[ QUOTE ]
Yes, you DID pick the easiest class.
[/ QUOTE ] No. Tankers are the easiest class. They start off a little slow...but they pick up speed. Fire/* is probably the easiest period.
[ QUOTE ]
Please. This is an internet argument board.
[/ QUOTE ] Lol....true but discussions resultent from people reacting out offer little enlightenment.
[ QUOTE ]
Once again Mieux: You are not all players. You are not even a remotely large percentage of all players.
[/ QUOTE ] I think you and Scott are hung up on a misconception. I want the Invinc setting to be a death march for a veteran. I want to heroic to be challenging to a first time player. Challenging =/= death march. You two are fixated on this and hell bent on combining the two concepts into one idea that the entire game has to be a death march. A father and his 8 year old daughter should be able to log on and do heroic missions with risk and success.
Games which offer no risk of failure are not games...they are by definition exercises. Scott says he likes the game because of the story arcs. This game would have failed the first day if all you did is go around and click on story arcs. This game would have failed the first month if the mobs couldn't kill you ..at all.
Risk v Reward
Risk v Reward
Risk v Reward
We have plenty of reward in the 30's...just very little risk. The devs understand it. Do you?
[ QUOTE ]
If you would, I dunno, not play a SCRAPPER, then maybe you would feel like you need a blaster a little bit more.
[/ QUOTE ] You think hunh? Well, i have two defenders at lvl 28...neither feel like they need blasters. I do need tanks. I love tanks. They don't die and the suck up aggro. My both my def's do their mission on Invinc...but I don't solo them...tho I have solo'd several missions on Invinc with my Kin/psi after the scrappers I've teamed with quit out of cowardice. I can't beat Named bosses that mez..to much chain mezzing. Tanker to the rescue...low lvl scrappers are far to squishy.
You're right about one thing tho. I am complaining that the challenge I enjoyed in the teens is conspicuosly absent once we get SO's.
[ QUOTE ]
But you love dying and a challenge, Mieux.
[/ QUOTE ] Hypbole to be sure. I love challenge. The greater the challenge the greater the sense of accomplishment. But there is a difference between a game that provides you a challenge and a game that is simply abusive.
I loved my first Respec so much because it it was so damn. I didn't think the game knew how to truly challenge the players will to succeed. And let me burst your bubble...everyone on that team saw it through to the end except one person...the blaster. He quit. Claimed all he did was die...nevermind the fact that he routinely tried to start battles with AoE before the tanker tried to grab aggro. I'm sure he blames the game.
Let me burst your bubbles about how people respond to challenges when they can't complain...
A while back, I did a CoT mission at around lvl 18 with Kin/Psi. It was one of those missions where when you die, you go to the prison cell. The long and short of this mission is that after 3 players quit an 8 man team for various reasons...and two after their first death...the remaining 4 of us hit the debt cap together finishing that mission. In fact, there was a SK tanker who saw myself, a blaster, and scrapper refuseing to quit...despite repeated death after death...and joined in of his own volition.
Here is what I think: When people have no one to complain to...they suck it up and rise to the occassion. This is the legacy of our survival as species...perserviing. Early man didn't have a dev they could go complain to because lions could run faster and had sharper claws. The challenge is what pushes you to become more than you are or thought you could be. The desire to improve who we are is integral to what we are. Games that tap into that desire for self-improvement and ability to rise to a challenge are games that will be remembered..and more importantly, played.
The alternative is to provide immersion. This is why Striga is so good. Though the challenges isn't any different, the immersion is better. I'd definitely trade challenge for immersion, but immersion is hard to create.
[ QUOTE ]
That ludicrous. Have you even seen an AV, or fought one before?
[/ QUOTE ] Bingo! It is ludicrous...but your the one who said fighting 3 is fighting three regardless of what lvl you are at.
[ QUOTE ]
The experience of fighting three level 50 minions is identical to fighting three level 20 minions.
[/ QUOTE ] Really, go exemp to lvl 20 and pull all your enhancements and fight three minions. Now go to lvl 50, pull all your enhancments and fight three minions. Tell me how it works outs for you.
