should team buffs have diminishing returns?
By
ageone,
Posted on: 2007-04-10 09:49 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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And they still aren't necessary, they're just much more usefu thanl in the past. -Regen debuffs are currently required for AV battles in many cases, but thats a result of boring, unimaginative AV design that seems to be summed up by Challenge=Giant Sack of HP.
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Agreed. And the change on test helps that a lot. Interestingly enough a buff to most debuffers. Making buffs/debuffs fair would entail a lot of buffing (FF and Sonic could be MUCH better), but it would nerf one particular playstyle.
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I'm speaking for my own suggestion, and not any of the many others that have been proposed in the past or in this thread: in mine, this is logically and mathematically impossible. Not just improbable: literally impossible, because of its construction. Every buffing set would have the same effect on something that wasn't pre-buffed, as it would have on something that was already buffed. There is no player-centric or team-centric downside to such a behavior that can possibly exist, unless you believe the entire purpose to your existence is to overstack with a twin.
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I think your argument is based on a fallacy, that an equivalent percentage of buffing brings the same effect to the team no matter what the numbers. While in your example from a previous post does indicate the percentage effectiveness is the same, the practical effectiveness is not.
It is like saying that I have 2 coupons. The first gives me 50% off. So, I have an item that is $100. So, I save $50. Now, I get a second coupon. It gives me 50% off of the reduced price. I save $25 in this case. So, the second coupon, while it saves me some money, the effectiveness of the coupon is significantly less, even though both coupons save me 50%. There is a point when the effectiveness of the 50% becomes marginal.
It is quite ridiculous to argue that the 6th or 7th buffer is as effective when the intent of the proposed change is to make that 6th or 7th buffer less effective.
In fact, it is a system of diminishing returns. The percentage is just a numbers shell game to make it appear more palatable than it is. Remember, 50% of $1000 is a lot, 50% of $1 is nothing.
And for the record, I think there should be diminishing returns, I just don't like the attempt to sell the idea under false or faulty pretenses.
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I'm partially making a point to the OP I replied to but I also want to know what it is about your suggestion that encourages teaming?
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Buffs would be much more difficult to stack to the ceilings: you couldn't have the first buffer do something, the second one drive you to the rails, and all others be worthless. In a multiplicative stacking environment, each buffer would have the same effect as the first, no more, no less (until *eventually* you reached the absolute caps for certain attributes).
Take force fields. *One* FF defender with maneuvers can make all others redundant, because they can stack bubbles + dispersion + maneuvers and hit the tohit floor. Two can do so without the need to even stay under the dispersion bubble at all. With multiplicative stacking, each FF defender would have the same effect as the previous one, and three FF defenders could still be made useful. Two would have a lesser effect than before, but neither one is being nerfed: each is having the same incremental effect. Currently, the second one is much stronger than the first one, because of stacking, and there's no reason he needs to be.
This means its much more difficult for one buffer to make another one redundant, but the powers themselves aren't being made individually weaker: no FF defender ends up weaker than they are now.
Actually, they could be made stronger: FF defenders can directly benefit from multiplicative stacking even when they are the only buffer around, because right now, the small bubbles and the dispersion bubble are balanced around the fact that they can stack together. If they made either stronger than they are now, they could combine to reach elude levels of defense. As it is, they can already do so with just one power pool power addition (maneuvers).
But for team mates within the small bubbles, and operating outside the dispersion bubble, that means the small bubbles are weaker than they could be. And for the FF defender, the dispersion bubble (their only personal defense bubble outside PFF) is also weaker than it could be, because of the danger of (linear) stacking.
With multiplicative stacking, the small bubbles could be increased, the dispersion bubble could be increased, and the stacked total would still have the same effective strength as they do now. Players (like scrappers) that operate outside the dispersion bubble benefit, the FF defender benefits, and other FF defenders benefit because they are still useful additions to teams that already have an FF defender. Nobody loses.
And there is an additional winner: the devs balance a lot of content around the presumption that some buffs can just be theoretically stacked sky-high. Quartz eminators have +100% tohit buff, (presumably) to cut through stacked bubbles. Lord Recluse (in the STF) has a tower that seems to buff him by at least +50% if not +100% tohit also, again to cut through highly stacked defenses. Hamidon is just plain untyped, to make absolutely sure he can cut through all conceivable defenses. With a more rational stacking mechanism for defense (and resistance which are the two main buffs that have the largest stacking problems), PvE content can be softened to not have to obliterate such defenses. Which means players that don't have such ridiculous levels of defense don't have to be massacred just to get at the other players that do.
