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A comment on datamining. While I can't tell you exactly how and what we look at in datamining, I can say that we don't usually look at 'Defiance' in and of itself. Overall performance matters much more than any single aspect of a character.
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Doesn't that make it terribly difficult to understand what contribution any given power or aspect provides to overall performance?
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I believe what Castle would say if he were able to comment is that blasters prior to the addition of defiance were not, as an archetype on average, meeting some specific performance metric they data mine for, whatever that might be. After adding defiance, they appear to, in their own internal test servers, on the test server, and now on live. At least to the extent that they believe defiance was supposed to change things.
The devs, as a rule, use datamining to look at macroscopic things. They then sprinkle changes to powers, inherents, etc, in an attempt to alter those macroscopic things. As I mentioned previously, I do not believe that is a proper way to balance things: you balance based on mathematical models of the ATs, and you use data mining to inform those models.
And as I said previously: you do not use data mining to determine the performance of powers. Its the worst of all possible ways to do that, and for the most part, the devs don't even try to do it, as Castle indicates.
The Rosetta Stone for dev-balancing thought comes from the I3 scrapper tests the devs performed and posted about. Ignoring a lot of the weirdness in those tests, they demonstrated several critical facts about dev-balancing methodology:
1. They don't have good mathematical models of the scrapper secondaries' performance, and by extension probably everything. Otherwise, those tests would have been redundant.
2. They do not actually datamine to determine specifics of performance. There would be no point to conducting those tests if their datamining was even remotely precise. Its clear that what datamining tells them is less whether the car is on the right road, and whether or not it just crashed through a barn.
3. Lacking mathematical models, there's also no mathematical guidence as to what changes to make if there *is* a perceived problem.
By the way, the I3 scrapper tests had an interesting consequence: they were part of what inspired me to create the scrapper secondary mathematical models I did in I3 and I4: essentially, I conjectured that I could reproduce the results the devs got through playtesting. The I4 models get most of the way there, the I7 ones basically get all the way there, except for modelling CoF and OG. Essentially, with proper mathematical modelling, the devs could have had their I3 test results before launch day, with all that implies.
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[ QUOTE ]
When CoH came out it was City of Blasters and that had to be adjusted. We don't want to see that skewed dynamic again.
[/ QUOTE ]
Historical note: the very first "numbers post" I ever made on the forums was one of my first posts ever: having read the "City of Blasters" discussions that were going on at the time, and not quite seeing that for myself, I conducted census tracking of my server in various zones at various times of day. My conclusion was that blasters at the time made up between 30% and 40% of all logged in characters depending on zone, with the number rising to a peak in the mid 20s, and falling off above 30. My conclusion at the time was that blasters were levelling out of the single digits and teens very fast, which depleted blasters in the low levels slightly, and piled them up in the 20s. But then levelling speed levelled off, and from that point forward they tended towards their true percentage, which was about 30%-35% of all logged in characters. Which is high, in a game with 5 archetypes, but not ridiculously so, given the natural conceptual attraction of playing a blaster when the game was very new.
If I recall correctly, the ones much lower than the expected average were scrappers and (especially) controllers.
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Before you start on Vigilance, if you really wanted to start something, do an analysis of which of the Defender primaries offer the most protection to a team.
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.
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Before you start on Vigilance, if you really wanted to start something, do an analysis of which of the Defender primaries offer the most protection to a team.
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I've thought about it. I'm still working, as time permits, on looking at blaster secondary effects, which is a very complex problem. Also, working on badge #374 and #375 has been taking up a bit of time the last couple weeks.
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I'm going to make a new year's resolution: Anything from before issue #2 (in this case, City of Blasters) is Old and I'm not going to discuss it. We'll see if it lasts. . .
As far as Vigilance, the question in my head is: What do you give a group of people who have nothing in common? It is WONDERFUL for Dark and for Storm, it's decent for lowbie FF,
it's a joke for Kinetics. Damage bonus? Buff bonus? Whatever you pick, there'll be a Defender who gets no use out of it... unless it's "Defiance for the entire team" or something equally unbalanced. (Me, my Defender, and my six dead buddies TOOLED Infernal!)