[ QUOTE ]
Actually, you seem to be having serious difficulty with the concept of "zero" so I wouldn't attempt anything more complex yet. When my tank engages a group that her defense is completely solid on, but can't kill, her "ultimate ability to survive" is not zero, its one, or certainty. Her risk exposure is zero, or near zero. As I said the first time, its actually beginning to amaze me that you are willing to assert with conviction statements that anyone who thinks about them for more than two seconds can prove to be false.
[/ QUOTE ] lol...you don't even understand this example do you Arcana? Read what I wrote again. read what it is in response to.
[ QUOTE ]
You say you agree with "this." Here's the "this" you were referring to, since you excised the quote yet again:
[/ QUOTE ] No. This is what you want me to have responded to. His statment about blastesr was in the same sentenced about a challenge on Heroic. I agree with the second part of that statement and specifically repeated it in my own. Your insistence on focusing on the other part is your being argumentative. Even after I point this out to you, you are trying to tell me what I meant. hahahahahaha.
[ QUOTE ]
Maybe you should try it once or twice first before you make such a statement
[/ QUOTE ] I've tried it. But you aren't even parsing my words correctly. I thnk part of the problem is you want me to argue A so you can argue against it. You don't have an argument against B which is what I am arguing but you have one against A so you are looking for ways to construe A regardless of what I say.
In regards to Mieux's opinion that toons are overpowered past SOs I completely agree.
In his assertion that if you continue to upgrade everyone you will eventually break the fundamental game mechanics, I completely agree. In fact, this has already happened. In shifting everyone up they also shifted the mobs up in I2. Suddenly we now face mezzing and range like never before and the game mechanics that allow for balanced ATs before SOs goes out the window. Suddenly we have blasters complaining not because they are not powerfull. Blasters are powerfull but because the game no longer accomodates them.
Is the answer to give defenses or to up blaster damage? No. Doing either will unbalance blasters and create a City of Blasters situation again because of the level 32 nukes. Continuously improving all the ATs results in the mobs being upgraded so that there is a continuous challenge.
Instead, it is far simpler to balance downwards and to manuever the game back to where it was balanced rather than try to balance the unbalanced portions of the game.
If this does not make sense to anyone please explain what is confusing and I will try to elaborate.
Mieux is right though, in his assertions.
[ QUOTE ]
Mieux is right though, in his assertions.
[/ QUOTE ]You go too far!!!!!
Don't be crazy man....don't throw yourself in with the likes of me.
I don't know Concern. Never met him...he's not with me.
Give all your one-stars to me...Concern's not the one you want.
[ QUOTE ]
We have plenty of reward in the 30's...just very little risk. The devs understand it. Do you?
[/ QUOTE ]
So when the interesting missions dry up, the exp slows down, and every enemy and its mother can beat my MAG resistance twice over I level faster and die less...
Soloing, the game right now is not challenging for blasters before thirty, controllers after thirty-four, and scrappers and tankers pretty much whenever. This I'll mostly admit to being true (And this may be why you're bored when playing a scrapper. They're not as invincible as tanks, but in most situations they come pretty close.)
However, the game is very challenging for early game controllers, late game blasters, and pretty much every defender that's not on a team (Not sure about you rad and dark guys, actually, but whatever.)
Say whatever you want about challenge, but my blaster gets two-shotted by bosses and stunned by minions, and that makes the game rather bloody hard in my opinion, especially since I don't have enough alphastrike potential to down an even level boss before they get their two to three shots off and kill me.
The issue, then, is whether to balance the entire game towards the harder areas, or balance the entire game towards the easier ones. Making it easier wins out for a couple important reasons.
1. Making the game harder for tanks effectively eliminates their ability to solo, since the nerf would have to affect their offense in order to preserve the tank's role on a team.
2. Making the game harder and encouraging play on Heroic slows it down. A lot. Not just the time it takes to reach 50, but the time it takes to finish a mission or solo a group of 3 minions. It slows the overall pace of combat and that makes the game a lot more boring than lower risk will.