There are really no losers in such a stacking scheme. Everyone's powers work the way you expect, which is to say they work the same way, regardless of the presence of other powers. "Stacking" in the sense a lot of people currently mean stacking, would go away, replaced by powers that simply always worked in a simple way. I could give hover 10% defense, and tell someone "if you take hover, you'll take 20% less hits." And if they say "what if I have other defenses?" my answer would be "doesn't matter: whatever you look like now, if you take hover, you'll get hit 20% less often than you do now, period."
Which makes describing powers, in-game and in printed documentation, much easier. Yet another win.
I wouldn't say multiplicative stacking would "encourage teaming." What I would say is that it takes away a lot of penalties to certain teaming combinations. And it has a ton of other benefits besides. And it hurts basically no one. And it makes the powers easier to describe. Its just better.
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There are no arguments here being put forth by anyone opposed to making buffs fair. There are just a lot of people who play buff/debuff sets who don't think what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
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Whereas you, of course, deeply care about what's "fair", and aren't out to punish buff/debuff sets becuase you think "what's good for the goose is good for the gander".
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Not at all. I'm out to see just what Castle said would happen. Weave wouldn't have to be 5% defense, SR could finally get a fair amount of mitigation and defenders could use their buffs on themselves.
But hey, easier to question my motives than put forth an argument.
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Whereas, of course, "There are just a lot of people who play buff/debuff sets who don't think what's good for the goose is good for the gander," isn't questioning people's motives in lieu of putting forth an argument.
But, hey, okay, let's compare Geese and Ganders.
It used to be that one "Goose" could singlehandedly steamroll an 8-man invincible mission, so the devs nerfed them. Nowadays a team of "Ganders" can, as a group, steamroll an 8-man invincible mission. That's not the same thing, because it takes a team to do it.
It used to be that one "Goose" could singlehandedly solo an AV (granted, AVs were a little wimpier back then), so the devs nerfed them. Nowadays a team of "Ganders" can, as a group, take out an AV. Again, not the same thing.
Now, there are specific sets (and mainly specific combinations thereof), that ARE capable of performing amazing feats singlehandedly, and those may need to be looked at. But the notion that Trick Arrow deserves a nerf because Instant Healing isn't a toggle anymore is laughably petty.
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I think your argument is based on a fallacy, that an equivalent percentage of buffing brings the same effect to the team no matter what the numbers. While in your example from a previous post does indicate the percentage effectiveness is the same, the practical effectiveness is not.
It is like saying that I have 2 coupons. The first gives me 50% off. So, I have an item that is $100. So, I save $50. Now, I get a second coupon. It gives me 50% off of the reduced price. I save $25 in this case. So, the second coupon, while it saves me some money, the effectiveness of the coupon is significantly less, even though both coupons save me 50%. There is a point when the effectiveness of the 50% becomes marginal.
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There is never a point where the effectiveness of the 50% becomes marginal, at least in the direct sense. It only looks that way on paper. It always means the same thing: you can take on twice as many things after you get the buff than before. The fact that the numbers are getting smaller is meaningless, because concurrent with that the amount you *need* to get to stay alive in the face of higher levels of damage is also getting smaller.
Put it this way: suppose you get paid $1000 per month. If I cut the intervals between paychecks in half, you now get a paycheck every 0.5 months, and you now make twice as much money ($24k/year). If I cut the interval in half again, you now get paid every 0.25 months, and make twice as much money again ($48k/year). If I cut the interval in half again, you now get paid every 0.125 months, and make twice as much money again ($96/year).
Now: do you consider this a diminishing return (1, 0.5, 0.25, 0.125...) or an accelerating return (12,24,48,96)? I'm sure there are people who will tell you that it all depends on your perspective, and mathematically both perspectives are equally valid, but would you agree in this case? Would you say that this was a diminishing return situation, and at a certain point it just doesn't matter anymore, and you wouldn't care either way? Heck, what's 0.0625 months: its only 1.9 days. How could shaving 1.9 days off of a pay period mean anything really, right?
The problem in your example above is that you're assuming you only ever have to buy one thing with that coupon. If so, yes, eventually the savings becomes marginal. That's like saying if you're going to fight exactly one minion, and then log out, at some point more defense becomes marginal. That's true: eventually the damage being taken is so small, that reducing it further is not especially helpful or noticable.
But that's not the case. Being able to take more damage means you can theoretically fight more things, and potentially faster without dying. In effect, instead of buying one thing with that coupon, and saving less and less and less, you're actually allowed to buy as many as you want, and those coupons are allowing you to buy more: you might have been able to buy just 2 with the money in your wallet, but after the first coupon you can buy 4, and after the second coupon, you can buy 8, and after the third coupon, you can buy 16. At no time does the next coupon become irrelevant: each time, you are doubling the amount of things you can buy.
