Unyielding on Test - Brutes and Scraps(7/13 patch)
By
Aett_Thorn,
Posted on: 2006-07-13 14:36 in Tankers
it's not 'needed', what it is is not broken. complaints about it are absurd. a tank running close enough to the margin that 5% DEF either way makes a difference has much bigger problems.
[ QUOTE ]
And that is what a QA department is for
[/ QUOTE ]
QA catches major bugs. Not piddling decimal errors.
[ QUOTE ]
Age of a QA dept shouldn't be an excuse.
Poor employment choices would be the only excuse.
And neither is really an acceptable excuse.
BTW, I'm the one who found the Invincibility bug, so believe me I don't have high expectations of their QA, but either they're doing they're job and keep it, or they're not and get let go and replaced. That is how you run a business.
[/ QUOTE ]
You realize that pretty much anything that makes a decision over at Cryptic is human right?
And that they are not held to Telecommunication market standards because they are not part of the information relay to emergency sytems, right?
That nobody will actually die, read-their-obituary-in-the-next-day's-paper die, if there is a bug in the CoX Code?
With a possible exception to the as yet unreleased "Shocks through the keyboard"(TM) feature comming soon 
Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.
[ QUOTE ]
Not excusing their QA. I just feel the devs feel test server is their 'free QA', along with the players on the boards.
[/ QUOTE ]
And that sort of model is doomed to failure. Sure we may find bugs, and people like me might report the more serious ones, but clearly, as we've seen from these forums, other people will sit and exploit something that is clearly a bug for the benefit of it supporting their own playstyle. And then tout it as a "valid" mode of play because its how the game works.
[ QUOTE ]
My biggest problem (back to unyielding) is the ever changing answers. I remember a brute asked why do we have 5% penalty, if we have less resistances? dev answer was, working as expected.
[/ QUOTE ]
I think there's a story in there that we're not being told. "Working as expected", from a developer in any field, generally means "according to what I'm seeing the code and data tables that would indeed be what is supposed to happen". It doesn't make what is happening "right" because "right" is subjective. It just means its doing what it should be according to what it is.
My overall guess is that the field in the data tables that supported the -5% on Unyielding could not take advantage of scaling by AT, and so it was -5% no matter what. And now the field scales by AT - which is the actual change.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
It makes me think that they thought of only 8 powers, but had to fill in 9 tiers. So... let's subtract DEF here (UY) and put it over here (TH), to tone down the potential DEF provided by Invinc. Viola! 9 powers!
[/ QUOTE ]
Unyielding was originally Unyielding Stance and it had no -DEF component. It did, however, make you immobile. This was incredibly unpopular and it was decided to remove that penalty. At that point, the -DEF was added to replace the Immobilize penalty.
[/ QUOTE ]
We know the history, but why is it needed after the GDN and ED?
Single. Greatest. Question. Evar.
[/ QUOTE ]
What he said. We know the history. Why is it still needed?
[/ QUOTE ]
exactly. they might have been able to make a case for it when Unyielding could be slotted to give 44% resists to S/L F/C E/N. but when it's only giving 7-15% resists? how is that still fair? yank it.
Level 50 is a journey, not a destination.
▲Scrapper Issues List - Going Rogue Edition▲
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And that is what a QA department is for
[/ QUOTE ]
QA catches major bugs. Not piddling decimal errors.
[/ QUOTE ]
No a crappy QA dept doesn't catch "piddling decimal errors". And are not qualified to catch major bugs.
A great QA department takes ownership of the product, understand it inside out, has a test plan, understands what regression testing is, and spends the time at the testing because they invest themselves in the product. "piddling decimal errors" never get past a great QA department. They feast on major bugs.
Your response tells me you have no idea what a QA dept even does.
[ QUOTE ]
it's not 'needed', what it is is not broken. complaints about it are absurd. a tank running close enough to the margin that 5% DEF either way makes a difference has much bigger problems.
