowing up 'hundreds' of minions or stuff like this. See, if you were an Ice Tanker without Tough, or a defender on your hip, or had friends that didn't mind the fact that you couldn't tank like the other three sets, you were either not invited to groups, or got kicked as soon as the rest of the team realized what primary you were playing. I still remember one team, where after the first spawn (where HC nearly died from all of the fire/smashing/lethal damage being dealt by the 5th Columns), one of the blasters started asking on the team channel if we couldn't find a real tanker.

So when I read how people miss being able to do this kind of stuff, I just shrug my shoulders. I never did it before, I can't do it now, and while my main is a little tougher on test, she still gets one-shotted by AVs and GMs.

So I'll guess I'll be one of the lone voices of dissension, and say that things are better now then they were back then.

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I understand your sentiments - I played underpowered sets back in the day, too - but what your saying boils down to: "I wasn't in on the fun, so I don't care that it's gone."

Which, you have to admit, isn't very charitable of you. For my own part, I wish they had simply fixed the defense formula back in Issue 4 and allowed Ice and SR to perform the way Invul and Regen did. That would have made me very happy.

~Gabriel

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why does it seem like ur contradicting urself Jericho? You talk about how you face certain mobs w/ pulling and kiteing, and yet say it's not a challenge or involve critical thinking o_O Knowing what to pull involves thinking, you just don't go "eeny meeny miny moe" cause you know you can end up pulling that whole mob if you choose wrong. Kiteing is basically hit n' run which involves atleast some thinking.

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I don't consider that thinking. As I said, it's too routine to be considered critical thought. I suppose that's just a difference of definition. Good to clarify.

~Gabriel

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I hate it when people talk about challenge. This game isn't challenging for me. Any time people bring challenge into the equation I can't do anything but shrug and wonder.

I don't get it. I don't get it at some very basic level, and I suppose it's preventing me from seeing some brilliant overarching game design that is, at the moment, totally opaque to me. Or maybe I'm just not their target demographic?

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Is that because the 3M-to-1H formula is still out of whack? I'm genuinely curious. I manage fine on Unyielding level, but even I worry about Invincible (although that's probably because I haven't yet respec'd into a Tough and/or AS build).

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No, it's because I know that it's merely a matter of how long I take to defeat a challenge, not whether I'll defeat it. Barring Archvillains and Giant Monsters, there isn't anything in this game I can't solo with any character. It's not a matter of my being an awesome player, it's a matter of extreme AI stupidity. If I come across a group that's too large for me, I pull. If I come across a single enemy that's too tough for me to defeat in one go, I do as much damage as possible, run away and rest, and come back. The bottom line is that all I'm thinking about when I look at a group of enemies - at any level - is: how long is this going to take?

That's not challenge. Challenge requires some kind of critical thinking. This game doesn't. Although, I do admit that what might have been critical thinking the first time is routine the fiftieth. Maybe that's my problem.

~Gabriel

I hate it when people talk about challenge. This game isn't challenging for me. Any time people bring challenge into the equation I can't do anything but shrug and wonder.

I don't get it. I don't get it at some very basic level, and I suppose it's preventing me from seeing some brilliant overarching game design that is, at the moment, totally opaque to me. Or maybe I'm just not their target demographic?

~Gabriel

The way I see it, the AVs and Heroes are pre-Crisis Kryptonians. Everybody else is post-Crisis Kryptonian.

They whoop our booties via writer/developer fiat. It's that simple.

~Gabriel

None of the problems that plague this game are so obscure that the devs should require statistics to suss them out.

Also, statistics has two major problems: hidden biases and identifying and confirming correlation. Frankly, I don't trust the devs to manage much of anything with competence any more, least of all something as delicate as making statistical information useful.

Look at their data regarding kills/deaths. So stalkers have the highest kill/death ratio. No kidding? Did you not realize, back when you were giving them complete invisibility and massively frontloaded damage and a defensive secondary, that this might be a problem? Do you really need datamining to make you see this as an issue? Didn't the most basic design elements of the stalker AT ring little warning bells in your collective heads?