Of course, at *some* point your defense can outpace your offensive ability to actually defeat things at a reasonable pace. But that is a separate issue of internal team balance, not a direct issue of effects stacking.
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Now, there are specific sets (and mainly specific combinations thereof), that ARE capable of performing amazing feats singlehandedly, and those may need to be looked at. But the notion that Trick Arrow deserves a nerf because Instant Healing isn't a toggle anymore is laughably petty.
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Its worth noting that the mechanical change I've been after since 2004, and the change Castle is basically implying with his example, does not as a consequence of its design involve nerfing anyone. It actually involves *buffing* non-stacked performance in the general case, leaving internally stacked performance identical to the current case, and only affecting multiply stacked buffs in a manner that only returns buffs that can stack exponentially to normal incremental stacking levels.
It doesn't place a hard cap on buffs. It doesn't weaken any particular power specifically. It opens the door to buffing powers specifically (in fact, it practically *mandates* buffing certain powers explicitly). All it does is alter the stacking equations for like buffs stacked on top of like buffs, for the exponential stacking buffs (really, inverse hyperbolic ones, but exponential is a more familiar term).
Trick arrow is specifically one of the sets that stands to benefit from multiplicative stacking. It would allow for a potentially stronger flash arrow for one thing.
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Arcana's right; Defender FF is absurd. For a set ones of people play, it casts a disproportionately massive shadow over all of CoH.
And this is coming from someone whose first posts were along the lines of, "OK ... so my bubbler is hitting her 20s. I don't get what I'm supposed to do with FF's next three powers." 2.5 years later, my bubbler's stuck at 37. Largely because the performance delta between having 22 defense and 45 is too large.
And, of course, EvilGeko's a troll.
I'm just sayin' 
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Arcana's right; Defender FF is absurd. For a set ones of people play, it casts a disproportionately massive shadow over all of CoH.
And this is coming from someone whose first posts were along the lines of, "OK ... so my bubbler is hitting her 20s. I don't get what I'm supposed to do with FF's next three powers." 2.5 years later, my bubbler's stuck at 37. Largely because the performance delta between having 22 defense and 45 is too large.
And, of course, EvilGeko's a troll.
I'm just sayin'
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You're a doodie head. 
But my FF controller is one of the main reasons I'm for this. Multiplicative stacking could do NOTHING but help the vast majority of buff/debuffers.
And I'm not singling out buff/debuff ALLY sets. I think the same thing should happen to Scrappers/Tankers/Brute and Stalker defense sets. In this way you could encourage more diversity among builds.
For example. When the game launched some Invul players used to take only the passives because they were good. But since buffs are additive, stacking them with TI and Unyielding was overpowered. But if you had multiplicative stacking, passives could be good, still less than toggles, but reasonable and people could explore different ways of getting the character they want.
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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And I'm not singling out buff/debuff ALLY sets. I think the same thing should happen to Scrappers/Tankers/Brute and Stalker defense sets. In this way you could encourage more diversity among builds.
For example. When the game launched some Invul players used to take only the passives because they were good. But since buffs are additive, stacking them with TI and Unyielding was overpowered. But if you had multiplicative stacking, passives could be good, still less than toggles, but reasonable and people could explore different ways of getting the character they want.
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My original motivation for the suggestion in the first place.
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team buffs have a mechanics problem. Teams vary in size from 1-8 so a buff that applies to everyone on the team is multiplied in effectiveness from 1x to 8x. Either a buff is useless for small teams or godmode for large teams - or both.
What if team buffs had diminishing returns? Say 150% effectiveness for teams of 1-2, 125% for 3-4, 100% for 5-6, and 75% for 7-8 (numbers given are just an idea, the real numbers would need to be better balanced and more complex like (Y-1) X (12.5% + R/2.3).
That way buffs would be more useful on smaller teams and less powerful on bigger teams than they are now. A team buff should still give a bigger total boost on a large team but not 4x on an 8 person team what it does on a 2 person team.
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Yes, they should. In fact, adding diminishing returns to buffs and debuffs of all sorts would allow us to alter many, many problematic powers. In all likelyhood, though, it will not happen. The change would simply be too fundmental and require a great deal of work on our part.
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Lord help us, they'd do it if they could! 
