Unyielding on Test - Brutes and Scraps(7/13 patch)
By
Aett_Thorn,
Posted on: 2006-07-13 14:36 in Tankers
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QA catches major bugs. Not piddling decimal errors.
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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.
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What? I thought the Decepticons destroyed the Mars probe.
Sorry about this derailment.
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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...
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While it is true that the ability to cap resistance and defense was incredibly uber, you could run with about 50% resists and Invincibility and still be extremely uber.
Invincibility was the pony with the trick. If that had been fixed in issue 5, Invuln probably wouldn't have been hit as hard as it was in the resists.
It's pretty frustrating that Invincibility was fixed, but the resists are left as-is.
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I will rephrase: People [censored] about what QA isn't catching. They have no idea what they are catching. My view is that complaining about QA not catching balance errors is like complaining about QA not catching errors in the spellcheck dictionary. It's irritating and intereferes with the product. But it does not warrant the comments being made in this thread.
The reason the global defense nerfs don't warrant a removal of the DEF penalty is, because, um... they were global nerfs. They had relatively minor effects on power balance.
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I also like how this is pretty much saying that one power in the set (TH) appears to be designed to counter anothers penalty. I wouldn't mind it if Tough Hide did something else, but does it appear odd to anyone else that the reason you should pretty much take that power is to counteract another?
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Except you can enhance it. That wasn't the initial intention since it WAS unyielding stance and tough hide was still around back then. This has been a suggestion of mine for quite sometime. Many props to the devs for making this change so that brutes and scrappers aren't at a disad.
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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.
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Issue 3 ftw! The last truly GREAT issue.
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I also like how this is pretty much saying that one power in the set (TH) appears to be designed to counter anothers penalty. I wouldn't mind it if Tough Hide did something else, but does it appear odd to anyone else that the reason you should pretty much take that power is to counteract another?
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Except you can enhance it. That wasn't the initial intention since it WAS unyielding stance and tough hide was still around back then. This has been a suggestion of mine for quite sometime. Many props to the devs for making this change so that brutes and scrappers aren't at a disad.
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Yeah, this was what I was wanting for Scrappers and Brutes to be balanced correctly back in i5/ED.
It is nice to see it finally fixed.
Still here, even after all this time!
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The reason the global defense nerfs don't warrant a removal of the DEF penalty is, because, um... they were global nerfs. They had relatively minor effects on power balance.
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And thats where you're wrong.
The massive reductions of all powers through I5/ED means that the piddly -5% penalty turned into a major factor, effectively negating the resists in the power, or even making you more vulnarable than not running the power at all (vs S/L).
Its the same as with Hasten and the Tier9 defense powers.
Hastens recharge was specifically modified that you needed exactly six SOs to perma it. The Tier9's were specifically given such extreme recharges to make sure they can't be perma'd even with six SOs and perma-Hasten.
Then ED hit, and completely destroyed the carefull balance of all those powers.
(thats one of the things that showed the lie in the claim that ED was looooooooong in the making btw)
Hover is another example, its so damn slow with ED.
Saying that global nerfs have minor effects on specific powers balance is incredible BS.
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The reason the global defense nerfs don't warrant a removal of the DEF penalty is, because, um... they were global nerfs. They had relatively minor effects on power balance.
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Saying that global nerfs have minor effects on specific powers balance is incredible BS.
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Well actually, I think even calling it BS is an insult to BS everywhere.
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I will rephrase: People [censored] about what QA isn't catching. They have no idea what they are catching. My view is that complaining about QA not catching balance errors is like complaining about QA not catching errors in the spellcheck dictionary. It's irritating and intereferes with the product. But it does not warrant the comments being made in this thread.
The reason the global defense nerfs don't warrant a removal of the DEF penalty is, because, um... they were global nerfs. They had relatively minor effects on power balance.
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Regardless of anything else, they balanced invuln with the bugged Invinc. The invinc that was giving a triple +defbuff per mob. Statesman posted they felt the Invuln with that Invinc (the 3x one) was balanced. Then they fix that bug but don't re-adjust the set. Basic math reveals that if A+B+C=Ok and you cut A by /3 it's no longer OK. It's now less than ok. In Invuln's case it's not horrifically bad, but it's still below where it was when they said it was balanced properly.
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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!
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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.
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This was however added before the cap to invincibility, and was seen as a way to not only balance it, but also keep the set from reaching a higher deff bonus than other sets with set deff figures. Now we get both, capped deff bonus on invincibility, and -deff on unyielding... now with the introduction of ED we get less resistance and even less of a deff pottential.
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You realize that pretty much anything that makes a decision over at Cryptic is human right?
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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.
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And that they are not held to Telecommunication market standards because they are not part of the information relay to emergency sytems, right?
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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.
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Wait. So you're saying the Q for "Quality" in QA is meant to be taken seriously!?!?!?!/111!??!retraintheQAdepartment!1?!/!?
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Wait. So you're saying the Q for "Quality" in QA is meant to be taken seriously!?!?!?!/111!??!retraintheQAdepartment!1?!/!?
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I'm saying that QA without the "Quality" lacks "Assurance".
