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I'd much prefer it if Hamidon Origin Enhancements just didn't exist...
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Makes two of us.
PvP aside, the game's not balanced for Hami-O's -- and, since they're supposed to be rare, it can't be. Except that they're not rare for some people anymore.
It doesn't look like the designers envisioned people having more than a couple HOs at any one time. Unfortunately, that's not how it turned out.
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so because a few people are unbalanced, by your standards, you want to do away with the only end game content's reward?
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Uh. Look at the post directly above yours in flat view. That's not just a little unbalanced. Regardless, there's a better way to fix Hami-Os than to simply do away with them. There's basically two things that make HOs great: multiple effects and stronger effects. Therefore, the easiest way to make them fairer in the arena, while still maintaining their flavor, would be to modify, slightly, the way they work.
First, cap their total effect at 40%, or slightly better than a SO. If something is a 50% Acc/50% Dam, it becomes a 20% Acc/20% Dam SO. At first blush, that might look unfair, because it means the character is running a DO and half a training on each effect, but when taken as a whole (220% base damage plus enough accuracy to ignore 60% defense). If the power can't normally be affected by one of the HO's effects (for example, slotting a Dam/Acc in burn), then that effect is removed, and its points are redistributed to the other effects. In the case of Burn, the HO would act as a 40% damage enhancer, since Accuracy can't be slotted in burn.
This would allow HOs to give a very slight edge in the arena, but enough to still be overcome by skill and a small amount of luck.
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that sounds difficult to code, being that they would have to modify each power to keep track of how much the hamidon effects it or not.
I'm just curious to see what the devs are gonna do. Getting really burnt out on the speculation and suggestions.
I don't know how difficult it would be. I will say that they seem to already have something in place to ignore enhancement effects that don't work on powers, so it seems they've already got in place a system to let them know what enhancements should and should not work on a power. The easy way to test that would be to slot up someone's burn with Acc/Dam and see if there's any effect on how long it takes them to kill things.
its not the dropping the uneffected parts of the enhancement that sounds hard, its the rigging each power to determine what percentage of the dropped power applies to the effective power.
Without seeing Cryptic's code, I can't say how hard or easy it would be. But knowing what they already have to store in memory (what effects will enhance a power and what enhancements are currently on a power), the pseudocode is very simple. The quick sketched out pseudocode I came up with was about 12 lines long. Of course, that's pseudocode, and based on how spaghetti their code is, who knows how intricate it will need to be. But saying, "That's hard! It'll take too long!" is, generally, not the way to go when you're talking about long term game survivability and balance.
i'm not saying it will take to long, it just sounds like something that would be funky to impliment to me. I have no idea if they wrote the enhc code in a manner that is easy to manipulate like that or not. it just sounds lke a modification to basically every power - for each Multi-O type. unless they have clever coders (more clever than me, which is easy to be)
If they coded their system even halfway sanely, it shouldn't require modifying every power, just a tweak to their enhancement/buff application system. Either they change the temporary stats to a power every time a buff/debuff is applied/ends (including adding enhancements) or every time it's fired. The latter would mean slightly more processor time, but would make for safer values. The former is the inverse. Coding it so that each power calculates with its own little function would be awful. If they did it that way, then... wow. That would be some really bad code. At any rate, it has to be checking now to see whether, say, an accuracy buff on the player should count towards the fire imps they summon, and they have to have a way to differentiate between buffs given by effects and buffs given by enhancements (since targetting drone doesn't make trip mine more accuracte, for example). And then...
Sorry, going system geek there. Anyways, the point is, it's very unlikely that it would mean a lot of code. I could see it meaning more mental gymnastics for the players, but if you're taking on Hami, you're probably good enough to figure out what the system means for you, and if you can't take him on yet, and you can't figure out the math, you're probably going to get crunched by Hami-O players anyways, regardless of whether there's a balancing system in place. The above system is really for those mid-ground players, like me, that want to acknowledge the hard work that Hami players have put out, while still having something resembling a chance against them in the arena.
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so because a few people are unbalanced, by your standards, you want to do away with the only end game content's reward?
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It's not just a matter of "balance". More important is the fact that Hamidon breaks all the established paradigms for handing out stuff in the game. Up until Hamidon, there was no part of the content you had to do to have your character "up to speed", no need to do anything in particular to develop an effective character. There was no "elite loot".
Hamidon Enhancements are "elite loot". They create a class of "haves" and a class of "have-nots". Avoiding that always has been one of the biggest strengths of CoH.