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3. Lacking mathematical models, there's also no mathematical guidence as to what changes to make if there *is* a perceived problem.
[/ QUOTE ]
While all three points are important, this one has always stood out in my perceptions of this game.
It may seem odd, but my reason for believing CoH was never numerically balanced, since the very earliest times at which I knew any of the numbers for the powers, was rooted in a seemingly innocuous fact.
Everything in CoH is nice, round numbers.
Oh, they're not all round in the sense of being even or even whole numbers. But they're all related to whole numbers and rational numbers. 1/10. 1/2. 1/3. Think about all the things based on these. AT modifiers are all some multiple of 1/10th off of 1.0. Enhancers are all 1/3 or 1/5, or 1/2 or 1/4 of those numbers.
While it is possible to build and design a game whose balance is based on such even multiples and fractions, it has never seemed remotely likely that CoH actually was. The performance discrepancies in things like DR vs Defense vs. Regen scream for less "whole" numbers to crop up somewhere. Real mathematical modeling and its attendant balancing would, in a system as complex as CoH, produce a "fudge factor" that wasn't a nice number like "2"
Those "nice" numbers always struck me as picked out of thin air, tested, tweaked, and then tossed into the wild. And really, the comments about the dev approach to datamining (and Arcana's comments) support that notion.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
<QR>
Arcanaville, thanks for proving what I'd felt had been happening - that Blaster damage is boosted by Defiance, even at high health levels. I've long suspected that since Defiance was implemented, overall Blaster damage levels have increased.
I agree that Defiance should kick in sooner and should also show its own numbers. A big problem with this inherent power is one of perception - since it does nothing flashy (ie no particle effects / "rising words" ie Scourge) and only really starts to be noticeable when the Defiance bar moves and Blasters are close to death, a lot of players feel it is useless. However, if Blasters could noticeably track the extra damage they received from Defiance, it might do something to make this inherent less of a punching bag for the Blaster forums.
Defiance needs to be recognised as a passive inherent power, one the provides some small benefit all the time and maybe a big benefit in times of trouble. Blasters need to be less focused on the high defiance / low health end of the equation if they are ever to see the value that Defiance actually contributes to their characters.
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While it is possible to build and design a game whose balance is based on such even multiples and fractions, it has never seemed remotely likely that CoH actually was. The performance discrepancies in things like DR vs Defense vs. Regen scream for less "whole" numbers to crop up somewhere. Real mathematical modeling and its attendant balancing would, in a system as complex as CoH, produce a "fudge factor" that wasn't a nice number like "2"
[/ QUOTE ]
Its not possible to balance exactly with whole numbers. But because even the definition of "balance exactly" is vague, its possible to get close enough with reasonable numbers.
Ever since the concept of the AT scalers was made generally known, I've tended to make balancing suggestions that take that into account, suggesting numbers that are relatively "simple" when expressing their base values. Its possible to do, and even the devs have tweaked things to have moderately "odd" numbers: the SR toggle defenses have a base intrinsic value of 1.85 (which when multiplied by the scrapper defense AT scaler of 0.075 gives the actual defense value of 0.13875, or 13.875%).
There are other reasons for me thinking that the balancing mathematics, such as they exist, are totally borked. Castle gets an earful at least monthly.
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[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
When CoH came out it was City of Blasters and that had to be adjusted. We don't want to see that skewed dynamic again.
[/ QUOTE ]
Historical note: the very first "numbers post" I ever made on the forums was one of my first posts ever: having read the "City of Blasters" discussions that were going on at the time, and not quite seeing that for myself, I conducted census tracking of my server in various zones at various times of day. My conclusion was that blasters at the time made up between 30% and 40% of all logged in characters depending on zone, with the number rising to a peak in the mid 20s, and falling off above 30. My conclusion at the time was that blasters were levelling out of the single digits and teens very fast, which depleted blasters in the low levels slightly, and piled them up in the 20s. But then levelling speed levelled off, and from that point forward they tended towards their true percentage, which was about 30%-35% of all logged in characters. Which is high, in a game with 5 archetypes, but not ridiculously so, given the natural conceptual attraction of playing a blaster when the game was very new.