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I will rephrase: People [censored] about what QA isn't catching. They have no idea what they are catching. My view is that complaining about QA not catching balance errors is like complaining about QA not catching errors in the spellcheck dictionary. It's irritating and intereferes with the product. But it does not warrant the comments being made in this thread.
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No, QA's history does warrant the comments made in this thread. Not the really nasty comments, but definitely the criticism.
There's no way QA should have missed: AV regen, 50% defense debuff on Unyielding, or reintroduction of legacy bugs (like the inability to hit moving targets with AoEs). Yet they did. QA should have also noticed the discrepancies in the scrapper vs. +8s tests, but they didn't.
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The reason the global defense nerfs don't warrant a removal of the DEF penalty is, because, um... they were global nerfs. They had relatively minor effects on power balance.
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The fact that they were global does not change the fact that the Unyielding penalty is too much for Invulnerability's current state, as opposed to issue 4 and earlier. To put it another way: If the debuff was balanced for Invuln in issues 3 and 4, then it's most certainly not balanced after issues 5 and 6.
Also, your above statement is circular.
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The reason the global defense nerfs don't warrant a removal of the DEF penalty is, because, um... they were global nerfs. They had relatively minor effects on power balance.
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Saying that global nerfs have minor effects on specific powers balance is incredible BS.
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Well actually, I think even calling it BS is an insult to BS everywhere.
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"It is not even wrong." -- Wolfgang Pauli
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I will rephrase: People [censored] about what QA isn't catching. They have no idea what they are catching. My view is that complaining about QA not catching balance errors is like complaining about QA not catching errors in the spellcheck dictionary. It's irritating and intereferes with the product. But it does not warrant the comments being made in this thread.
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No, QA's history does warrant the comments made in this thread. Not the really nasty comments, but definitely the criticism.
There's no way QA should have missed: AV regen, 50% defense debuff on Unyielding, or reintroduction of legacy bugs (like the inability to hit moving targets with AoEs). Yet they did. QA should have also noticed the discrepancies in the scrapper vs. +8s tests, but they didn't.
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The reason the global defense nerfs don't warrant a removal of the DEF penalty is, because, um... they were global nerfs. They had relatively minor effects on power balance.
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The fact that they were global does not change the fact that the Unyielding penalty is too much for Invulnerability's current state, as opposed to issue 4 and earlier. To put it another way: If the debuff was balanced for Invuln in issues 3 and 4, then it's most certainly not balanced after issues 5 and 6.
Also, your above statement is circular.
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Well, one *could* say that if we had the option of being able to actually see the numbers that these issues, and many more like them still floating out there, would never be. But that would ruin the "illusion" I guess 
And was the AV regen thing actually attributed to a goof? I missed that proclamation. I just wrote it off as yet another stealth nerf -- y'know, they nerf something to the nth degree, people complain, and then they swoop in and "adjust" it back down, assuring the player base that all is well and that they're oh so attentive. Until you realize that what they un-nerfed is STILL more nerfed than it was before. So all the while they're sucking up praise, they're secretly laughing at us cause they got their nerf in nonetheless.
But I'm derailing -- was the AV regen thing a goof and not a stealth nerf?
The reason the devs don't really want to lay down the numbers to us in a reasonable in-game fashion is simple: "In a land of blind men, a one eyed man would be king." They want to be that king, and keep us all in the dark. Sort of like politicians.
One thing I've learned as software engineer, and a product manager, and someone who's worked in the video game industry: an informed clientele is a happy clientele.
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And was the AV regen thing actually attributed to a goof? I missed that proclamation. I just wrote it off as yet another stealth nerf -- y'know, they nerf something to the nth degree, people complain, and then they swoop in and "adjust" it back down, assuring the player base that all is well and that they're oh so attentive. Until you realize that what they un-nerfed is STILL more nerfed than it was before. So all the while they're sucking up praise, they're secretly laughing at us cause they got their nerf in nonetheless.
But I'm derailing -- was the AV regen thing a goof and not a stealth nerf?
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It could be a deliberate decision, which would suck.
It could also be that they thought it would make them properly tough, and QA missed that they were too tough.
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QA wasting time doing AV fights over and over would be inefficient. They really don't have time for balance problems like that. One can make an argument for more extreme and obvious balance errors, but I think it is a tiny matter compared to the things QA ought to be concerned with. The balance errors are Cryptic's error.
Yes, the AV buffs were deliberate.
I think the main problem with the AV buffs is that they simulated player damage output under the assumption that every player on the team would be huffing reds like candy, and that doesn't tend to happen.
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Saying that global nerfs have minor effects on specific powers balance is incredible BS.
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Well actually, I think even calling it BS is an insult to BS everywhere.
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Y'all are cute, really. But my point - as i'm sure you all know - is that the def debuff was not instituted to balance out the wholeset against the huge buffage that could be attained pre-ED and global defense nerfs. It was instituted as a matter of powerset balance.
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Y'all are cute, really.
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Thanks. I get that all the time. Really.
