SpittingTrashcan

Netflix and Amazon are the models I had in mind. The system already stores which arcs you have played and rated, and IIRC even what rating you gave them, so that end of things would not be the implementation issue.

The real hog would be the recommendation data itself - in fact, generating recommendations efficiently is such a difficult problem that Netflix recently held an open programming contest to get a better solution.

Nevertheless, I really believe that development effort in this direction would make the AE a lot more useful and enjoyable for players. It would also help direct players toward niche authors who wouldn't otherwise get exposure.

In order for it to work, though, I also really believe that it can't be linked in any way to any sort of author reward system. Otherwise it will be manipulated, and made less useful as a result.

Parts of this might be useful to you:

Guide To Life Outside the AE Building

I particularly recommend going to Ouroboros and playing the canon arcs you haven't already.

Addendum: It's worth emphasizing that unlike in certain other MMOs, there is much more content throughout the level range than there is at the end game. You might want to try creating a new alt and leveling up through story arcs. Your new alt will be introduced to a story arc contact right off the bat; if you ever run out of contacts, run papers until you get a safeguard/mayhem, complete that, and then return to your safeguard/mayhem contact to be introduced to a new story contact.

Also, heroside, there are several completely optional zones with their own content: Faultline (15-25), Striga Isle (20-30), Croatoa (25-35), the Rikti War Zone (35-50), Cimerora (35-50), and the Shadow Shard (40-50). Check them out if you haven't yet.

It makes perfect sense. I was addressing Kruunch's assertion that activities, methods, and strategies are only ever popular because they are entertaining. This is just not true. Some activities are popular because they are wildly more rewarding than more entertaining options. I assert that herding was one such activity, and AE farming is another.

I'll try to make this as clear and simple as possible.

The AE rating system should be designed with the sole goal of matching players to arcs they are likely to enjoy.

It should not be used to determine which arcs have merit on an absolute universal scale, nor to determine which authors deserve rewards and recognition, as these conflict with and detract from its proper purpose: to match players to arcs they are likely to enjoy.

I am not recommending any particular implementation, although I believe there are several that would do a much better job than the current one. I am only asserting that the sole, singular, entire design goal of the AE rating system should be: to match players to arcs they are likely to enjoy.

I think it's fine as is. Enemies are balanced to the level of the characters that fight them, and that includes their available powers.

I never put an attack on auto, but then I like pressing buttons.

History has shown that when people are given a choice between something entertaining and something rewarding, they tend to either choose the rewarding option and complain about how boring it is, or choose the entertaining option and then grouse about their lack of rewards. A well designed game doesn't offer a stark choice between boredom and envy, and that's why herd-farming had to die and a similar fate is in store for AE farming.

And if the aggro limit is lifted and a tank on a team of mine attempts to herd for their own amusement, that tank's getting kicked for being a selfish bum.

I like TT: Assault. Constant +15% damage for half the cost of Leadership Assault makes it worth picking up even if you only solo, and if you team up your teammates will love you for it.

I could get behind removing the aggro cap only for solo tankers inside instances. I don't give a hoot what people do on their own time.

I'm going to make a statement which I'm not at all sure is true, but which seems to point in the direction of truth.

A Defender can be built which will exceed any Controller in any two of mitigation, force multiplication, or damage, but that Defender will always be significantly worse than the nearest competing Controller in the remaining aspect.

Counterexamples?

True, but:
A. Night Widow Blind lasts 60 seconds, not 5-10.
B. If you could see the enemies through Blind, you'd be able to hurt them. An attack on a Dim Shifted enemy is always a wasted attack.
C. A visual indicator points to where the enemies will be appearing, in one big pile. Drop patches, ready PBAoEs and cones.

It'd take some getting used to, but not more than anchor debuffs.

If it reduces incoming DPS, it's mitigation. If it increases outgoing DPS, it's force multiplication. And if it generates outgoing DPS, it's damage. Mechanism is largely irrelevant at this level of analysis.

Now consider the relative number and strength of damage, mitigation and force multiplication tools available to Controllers versus Defenders. Controller primaries range from good mitigation and good damage to excellent mitigation and poor damage. Defender secondaries range from good mitigation and poor damage to good force multiplication and poor damage to just poor damage.

It's also that while DPS and force multiplication are never wasted, mitigation past the survival line is - and in most of the game's content, the survival line is not very high.

I'm not trying to guide anyone to a conclusion - at this point, I haven't worked through enough to offer an opinion - but I think this perspective is the direction to tackle the issue from.

Leo_G, that's a cool idea. I like it and I think it'd be extremely handy and unique.

BUT. I don't know if it'd fly under the "expanded cottage", though. Looking at powers that have been changed, what seems to be part of the rule is that a power has the same interface as it used to, and the same effects as it used to (although varying in degree), and may also have an additional effect. Frozen Aura, a PBAoE sleep power, remained a PBAoE and a sleep, and a damage effect was added. Clobber, a ST melee stun and minor damage power, remained a ST melee attack and a stun (for shorter duration) and its damage was greatly increased. Conserve Power, a self-affecting click buff with a -endurance cost effect, remains a self-affecting click buff and kept its -endurance cost, and gains a self-heal and regeneration effect. Based on these examples, it's reasonable to conclude that any change to Dim Shift will likely keep it as a targeted AoE that phases its targets for some duration.