The fact that Hamidon has never really been a balanced encounter vis-a-vis all power sets in any of its incarnations only exacerbates the basic problem. (Are they still having Regen Scrappers tank the thing because Tankers are useless?)
But smashed paradigm aside. If the "end game content reward" is going to unbalance the game to a large degree, then yes, it should be done away with. Or at least limited to some extent. Unbalancing the game is not good no matter what's doing the unbalancing.
And this is not just PvP -- PvE is going to be either "too easy" for a 50 with 30 Hami-Os or "too hard" for your basic level 50 without any. PvP just makes it more glaring because those two characters will be directly compared, whereas in PvE, they wouldn't coexist and you could cover up the issue with such things as a difficulty slider.
Again, the problem is camping/farming. Hami-Os would not be a problem if level 50 heroes had one or two, as I suspect the original intent was. The problem is that Hamidon has stopped being "end-game content" and has merely become a source of loot to be plundered over and over.
It's quite probable that the number of Hami-Os out there has already vastly exceeded any capacity of the game to accomodate them while still remaining viable for non-Hami-O characters in PvE already.
Hamidon Enhancers were bad before PvP entered the picture, the combination of Hamidon farming and looming PvP simply make the problem obvious.
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You guys with this "skilled" arguement are killing me here, have you played PvP in other MMOs?
Yes skill DOES have a good deal to do with it BUT so do the "behind the scenes" numbers. Also people making the "skilled" arguement seem to forget that some skilled PvPers are going to ALSO be the ones who have fully-slotted HOs. Hell the skileld PvPers are going to be MORE LIKELY to put in the time it takes to get all those HOs because they are competitive.
Not to mention, in an MMO where numbers play a big part in fighting mechanics, if one guy has especially more powerful "equipment" than the other he has to suck pretty bad to lose to someone with much crapper "equipment."
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EXACTLY! You are correct. Those who spent the time to figure out how to beat Hamidon legitimately, or who have the prowess to lead or organize a raid are often the most skilled players in the game. Combine that with the equipment advantage, and you've got a very tough opponent, even if you DO have Hamihancers.
If the changes on test go live, it just got alot harder for the casual player to earn hamidons, but alot easier for them to get them for just being there.
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If the changes on test go live, it just got alot harder for the casual player to earn hamidons, but alot easier for them to get them for just being there.
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NOTE: this is based on one guy being teamed, but "at the gate" doing nothing.
A lot of people ran around squawking on the boards "omg people can just be in the hive and get a hami enhancer."
If I were one of the devs, I would be coding it so that the empaths and/or whatever support staff on a team who never made an attack or never hit with an attack get their reward for participating. So it looks to me like that guy got his drop for being on a team.
They could do a range check to be tougher about it, so that you have to be at least on a team and within visual sight of hami when he goes down. Anyway, even that is a major change for the better compared to the situation of some guys getting 8 drops on one Hamidon death.
The flip side of course is that it widens the gap between the haves and the have nots. Guys who raked in 50 of these on 10 raids now have to be matched by someone in PvP who is going to have to run 50 raids.
Just more insanity brought to PvP by Hamidon.
well they went live. It'll now take 3 times as long for you casual players to catch up to us intense players, if you where so inclined. (or maybe "serious players," use whatever antonym of casual you want)
This won't matter to erik and all the arrogant casual players that are "above" that, but if they wanted to leech at minimum effort, they now can with no repercussions.
Hooray!
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well they went live. It'll now take 3 times as long for you casual players to catch up to us intense players, if you where so inclined. (or maybe "serious players," use whatever antonym of casual you want)
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You call me arrogant and you ramble off this better than thou stuff like this? Please.
how is it better? i was literally using an antonym of casual. an antonym for casual is intense. and antonym for casual is serious. its not better, its opposite.
I'm sorry if you feel inferior, but thats the way the english language works! maybe you can ask the Devs to fix your thesaurus.
Okay "Intsense player" we pathetic casual gamers will go piddle around with our skulls and hellions now and let you do the big important stuff /sarcasm
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PvP aside, the game's not balanced for Hami-O's -- and, since they're supposed to be rare, it can't be. Except that they're not rare for some people anymore.
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Besides your opinion what are you basing this off of?
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I'm a casual player. My main was started pre-I1 and I just hit 50. 2 hours for a hami raid isnt a big deal.
hey "casual gamer" if you want to use a different term for yourself go ahead. you seem to take pride in being "casual" and if casual is the opposite of intense, and the opposite of serious, don't get down on me just because you've labelled yourself as such.