Color me cynical, I suppose.

~Gabriel

I've said this before, but it bears repeating:

The best thing about early CoH was the dichotomy between lowbie and level 40 superhero. At level 10 or so you could fight four or five mobs. At 40 you could, depending on your AT:

- Do massive amounts of damage to hundreds of mobs at once.
- Survive indefinitely in conditions that would kill other ATs.
- Control hundreds of enemies at once.
- Debuff everything into complete impotence.

You started small and became massive. Weak and powerful. Light and dark. Nonfat and whole milk. THERE WAS STARK CONTRAST!

I used to look at level 50 heroes and think "wow, they can do incredible things!" Now I look at them and think "they can do the same things I can do, but to +con enemies." Sorry, not impressive.

~Gabriel

Statesman's response to the issue irritates me. Rather that providing more interesting challenges for very powerful heroes, he nerfed them to the point where routine numbers and levels of mobs were "challenging." Except when he says challenging, he means "time-consuming."

I enjoyed being powerful. I enjoyed being able to take on enormous numbers of high-con enemies with my heroes. I felt super. What I wanted at that time was for the developers to provide me with opportunities to play IN THAT MANNER in such a way that it furthered a storyline. That would have been great. Super-missions, that spawned large numbers of powerful enemies that might have challenged high-level heroes, would have been enormously fun and engaging. And challenging.

Instead we got nerfed. How original.

The thing about AI in this game is that it's very predictable when you're dealing with small numbers of NPCs. Increase the numbers of NPCs and you start to get somewhat chaotic behavior, because they're interacting with each other as well as with you. That's part of the reason taking on double-spawns is so much more exciting than taking on single-spawns. I routinely herd my missions nowadays, just to liven things up a bit.

In short, I don't think Statesman has ever understood what makes being super fun. "Super" is, after all, a relative description. You can only be super in relation to some analagous being, whether it be another hero or a flimsy NPC. If we aren't powerful compared to each other (balance), and the minions grow in power at nearly the same rate we do, at what point exactly does the word super ever come to describe our relationship to anything in the game world?

In the old days we started out being equal to 4 or 5 minions. By the time we hit 50 we could take on hundreds. In relation to our old power levels, we were truly super. Now, at level 50, you can probably take on 8 to 15 minions without using an overclock power. That's not really all that impressive, considering that with the use of a few inspirations we could have achieve the same results 40 levels earlier.

We are, in every way, less super than we used to be. Blasters, Scrappers, Controllers, Defenders, Tankers. All of us. For some of us, anyway, it's the memory of that superiority that makes whatever we achieve now feel mediocre. I was a god, and now I'm just a tough guy. That chafes a bit on the ego.

~Gabriel

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Healing Flames isn't the only power that needs to be improved. Fire could use a boost in multiple areas. It is horrible...in PvP. I wasted 39 of my first CoV levels on a dark/fire brute.

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Ironic because Dark/Fire levels very quickly. With an endurance drain power in primary and secondary you've got almost no downtime. I believe the first Brute to 40 was Dark/Fire.

~Gabriel

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FYI: Electric Shields' Grounding Power will have Immobilize and Knockback Protection added. The set will still not have a Heal power or HP Buff power.

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The opportunity cost of Fiery Aura just went up.

~Gabriel

I suppose I shouldn't complain too loudly, what with it being free to download and all...

...but issue 12 was really, really unsatisfying. The writing, the art, the plot...

Whoever you're paying to do that is being paid too much.

~Gabriel

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I haven't had time to get on test, but I was wondering what people are reporting about the changes to hurricane. Anyone have any stories?

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This is as good a place to put this, as any:

I checked in a few Hurricane changes today that QA is going to look at. In Theory, these changes should mean that for PvE, Hurricane acts Exactly as it did before the previous change, while in PvP, it should act exactly as it does currently. Hopefully this change will get a green light from QA -- I've spent quite a bit of time on it over the last few days.

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Somebody needs to write a song for you. Something along the lines of "Jefferson and Liberty."

~Gabriel

P.S. To those who don't know, that's an American Revolutionary War song.