The reason I mentioned intangibility enhancements earlier is that if Dim Shift's intangibility were enhanceable, it might be reasonable to as much as halve Dim Shift's intangibility duration and say that those who use Dim Shift situationally for the phase could still enhance it back to its former performance. My general stance is that viable changes to Dim Shift would:
- Preserve its current function to a degree usable by those who currently use Dim Shift
- Reduce Dim Shift's drawbacks and add advantages for those who currently do not use Dim Shift
- Make the phase effect less obnoxious to teammates

That's just my opinion, but I feel it's well backed.

Yes, I'm proposing it as a new inherent.

3 "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

Defenders don't really need more team support; their problem is that they're so awesome on teams they can't catch a break any other time. I'm going to suggest the same thing I suggested for Tankers, which have roughly the same problem: Inherent +50% damage, -7% per teammate within 80 feet. At full damage enhancement, that's about the same as a +25% increase to AT mod, or 0.8125 for ranged. Unlike an AT mod increase, it can't be exploited by Kineticists (who just hit the damage cap sooner). There's an issue with -res, but fiddling with the numbers might be able to fix that. And yes, it'd mean that Defenders lose personal DPS by bringing on teammates, but then if you're selfish enough to care about that what are you playing a Defender for?

Cue the deafening silence.

Incidentally, could we just bloody well set aside fidelity to comic book models of heavies as a design goal? If we were being informed by comic book big guys, sure, Tankers would have high mitigation and high melee offense. They would also have no mez protection or knockback protection.

Alternatively, if I had the game to build again, Tankers would resemble Brutes and Scrappers would resemble Stalkers or Bane Spiders - moderate mitigation, high burst damage, reliance on ambush tactics.

But this is the game we have now. And in this game, Tankers were cursed with awesome - they have survivability that only ever matters against team-sized challenges, which benefits them little solo, and to compensate for this their damage was made moderate. To call it "low" would be an outright lie - for that, you'd have to look to Defenders, who are even more cursed with awesome due to their superior support capability. And unlike Tankers, many Defenders can't even leverage their superior primary to solo effectively.

Odd, isn't it, that the Holy Trinity ATs - Blaster, Defender, and Tanker - are the ones who have come off worst in the end? Precisely because they're the best at what they do, they can't be made better at the other thing they do. In this respect, Tankers probably got off easiest, at least until Defiance 2.0 - slow as they might be, they keep plugging along and never become difficult to play. I'm not sure if Defiance 2.0 changed that for Blasters, but if it did, it may be worth looking at to see exactly how D2.0 filled in Blaster solo deficiency, and how those lessons can be applied to Tankers and Defenders.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, so I'll just cut short and summarize:
1. CoH Tanks are not comics tanks, nor are they what they might be if we could start over knowing what we know now.
2. The Holy Trinity was cursed with awesome. Tanks got off light.
3. If Defiance 2.0 worked, then maybe Gauntlet and Vigilance 2.0 need to follow its lead.

Sometimes I get quite close to saying Tanks could use a buff - as, indeed, I did in at least 3 recent posts that were largely ignored - and then I read something such as the above.

I need a word for someone who makes a position less attractive by earnestly advocating for it.

To expand on the hyperadaptation issue: almost all hero ATs started out hyperadapted to their roles, by design. Blasters were DAMAGE and nothing else; Tankers were SURVIVAL and nothing else, and Defenders were SUPPORT and nothing else - thus forming the "MMO Holy Trinity". Scrappers combined Damage and Survival and became popular soloists; Controllers combined various degrees of Damage, Survival, and Support and thus quietly slid into the role of universal AT.

By contrast, villain ATs tended to combine roles in roughly equal measure; the main exception, Dominators, who had survival through control but lacked offense, were recently buffed to bring their damage to par. There is no villain AT lacking in damage, and all have either commensurate survivability or commensurate support - Masterminds have both, making them the villain universal AT provided one can manage their fairly complex playstyle.

Meanwhile, on the hero side, Blasters were given tools that allowed them to leverage their superior damage as a form of survivability. The last two squeaky wheels on the hero side are Tankers, whose superior survivability rarely comes into play solo but who can nonetheless trundle along as somewhat slower Scrappers, and Defenders, whose superior support capabilities are all but useless without teammates to leverage it.

What this means is that in order to want to play a Defender, you have to fall into at least one of four categories:
1. Naive. You don't know or don't care about any of this, and just want to play a Defender because they have the powers/concept you're interested in.
2. Altruistic. You enjoy helping others and don't really care about your own capabilities.
3. Enlightened Altruistic. You create or join teams using your strong buffs as a foundation and benefit from your teammates' increased power.
4. Repeat Offender. You and your friends consciously plan to use Defender cross-buffing to turn yourselves into tiny gods.

Apparently the number of people for which any of the above are true is simply less than the number of people who prefer to have good solo performance. I'm not sure if Defenders need to be changed for these reasons - they're doing quite well as is for the sort of people who play them - but it does go a way toward explaining why more people don't play them.

Unfortunately, I don't see a way to change Defenders to fix any of this. Making their team support stronger would only pigeonhole them more; increasing their damage would obviate Corruptors; and increasing their damage while decreasing their support would turn them into Corruptors.