Oedipus_Tex

I took the numbers a step further and ran 30 randomized trials. I was interested in learning the disparity between the people with the best luck the people with the worst. Again this is based on the proposed 30/40/20/10 break down. This could be done mathematically instead of with iterations but again I want to show how even if the random function isn't "broken" it could produce such numbers.

The first column shows the number of runs required before every league member had 1 Very Rare. This person is the "unluckiest" member.

The second column shows how many Very Rares the league member with the most Very Rares had when the unluckiest got their first Very Rare. This is the "luckiest" member.

The third column shows the number of players in the league who had 4 or more Very Rares by the time the unluckiest member got his or her first. These players can to an extent be considered "done" with the system (assuming they don't want multiple very rare abilities). [Note the label shows >4, but the real value is => 4.] This is a bit of an abstraction however because in some cases they may still need Rares.

The final column shows the percentage of players in the league who had 4 or more Very Rares.

Number in bold at the end show the averages. On average, it took 35 runs for the unluckiest member to receive his or her first Very Rare. The longest took 75 runs and the shortest took 18. On average, by the time the unluckiest member got the V Rare, the luckiest member had about 7 Very Rares. On average, 10 members of the league had 4 Very Rares when the unluckiest member got 1. This represents about 45% of players.

[EDIT: Corrected screenshots and some statements about them that resulted from writing about wrong screenshots that were originally uploaded.]

I did mock ups of a few more runs. The purpose is simply to demonstrate what random chance means to actual players if the 30/40/20/10 break down is correct. I apologize for screenshot size, but I don't want to overcrowd the forum page with images.

For these three leagues, I assumed 100 runs. The pattern is fairly clear; there is staggering amount of disparity between the least awarded and most awarded players even if the random code operates 'correctly.' The system does not have to be bugged to produce very lopsided rewards; in fact, given the numbers, heavily lopsided results are expected.

Most players probably wouldn't have a use for the 17 Very Rares one player got, but since rewards can be traded down, you are always much better off with the V Rare reward over anything else. You cannot trade rewards upward, so unlucky Player 20 in League A is running the trials collecting garbage and moving no closer to his or her goal. Out of the 96 players represented, s/he alone has to resort to using Empyraens at the end of 100 runs. (I hope that player is never me.)

One thing that really stands out to me about the results is that if you roll a Rare or even an Uncommon it moves you no closer to finishing your journey if what you need is a Very Rare. If you roll a bunch of Very Rares early, you end up in a position where you are 100% guaranteed to get what you need going forward because you can always trade down. Basically, rolling a Very Rare cancels uncertainty, where a player with poor luck is completely at the mercy of the system or spending Empyraens.

For each league, it took 33, 38, 30, and 54 runs before every member got their first Very Rare. In every league, at least one member got a Very Rare on the first run.

League A:



League B:



League C:



League D:



[Edit: Forgot League D.]

I took some time to write a random number generator in Flash that uses the estimated values from Leandro's first post. I used the values 30/40/20/10 as the estimated chance of each piece dropping. I then ran a league of 24 through a bunch of iterations to see what sort of breakdown might occur. Here is one example run (ignore the white text on the right for the most part, as I didn't finish coding it and only the first 2 reported items work):




In this situation, Players 6 and 19 have 12 Very Rares before player 9 has 1. In fact the entire league has gotten their 4 Very Rares before Player 9 got one Very Rare. These results aren't typical but they are definitely possible. I got these results by accident while testing the reporting function to see if it would correctly report the last player to get his or her V Rare, and ended up having to click 67 times. Other runs it would come up at 20 or 30 or 40 or 50; really all over the place.

The strategy? Hope you are not Player 9.

Nice work.

Math work follows that probably has some errors: if the numbers are really 10% for a Very Rare, it means that in 10 runs you would only have around a (9.^10) 35% chance to not get a V Rare. If those odds are real, then in terms of a single Very Rare, it is actually better strategy to run the BAF over and over than chase Empyreans. If you took an average amount of time to run each of the 3 trials every day based on these times, a Very Rare in Empyraen would be worth about 84 minutes of mission time across 10 days, or the equivalent of 14 hours of playing trials (not including set up time). If you ran the BAF 40 times you'd have a less than 1% chance of not having your V Rare within 11 hours, and some chance of getting more than one. Of course, you can do both.

However, this also means that after 40 runs around 1% of players will not have found a V Rare. Multiply that by the number of people playing and you've got your conspiracy theories right there, and some (IMO somewhat justifiably) annoyed players.

I'm still curious whether team performance changes the odds and in what way.

I don't know the answer to the specific question about Energy Melee.

The answer to the question in the title of the post though, is "all of these, and a bit more."

I don't happen off hand to know the DPAnimation (which I will refer to as DPAnim from here on for clarity) of Energy Melee attacks. However, the animation time itself is pretty easy to look up, and the attacks are long.* Without knowing anything about how much damage they do, we can say that using them is an investment of those number of seconds.

