Mr_Strange

I have a very simple fix in mind:

Give all blasters a placate ability in their secondaries. Make it a new power.

I believe that an AoE placate power would fix all of my issues quite nicely.

--Mr. Strange

[ QUOTE ]
I think you are very much mistaken. If they really took that long to anylize the data they would never be able to make any changes much less actually work on two games. In any case Geko explained in the latest developer response what I already suspected. The information is very much, right at hand.

Geko:
[ QUOTE ]
All of this is done in Excel. It’s pretty massive, but it’s also quite flexible and powerful since all values are interlinked. And since all these values are in Excel, the data can easily be analyzed. For instance, we can instantly see what the average damage a Tanker will take if we change one number. And we can compare this based on a number of variables such as Level, Enhancements, and Buffs.


[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

Well it's certainly possible that all of the power data is kept together and up to date. But is that excel sheet driving the data, or is it generated based upon data changes in the code base?

If it's the former, than it would be very easy for anyone at Cryptic to check the numbers on a power. It would also be something of a headache to review past revisions, since every change made to any power would all be revisions on the same document.

If it's the latter, then I stand by my assesment of the difficulty for a given developer to get numerical data. That would be something Geko might generate for himself, and it might not be readily available to everyone else.

I strongly suspect it's the latter, since excel documents are difficult to diff between revisions. Not being able to diff the powerset numbers would be an insane oversight.

It's certainly irritating when the players are aware of a change and cannot get confirmation, but how many erronious claims are made on the boards every day? Heck, how many erronious bugs are reported in-game every day?

I'm not trying to imply that anything wrong has occured here - I'm just describing why, in my mind, this type of oversight is totally within the realm of normal, and is not evidence of any incompetency on the part of the Cryptic staff.

--Mr. Strange

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
30% -Res according to Erratic IIRC. -Dam should correspond to that, either directly or relatively.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here's something that is very very sad and disturbing. We have to rely on other Players for honest information about the game, because we can't trust the missives from the company itself.

[/ QUOTE ]

DING! Thats the main problem that I see as well. I can't trust anything that is written about the powers in this game. Not in game and not out of game by the Devs. Not any more. Not after REGEN and EF fiascos. I originally said that everyone makes a mistake once in awhile and that we should kinda let the regen fiasco slide and just focus on other things.

[/ QUOTE ]

It is very difficult to keep all of the proper data together in one place for easy reference. I suspect that Cryptic has someone collate all of the check-in comments from various powers-changing adjustments made to the game, and that is the official company line with regard to power changes.

Looking up the specific numbers on a power takes some work. Not a ton, maybe 5-10 minutes- less for whoever wrote the code initially.

It seems totally unreasonable to expect Cryptic to invest the time to look into every claim made on the boards or in-game about unnecessary power changes. To investigate a change requires even more work, because you also need to review past revisions of that power, and compare. In many cases, I suspect the numbers do not immedaitely suggest what, exactly, changed from a player's perspective.

I suspect that the changes to EF were done as part of the "global defense reduction" pass, and checked in with that batch of work. Unless someone specifically reviews the EF portion of the code to look for changes, it is totally reasonable for Cryptic's spokespeople (CuppaJoe, Statesman) to stick to what they have documented as the changes.

It's great that CoH has a fan base which is dedicated to getting information out to the people who are looking for it. This sort of thing helps Cryptic and the players alike. But claiming that Cryptic should do the work themselves is simply unreasonable from a development point of view.

--Mr. Strange

[ QUOTE ]

Our DEF? I dunno, it still seems unbalanced. If the Devs wanted to make us more damage based, they would have brought down the I4 Endurance costs to assist in that. It seems like all we have now, with our armors, is an old fashioned Weave. Waiting until 26, before we can start dishing anything out.


It is good to see some Ice Tanks are surviving I5 though. Kinda holding back myself, until they do something to replace it's lost DEF.

Good luck in your tanking. If it ever comes up, I'd like to know how Ice runs with a Sonic Bubbler behind it.

[/ QUOTE ]

After playing a ton of my ice tank in I5, I have more feelings to share:

1 - I am _very_ strong vs even-leveled foes with a modest number of +1 foes. I switched from 5DEF to 6DEF in my armors, and I keep them fully green as much as possible. Yellow defense enhancements are death.