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Well, there are two possibilities. Castle is lying to us or he isn't. I am, frankly, one of the more jaded people on the forums when it comes to the nerfs we've seen in the past. I do not, however, believe that they would flat out lie to us.


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Things just aren't that simple. If Castle were in actual control of CoH balancing, I might be inclined to take his word as absolute. Since he is part of what I have gathered is a bureaucratic decisionmaking process, I don't really think his honesty even really matters.

That is to say: I don't doubt Castle's honesty, just his ability to predict what's going to happen.

~Gabriel

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I've seen the rather extensive arguments that balance is turning PvP-centric. And I remain unconvinced.


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We're playing a superhero game. We have super-powers. If the devs wake up some morning and decide that any one of our super-powers is unbalanced, they'd be right. Of course they're unbalanced - they're super-powers! When you get right down to it what we end up doing after level 30 is totally abusive. We plow through those Invincible missions like they weren't even there, and it's so easy that most of us are more concerned about speed than anything else. THAT'S unbalanced. The entire PvE game's unbalanced. The definition of PvE balance is so subjective that we can't possibly argue that any of our powers aren't unbalanced. But that doesn't mean that those balance issues should necessarily be addressed. A lot of the fun of the PvE game arises from the balance of power being shifted in our favor. If we were on an equal footing with the mobs, life would be very, very boring.

I find denials that changes were predicated on PvP issues very disingenuous. I know, I know, correlation does not imply causation. But look at the facts. Every single item that came to light during Arena testing has been addressed. Many of those same issues had been around since launch, but only received attention after the Arena was introduced. Coincidence? Better yet, look at powers that are unbalanced in PvE but aren't in PvP. Fulcrum Shift. Amazingly unbalanced in PvE, but totally worthless in PvP. Has it received attention? Of course not. Will it? Of course not.

It was all too coincidental. I've never overlooked what was lying right in front of me.

~Gabriel

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Many of those changes were necessary due to the GDN of i5 stacking with ED. Sets may not have performed at all had they not made them. There is a difference. When it comes to sets being more powerful/effective, the devs nerf to bring it in line with the rest, not buff everything else.

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Backpedalling and wholly disingenuous.

Your claim is that the Devs only nerf, never buff. Even when concurrent, that doesn't negate the point that a buff is made.

No offense, but those stacking buffs to DA and Stone are not inconsequential, and are not completely mitigated by either I5 or ED. Those changes help those sets relative to other comparable sets irrespective of other downtweaks that've been made.

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I don't consider those buffs. The sets were broken, and they got fixed. That's not buffing, that's the devs pulling their heads out of their behinds.

~Gabriel

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...when the Arena and PvP first came out that Tanks were king of the mountain.

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Tanks, not so much. Trollers everyone feared.

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No, tanks were pretty well feared. Not all of them, just the /EM and /Super-Strength ones. Just like now.

Heh.

~Gabriel

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Are you serious Kali?? You must have turned blind if you think tankers do ok in PvP.

Remember that devs balance for teams. Just exactly what do a tank contribute with in a PvP team that no other AT can do better?

Damage, no. Buffs, no. Protecting team members, no. Debuffs, no...

So perhaps a tank can take a bit more beating due to more HP but since a tank is not really that big of a threath WHO CARES!

Master Minds and Dominators at least have tools that make a difference in PvP. Tanks just hang around.

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Oh, please. Tankers do 80% blaster damage and have many times more durability. What tankers can't really do is fulfill their intended role in PVP. Taunt's nerfed against other players and punchvoke doesn't work at all.

I did not "turn blind." All I had to do was PVP with a tanker and against tankers.

But, wow, "a tank is not really that big of a threat?" "Tanks just hang around?" I have to ask - have you played a tanker in PVP?

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While I agree with your general point that tankers manage quite well in PvP as uber-scrappers, their damage isn't 80% of a blaster's. Their AT scalar is, but their actual damage dealt isn't anywhere close. Don't give people the wrong impression.

