Hopeling

Massively has a weekly column specifically about CoH and nothing else, which has been running for almost 3 years. We haven't exactly been ignored.

Within the code? Maybe not a lot.

When deciding whether to configure the code this way, rather than any of those ten thousand possible ways? Quite a lot. Not to even mention the nontrivial knowledge required to be able to make useful code in the first place.

I don't re-calculate from scratch what the optimal behavior is in every situation in-game. I doubt many people do. A lot of behavior is stuff we've practiced or learned before, and using them in play consists largely of repeating or combining patterns. But you have to know the pattern in the first place to repeat it. An unskilled player doesn't know the patterns, or knows bad ones. Good use of inspirations and temp powers makes an incredibly huge difference to performance, for example, and the way players use inspirations is all over the map. Some players just mash f1-f5 whenever they hit a tough spot, some hoard inspirations and basically never use them, some outright forget they have inspirations most of the time, some meticulously plan and control their inspiration supply and usage, some people (ab)use /auctionhouse to have a near-unlimited supply of powerful inspirations. And all of those behaviors lead to significantly different performance.

Again, the claim you're making is (IMX) wildly counterfactual. An individual player's capabilities makes a huge difference. Even just my own level of focus makes a huge difference, and there's presumably no gap in knowledge or experience between myself and myself. You can keep arguing for your theory, if you want, but every piece of actual evidence I have says you're wrong.

I don't think anyone can honestly claim that IOs, Incarnate powers, and various other buffs and general power creep haven't raised high-end performance dramatically as well. Whether the gap between low and high has gotten wider or narrower... well, I'd say wider, but that's hard to actually measure. Still, when some characters/players struggle at very low difficulties and others can thrive at maximum difficulty (in a game where the difference between minimum and maximum difficulty is very wide), it's pretty clear that the gap has at least not narrowed excessively.

I would also have a problem with somebody saying that, since obvious counterexamples abound, although I can't recall any specific instances of someone actually claiming that (other than perhaps accidentally while speaking in generalizations). I'm not sure I even agree with saying that a majority of Blasters are bad; I've quite enjoyed and done some pretty awesome things with my Blasters, even the ones with the least impressive powersets. IMX it's still pretty clear that Blasters, for the most part, are not good enough to claim they're balanced against other ATs in any useful sense.

Personally, I think the difference between "Blasters as a whole have issues, but a small subset of builds overcome that and are awesome anyway" and "Blasters as an AT are awesome, it's just that a large majority all of the builds available to Blasters have issues holding them back" is a purely semantic distinction. Framing it one way or the other can lead to different solutions appearing more appropriate (individual fixes for each powerset vs AT-wide changes, for example), though.

So why are you claiming you can predict that the changes will make you enjoy Blasters less (not to mention projecting that onto other players)? That seems rather hypocritical.

Actually, the statistics say Blasters were the most-abandoned AT: they are the most popular at level 1, and drop off steadily from there. People are less likely to stick with a Blaster and play it anyway than any other AT; the concept of a glass cannon is clearly attractive to players, but the execution leaves something to be desired.

And, yes, there is room for "hard mode" Blasters. There is also room for "hard mode" Blasters that aren't straight-up inferior. And this is what the i24 changes actually did.

But moreover, you keep waving your hands vaguely towards some unspecified properties of Blasters that make them unique and interesting but rely specifically on traits that i24 was going to remove, and as far as I can tell, those properties do not actually exist. i23 Blasters are glass cannons; i24 Blasters are also glass cannons. i23 Blasters rely heavily on burst damage and neutralizing threats quickly, i24 Blasters rely even more heavily on burst damage and neutralizing threats quickly. i23 Blasters must be careful in avoiding and working around mez, i24 Blasters must still do that.

i23 Blasters can have a lot of downtime between fights, but I find it difficult to believe that is specifically attractive to you as a gameplay feature.

In principle, maybe, but I've never seen you manage it. OOH BURN

This is the fundamental disagreement. Whether or not MMOs are about being as powerful as possible, rather than some other form of "personal gain" with character power only maybe a tertiary goal at best.

We're talking about a game where the ability to use Excalibur at level 1 (even though you can earn it for free at level 50) costs more than any IO and most full sets of IOs. Saying that optimizing performance is more important than having a good costume or playing out your character concept or whatever is, in this game, factually incorrect.

So, congrats: you brought a gun to a knife-fighting club. You win, but you kinda missed the point, and insisting that everyone else in the club isn't as good as you is kinda annoying.

Edit: (This response was composed before I saw your edit above. Please note that I really have nothing against you, and at most mildly disagree with your approach to the game. I'm just holding a silly face to see which of us cracks up first, since that has appeared to be the theme of this entire thread.)

No no, I'm not saying to avoid any character that is advantageous. Just that specifically seeking out advantageous combos, as the primary consideration, is deliberately seeking a handicap.

Congrats, you did stuff with your Archery/Mental. Other players did similar stuff with characters that are, according to you, weaker. That would, by most estimations, make you the inferior player.

Yeah, winning by playing only the most advantageous characters. Congratulations; you took the biggest handicap the game will allow, and you won, whatever that means. Me, I'd call restricting yourself to a tiny subset of the game's possibilities in a game that is valued for its breadth of possibilities "losing".