[ QUOTE ]
And that is what a QA department is for
[/ QUOTE ]
QA catches major bugs. Not piddling decimal errors.
[/ QUOTE ]
So the intital 50% debuff was just a piddling decimal error and beneath their notice? Yeah, it's not like it majorly impacted gameplay or anything...
Level 50 is a journey, not a destination.
▲Scrapper Issues List - Going Rogue Edition▲
[ QUOTE ]
QA catches major bugs. Not piddling decimal errors.
[/ QUOTE ]
You mean like that "piddling decimal error" which lost the NASA probe to Mars a couple years back? That was only a few hundred million bucks.
Do you even know what decimals are? From this response you sound like you don't.
Too many alts to list.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
it's not 'needed', what it is is not broken. complaints about it are absurd. a tank running close enough to the margin that 5% DEF either way makes a difference has much bigger problems.
[ QUOTE ]
And that is what a QA department is for
[/ QUOTE ]
QA catches major bugs. Not piddling decimal errors.
[/ QUOTE ]
So the intital 50% debuff was just a piddling decimal error and beneath their notice? Yeah, it's not like it majorly impacted gameplay or anything...
[/ QUOTE ]99.9% of all decimal errors are piddling, with a magnification magnigtude of 10, ocassionaly 16
Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.
[ QUOTE ]
You realize that pretty much anything that makes a decision over at Cryptic is human right?
[/ QUOTE ]
Sure. But I also understand what a QA department is responsible for. They are the gateway between development and release. They are solely responsible for deciding if something warrants release. And they are responsible for the overall quality of their product. If the product has problems when it goes out the door, then they missed it in their testing. This is true for any product.
[ QUOTE ]
And that they are not held to Telecommunication market standards because they are not part of the information relay to emergency sytems, right?
[/ QUOTE ]
CoX is a service. People pay for that service. The people who pay for that service have a right to quality of service. That is the responsibility of the QA dept for the service. If they're not up to the task and don't understand their product enough to perform the task then they should find something else to do with their time.
However, and let me state, I'm not saying the QA dept can't do their job. I'm saying that it is their job. And that I believe that if they are as properly dedicated to their product as a QA person needs to be successful at their job, then they can perform their job.
The people saying they can't do their job are the ones who are saying every little change needs a week or three on test for the players to vet before it hits the live servers.
Like it or not, the test server IS part of their Q&A process, and everything must go trough the process to get to Live.
You dont have to Q&A for them, you can just log there and play arround unless you think its a waste of time to play there. Sometimes datamining there is all they trully need, aquiring data they will never be able to get from internal servers.
I'm thinking a clarification of why Unyielding needs a penalty in the first place is in order, then.
Arc #41077 - The Men of State
Arc #48845 - Operation: Dirty Snowball
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Age of a QA dept shouldn't be an excuse.
Poor employment choices would be the only excuse.
And neither is really an acceptable excuse.
BTW, I'm the one who found the Invincibility bug, so believe me I don't have high expectations of their QA, but either they're doing they're job and keep it, or they're not and get let go and replaced. That is how you run a business.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, I remember you found the bug. Sadly, I expected teh bug to get fixed, even if invincibility was 'good as it is', and thus be a nerf. *sigh* such is life.
Not excusing their QA. I just feel the devs feel test server is their 'free QA', along with the players on the boards.
My biggest problem (back to unyielding) is the ever changing answers. I remember a brute asked why do we have 5% penalty, if we have less resistances? dev answer was, working as expected.
burn with fear, yet it did have fear before, was removed, because it wastn fun, now its fun with fear, while other damage auras, and that monster with a battle axe, do NOT cause fear ...
As for running a business, sadly, this is the ONLY hero (didnt say super) MMO (for now). I left, tried wow (bored of clone characters and hunting rats), tried another, and do you know why I came back?
Friends. Good people. Not this stupid 'vision' crap. Give me a good game, and I will draw my friends there.
sorry, ranting.