3. People are lazy. Some of them even pay Cryptic money to not play the game while someone else herds freaks or wolves. These people outnumber the people looking for a challenge, and these people will quit if the game becomes harder and slows down.
4. The boredom associated with not dying is a) not always there and b) better than the boredom and frustration associated with dying repeatedly because the game is too challenging. When I3 bosses came out my blaster simply could not have fun soloing because I was defeated in a single shot by even con bosses, at range. So I made a tank. I still have him, and even though I have effectively zero risk it's still fun to round up a map full of baddies and watch them burn to death. Especially after hitting the debt cap with my blaster.
So although I agree that parts of the game are easy (too easy is a matter of personal opinion) there are also parts right now that are far too hard (Namely, the parts that involve blasters in the later levels), and the hard parts need to be balanced first because they're far more unfun, annoying, and harmful to the game than the easy ones.
EDIT: Not to say that the easier parts of the game don't need addressing as well, but right now I simply don't have fun playing with my blaster in the later levels, so equalizing everyone else to that point as a fix doesn't sound like a good idea. Fix the unfun parts first, then work on balancing whatever people find too easy or boring afterwards.
[ QUOTE ]
In regards to Mieux's opinion that toons are overpowered past SOs I completely agree.
[/ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Instead, it is far simpler to balance downwards and to manuever the game back to where it was balanced rather than try to balance the unbalanced portions of the game.
[/ QUOTE ]
2 quotes....what the hell are you talking about. The games enhancements are a progression from TOs, to DOs, and to finally SOs. If the Devs and any inkling of a lvl50 toon actually slotting TOs in their powers don't you think Ghost Falcon or General Hammond would sell them? Those actions by the Devs spit in the face of your ideas that SOs are gamebreaking.
[ QUOTE ]
Is the answer to give defenses or to up blaster damage? No. Doing either will unbalance blasters and create a City of Blasters situation again because of the level 32 nukes. Continuously improving all the ATs results in the mobs being upgraded so that there is a continuous challenge.
[/ QUOTE ]
So far when certain ATs are looked at and improved it becomes City of recently improved ATs.
This game is a progression from Outbreak, I don't the power confines of from lvl1-20 should confine high level heroes, and neither do the Devs. Hence their evolving understanding of 'fun' and 'doable' things at higher levels.
[ QUOTE ]
Instead, it is far simpler to balance downwards and to manuever the game back to where it was balanced rather than try to balance the unbalanced portions of the game.
[/ QUOTE ]
Balancing down? Doesn't it seem more reasonable for the Devs to look into a situation and then decide if it needs balancing up, down, or not at all and not assume and generalize that balance most come from nerfs.
[ QUOTE ]
The issue, then, is whether to balance the entire game towards the harder areas, or balance the entire game towards the easier ones. Making it easier wins out for a couple important reasons.
1. Making the game harder for tanks effectively eliminates their ability to solo, since the nerf would have to affect their offense in order to preserve the tank's role on a team.
2. Making the game harder and encouraging play on Heroic slows it down. A lot. Not just the time it takes to reach 50, but the time it takes to finish a mission or solo a group of 3 minions. It slows the overall pace of combat and that makes the game a lot more boring than lower risk will.
3. People are lazy. Some of them even pay Cryptic money to not play the game while someone else herds freaks or wolves. These people outnumber the people looking for a challenge, and these people will quit if the game becomes harder and slows down.
4. The boredom associated with not dying is a) not always there and b) better than the boredom and frustration associated with dying repeatedly because the game is too challenging. When I3 bosses came out my blaster simply could not have fun soloing because I was defeated in a single shot by even con bosses, at range. So I made a tank. I still have him, and even though I have effectively zero risk it's still fun to round up a map full of baddies and watch them burn to death. Especially after hitting the debt cap with my blaster.