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Sure! Then Weave could give 15% Defense, and Combat Jumping could give 25% Defense (or whatever) and combined, they'd give 30% instead of 40%. When the local FF Defender buffed the character, instead of the normal 25% for the FF, it'd be 5% for 35% defense.*
Basically, additional buffs would always be helpful, but the base level abilities could be made better and more useful across the board.
* Disclaimer: All numbers used illustratively and do not indicate any relation to what said values or formulae would actually be if we were ever to implement a system such as this, which I doubt.
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The numbers don't matter*, I'm convinced you should go do this now.
Heck, I'll send you booze.
* Okay, they do in as much as everything should be effective.
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But my FF controller is one of the main reasons I'm for this. Multiplicative stacking could do NOTHING but help the vast majority of buff/debuffers.
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But, on the other hand, the best fun I've had in ages involves the Pinball Wizards and enough recharge to have Howl as my attack chain.
You can, I'm sure, do the math on why this is really, REALLY fun
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Basically, additional buffs would always be helpful, but the base level abilities could be made better and more useful across the board.
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I wish you could do this. I wish it so much. I hope, for your sake and the sake of its players, that you're doing it for MUO. Sadly, I'd rather not play in the Marvel Universe, and I'd rather not leave this game.
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I'll bet you money that they won't make the same mistakes with MUO that they did here.
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Bet you they will, bub.
*SNIKT*
Dang. Some of you are wicked paranoid. This is especially interesting considering Castle basically said that this would be a great idea, but they just don't have the resources to implement it.
Equality, or at least some semblance of it would be nice, but arguing for the status quo is always fun, too, I guess.
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Defenders and controllers can't solo missions as well as scrappers and blasters (at least in the early game).
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Tell that to my rad/sonic def. Even in the early game I am running on invincible.
Keep in mind that it's not just +res and +def. Heals would have to be treated in the same fashion, for this to be fair. Heals would always heal x% of the damage you've taken, otherwise you will have a problem.
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Dang. Some of you are wicked paranoid. This is especially interesting considering Castle basically said that this would be a great idea, but they just don't have the resources to implement it.
Equality, or at least some semblance of it would be nice, but arguing for the status quo is always fun, too, I guess.
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Any change must be reviled and feared, even if it doesn't make all that much difference, or only appears to make you less powerful while in fact granting you the power cosmic.
I'm serious about the booze, Castle.
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Keep in mind that it's not just +res and +def. Heals would have to be treated in the same fashion, for this to be fair. Heals would always heal x% of the damage you've taken, otherwise you will have a problem.
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No one has said this, and it's one of the reasons I don't like the idea.
Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
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Keep in mind that it's not just +res and +def. Heals would have to be treated in the same fashion, for this to be fair. Heals would always heal x% of the damage you've taken, otherwise you will have a problem.
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That's not exactly how it would play out. To have the server do that would be scary hard.
Healing would have to be brought in line though, that's true. I'm not exactly sure how that would work out. It might require heals be stronger, but I wouldn't want that because then we really would be like all MMOs and I don't think healing should actually have primacy.
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Keep in mind that it's not just +res and +def. Heals would have to be treated in the same fashion, for this to be fair. Heals would always heal x% of the damage you've taken, otherwise you will have a problem.
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No, to be fair a heal would have to heal the same amount, regardless of how many other heals had landed prior. Luckily, it does so now. There is no problem.
The issue of fairness and balance comes from attempting to normalize the incremental benefits of a particular buff, relative to any pre-existing conditions. This is for the most part already true with heals. Its not true for things like defense and resistance buffs.
Again: under the right circumstances (meaning, for different numbers the numerical change will be different, but this behavior does not rely on any special circumstances in general) an FF defender that can double the survivability of a group (they take half the damage, or they can face off against twice as many foes simultaneously), when they join another FF defender that can also double the survivability of a group, doesn't end up with a group with four times the survivability. Its often ten times the survivability. That creates all sorts of problems when it comes to balancing the game, because you have to balance powers for what you want them to do individually, and what they can do when they stack up, and if the powers can run away like that, you have to constrain them. That's why combat jump is 1.875% defense. The devs don't really think blasters deserve only 1.875% defense: they are worried about what SR scrappers, Ice tankers, and FF defenders will be able to do with 1.875% defense, which is potentially a lot.
When a defender with heals joins a team and can double their survivability, or double the number of things they can take on, and they join another defender with heals that can do the same thing, you generally *do* end up with a team that can take on about four times the stuff [Correction: actually its generally three times the stuff: healing doesn't even scale proportionately like a proposed multiplicative stacking system would do - its even *lower* than that, much less what happens now]. Healing and regeneration do not scale in the same way as defense and resistance do, because of the way defense and resistance are implemented in the game. Heals and regeneration don't suddenly run into a mathematical cap, where you become indestructible. If it wasn't for the archetype caps, defense and resistance could do that: 50% defense and 100% resistance would both be perfect indestructibility. There's no level of regeneration that does that: it would take an effectively unlimited amount of regeneration to get the same approximate behavior.