[/ QUOTE ]
/agree
Problem is, you just can't really ever believe the rationale we're given when changes are made. 9 out of 10 times it's total BS. I would love to find out why the recharge of powers weren't reduced to take ED into account. We were told over and over again that perma-hasten and perma-dull pain weren't bad things, but ED basically made them impossible and no adjustments making them possible were ever made. Same with Unstoppable, Elude, etc. Their recharge rates were dramatically increased to ensure they could never be made perma (heaven forbid!), but post-ED those recharge rates were never reduced, making those powers even more useless than they already were.
The -5% in unyielding was back when the power all by itself could give you 44% resistance to everything but psi. Now it's what? 7.75% smashing/lethal; 15.5 everything else but psi?
And it's also back when Invincibility could give you over 100% defense -- 5% really wasn't that much to lose, especially considering you could essentially negate it with combat jumping, hover, hasten, stealth, etc. and tough hide more than covered it and left some +def to spare. But lessee now, CJ, hover, and stealth won't fully negate it, and hasten doesn't have a +def anymore. Also factor in that Invincibility gives you a max def buff of something like a whopping 15%, and then you realize you're losing A THIRD of it to Unyielding. I mean, really, it's so pathetic that our toons have fallen so far we're here arguing over 5% defense. What does that really say about the state of the game?
I also agree about CoX being the only game in town. I tried WoW, I tried Guild Wars, I just wasnt' able to get into them. But with DCO on the horizon, even if it's half as good as CoH was at release, it'll still be 5x better than the lame duck we have now. But I continue to play because it's better than playing nothing.
You know what I would love to see? A "classic CoH" server, kinda like the test server, that pushes the game back to I2 or I3 and left it there forever. It would be interesting to see how many people decide to play there instead of in the "live" world.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
It makes me think that they thought of only 8 powers, but had to fill in 9 tiers. So... let's subtract DEF here (UY) and put it over here (TH), to tone down the potential DEF provided by Invinc. Viola! 9 powers!
[/ QUOTE ]
Unyielding was originally Unyielding Stance and it had no -DEF component. It did, however, make you immobile. This was incredibly unpopular and it was decided to remove that penalty. At that point, the -DEF was added to replace the Immobilize penalty.
[/ QUOTE ]
Unyielding also gave 20%(15% for Scraps) resists to all but Psi (and Toxic) then too. One could understand the penalty in the face of that buff. Why now?
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
They should redesign invulnerable to follow it's name, "INVULNERABLE". If they would just crank up our DR to a lot and they can get rid of all this extra +def, then we can die like true invulnerables. Death by a thousand cuts. Instead of being an offspring of the super reflexes set. We are invulnerable ...we should not be hard to hit, but hard to hurt.
It should be ... hit me all you want, I might be bruised, broken, and bleeding, but I'm not dead yet.
Before the whole nerfing the DR cap and stupid ED, I use to test out how much punishment my INV could take by turning invinci off. It was GREAT! I took a beating before I dropped dead.
When UY first came out it was awesome!!! We were easier to hit but we didn't mind cause we were INVULNERABLE!
But then they decided to nerf the DR cap and now we are just an SR crossbreed. Further more ED. I wonder who's brilliant idea that was. It only forced us to enhance our powers to look exactly like the next person. OOooo look at me.. I'm a cookie cutter hero!
If my hide is tough... I think it would equal to being harder to hurt. Not harder to hit.
Invincibility should increase DR cap or something, but the more mobs around me then I am easier to hit. I am surrounded after all.
It's like superman =) you can hit him all you want. He is not hard to hit. But he is hard to hurt =)
So my opinion is stop making us part super reflexes and make us invulnerable already.
[ QUOTE ]
Unyielding was originally Unyielding Stance and it had no -DEF component. It did, however, make you immobile. This was incredibly unpopular and it was decided to remove that penalty. At that point, the -DEF was added to replace the Immobilize penalty.