So although I agree that parts of the game are easy (too easy is a matter of personal opinion) there are also parts right now that are far too hard (Namely, the parts that involve blasters in the later levels), and the hard parts need to be balanced first because they're far more unfun, annoying, and harmful to the game than the easy ones.
[/ QUOTE ]
It is not about balancing the game towards harder areas. It is about balancing the players to their PvE environment and maintaning a level of balance and challenge that is constant through the game.
Let me respond to a few of your assertions.
1. Making the game harder for tanks how? You don't explain how you would make the game harder for tanks. I can tell you that it has been tested that if you take a tank and slot 1SO, 3DOs and 2Training enhancements they can still walk into a pack of +2 mobs and tank them. This is more than you would find on a heroic mission level. It is however under what they can currently do and kills herding. Does this keep a tank from helping the team? No. Does it stop a practice that the Devs are flinging every tactic that they can think of at? Yes. So your assertion that a nerf to tanks would ruin the game is wrong. It is merely an assumption on your part and something that you have not tested or even thought through.
2. You are absolutely right. If the game slows down to the point that people become frustrated it is much easier to maintain gameplay balance and simply add higher xp rewards than to allow people to continue to be overpowered. It is an amazing concept but xp rewards can also be changed instead of gameplay.
3. This is another assumption with no proof. People join this game everyday with no expectation of Power Leveling. If the main way to powerlevel were removed they would not even worry about it. As for the majority of gamers being PLers, I think you are way off base. Frankly, they wouldn't leave the game either but instead work and challenge themselves to find a new way to gain levels as fast as they can. Maybe you will leave if the game maintains a steady level of challenge but the majority of players won't.
4. Congratulations you have just pointed out why the game should be balanced down and not up. Why were those I3 bosses introduced? Oh, thats right because the players were overpowered and the devs compensated by changing the enemy instead of nerfing the players. Oops, it broke the game though for some classes.
[ QUOTE ]
So although I agree that parts of the game are easy (too easy is a matter of personal opinion) there are also parts right now that are far too hard (Namely, the parts that involve blasters in the later levels), and the hard parts need to be balanced first because they're far more unfun, annoying, and harmful to the game than the easy ones.
[/ QUOTE ]
No. The players need to be brought down and the mobs also need to be brought down. It is not one before the other but both at the same time need to brought down to a new baseline so that they can enhance from a stable platform instead of the unbalanced system that we have currently.
The problem has always been one of enhancements.
[ QUOTE ]
If the Devs and any inkling of a lvl50 toon actually slotting TOs in their powers don't you think Ghost Falcon or General Hammond would sell them? Those actions by the Devs spit in the face of your ideas that SOs are gamebreaking.
[/ QUOTE ]
The devs didn't have any inkling or did you miss where Statesman said that they made a mistake with SOs? Where he specifically said that they were overpowered.
[ QUOTE ]
If this does not make sense to anyone please explain what is confusing and I will try to elaborate.
Mieux is right though, in his assertions.
[/ QUOTE ]
Man, if one of the side effects of adjusting the average power level downward is to cut way back on the mezzing in the game, I'm all for it.
I'm not even against adjusting the average power level downward, as long as the end result is a fairly equitable playing field.
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[ QUOTE ]
Man, if one of the side effects of adjusting the average power level downward is to cut way back on the mezzing in the game, I'm all for it.
I'm not even against adjusting the average power level downward, as long as the end result is a fairly equitable playing field.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is exactly what I am argueing for. An equitable playing field not just between ATs but also player VS. NPC.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If the Devs and any inkling of a lvl50 toon actually slotting TOs in their powers don't you think Ghost Falcon or General Hammond would sell them? Those actions by the Devs spit in the face of your ideas that SOs are gamebreaking.
[/ QUOTE ]
The devs didn't have any inkling or did you miss where Statesman said that they made a mistake with SOs? Where he specifically said that they were overpowered.
[/ QUOTE ]
The one about them being too cheaply priced?
I don't see the fact that they are cheap so therefore overpowered.
If a poster asked you a question then kindly answer their question before asking one of your own.