2 - My Ice tank could, by himself, protect the shrine in the new Croatoa Fir Bolg mission. If you've tried it, you know the one I mean. My aura and Icicles grabbed all the aggro nicely, and I was able to finish them off quickly enough. These were mostly +2 minions with fire attacks - it got hairy a few times, but I did it with constant inspiration use.

3 - As I start to go up to +1 enemies with some +2s, I drop in effectiveness significantly. I would say that I am clearly weaker than an Inv or Fire tank in this range, but not so much so that I am a detriment to the team. This range will be much more possible for me once I get Hibernate.

4 - The endurance regen from EA is _amazing_ - I'm filling my bar about every 20 seconds. I drain endurance pretty quickly with my axe attacks, but I think I could run my primaryies without and endurance reducers now if it would help.

5 - I cannot fight red minions in any significant numbers (like, more than 3) without serious danger.

6 - Just 1 defender or controller, of any type, makes +2 and +3 mobs quite doable. But they must actively support me, which sometimes they forget to do. I've become accustomed to Defenders acting 50% blater and 50% defender. Now I really look for defenders who defend more actively. Empaths are great if they have regen aura and Fortitude - useless if they do not. Dark, Rad, Storm, Kin, FF, and Sonic (sk'd up a 21) all push me easily into the "awesome" range again.

--Mr. Strange

I'm still playing my tank on live, and things are still going smoothly. I'll try to crank things up a bit tonight, and see how far I can push my Ice Tank before he folds.

What I'm really finding, and will probably make a seperate post about in the Ice Tank forums, is that my playstyle is somewhat different now. And actually, I'm much more effective as an active damage dealer. I've not changed my powers or slotting at all - just my actions in-game. EA is mostly the culprit. I'm quite liking it.

--Mr. Strange

[ QUOTE ]
I did a few quick tests on the new -damage aspect of Chilling Embrace. Here are my numbers as of 8/20/05 on test.

As you can see, the percentage of -damage is not 10% but somewhere more in the area of 7ish%. Obviously, further testing is required but I thought you all might like preliminary results.

[/ QUOTE ]

I noticed that the patch notes did not say that the -speed or -recharge of CE has been reduced. If we're getting ~8% -damage from enemies on top of -25% recharge, I think we're in good shape on this power.

CE is the new EA - but it doesn't require any slotting.

--Mr. Strange

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I got really annoyed earlier and said the devs "must hate ice" which I'm sure they don't, but I just don't understand.

[/ QUOTE ]

They don't hate Ice. They hate *defense*.

Defense has many advantages over resistance. A resistance tanker can be brought down by sappers, by stacked holds, or by resistance debuffs. None of those things matter to a hero with high defense, because none of those things *hit* when your defense is high enough. High defense scares the devs, because they seem to think there is nothing they can do to stop it.

Except...in reality, everything stops it. There are more defense hosers in the game than resistance hosers, by a factor of about 10 to 1. (This is not hyperbole. The only resistance debuffers are Council Sonics. Every mook with an assault gun or handaxe debuffs defense.) There are more things that totally ignore defense (Toxic damage, caltrops and swarms. The only thing that ignores resistance is untyped damage from a couple AVs, not counting the psi vulnerability that defense also has.) Defense-based sets have more vulnerabilities. Defense in PvP is a joke because player accuracy buffs are so incredibly strong. And defense is the only set of powers in the game affected by the streakbreaker, a deus ex machina that swoops down on you every once in a while and declares you naked and helpless by divine fiat.

Defense sucks compared to resistance, in practice. But the devs don't see that -- they look at spreadsheets that tell them 20% defense is equivalent to 40% resistance (with base 50% chance for a minion to hit, 20% defense in theory means you're taking 30% of the minion's damage. To get the same value in theory for resistance, you need 40% resistance.) And with those numbers in hand, they make defense worse by far than any other damage mitigation strategy in the game. In reality, to balance the game, they'd have to make defense much, much stronger than their spreadsheets tell them to, because it has so many vulnerabilities. But they don't see that, and won't do it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Remus, that's a very well-formed post you made there.

Personally I think the developers at Cryptic are excellent. I think they play the game, and I think they have things well in hand. But I believe you cleary sounded out why defensive powers are such a sore point between the developers and the players.