Its this race to zero that defense and resistance do, and regen does not, that makes them fundamentally different mechanically. And that's why the devs have no problem giving players a power pool that gives +40% regen, but anything more than about +5% defense in the pools is too scary to contemplate (and most are below 3%). That 40% regen doesn't somehow amplify itself and become massive when "stacked" on top of regeneration scrappers: they actually hardly notice. But stack 5% defense on top of an SR scrapper with 30% defense, and they notice.
There is no reason to force regeneration to work in the manner you describe, to address the issue at hand with regard to stacking, because regeneration doesn't have the issue in question. One has nothing to do with the other.
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Keep in mind that it's not just +res and +def. Heals would have to be treated in the same fashion, for this to be fair. Heals would always heal x% of the damage you've taken, otherwise you will have a problem.
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That's not exactly how it would play out. Healing would have to be brought in line though that's true. But then, wouldn't the anti-healor forces love that?
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I question whether Heals would be brought in line. Even if they were, would the playerbase understand what that meant? I think one of the main consequences of a change like this is everyone would stock up on self-buff Power Pools and eschew any Defender but a Heal0r.
The more I look at Arcanville's arguments, the more I am convinced that it is a good idea, but I fear what the players would do with this kind of system.
Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
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Keep in mind that it's not just +res and +def. Heals would have to be treated in the same fashion, for this to be fair. Heals would always heal x% of the damage you've taken, otherwise you will have a problem.
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That's not exactly how it would play out. Healing would have to be brought in line though that's true. But then, wouldn't the anti-healor forces love that?
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I question whether Heals would be brought in line. Even if they were, would the playerbase understand what that meant? I think one of the main consequences of a change like this is everyone would stock up on self-buff Power Pools and eschew any Defender but a Heal0r.
The more I look at Arcanville's arguments, the more I am convinced that it is a good idea, but I fear what the players would do with this kind of system.
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I said brought in line because depending on how the numbers worked out, heals could be too powerful or not powerful enough. Given the general difficulty level, I would guess heals would be pretty much OK and only need to be tweaked.
But healing is a strange form of mitigation. As a reactive, it has a lot of liabilities compared to resistance/defense. But it can make you immortal if you have enough of it.
So really, I don't know how healing would have to work with this system.
Ah well. I'm happy to know that the devs understand what we've been saying and would do it if it was possible. It validates my opinion that Castle really knows what he's doing.
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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Ah well. I'm happy to know that the devs understand what we've been saying and would do it if it was possible. It validates my opinion that Castle really knows what he's doing.
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What I really hope is the MUO guys figured this all out before implementing their engine.
You guys know who you are: you *really* do not want me finding these same problems in the MUO engine. You really, really don't.
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Just three things:
I'm saying booze.
Arcanaville wins.
Punchy's healing argument doesn't follow. Heals scale in a linear fashion no matter what. Yes, if you combine healing with the ability to cap resistance and/or defense, you make it that much more powerful - that's an argument for scaling resistance and defense buffs. If you scale those, healing will continue to work fine. You may need to alter the numbers themselves, but healing can remain linear.
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You're overlooking something you (and everyone, really) already know. Heals and regen have an immortality line. If players were unable to regen in combat, unless you were achieving 100% resistance or 50% defense, you'd eventually die, no matter what sort of damage you were facing. Not so with regen/heals. (Call it the low-downtime factor.)
In the suggested fix, res and def are made almost equivalent (barring specific weaknesses, like psi/effects for grantable res and +tohit for def). Healing/regen isn't. Sometimes it's worse, sometimes it's better.
If you don't want to cause problems you should make all types of mitigation equal, barring their specific weaknesses. Especially when you have sets that specialize in each of the different mitigation-types.
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There are no arguments here being put forth by anyone opposed to making buffs fair. There are just a lot of people who play buff/debuff sets who don't think what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
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Whereas you, of course, deeply care about what's "fair", and aren't out to punish buff/debuff sets becuase you think "what's good for the goose is good for the gander".
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Not at all. I'm out to see just what Castle said would happen. Weave wouldn't have to be 5% defense, SR could finally get a fair amount of mitigation and defenders could use their buffs on themselves.
But hey, easier to question my motives than put forth an argument.
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.