Basically, pure DPAnim isn't a totally accurate view of the data. It assumes that three powers that chain and do 100 damage are equivalent to one power that takes the same time to do the same damage. However, this assessment assumes the enemy never moves, doesn't die from overkill, the player doesn't need to break the chain to do something else, and that all attacks actually hit the target. While it is true they do the same damage on average, average situations can be surprisingly rare.

For example, a Blaster with a very high damage attack that takes 3 seconds to animate is at both a disadvantage and advantage next to one with 2 attacks that have the same DPAnim and combined total animation time. The disadvantage is it could mean the Blaster has to spend 3 seconds at melee, unable to respond or change actions, and at a minimum has a 5% chance to completely miss and do no damage at all. The advantage is the Blaster can joust with a very powerful attack and thus spend less actual time in melee, while also being subject to only one ToHit roll instead of two. In other words, the slower attack has a greater chance to miss while the faster combined one has a lower chance that both miss, and a higher chance that at least one misses.

Anyway, the reason animation time is so hard to evaluate is that the resulting DPA calculations are a lie. A power that takes 3.5 seconds to animate takes that long to animate no matter what its DPAnim is; it doesn't matter if the DPA is the same or more or less than other powers if the animation time itself doesn't warrant using the power.


[*NOTE: Some people suggest always using Arcanatime in calculations. I think that can be useful, but that in general that level of detail is not always needed when you're making a decision like "is this power ever useful?"]

The balancing problem is threefold. One part of it is the strictly mechanical evaluation of power. But the other two parts are what I think of as the mechanical/thematic mashup, and the respecability question.

Let's say we create a system where going down a "blast" route locks you out from going after armor. We might have Ice, Fire and Lightning blasts of some kind. But what if the -Recharge in one Ice Blast is really good, and the extra damage in one Fire power is especially a standout, and the -Endurance in one electric power is attractive? Then one of two things has to happen: we have to accept that players are going to min/max to the detriment of coherent theme, or we have to lock them out of thematic choices with too much conflict (including ensuring they can't "point buy" their way halfway up one tree and one third of the way into another to grab all the best powers). The former option is often troubling to players: they quickly find they want rails to keep the best choices from being cosmetic mismatches.

[Addendum: Note that medieval fantasy games have a leg up on superhero games here, as it is somewhat feasible for an Archmage to throw both lightning bolts and fireballs. People would be annoyed if a hero game's version of Iceman did the same. The thematic consideration is therefore somewhat related to the genre of the game; I would have more confidence in a system implemented for a high fantasy game than a hero one. But not much.]

One possible solution is to have an 'elemental blast: ranged', 'element blast: cone-based', 'elemental blast: pbaoe' etc powersets that players pick from, and then after picking that, they then pick an element, and the element determines the damage type and extra effects. However, while that does provide some flexibility, it's actually still "powersets." We've just moved the elemental type back a cog. And while this might work ok for something relativily repetative, like Blast sets, it likely wouldn't for buff/debuffs or controls. There isn't any system I can think of that could normalize powers as varied as Ice Slick, Flashfire, Mass Confusion, Telekinesis, and Phantom Army.

The other issue I mentioned is respeccability. Basically, the way I think of it, if I can't respec out of it, that's a "class" and not a "tree." While class/archetype selection involves branching, the locked investment prevents strategizing it as a temporary solution. You can't level up as a Super Strength/Fire Brute and switch over to an Ice/Force Field Controller. If you want that Ice troller, you have to strategize within the confines of the class.

One recent game provides 4 classes with 8 possible trees each. This sounds flexible, except it means its only worth playing through the game 4 times unless you just want to play different factions. A power selection system that let you respec without limitation encourages a similar outcome. Why bother playing a Fire Blaster from 1 to 50 when my Ice Blaster is a Fire Blaster who just isn't specced for it right now? Why bother leveling up as anything other than the fastest soloer ever? And if the game allows you to retain multiple builds you can switch between easily, the problem becomes more pronounced.

Basically, you end up back at powersets/classes again, and the need for meaningful boundaries.

I like it overall. I might consider stealing a slot from Tough, changing it to a End/Resist IO, and move that over to add another Recharge to Indom Will. That will only lower Indom by 5 seconds or so, but once you get a taste of mezz protection on an Ice Controller with high defense, you'll likely find yourself vaulting on top of enemies much more often. Having your mezz protection drop halfway through the fight can turn the battle against you really quickly.

I have admit I'm a little nervous about the lack of Combat Jumping. Getting Immobilized is a leading cause of death for me on Ice trollers. Indom Will includes everything except Immobilize protection.

Yeah the "remarkable precision" bit in Ice Control is a little weird, like its suggesting you are especially likely to hit. The truth about two of the big sells in Ice, Arctic Air and Ice Slick, is that they are actually autohit, but with a totally random chance to confuse/fear/knockdown thats completely outside your control. I guess "remarkable precision" was just flavor text.

It does seem like Fire and Ice should have some sort of indication (warning?) that several of the powers need to be used up close. Electric sort of is too, but it only has that one PBAoE; something about the chain effects could probably be mentioned there.

I definitely think Ice Control should mention Recharge rate directly to distinguish "slows" from "slowed powers."

Taunt?