If the Devs and any inkling of a lvl50 toon actually slotting TOs in their powers don't you think Ghost Falcon or General Hammond would sell them?
[ QUOTE ]
The one about them being too cheaply priced?
I don't see the fact that they are cheap so therefore overpowered.
[/ QUOTE ]
There was a previous post that he made that actually said that SOs were more powerfull than they thought they were going to be. They did not plan for toons to have six slotted SOs. Or don't you think they would have caught things like how easy it was to get AM perma and hasten perma.
The devs have been reacting to the imbalance that SOs created for sometime nerfing powers as they go so that six slotted SOs don't have the impact that they do. So I will answer you plainly. The devs made a mistake.
I will go further and add that those characters were added after Issue 1 and 2 when the players had already adopted a six slotted SO strategy or did you totally forget that orignaly there were no places where you could buy just SOs? When the game came out those characters did not exist.
The devs have been reacting with power nerfs and mob buffs trying to balance SOs and so far it has ruined the game as they have tried to balance up. Now they are starting to balance down the melee classes but in my opinion by focusing on nerfing powers they are going about it the wrong way.
We could argue point and counterpoint, but since I think we both recognize the same problem and want the same ultimate solution, and only have differing views of how to implement it, that would be kind of silly.
Balancing the players down while bringing the enemies down to an enjoyable level is effectively the same thing as balancing the players up while raising the enemies to a reasonably challenging level. Each strategy attempts to produce the same result, and if each were properly implemented the result would be the same.
We both agree that the parts of the game that are difficult to the point where they're unenjoyable need to be fixed, and the parts of the game that are easy to the point where they're boring need to be fixed. The game should be equally enjoyable and challenging for all ATs.
Where we disagree is in how big the numbers associated with the fixed game should be. I want them to be slightly larger, but it's really a non-issue.
Either way, blasters right now are unenjoyable in the late game and something needs to be done about that. I'd prefer balancing them up to where the good melee ATs are now and correctly compensating challenge myself, but if it can be shown that the other way has a better chance of being successfully implemented I'd be fine with that too because the end result is the same.
What I'm getting from Mieux, though, is that the game should be as hard as it is for late game blasters right now, which I disagree with entirely.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The one about them being too cheaply priced?
I don't see the fact that they are cheap so therefore overpowered.
[/ QUOTE ]
There was a previous post that he made that actually said that SOs were more powerfull than they thought they were going to be. They did not plan for toons to have six slotted SOs. Or don't you think they would have caught things like how easy it was to get AM perma and hasten perma.
[/ QUOTE ]
Kindly repost a link to that so I can read it. Your interpretations of postings is somewhat questionable. Who am I kidding you flat out twists posts around to fit your beliefs.
[ QUOTE ]
The devs have been reacting to the imbalance that SOs created for sometime nerfing powers as they go so that six slotted SOs don't have the impact that they do. So I will answer you plainly. The devs made a mistake.
I will go further and add that those characters were added after Issue 1 and 2 when the players had already adopted a six slotted SO strategy or did you totally forget that orignaly there were no places where you could buy just SOs? When the game came out those characters did not exist.
The devs have been reacting with power nerfs and mob buffs trying to balance SOs and so far it has ruined the game as they have tried to balance up. Now they are starting to balance down the melee classes but in my opinion by focusing on nerfing powers they are going about it the wrong way.
[/ QUOTE ]
Ah stop right there...you are have spoken about a dev post and now you are mixing in your ideas as if they go hand and hand.
But you answered the question,...The devs made a mistake.
You attain that the Devs never thought we would 6 slot SOs into our powers...when the ONLY enhancments purchaseable are SOs after 40. 
Can you even tell where facts stop and your opinion begins. (Not a question...don't bother answering)
[ QUOTE ]
What I'm getting from Mieux, though, is that the game should be as hard as it is for late game blasters right now, which I disagree with entirely.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is not what mieux is saying in my opinion. I believe he is saying if I am reading correctly that the game is as hard as it is for blasters so that they can continue to challenge scrappers and tankers and that all classes should be challenged. In other words he thinks that scrappers and tanks are overpowered and thus that is the reason that the game is so hard for blasters. On the other hand maybe I am completely off base.