Keep it up.

--Mr. Strange

Adding a damage debuff on CE is great - thank you for that. I'm also glad you reduced it's -recharge, rather than upping the endurance cost.

I'm willing to accept that tanks will be, in general, weaker in I5. That's fine. Losing ~10% DEF on Wet Ice does that. Losing ~4% DEF on FA and GA does that.

EA is the sticking point for me. It's still a fine power. Frankly, 0.5% DEF per enemy is not too bad - and makes a significant difference.

The problem is that, prior to I5, Ice Tanks were able to accept somewhat low defense overall because we knew that EA was coming. Once we had EA, we were set we were banking on the fact that EA was a better than average power.

On test, EA is now a good taunt/endurance recovery power, but it no longer completes our defensive picture. Ice Tanks are a bit weak before EA, and we are also weak after EA.

This goes 10 times for Fire. Ice Tanks are now totally vulnerable to fire damage. The only defense we get to them is a mediocre 17% - if we jump into a group of 14+ fire-throwing enemies... not a good idea.

I have three suggetsion for EA - none of them unsaid before this:

1 - Increase the base DEF bonus on EA. 1% would be fine.
2 - Make the first target count for more. Say 7.5% DEF for the first target hit, and 1% thereafter. Make that first boost unenhancable, if you need to.
3 - Make the DEF granted vs Fire significantly higher. I'm thinking 4 or 5x DEF vs Fire. I'm draining the energy out of my foes - I want to extinguish their fires. I want to withstand fire attacks.

Ice tanks are weak to both Psi and Fire. Our PSI weakness is not a problem - it's a common ailment. But our Fire weakness cripples us. With the old EA, it was not much of an issue. But 17% Fire DEF simply will not stave off death for even a second if you are facing 14+ fire-throwing enemies.

--Mr. Strange

[ QUOTE ]
As for the changes, I don't have an Ice Tanker, but I don't see how they help them, specifically. While it would be a nice change for everyone, it doesn't balance the Ice Tankers with the other sets.

[/ QUOTE ]

Allow me to elucidate:

How changing AV accuracy from 90% to 75% helps Ice Tanks specifically (and SR scrappers).

Consider three tanks.

Tank A has 90% resistance to lethal damage. (Inv)
Tank B has 90% resistance and 28% defense to lethal. (Stone)
Tank C has 0% resistance and 70% defense to lethal (Ice)

damage taken = Damage*(%resistance)*(AV acc - DEF)

With AV acc of 90%:

A takes 9% damage from the AV.
B takes 6.2% damage from the AV.
C takes 20% damage from the AV.

This is essentially how it works on live. Inv takers (A) are even better off if they can keep enough foes around to get Invincibility running well.

Now let's see how an acc reduction affects things.

With AV acc of 75%:

A takes 7.5% damage.
B takes 4.7% damage.
C takes 5% damage.

Zing! Ice tanks benefit much more than the others do.

So does this mean Ice tanks are balanced with the other types? Well no. On test Ice tanks are not hitting anything like 70% DEF, probably due to some bugs. Also, damage taken over time (resistance style) is easier to respond to than damage taken in bursts (DEF style).

However, that's a point for another post. The point here is that, in fact, lowering hig acc values has significantly more benefit for DEF sets than others.

--Mr. Strange

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
This seemingly affects everyone, although Ice tankers and SR scrappers may benefit the most, along with bubblers (somewhat).

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, they may benefit the least. If somehow, using power pools and whatnot, you managed to floor the ACC of an attacker to 5% before this change, then this change will have absolutely no impact on you whatsoever.

For example:
[ QUOTE ]
Reduced Accuracy of Archvillains from 90% to 75%.

[/ QUOTE ]

So a 15% reduction...

If you had reduced their ACC to 15% before the change...you will only see a 10% improvement as 5% is the floor.

In order to get benefit from this 15% reduction, the mobs will need to have at least a 20% chance to hit you in the first place. Otherwise you will not see a 15% improvement, you will only improve enough to lower it to 5%.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're mis-stating the benefit here. The difference between being hit 15% of the time and being hit 5% of the time is a 300% increase in defense, not 10%.

The accurracy changes actually do help +DEF powerset significantly more than other sets, because it helps get us closer to the 5% cap.