If I recall correctly, the ones much lower than the expected average were scrappers and (especially) controllers.
[/ QUOTE ]
I've been wanting to say this for a while now.
CoH was City of Blasters at release not because of Smoke Grenade as so many seem to be saying these days, but because range actually was a defense below level 20, and they got full benefit of their defense at level 1. They also, at the time, put out more DPS and DPE (they had a 20% endurance discount over all other ATs) than any other AT within that level range, which is always popular.
It was City of Blasters at launch because from 1-20 Blasters were the best performing AT all around, and 95% of the players were between level 1 and level 20. The story was completely different once you hit the 30s, but very few people had figured that out yet.
P.S. I'm not disagreeing with you, Arcana, just adding to it.
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Does Defiance do what is advertised in the perception of the gamer? From the discussions I think not. Maybe our perceptions and preconceptions should be handled better by NCSoft.
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On that note I've suggested directly to Castle that defiance damage have its own set of floating numbers, specifically to improve defiance's "image." Which I understand would be difficult, because unlike criticals, which are a separately calculated damage component, defiance is a damage buff, like assault, and doesn't have an easy way for the game engine to tease back out what it was.
But perhaps defiance should be critical or scourge-like anyway: that way it would be easier to represent, and it would be bonus damage that was separate from the damage cap. After all, why should a highly buffed blaster's damage not benefit from defiance if that blaster is at low health and in trouble: isn't he just as much in trouble whether damage buffed or not?
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[ QUOTE ]
Its not possible to balance exactly with whole numbers. But because even the definition of "balance exactly" is vague, its possible to get close enough with reasonable numbers.
Ever since the concept of the AT scalers was made generally known, I've tended to make balancing suggestions that take that into account, suggesting numbers that are relatively "simple" when expressing their base values.
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Agreed, and I often do the same things.
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There are other reasons for me thinking that the balancing mathematics, such as they exist, are totally borked. Castle gets an earful at least monthly.
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Oh, I know very much that you aren't basing your findings off anything so overly simple and coarse. I was just pointing it out as something I had an immediate intuition about almost 3 years ago now.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
Great post arcanaville, it's been a while since i read your stuff, but thanks to the dev digest bringing me across your path again, i find you're as erudite as ever.
I was just gonna comment on another person's conclusion: [ QUOTE ]
[E]ither it's [defiance is] designed for blasters who cannot control their battles and are constantly getting into the red on health or its designed for very, rare situations [biting off more than one can chew].... either way it is lacking. I understand that we are getting a tiny buff no matter where the health lies, but I think it says it all that a poster had to test to find that out and inform the rest of us, because we sure weren't seeing it on our own.
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Another viewpoint is that it's designed for those players that can intentionally put themselves in harm's way and reap the rewards. So contrary to concluding that it requires an inept blaster, it might also require a very skilled player that can manage inspirations, knows how to avoid heals and intimately knows the limits of the archetype. Other ATs also have to subject themselves to a noticeable amount of aggro to receive their benefit (fury and domination), although arguably with a lot less risk.
And on balance, defiance is still probably more useful than the Defender inherent, where you are rewarded only if you don't do your job well. At least blasters can expect to do damage and receive damage. Of course, they can blame the incoming damage on their teammates (notably Tanks), but they are expected to get aggro.
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More than you realize.
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and [ QUOTE ]
you attempt to replace understanding with data mining, you end up flailing around randomly. cf: Regeneration. Its never a good circumstance to be in.
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Arcana, if I am reading between your lines correctly are you saying that much of the game engine is/was designed primarily by trial and error and not by creating/using a mathematical model to represent some particular plan or behavior?
It certainly would explain a lot, especially with all the wacky regen nerfs/changes over the years.