No biters yet, so I'll approach it with the two that are wrong/misleading This isn't a heavy flavor rewrite, just correcting/clarifying the text:


Mind Control
You can manipulate and control your opponent's mind. Since Mental powers directly affect the mind, most tend to be very accurate, and thus very useful against higher level foes. Few foes can resist Psionic powers, but creatures without minds, like machines and robots, are resistant to many of the effects.

Rewrite: You can manipulate and control your opponents' minds. Since Mental powers directly affect the mind, many of your powers bypass enemies' abilities to dodge with Ranged and AoE defenses. Few foes can resist Psionic damage, but creatures without minds, like machines and robots, are difficult to directly damage with most powers.


[A little more flavor here altough note this assumes Propel was worth advertising.]

Gravity Control
This power set allows you to manipulate the forces of gravity to control your foes. Enemies have little defense against Gravity powers.

Rewrite: This power set allows you to manipulate the forces of gravity to control your foes. Many powers in Gravity Control allow you to directly or indirectly control the location of your foes, through teleportation, slows, and knockback... and when that doesn't do, throwing an anvil at the problem.

[I have no idea what the original second part was talking about.]

I can't speak for everyone, but there is an 'ick' factor in directing my character to fight and presumably kill the police. For some reason in the "other game" that was mentioned, I found it a lot more disturbing than CoH and rerolled pretty quickly. Maybe the game had more "death" and "injury" sound effects--I can't remember. Anyway, it's one thing to talk about villains planning evil things and maybe sometimes getting away with it, but seeing it all the time (and especially directing the character to do it) was just really depressing.

However, the other reason I avoid red side is the color scheme and the fact that whatever the numbers show, getting on a low level team is way too much work.

Defender Psi Blast is also longer base range than Blaster. If you then add Cardiac Alpha, you can hit from 120ft away without any additional slotting, 72 ft on the cone. You also get an immobilize built right into the blast set, which is pretty nice for a few primaries.

Psi-nado is a slowish cast, but extremely effective control for an AoE blast power.

IMO this is one of more exciting prolifs this round.

Sonic Resonance is sub-par. It just has to be said. I would never stop a person from playing it for thematic reasons but the set is underwhelming on the 4 ATs that can access it, when they could pick Thermal instead. That PITA debuff ring power with the same -Resistance as every set doesn't help things, nor do the out of the control endurance costs or lack of -Regen or mile-wide vulnerability to Psi damage.

Someone pointed out in another thread that the text descriptions of powersets are not particularly helpful and in some cases are completely wrong or outdated. I had the idea of asking how members of the community would write if they were given the opportunity. I doubt any of this will be used in the game, but it might be a fun activity.

There are a ton of powersets out there, so I figured I'd start by asking about the Control sets first. Here are the current descriptions; how would you rewrite them?

[I'd prefer serious rewrites to writing that Gravity Control excels at "long animations times and poor controls," but I'm not a forum policeman either. ]


Earth Control
You can control the forces of the Earth. You can manipulate earth and stone to defeat your foes. The crushing force of many Earth Powers can reduce a target's Defense. Being of the Earth, many of these powers need to be performed while on the ground.


Electric Control
Electricity leaps and sparks at your command. You can use raw electrical power to paralyze, knockdown and drain the endurance of foes.


Fire Control
You can control the essence of fire to entrap, scorch, and manipulate your foes with smoke and flame.


Gravity Control
This power set allows you to manipulate the forces of gravity to control your foes. Enemies have little defense against Gravity powers.


Ice Control
You can draw moisture from the air to create Icy formations. With these abilities, you can control ice with remarkable precision to dominate your foes.


Illusion Control
You can manipulate light and sound to manifest all sorts of Illusions, aiding your allies as well as deceiving your foes.


Mind Control
You can manipulate and control your opponent's mind. Since Mental powers directly affect the mind, most tend to be very accurate, and thus very useful against higher level foes. Few foes can resist Psionic powers, but creatures without minds, like machines and robots, are resistant to many of the effects.


Plant Control
You can call forth and control the power of plants and flora to control your foes. Animate and control vines, roots and spores to entrap, entwine and utterly dominate your foes. Many Plant Control powers are only effective if the target is near the ground.

I don't think anything like what's in the OPs post is likely to happen.

However this is a game where a missile launcher can do less damage than a bow and arrow, a burst of oxygen can heal a person crushed by a chunk of concrete, and you can hit a street thug with a battle axe without worrying about jail time. Cool factor > accuracy.

Superflous no, room for buffing, possibly.

I agree with the people who said the place to start is the crashing nukes. The penalty exceeds the utility. This would also hopefully make nukes a bit more attractive for Defenders.

For Flash to become targeted though, it would have to lose 10ft of radius. (Well it doesn't have to, but I have doubts about making Flash better than any other AoE hold.)

EDIT: Paralyzing Blast in Electric Control for some reasons lists 30ft radius + ranged on Controllers and 20ft radius + ranged on Dominators. I have reported that discrepancy as far back as GR beta. I don't know whether the powers really have different radii or the info text is just wrong. The expected value would be 20ft +ranged to match identical powers.