[/ QUOTE ]
As was said, we know that.
The problem is that it made no sense then, and it makes no sense now.
Being immobile was annoying as hell, and basically forced every INV Tanker into the Teleport pool, but thats it.
A -DEF penalty though reduces survivability, the entire reason for the Tankers existance.
Quality of life/fun for survivability. Weird, and pretty unfair trade that.
Whats worse, back in the day, those -5% were completely irrelevant. Basically impossible to ever notice considering the power of the entire set (especially Invince *cough*).
Fast forward to today, post I5/ED.
Now -5% removes a significant portion of the defense the entire set gives you!
The global changes turned a minor debuff into a significant factor.
And thats just wrong.
[ QUOTE ]
They should redesign invulnerable to follow it's name, "INVULNERABLE". If they would just crank up our DR to a lot and they can get rid of all this extra +def, then we can die like true invulnerables. Death by a thousand cuts. Instead of being an offspring of the super reflexes set. We are invulnerable ...we should not be hard to hit, but hard to hurt.
It should be ... hit me all you want, I might be bruised, broken, and bleeding, but I'm not dead yet.
Before the whole nerfing the DR cap and stupid ED, I use to test out how much punishment my INV could take by turning invinci off. It was GREAT! I took a beating before I dropped dead.
When UY first came out it was awesome!!! We were easier to hit but we didn't mind cause we were INVULNERABLE!
But then they decided to nerf the DR cap and now we are just an SR crossbreed. Further more ED. I wonder who's brilliant idea that was. It only forced us to enhance our powers to look exactly like the next person. OOooo look at me.. I'm a cookie cutter hero!
If my hide is tough... I think it would equal to being harder to hurt. Not harder to hit.
Invincibility should increase DR cap or something, but the more mobs around me then I am easier to hit. I am surrounded after all.
It's like superman =) you can hit him all you want. He is not hard to hit. But he is hard to hurt =)
So my opinion is stop making us part super reflexes and make us invulnerable already.
[/ QUOTE ]
I agree with the spirit of this post. Invulnerable isn't anything near what someone would picture as Invulnerable. Removing Defense from the set and making it pure Resistance would go a long way toward making this set like it's namesake.
Sign It : http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
They should redesign invulnerable to follow it's name, "INVULNERABLE". If they would just crank up our DR to a lot and they can get rid of all this extra +def, then we can die like true invulnerables. Death by a thousand cuts. Instead of being an offspring of the super reflexes set. We are invulnerable ...we should not be hard to hit, but hard to hurt.
It should be ... hit me all you want, I might be bruised, broken, and bleeding, but I'm not dead yet.
Before the whole nerfing the DR cap and stupid ED, I use to test out how much punishment my INV could take by turning invinci off. It was GREAT! I took a beating before I dropped dead.
When UY first came out it was awesome!!! We were easier to hit but we didn't mind cause we were INVULNERABLE!
But then they decided to nerf the DR cap and now we are just an SR crossbreed. Further more ED. I wonder who's brilliant idea that was. It only forced us to enhance our powers to look exactly like the next person. OOooo look at me.. I'm a cookie cutter hero!
If my hide is tough... I think it would equal to being harder to hurt. Not harder to hit.
Invincibility should increase DR cap or something, but the more mobs around me then I am easier to hit. I am surrounded after all.
It's like superman =) you can hit him all you want. He is not hard to hit. But he is hard to hurt =)
So my opinion is stop making us part super reflexes and make us invulnerable already.
[/ QUOTE ]
I agree with the spirit of this post. Invulnerable isn't anything near what someone would picture as Invulnerable. Removing Defense from the set and making it pure Resistance would go a long way toward making this set like it's namesake.
[/ QUOTE ]
NO. It wouldn't. It may sound good on paper, but in reality running on pure resistances makes you LESS hearty than a blend of resistances and defense does. If you can actually sit down and do the math (and I really can't, it gives me a supersize headache) you'll find that adding resistances and defense together gives you a kind of multiplicative protection, far greater than you could ever get on resistances alone.