The simplest analogy seems to be that CoX game system is similar to cook trying to develop a cooking recipe verses a chemist using a precise chemical formulas. Throw some salt here, add a spice here, give it some time to cook, see how it tastes, and goes down, refine it some more, play with more of the ingredients....
For the amount of money invested in the game, and relying more on art than science seems very risky to me. Especialy when you have so many cooks in the kitchen......
You may finaly end up with a great dish, but folks may have lost their taste for it if it comes too late....
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Arcana, if I am reading between your lines correctly are you saying that much of the game engine is/was designed primarily by trial and error and not by creating/using a mathematical model to represent some particular plan or behavior?
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I rather think you've read that correctly.
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For the amount of money invested in the game, and relying more on art than science seems very risky to me. Especialy when you have so many cooks in the kitchen......
You may finaly end up with a great dish, but folks may have lost their taste for it if it comes too late....
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If the above discussion about the game's balance and design is all true, what it comes down to is that the game's core vision and playability saved it. I hated (and basically still hate) all other mainstream MMOs. CoH had no PvP, and it was basically a beautiful, 3-dimensional version of Diablo with comic-book inspired events, characters and environments.
That combination of elements, plus some other seemingly happy accidents (the combination of the character creator and the "Description" box) created a game with enough enjoyable gameplay, character investment, and unique MMO feel that it attracted and kept a meaningful subscriber base.
I feel rather sure that if CoH had not been as pretty, if the characters hadn't been as customizable, and the combat had not had as much FPS feel as it does, the balance issues (and the associated corrections) would have likey been harder on subscriptions. Indeed, the balance issues might have been enough to damage subscriptions before the nerfs even hit if they game hadn't had a strong appeal outside its balance mechanics.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
Speaking as someone who played EQ, EQII, WoW, and (don't hit me) SWG...
...there's nothing particularly surprising about any of this, honestly. In none of those games is balance even remotely refined. In SWG, at least in the first nine months, it see-sawed radically, with Creature Handlers, then Bounty Hunters, then Combat Medics, then any Imperials, and then Jedi (...I didn't stick around long enough for that fiasco, but I heard it, like the voices of millions of beings being snuffed out at once...) being "king of the hill" as the developers tweaked and tweaked and tweaked, and then finally hit the reset button on the whole damn thing and started over. I understand WoW is going through a similar process currently, though with fewer wild vacillations.
Even in EQ, roles shifted as new abilities and gear were released with new expansions. On my server, Firiona Vie the "roleplay server", we were only allowed one character (unlike the normal eight); in my time playing the game as a Druid, I found at one moment I was sought after for travel powers, and then later on, not at all. Like Wizards, I could solo easily, even engaging in the much-maligned "quad-kiting" and later, the much, much more dangerous "charm-kiting" (which Wizards couldn't do, but Enchanters could). On paper, Druids weren't "the best" at anything--third-tier direct damage, second-tier healing, third-tier (at best) buffing. However, the unique combination of abilities--none of which were first-tier--allowed them to solo things in the highest ranges that others would get instantly slaughtered by. I bring this up because the math there didn't tell the entire story.
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I have a thought about that, something related to vigilence. I can't quite express it fully yet, but when the thought finally settles I'll post it here.
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I would really look forward to an analysis of this sort for Vigilance.
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Vigilence is a little trickier to analyze because of its group dynamic. But what I was thinking about was more of a perspective on defiance and vigilence rather than their actual strength (although that is part of it).
One interesting complaint that is shared to a degree between both inherents is that in effect, they reward bad play. You can only get the damage boost from defiance if you get punched in the face a lot, you can only get a lot of it if you put yourself at significant risk of death (intentionally or not). The same is somewhat true for vigilence: you can only get a boost from it if, in effect, you let your team get beat up.
Both seem to penalize good play. A blaster that protects himself well cannot get much of a boost from defiance. A defender that protects her team well cannot get much of a boost from vigilence.