Imagine acc was reduced from 50% to 49%, and Ice tank +DEF was 44% max.

Just going from 6% to 5% is a 16% increase in survivability. Going from 50% to 49% is only 2%.

The +DEF character is getting eight times the benifit.

Going from 90% to 75% is a 20% boost in survivability for everyone. But if that change moves you very close to the 5% cap, your benefit will be siginifacantly greater.

--Mr. Strange

First - thank you to Cryptic for creating this forum.

Second - I apologize for the community's apparent inability to remain on-topic.

Third - I trust that we are moving towards a system in which defense and resistance are distinct, but both attractive. We might already be there, in fact. I'm comfortable with the direction, at least.

Fourth - We really need to get Wet Ice and Energy Absorbtion working on Test. If zero defense is the plan, we need to be told that explicitly.

Fifth - Ice Tanks would really appreciate being thrown a bone on the AV issue. There are two basic (reasonable) approaches to this:

* Allow EA to give us a decent DEF buff vs 1 foe.
* Reduce the damage of very large hits. (I would like to avoid resistance on my ice tank - but some special reduction to extreme-damage hits would be a benefit.)

With my specific experiences on Test (on Pre-EA tank, one post) I found that pre-EA defense was passable, though not by any means very good. Post-EA I felt very weak indeed.

I hope we can remain on-topic.

[ QUOTE ]
Well even though we may never see Godzilla or Rodan or their buddies. I would sure love to see a special map incorporated where anything can and does always happen. Especially if buildings were set ablaze and toppled by huge monster beasts. Now that to me would be dynamic super hero, saving the city playing at it's best. Laterz.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, time to break character a bit:

I'm a game developer, and most recently I designed the two morst recent Godzilla games: "Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee" and "Godzilla: Save the Earth."

As part of my job I worked with Toho - the company who owns the IP for all of those monsters. If Cryptic has any serious interest in actually working with a Toho property, I'd be glad to give them some expert advice.

Japanese copyright law is very different from American law. In America, if a party purchases the rights to an IP, they have those rights. Under Japanese law, if a party purchases the rights to an IP, they only have so long as the owner doesn't change their mind. There is no strong obligation as in American copyright law.

It Cryptic has any interest in this area - it seems not at all impossible to me that they could get a Toho monster in their game.

--Mr. Strange

I don't at all mind that EA only gives defense for the first 5 mobs, but the loss of taunt and endurance drain seem odd.

I'd love to see EA protect vs Psi, but there's one thing I'd like more:

Change Permafrost (or add a new power to the set) which caps our maximum damage taken per hit at 50% of our max HPs.

No more one-shot kills.

--Mr. Strange

Here's something straightforward -

Give SG a nice block of text (perhaps the same size as a character's origin) and allow people to view your Supergroup info. It's hard to find a SG when you can't know anything about it other than the name.

I'd love to read about different SGs, and find one that works for me. Getting invites to random supergroups feels sleazy, but joining for a moment is the only way for me to get a feel for what the SG is like.

At the very least, when you get an invite to a SG, it could tell you the name of the SG, rather than just the name of the character inviting you.

Heck, I'd love to search for Supergroups the same way I search for characters.


--Mr. Strange

I'll echo what others have said:

My defenders use the shift+ keys all the time.

I never use the Ctrl keys. And when I hit it by accident, it's a major pain.

Cryptic is on the ball once again.

--Mr. Strange

1 - E-mail the whole SG at once.

2 - A "message board" where ranked members can post things to be read. The message of the day does a bit of this, but it would be great to have a real SG message board.

3 - The ability to info folks in your SG when they are offline/in another zone. I'd love to read all of the origin stories for my SG mates.

4 - A tweak to the color/style of the selection box when you've targeted someone in your SG. Maybe display their name in another color?

5 - Some ability to mark spots on the map which can be seen/targeted by folks in your SG. Folks on your team can always target you to find you in the map, but if there were multiple teams in the same SG, they'd have a hard time meeting up.

--Mr. Strange

The thing I want most of all in CoH is new powers. Issue 4 might be too soon, but by issue 5 I'd like to see a new primary and new secondary for every AT.

The SSOCS is also very appealing.

Nothing earth-shaking here, just getting my opinion out.

--Mr. Strange