[ QUOTE ]
Balancing the players down while bringing the enemies down to an enjoyable level is effectively the same thing as balancing the players up while raising the enemies to a reasonably challenging level. Each strategy attempts to produce the same result, and if each were properly implemented the result would be the same.
[/ QUOTE ]
Actually the result would not be the same. Because of the game mechanics concerning damage and defense if you end up with a point at which an AT that does not have defense cannot exist except in certain scenarios. This creates frustration among players who end up asking for a bit of defense in order to survive the standard team encounter. When you start to give defense to blasters you begin to ruin what makes the AT unique to begin with, which is the utter lack of defense. As you make the numbers bigger and bigger the chasm between those with defense and those without grows wider and wider. On the other hand you can balance down and keep the current AT structure with each AT being given its unique role. However again that is if you balance down.
[ QUOTE ]
We both agree that the parts of the game that are difficult to the point where they're unenjoyable need to be fixed, and the parts of the game that are easy to the point where they're boring need to be fixed. The game should be equally enjoyable and challenging for all ATs.
[/ QUOTE ]
The last sentence is entirely true.
[ QUOTE ]
You attain that the Devs never thought we would 6 slot SOs into our powers...when the ONLY enhancments purchaseable are SOs after 40.
[/ QUOTE ]
No, what I said was that the devs made a mistake in playing to the player base that wanted more power when they could have balanced the game then. Instead they chose to balance upwards and we now have the game as it stands. Those with defense and those without in the late game.
The devs thought about it and made a mistake but ended up making players happy for a time.
If you don't think SOs overpower characters I would love to hear your explanation why couched in terms of Statesmans balance goals. Even considering the shifted goals of 3 +3 minions you will have a hard time saying that any AT is not overpowered.
[ QUOTE ]
If you don't think SOs overpower characters I would love to hear your explanation why couched in terms of Statesmans balance goals. Even considering the shifted goals of 3 +3 minions you will have a hard time saying that any AT is not overpowered.
[/ QUOTE ]
The Devs planned on SOs being slotted into powers from Day1. No mistake, no Dev ever said allowing SOs to be 6slotted into powers was a mistake. Thats your opinion.
Your suggestions are unreasonable and for you not to be able to recognize how unreasonable is a bit sad. You attempts to turn City of Heroes into City of,...actually just plain City. It's lame. Every thread you post in has you eluding to the same garbage. I don't like derailing threads, so the easiest way for me not to is to put you on ignore. Goodbye, hopefully you will make you own threads and stop inciting derailments on others because you want red name attention on an "official thread"
Where am I...I thought I was in a thread about blasters.
On Topic. Give blasters some kind of defense to ranged attacks.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
That ludicrous. Have you even seen an AV, or fought one before?
[/ QUOTE ]
Bingo! It is ludicrous...but your the one who said fighting 3 is fighting three regardless of what lvl you are at.
[/ QUOTE ]
I said fighting three MINIONS is the same regardless of what level you are at, especially if they are basically the same level as you or close.
This is why I ask the question: have you ever seen an actual AV before. Because unless you are simply trying to be deliberately argumentative, no one else on these boards would even think of suggesting that fighting three AVs was anything remotely similar to fighting three minions.
[ QUOTE ]
lol...you don't even understand this example do you Arcana? Read what I wrote again. read what it is in response to.
[/ QUOTE ]
Honestly, I keep quoting you with your words in their entirety and you seem to be able to consistently backpetal away from what you wrote by resorting to:
[ QUOTE ]
you are trying to tell me what I meant. hahahahahaha.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not hazarding any real guesses on what you mean, or if you meant anything at all. At this point, for the benefit of anyone else reading, I'm responding to what your words say, thats all.
[ QUOTE ]
I've tried it. But you aren't even parsing my words correctly. I thnk part of the problem is you want me to argue A so you can argue against it. You don't have an argument against B which is what I am arguing but you have one against A so you are looking for ways to construe A regardless of what I say.