But I was thinking about how the SR passive resistances work in relation to this. A lot of people don't fully appreciate that those resistances are a lot stronger than they appear, specifically because they (often, not always) get stronger as they are needed most: that acts to skew their net effect higher, because they only apply power where necessary, and not anywhere else.
In a sense, defiance and vigilence can act in a manner similar to those resistances: as "bumpers" that tend to kick players back into normal realms of play. A blaster might *attempt* to play without getting damaged a lot, but defiance acts as a partial safety net for when they fail: and in degrees, the more they fail, the stronger it acts to kick them back, by increasing their kill speed and presumably reducing their incoming damage. Vigilence has a similar negative feedback effect: if you don't protect your team well enough that they start to take damage, your endurance goes up to give you more options to be profligate with your powers to keep them alive.
In effect, both defiance and vigilence are not buffs in the conventional sense, they are really gap reducers for the AT. They reduce the difference between perfect play and imperfect play: they reduce the penalty of errors.
Seen that way, both inherents are actually casual player tools of a sort. Training wheels for the AT, to reduce their difficulty: you can get the same benefit with less skill, and you cannot easily get lots more benefit with more skill.
This doesn't mean skilled players can't figure out ways to leverage both, but their overall intent might not be to boost those ATs, but rather to reduce the *spread* in their performance. And that *is* something that would show up in the datamining the devs probably do.
This says two things to me if true:
1. Defiance isn't actually comparable to something like criticals, and it never was. Criticals are a set-wide boost to scrappers: they make all scrappers better. Defiance and Vigilence aren't: they are learning-curve softeners. They reduce the gap between the best and worst blasters and defenders.
2. This reopens the question of whether or not blasters really do enough damage, because defiance isn't specifically a damage-boosting tool. That's secondary to its actual purpose. An interesting question would be to find out if the introduction of defiance, independent of other factors, improved the net average performance of all blasters, or if it primarily reduced the spread of performance around a similar average, or if the top performance stayed basically the same, the bottom moved up, and the average therefore moved up - but only by moving the worse performers upward, not because the blaster AT itself moved upward in performance overall.
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This is basically what I've always understood about these Inherants. I've not been able to communicate that accurately though, so I thank you for being able to put my thoughts into words in the way that I couldn't.
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I feel rather sure that if CoH had not been as pretty, if the characters hadn't been as customizable, and the combat had not had as much FPS feel as it does, the balance issues (and the associated corrections) would have likey been harder on subscriptions. Indeed, the balance issues might have been enough to damage subscriptions before the nerfs even hit if they game hadn't had a strong appeal outside its balance mechanics.
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I agree totally. I really like the game for those reasons, but it bodes ill for the endgame and at least explains to me why PvP is not as popular and while it will not be popular, since "balance" is so much more important in that arena.
In PvE the balance is not as important because you can still succeed at the game. This is obviously true now. You can still be technically a poor player, but still level, and get the feeling of a hero defeating bad guys. There is a lot of tolerance and wiggle room built into the PvE game....I don't need MoG and Revive to succeed with my Regen scrapper.
But in PvP, if your character is not well balanced, that will translate very quickly into feelings of helplessness, inequity, and inconsequentialness. In a game that strives to make you feel like a hero, and then be ineffective and unable to save or defeat villians because of character power choices is a significant problem and will utimately destroy the game IMHO.
You will only be left with the the roleplayers who really don't care about the game mechanics, the players that get their jollies from the unbalanced ATs that are powerful, or focus on new subscriptions and content. But even that ends unless you start introducing different or more than one way to succeed in your missions.
Kill X is still Kill X and for some of us we have been doing kill x missions since we were killing bats and rats in Qeynos Hills and only the scenery has changed. After a while it will get old and tired.
For these reasons we can only hope that they are listening to Arcana, because it seems like their method will not work for the endgame. Player vs player is opened ended content that will always be more challenging and rewarding than PvE if done well, and that system is not as tolerant to mistakes and balance issues. You must have a good system for it to succeed.
While this has been a fantastic set of postings, it has really got me worried for the future of CoX and endgame design because of the way Cryptic seems to be doing buisness in planning and managing the game mechanics....