I did this experiment a long time back, about 14-15 months ago, before all the defense/resist cuts and ED. I was farming a dreck mish with my lvl 50 inv/ss tank, who, thanks to good slotting and a few HOs basically was at the 90% cap for all damage types except toxic and psi. I would typically herd together 20-30 at a time (not a lot by herding standards of the day, mind you), and with invincibility up I would barely take any damage at all. Now just this once I decided to turn off invincibility to see what happened. I dropped like a stone. The resistance was not enough by itself to keep me alive, even tho I was only taking 10%.
Now this is somewhat of an exaggerated experience, and not something you can realistically do today. And I'm sure there is a "point of dimishing returns", a point at which having only high resistances would be more effective than having low resistances and low defense. But in general, you're much better off with both. The exceptionally high resistances isn't what made the invulnerability set uber (compared to other sets), it was the defense.
Actually it was the ability to max out both RESIST and DEFENSE on one char, but who cares... 
The problem right now is simply that the non-S/L resists are so lousy, dropping the DEF and going for the old RES values for those types would improve the survivability...
I will simply point to Fire Tankers pre GDN and ED.
No Defense to speak of, just resistance. Capped at 90%
Never had to worry, had enough Health to keep alive till HF was up. Get in trouble, pop an Insp of some flavor.
What I was saying is that a blended approach is what leaves the set lackluster in it's current state.
Sign It : http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
[ QUOTE ]
I will simply point to Fire Tankers pre GDN and ED.
No Defense to speak of, just resistance. Capped at 90%
Never had to worry, had enough Health to keep alive till HF was up. Get in trouble, pop an Insp of some flavor.
What I was saying is that a blended approach is what leaves the set lackluster in it's current state.
[/ QUOTE ]
I suppose that's why Fire Tankers were, back then and still now, the squishiest of all Tanks.
RES alone doesn't cut it. Never has, never will. This horse has been beaten so badly that there are only a couple of hooves and a little piece of mane left.
So many zillions of posters, some still here (D_O, Iron Vixen, me) and some long gone (Krunch, _Havok_) conclusively proved that it was the combination of high RES AND high DEF that made INV so good.
Everybody that keeps saying that high RES and little to no def would be preferable, even to what we have now, is sadly mistaken. My Kheld has higher resists than an INV to everything except S\L. My INV Scrapper (forget about the Tank) handles large groups of Mobs better than the Kheld because of the scaling defensive factor of Invince and DP+Hasten. The Lobster needs Purples to tank effectively in groups.
Don't misunderstand, I'm pleased that TH can completely offset the UY debuff for all INV users. Like everyone else, I still wonder WHY we need it now.
Hmmm ... perhaps I was just pleased to have 90% S/L on my Fire Tanker back then.
/em Sigh
Sign It : http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
Me too......
Capped RES + Bugged Invince= Standing in the middle of a bunch of +7 Freaks and laughing at them. 
[ QUOTE ]
Me too......
Capped RES + Bugged Invince= Standing in the middle of a bunch of +7 Freaks and laughing at them.
[/ QUOTE ]
Stop! I'm getting misty... 
Well, we're waiting devs. What is your excuse for leaving this hack-job of a balance penalty in? We would still lose out against non s/l attacks without this penalty, so your only drawing even more ire upon yourselves by 'sticking to your guns' in this case. Or is there something we still are not aware of yet? Like maybe plans to just abandon the Tanker AT? Heaven knows you've dropped enough hints about that in the last year. 
[ QUOTE ]
That reason for the debuff is stupid, but i think is actually the reason it got introduced.
[/ QUOTE ]
You mean the whole "It was -Def if we remove the root"? yeah, that was the reason.
Kinda sad - made it to where you had more than just stone armor being tele-tankers.
Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.