[/ QUOTE ]
Anyone who cares can see I quoted your posts completely, and anyone who cares can decide for themselves if you are actually making any sense at all. However, if I refute something you said and you decide to truncate and reprovision your statements, as you do here, I'm prepared to let everyone else judge for themselves without further comment.
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[ QUOTE ]
This is not what mieux is saying in my opinion. I believe he is saying if I am reading correctly that the game is as hard as it is for blasters so that they can continue to challenge scrappers and tankers and that all classes should be challenged. In other words he thinks that scrappers and tanks are overpowered and thus that is the reason that the game is so hard for blasters. On the other hand maybe I am completely off base.
[/ QUOTE ]
Up to this point I cautiously agree. But then there is the question of making the leap in terms of by what metric should scrappers and tanks be "challenged."
There is a fundamental difference between the classes that makes balancing them tricky if you attempt to use the same mechanism for all three. Tanks are supposed to be able to draw all the aggro and associated damage from an entire 8 person team. *Anything* capable of doing that will be, effectively, at zero risk in his own solo missions. He may be slow, but if his risk facing a solo-scaled mission is any significant non-zero number, it will be too high to do his job scaled to 8 people.
So then the question becomes: should we even be comparing the "relative risk" associated with the different classes. Because there isn't a good way to do that given what we expect them to do, across the large span from solo to large team.
If tanks automatically spawned many more minions in their missions than blasters to challenge them, risk could be better balanced. But that opens a whole different can of worms: relative leveling speed. If tanks get to boost their missions to whatever they like, they can hit leveling sweet spots much easier than can any other class.
So I think mieux isn't giving full credit to the complexity of the problem, if this is what he is actually asserting. This is not to pick on mieux specifically either; anyone suggesting nerfing down the other classes to be comparable with blasters, or in any way balancing them based on a nebulous concept of "risk" is bound to run afoul of critical (I believe fatal) problems with any such attempt.
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[ QUOTE ]
I think you and Scott are hung up on a misconception. I want the Invinc setting to be a death march for a veteran. I want to heroic to be challenging to a first time player. Challenging =/= death march. You two are fixated on this and hell bent on combining the two concepts into one idea that the entire game has to be a death march. A father and his 8 year old daughter should be able to log on and do heroic missions with risk and success.
Games which offer no risk of failure are not games...they are by definition exercises. Scott says he likes the game because of the story arcs. This game would have failed the first day if all you did is go around and click on story arcs. This game would have failed the first month if the mobs couldn't kill you ..at all.
Risk v Reward
Risk v Reward
Risk v Reward
We have plenty of reward in the 30's...just very little risk. The devs understand it. Do you?
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While I strongly agree with you in principle, I think its too late to put a more viable risk vs reward curve into this game. Its human nature to try and manipulate their surroundings so they get the most reward for the least risk. The satisfaction for doing this is what makes a game enjoyable in the first place. Of course its also human nature to look for bigger challenges that also offer bigger rewards. This is why games that give you to much reward for to little risk cant survive.
The dilemma facing the CoH devs is that not everyone has the same perception of what suitable reward should be for the risk they face. Thus some get bored more quickly when they face little risk, others stick it out longer. This game has had its risk vs reward screwed up for so long that most of the people looking for bigger challenges to face have long since moved on leaving only the ones who think more reward for lower risk is a better thing to have in a game and have not drifted away from boredom yet.
The former would readily adapt to a better risk vs reward curve but they are long gone. The latter dont know what they are missing and would object strongly to fixing the curve, and those who are already suffering the boredom brought on by the very thing they are defending would probably quit as well.
In other words if they fixed the problem now thy will have alienated both groups instead of just the first. I think the devs will eventually decide that a small player base and a substandard game is better then a much better game with no player base. Its sad to say that because this game has so much potential, but I think its what we will see happen. 
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Man, if one of the side effects of adjusting the average power level downward is to cut way back on the mezzing in the game, I'm all for it.