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But my point - as i'm sure you all know - is that the def debuff was not instituted to balance out the wholeset against the huge buffage that could be attained pre-ED and global defense nerfs. It was instituted as a matter of powerset balance.
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And yet powersets aren't balanced. So I fail to see your point.
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QA wasting time doing AV fights over and over would be inefficient. They really don't have time for balance problems like that. One can make an argument for more extreme and obvious balance errors, but I think it is a tiny matter compared to the things QA ought to be concerned with. The balance errors are Cryptic's error.
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So, do you actually know what QA does? QA's job is to play the game over and over and over and over and dig out everything they can find. That's it. That's QA. They play the game until their eyes bleed. Then they crack open a box of Kleenex, wipe the blood off, and play some more. If it's impossible to finish a fight with a reasonable team, QA should notice.
And, actually, QA did notice. it was mentioned when they announced the contest to complete the LRSF.
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Yes, the AV buffs were deliberate.
I think the main problem with the AV buffs is that they simulated player damage output under the assumption that every player on the team would be huffing reds like candy, and that doesn't tend to happen.
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I don't think even that would account for it.
Anyway, I didn't say the AV buffs weren't deliberate. I said the overestimation probably wasn't.
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Y'all are cute, really. But my point - as i'm sure you all know - is that the def debuff was not instituted to balance out the wholeset against the huge buffage that could be attained pre-ED and global defense nerfs. It was instituted as a matter of powerset balance.
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"powerset balance" = "what the powerset is capable of." You're being circular and claiming it's a straight line.
To spell it out in explicit terms: If the debuff was instituted as a matter of powerset balance (it wasn't, but we can come back to that later), then it was a matter of balancing what the powerset could do. What the powerset could do at the time the debuff was added was reach extreme heights of defense and resistance, making well-built invuln tankers practically unkillable against anything neither psi nor toxic. If the defenses are reduced (and they were, twice), then the debuff - which was balanced for the former capabilities - is now too powerful.
It's like algebra. If a = the desired balance point, and both the debuff and the powerset's capabilities are at the desired balance point, then a = a. If you change one, then one of those becomes b, or not-a. Naturally, a != b, especially if b is explicitly not-a.
So to sum it up: Your point isn't even wrong.
Anyway, the def debuff replaced the self-immob. The self-immob was added for flavor reasons, per one of the devs way back when. They later said that it was actually for balance, but that's a retcon, as it were.
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I'm not responsible for misinterpretation ;p
Powerset balance means internal powerset balance and balance between powersets, as opposed to the -def being intended to balance Invuln considering pre-ED/nerf levels of invuln uberness, which is the assumption made by many, many posts in this thread.
If you want to talk equations
a = b
and ED+Global Defense nerfs gets
(a/2) = (b/2)
or
invuln = dark armor
invuln-ED/Nerf = dark armor-ED/Nerf
But what people are SAYING is
invuln-DEF = Dark Armor
invuln-DEF-ED/Nerf != Dark Armor-ED/Nerf
Yes there are problems with powerset balance. Noone has to demonstrate this with Unyielding except through their pieholes.
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If it's impossible to finish a fight with a reasonable team, QA should notice.
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But the fights were never impossible to finish with a reasonable team. Just very difficult. (Afore-mentioned damage insp huffing included) And it's not their job to make balance calls. The overriding priority of QA is making sure the frigging thing works. Cryptic takes care of balance and stuff, Thats why they have an internal test server.
Sheesh, you really don't get it.
Yes, all defensive powersets suffered equally. But halving the power of Invul effectively doubled the impact of the debuff, that really that hard to understand?
Or in your language:
A-5 = B
and after ED:
(A/2)-5 != (B/2)
And yes, those buffed AVs were basically impossible to take down, especially with the intended forces, i've tried several before we gave up and waited for the unevitable patch. Best example is Babbage, who took like 20 hero's wailing on him without problems, it required the presence of my D3 and another RadDef to turn the tide.
Maybe B was too much and maybe now B/2 is too little:
I propose B/2 + 5% def buff (or no 5% def debuff form UY)
also on a pure mathimatical level A/2 - 5 does not equal B/2 if A-5 = B, but i get your point.
Okay, I have no experience with Unyielding and minimal experience with Invulnerability, so perhaps I don't know what I am talking about. But I can't resist butting in.
Stop assigning blame and asking for fixes that will never happen (i.e. the debuff being removed entirely with no alternate drawback). All that really needs to be done is to think of a solution the Devs will actually implement.
The problem here is that post-GDN, the defense debuff is such that it negates the effect of the Resistance buff with Unyielding, correct? Except on Smashing and Lethal damage, because of TI and RPD. . . so why not alter the debuff to only lower Smashing and Lethal defense? That way, Unyielding would best protect against everything except Smash/Lethal (and Psionics), as well as offering Mez protection. Sometimes you would want Unyielding; sometimes you would want Temporary Invulnerability. You might have to choose between them. (I believe this was always the intent. . . I seem to recall they were once not stackable.)
And having said that, I shall stop being a smartaleck and leave you to squabble in peace.
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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.
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Before Invincibility and SOs, tankers do run close enough to the margin that 5% def either way makes a difference.
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