Kitsune9tails

Meh. Respecs are easy to get.

On the other hand, one way to semantically avoid a problem with jealousy from other classes and also dodge the respeccing problem might be to roll the 'break out of mez' feature into Defiance.

Add the mez-breaking to every Blaster primary attack with an appropriately lower effect. Only the first two powers would retain the 'blasting in my sleep' effect (which I hate but oh well) and the other powers could still be activated while mezzed, but would have no effect other than a mini-break free.

Maybe his 'max damage' number means the max damage the power will do after all buffs except for the ones he mentions? For instance, a headsplitter can do 1200 if buffed to the gills by a team full of defenders, 2400 if critical?

For example:

Super Strength (burst damage) vs Claws (dps)
Energy Melee (stuns) vs Spines (range, debuffs)

I think you are talking about using caps to balance out powersets, which I thought was a good idea back in Beta, but the other players outvoted me

Caps still exist, but in general are above where the original designers felt was balanced. They are reached on large teams on a casual basis, due to buffs from allies.

When soloing, most people operate well below most caps, where imbalances become more apparent.

However, you also realize that the Devs balance around characters using SO enhancements to fight spawns set to 'normal' difficulty: +0 levels, x0 extra foes. If you look at performance against the environment (not other players) at that level, things are fairly balanced.

Another choice would be to time gate certain rewards.

Datamining can tell them the average speed at which rewards are earned in iTrials by the average player in a 20 hour period. They then time gate certain drops in the solo path to a proper percentage of the above.

Of course, I think the iTrial rewards should be time gated also. Repeating the same content should be rewarding, but not so rewarding that it encourages burnout.

As far as I know, the tech exists to do that now, although it might be a bit kludgey in execution. They already have tech that scales EBs up to AVs based on team size, and certain foes that only spawn based on your Archetype.

One way of doing this would be to build climactic encounters around a specific Incarnate ability, while handing each player an emergency substitute for said ability.

For instance: you have an encounter that "assumes" the player has Judgement. Every time Judgement should be recharged, an ambush of trash mobs arrives at the location of the main foe. Now, if you have enough strong AoE or the right tactics (maybe pulling the main foe out of the encounter area) you can give yourself an advantage. In addition, if you click some glowies elsewhere on the map, you can give yourself a temp version of Judgement with a certain number of charges.

A player that is built 'wrong' and doesn't figure out the right tactics may hit a wall, but if they explore the mission, they will find the temp power. In addition, they can also just go and redo the 'you only have alpha unlocked' solo content, which should allow them to earn and slot a Judgement power.

If you for some reason don't want the Judgement power, you go down a different story branch and avoid the Judgement Battle completely.

The Judgement encounter would feel very different for your Tanker and Blaster, but I'm not sure what kind of encounter differences are going to make Broadsword and Katana feel different. Broadsword and Mace, maybe.

EDIT:
Another way of working this is to have elements of a given encounter that are random (or which depend on choices made previously by the player). For instance the climactic encounter of a mission could randomly be a blaster version, tanker version, or controller version of the same foe, either randomly or based on what glowies the player activates/destroys before spawning him. For example, maybe you examine wreckage in his wake, and based on the dialogue tree choices you make, you 'discover' that he is a living inferno, a living juggernaut, or a living nightmare.

Rough estimate? 2 every couple issues, so average 1 per issue.

I wonder because I think it might be something the Devs might want to try to reduce the 'grindiness' of grindy content. The numbers might need to be tweaked, but the idea is that running each trial in succession should be more or as rewarding as rerunning the fastest trial over and over.

The other solution to grindiness I see would be to use more random elements in trial design (like MoM's random foes in one part), but that of course makes things a bit more difficult to balance.

I think the devs have realized, as many posters have said, that content is going to be farmed no matter what they do. It only makes sense for them to design content that is intended to be farmed.

It frees up resources (including time) for the story content to be worked on in detail.

The only problem is players choosing to burn themselves out with the grind before more content can be added, but the AE is the only potential solution to outracing player desire for content that I have seen.

The AE and potentially, PvP.

Is that different from now?