I work in the safety field, and it seems like Cryptic is behaving like my nemesis. Folks want to wait to see if anyone dies before they consider it a problem, and then we will fix it. Well that kinda sucks for the person that dies, and what I try to preach, and what I think Arcana is trying to as well, is lets not wait to see if anyone is going to die, we can look at the system and model it such away as to be able to predict who can get hurt and fix it before that happens. When some dies it is already too late....Reactionary, wait-and-see management is lethal and utimately self-defeating....
I don't want to take away for all the nice things the developers have done in making an enjoyable MMO, they have done a lot of good things. But these revelations maybe the Achille's heel that will bring CoX down to minimal subscriptions in the not too distant future.
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Yet another post by Arcanaville showing off the big brain and ruining the bell curve. 
Stop hoggin' the smarts!! 
Thanks for the info 
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I'm of the opinion that defiance damage should be a separate floating number, like criticals. That way, blasters can actually see the defiance boost in a way more psychologically satisfying (and perhaps a bit more obviously). This was done recently for defense: the various "dodged" and "deflected" messages which show that defense is actually "working" were added purely to give a psychological boost to the visibility of defense. Defiance damage should probably get similar treatment.
*Especially* since defiance is one part numerical buff, and three parts psychological buff, its important to make sure its highly visible to get the psychological boost its intended to provide.
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nice number crunching.
personaly i'm of the opinion that more AT's need to get big words that appear over targets heads when their inherent does something. Like haveing Defied float over the targets head when a blaster hits them with less than 40% health or something to that nature.
In my playing of blasters, i have 3, i've noticed that in the high level game (30+) defiance seems more trivial and not used so much since i seem to have a higher average health. And in most cases targets die faster than they can damage me. while at the lower levels fights can be drawn out and more dmg taken. even to a point close to death where i manage to hit that last minnion with defiance at 99% and defeat him with one shot.
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One thing. The devs seem to also balance on "feel" which can invariably trump all math from time to time.
Regarding the mechanics of Defiance - thank you so much for your testing and discussion.
[ QUOTE ]
Quick Reply:
Great thread!
A comment on datamining. While I can't tell you exactly how and what we look at in datamining, I can say that we don't usually look at 'Defiance' in and of itself. Overall performance matters much more than any single aspect of a character.
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cool, can you explain the overall performance of AR blasters which suffer from a terrible draw root each and every single time they go from using secondary/pool powers to primary? It seems a little bit unfair seeing as no other weapon based sets have this root with the exception of archery when flying.
A little off topic perhaps but when "datamining" shows up I really would like to see how perceived underperformers like AR (and the draw root is a joke) really measure up in "overall perfomance" against the rest. Is it a case of /em blasters do ok so all blasters are fine in the way that the entire controller AT was overperforming due to the apparant existance of fire/kins.
I always thought Defiance was when, against all logic, you are still asking them to repeal ED...
----------------------------
You can't please everyone, so lets concentrate on me.
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Arcana, if I am reading between your lines correctly are you saying that much of the game engine is/was designed primarily by trial and error and not by creating/using a mathematical model to represent some particular plan or behavior?
[/ QUOTE ]
This is a game where, (I hear- wasn't there), Tanks started out able to reach 100% damage resistance and they didn't realize it would be a problem.
Math came to this game somewhat late.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
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Two things:
1. City of Blasters was not only highly exaggerated, it also was confined to one BUGGED powerset. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Is one intern misplacing one decimal point enough justification to constantly deny a hurting archetype attention it desperately needs?
2. Nice work, Arcana. It must have taken quite a bit of work, putting that together. Being mathematically disinclined, I don't know the exact process, but I know you must have put effort into your analysis and it's appreciated.
That said, Defiance, while working as intended, is still not thematically appropriate for Blasters, nor is it smart to attempt to use it. Fact is, if this bonus had been enough, someone would have noticed it long ago. As it stands, Defiance is one of the worst inherents in the game, bonus from 100% health or not.