~Gabriel

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FWIW, reduced Toggle Drops and Gauntlet working in PvP should help tankers teaming ability. If those don't set them within the 'acceptable' range, then we'll try something else.

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Well it all depends on what "reduced Toggle Drops" actually means. Us not knowing the numbers far from produces warm fuzzies. My feeling is that if anything still has a 100% chance to drop or can drop more than one toggle, then you've not gone far enough.

Gauntlet will help, but only on a proactive level. And its still not clear if this will cover Taunt Auras like Invincibility and Chilling Embrace.

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Hell, I'll go one step further. I've always thought the idea of having defensive toggles was stupid. It's even worse now that our defenses aren't effectual the way they used to be. To have a 30% resistance power that I'm paying endurance (my fun meter) for, and then have it be possible for another hero or villain to come up and utterly disable it is just so far from our comic-book roots that I want to hurl something across the bay at Cryptic headquarters.

I will never be happy with toggles, much less toggle-dropping.

~Gabriel

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a) stand in awe of your pathetic whipped-dog mentality, that you mewl about how far up the [censored] we COULD have taken it

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A beaten dog knows to fear the hand.

~Gabriel

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A teensie cautionary note on that.

For the most part, Castle simply confirms what large sections of the PvP playerbase has been dogmatizing. Be careful about asking for too much, though.

Complete transparency of the datamining may simply drive more sections of the playerbase to FotM PvP building. It's one thing that we all know /Eng Blasters outperform all others; that differential is so widely accepted at this point, it's hardly surprising.

My fear is that complete transparency will simply narrow the field of "acceptable" PvP builds in the perception of the playerbase, by virtue of having Dev confirmation.

And, speaking only for myself, one of the most disappointing and outright boring elements of CoX PvP is going up against the exact same FotM sets over and over and over again. If all I wanted to PvP against were a very limited set of build options -- Eng/Eng stalkers, /Eng Blappers, the occasional pocket Emp -- I'd be playing a game with far more restricted build options -- like an FPS.

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You bring up (tangentially) an interesting point: to what degree are the min-maxing players creating the illusion that /eng is that much better. If I'm going to build a PvP blaster, I'm going to go /nrg. Period. No reason not to. I imagine a lot of forumgoers would do the same. Thus, you get the most informed, and probably the most skilled, players gravitating towards the highest-performing sets.

I'm wondering how much we're padding the numbers. Is the margin of difference between /nrg and /fire really so great? Or are we, those who know the numbers, inflating a marginal difference by showing preference for a slightly better secondary? When we get kills with our /nrg blasters, are we getting them because of the /nrg or just because we're the best players in the game? Would we be able to skew the numbers if all of us forum-goers built and played /fire blasters?

I'm not saying that /nrg isn't simply better in every way (because frankly I think it is), but we shouldn't ignore the fact that we're probably causing a bias in the results of their datamining.

~Gabriel

Castle, I love you. I love you, I love you. I can't say it enough.

Please, give us more data. More information. I know I'm not alone in this. I know it's not your job to give us data, and that anything you do give us is entirely on your time, but my poor little heart thrills every time you give us tidbits from your datamining. ;;

~Gabriel

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What's sad is that _Castle_ can be so incredibly wrong when he is the only dev that regularly posts on balance issues. Perhaps they should datamine kills in the arena, especiall the arena on Test to see what is and isn't true.

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To the devs this game is a job. Our own interest in it varies from hobby to obsession. It's only natural that from time to time the devs will not understand things that seem obvious to the forumgoers.

And who's to say whether our "obvious truths" really are?

~Gabriel

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Scrappers out damage blasters in melee.

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No. If you'd said "scrappers have a higher AT damage scalar than blasters in melee," I might have agreed with you. Unfortunately, Blaster melee attacks have faster animations and generally do more damage per attack, which means that blasters tend to actually do more numerical damage than scrappers at melee range.

If you want me to compare attack chains between a typical scrapper and a blapper I certainly will, but I assume that you of all people know the numbers.*

So please don't mislead people like this.

* I am assuming that the blaster will supplement his melee attacks with short-range blasts in order to achieve a full attack chain.

~Gabriel