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I think that is a given. IMO the reason all the mez, etc was brought in in the first place was to create challenge and risk for some ATs that didnt really face any. The problem was that a tank getting mezed dies far to quickly, (just like blasters) because of the amount of raw damage floating around and the huge difference between having defenses up and not having defenses up. The end result it that the devs needed to make them essentially immune to status effects, which undid the additional risk for the ATs that needed that risk but created additional risk for ATs already facing plenty.
Cool! I've discovered the source of the evil. 
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I think you and Scott are hung up on a misconception. I want the Invinc setting to be a death march for a veteran. I want to heroic to be challenging to a first time player. Challenging =/= death march. You two are fixated on this and hell bent on combining the two concepts into one idea that the entire game has to be a death march. A father and his 8 year old daughter should be able to log on and do heroic missions with risk and success.
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This is a good point; I misunderstood you. However, since the difference between Heroic and Invincible is, er, 2 levels... I think that making one a death march and one an easy challenge is going to be.. hard. That's some difficulty spread! Maybe a SuperPurplePatch would work?
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Games which offer no risk of failure are not games...they are by definition exercises. Scott says he likes the game because of the story arcs. This game would have failed the first day if all you did is go around and click on story arcs. This game would have failed the first month if the mobs couldn't kill you ..at all.
Risk v Reward
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I get it now. It took a it, and there were false starts, but I think I finally get it.
CoH is a passtime for me. Some people build little trains. Some people paint miniatures. Some people crochet.
I play CoH. I play to meet people, talk to people, check out the story arcs, and level up strange hero ideas. I really thrive on making ATs do things they just weren't meant to do (ex: FF Defender + Provoke = Tank)
Challenge just isn't in this equation. I'd argue it isn't for other people as well.
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Games that tap into that desire for self-improvement and ability to rise to a challenge are games that will be remembered..and more importantly, played.
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Good point for some people, I'm sure. I know there are people that are incapable of taking it easy - heck, I play a melee Blaster every once in a while. Relentless difficulty does add to a sense of accomplishment, sure.
You just need to keep in mind that the "feeling of accomplishment / feeling of pointlessness" theshold is different for everyone.
Currently playing:
Infaerna Who knew Fire/Fire Brutes were fun to play?
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So I think mieux isn't giving full credit to the complexity of the problem, if this is what he is actually asserting. This is not to pick on mieux specifically either; anyone suggesting nerfing down the other classes to be comparable with blasters, or in any way balancing them based on a nebulous concept of "risk" is bound to run afoul of critical (I believe fatal) problems with any such attempt.
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The way I see it, the classes were pretty well balanced to begin with. I think that if any kind of nerf happens it needs to be across the board rather than to specific sets. It also needs to be fair to all the ATs.
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This is a good point; I misunderstood you. However, since the difference between Heroic and Invincible is, er, 2 levels... I think that making one a death march and one an easy challenge is going to be.. hard.
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1SO, 3DOs, 2 Training enhancements. Try it out. It is not as hard to balance as you think.
Had a post prepared but I lost it...
Ok since blasters are range damage specialists I think they should get a toggle in their secondaries that support them by adding defense to ONLY ranged attacks. There is at least one power in each secondary that could be dropped to get this power, Avoidance. Well Cloaking Device could be modified.
Ranged Avoidance would provide a base defense of 15% (or the Devs could substitute. I picked a nice number) and be about as draining as Stealth.
That wouldn't be too much...right?
Then there is the matter of damage caps and the reasoning for scrappers having a higher one is because they are in more risk compared to blasters.
Can I ask that for a week the Devs monitor defeats in on Live servers to see who is really facing the most risk. I am not assuming that blasters would be the number defeated AT, but it wouldn't suprise me.
Since both ATs role is to do damage why not have their caps both be 500%. Boost the damage buff on blaster Buildup and Aim ever so slightly and extend the duration to about 20 seconds.
A few tweaks and some boosts. Throw them on Test and see what floats.