Okay then, how about instead of casual gamer we call it Normal gamer?
This is a good first step... and I have no doubt this is only the first step. This seems to solve the issues people had with HO stealing. Nothing wrong with that.
As for the issue of people leeching by standing at the zone entrance not helping in a team... kick them, put a range limitation in, whatever... this is a minor issue at best.
With all the discussion HOs have generated, you can be sure the devs are listening and I'm sure they are not yet done with their mods in regards to HOs.
I fully expect we will at some future patch we will be able to tell who has HOs and who does not so we can choose arena opponents based on if they have them or not.
I have not done and HO raid, I may do it once just to say I did it, but IMO HOs have broken this game by introducing "loot" since loot is not a concern at any other point. No biggie when it was only a PvE game, but with PvP, even with this fix, people will farm Hami over and over until they do get HOs in everything. Count on it - its the nature of most wanting to be competitive in PvP.
Since I fully expect to be able to choose my opponents in the arena based on them having HOs or not, HOs concern me little at this point. However, how will this be handled when CoV comes out? Will HO'd Heros be able to fight non HO'd (equivalent) villians?
I personally think HOs should just be scrapped... with PvP, Hami no longer needs to be the end game, and HOs are no longer required as the carrot to get you to do it. PvP is the end game for many of us. For those that do not see PvP as the end game, good immersive content is what they need - not unbalancing HO carrots.
I started playing CoH only after I knew plans for PvP were on the table - pvp is my end game - and I don't want to have to farm "uber lewtz" to do it. Grinding to 50 is enough tyvm; no need to screw up an otherwise unique MMORPG model by introducing loot so late in the game.
I leared from DAOC that needing to farm uber loot to be successful in PvP is a very very bad thing for anyone that has a life away from their computer.
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Okay then, how about instead of casual gamer we call it Normal gamer?
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Yeah, because that's certainly an objective, non-loaded term.
Back when I used to play EQ it was only the "uber" guilds which ran raids. The average player never got to see hide nor hair of a raid.
Even if this was EQ (and it isn't), it doesn't logically follow that there's automatically something wrong with people who choose participate in a raid.
You keep getting hung up on this asinine notion of "Hamidon killer==powergamer==embodiment of evil".
The way that the supposed "intense players" make fun of us for not being as good as they are. Insulting at best.
And if I act just as arrogant as they do, oh well. I'm sick of being on the recieving end of thier "OMG U suck! Why u take that power?" insults.
You are more arrogant, not as arrogant. You also have a tendency to exaggerate other people's words well past the point of bald-faced lying. This, and not your playstyle or your opinions, is the reason you are the laughingstock of this forum.
That all seems pretty valid.
Though its not like I have any other recourse. Well I do but its along the lines of.
"Well golly, I wish I had a chance in the arena. But you did work awfully hard getting those enhancements. It would be really wrong of me to want to win and undermine all your hard work. I guess if I never win a bout against any of you its okay. I mean you are superior to us casual gamers in every way!"
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I'd much prefer it if Hamidon Origin Enhancements just didn't exist...
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Makes two of us.
PvP aside, the game's not balanced for Hami-O's -- and, since they're supposed to be rare, it can't be. Except that they're not rare for some people anymore.
It doesn't look like the designers envisioned people having more than a couple HOs at any one time. Unfortunately, that's not how it turned out.
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so because a few people are unbalanced, by your standards, you want to do away with the only end game content's reward?
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Uh. Look at the post directly above yours in flat view. That's not just a little unbalanced. Regardless, there's a better way to fix Hami-Os than to simply do away with them. There's basically two things that make HOs great: multiple effects and stronger effects. Therefore, the easiest way to make them fairer in the arena, while still maintaining their flavor, would be to modify, slightly, the way they work.
First, cap their total effect at 40%, or slightly better than a SO. If something is a 50% Acc/50% Dam, it becomes a 20% Acc/20% Dam SO. At first blush, that might look unfair, because it means the character is running a DO and half a training on each effect, but when taken as a whole (220% base damage plus enough accuracy to ignore 60% defense). If the power can't normally be affected by one of the HO's effects (for example, slotting a Dam/Acc in burn), then that effect is removed, and its points are redistributed to the other effects. In the case of Burn, the HO would act as a 40% damage enhancer, since Accuracy can't be slotted in burn.
This would allow HOs to give a very slight edge in the arena, but enough to still be overcome by skill and a small amount of luck.