There is consistency in comics (though not always). Superman is invulnerable to bullets. It doesn't matter who is shooting the gun, bullets don't ever faze him. The same is true of many other characters and abilities.
What you say is true, though. If players could do the same damage as villains, it could trivialize things. The question to ask isn't how much more damage and health do we give the bad guys, it's WHY does this trivialize things? Once that question can be answered, then a solution can be found that doesn't trivialize US.
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There is consistency in comics (though not always). Superman is invulnerable to bullets. It doesn't matter who is shooting the gun, bullets don't ever faze him. The same is true of many other characters and abilities.
What you say is true, though. If players could do the same damage as villains, it could trivialize things. The question to ask isn't how much more damage and health do we give the bad guys, it's WHY does this trivialize things? Once that question can be answered, then a solution can be found that doesn't trivialize US.
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Unless he's weakened by kryptonite, or a red sun, or they're magic bullets. Sometimes in any of those cases, they'll hurt him but not break skin. Other times, they're nearly lethal. The only consistency in comic books is that the writers will destroy all consistency over time.
The answer to the previous question could be answered in one way. AI. Simply put, the NPC AI is amazingly simplistic in this game. Not to say that programming it is simple, but rather it can only take a few different actions based on the vast number of variables it has to deal with. If there was a way to program the AI to adjust to every player/team's performance so as not to overwhelm the more casuals, that'd be great. However, programming the AI to that amount of depth is a task I wouldn't wish on anyone.
"the reason there are so many sarcastic pvpers is we already had a better version of pvp taken away from us to appease bad players. Back then we chuckled at how bad players came here and whined. If we knew that was the actual voice devs would listen to instead of informed, educated players we probably would have been bigger dicks back then." -ConFlict
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Tankers can lift a patio stone. I can lift a patio stone (though I'll admit if I were to throw it, it sure wouldn't go very far).
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This is a limitation of the game engine, not your character. We never see anyone drive a car in-game either, that doesn't mean they can't do it.
MMORPGS have their roots in pen-and-paper RPGs, where everything happened in our own imagination. Today we have these cool games that create a very good simulation of our characters and their abilities, but it's still far from perfect. We still need to use some imagination to fill in the gaps.
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Your characters don't hit as hard as ANYONE else. PCs are third stringers, at best.
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Damage numbers are just a game mechanic, they don't reflect concept or power levels.
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There is consistency in comics (though not always).
[/ QUOTE ]I'm going to leave this quote right here where you can look at it.
Heh, I'm glad someone got it...
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Damage numbers are just a game mechanic, they don't reflect concept or power levels.
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Ah but they do. They are our feedback as players as to the power level trying to be conveyed.
That is why "weaker" attacks generally deal less damage and more powerful ones deal higher damage.
That is why more powerful enemies deal higher damage then grunts.
Damage is also how enemies are defeated. Ability to defeat enemies and the effort and time it takes you greatly influence how powerful a character is perceived. How am I to feel powerful about a Tanker who takes much more time to defeat a Boss or EB than a Scrapper or Brute who take less time, when all three ATs can stand up to said Boss's/EB's attacks?
Damage may not precisely equal power level in this game, but the two are far from strangers.
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Damage is also how enemies are defeated. Ability to defeat enemies and the effort and time it takes you greatly influence how powerful a character is perceived.
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Damage dealing greatly influences your character's effectiveness in the game, but has no bearing on your character's conceptual power level. A baseball bat and magic hammer both do Mace damage.
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How am I to feel powerful about a Tanker who takes much more time to defeat a Boss or EB than a Scrapper or Brute who take less time, when all three ATs can stand up to said Boss's/EB's attacks?
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Simple- play a Scrapper or Brute. Tankers aren't for everyone. They shine best in a team situation and you've stated time and time again you have no interest in that.
Missed this one:
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Or you can just go all Tanks and be a rolling ball of destruction.
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Immortally slow destruction 
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No slower than an average team. We did the Synapse TF in 2.5 hours with six Tanks last week, and that's full of "defeat all" missions.
Sure, optimized teams can tear through TFs in a fraction of the time, but 2.5 hours isn't bad- and we had fun!
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A baseball bat and magic hammer both do Mace damage.
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Which has no bearing on:
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Ability to defeat enemies and the effort and time it takes you greatly influence how powerful a character is perceived.
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Simple- play a Scrapper or Brute.
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Brutes and Scrappers existing is not an excuse for not fixing Tanker design flaws and their failure to live up to reasonable expectations any more than Controllers negated the need to address Dominator issues.
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Unfortunately, most of those expectations are quite unreasonable. Others aren't flaws to begin with.
"the reason there are so many sarcastic pvpers is we already had a better version of pvp taken away from us to appease bad players. Back then we chuckled at how bad players came here and whined. If we knew that was the actual voice devs would listen to instead of informed, educated players we probably would have been bigger dicks back then." -ConFlict
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Brutes and Scrappers existing is not an excuse for not fixing Tanker design flaws and their failure to live up to reasonable expectations any more than Controllers negated the need to address Dominator issues.
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The round hole isn't a design flaw, the problem is your repeated attempts to force a square peg into it.
After two years of trying, I'm sure most people and quite a few animals would have figured that out.
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Unfortunately, most of those expectations are quite unreasonable.
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Prove it.
Most of the poeple here have agreed on a number of solutions for Tankers that they deem quite reasonable in theory.
The developers don't weight in either way, so in this case their silence can not be taken to equal disagreement, nor can it ever really.
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Unfortunately, most of those expectations are quite unreasonable.
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Prove it.
Most of the poeple here have agreed on a number of solutions for Tankers that they deem quite reasonable in theory.
The developers don't weight in either way, so in this case their silence can not be taken to equal disagreement, nor can it ever really.
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From what I've read here... "most" (whatever that means by the way) people here don't even accept your premise that there is a such a gigantic problem to begin with.
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Most of the poeple here have agreed on a number of solutions for Tankers that they deem quite reasonable in theory.
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Prove it.
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The developers don't weight in either way, so in this case their silence can not be taken to equal disagreement, nor can it ever really.
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What the developers believe as "reasonable" does not always match what the player base does. Many thought that full map herding into burn patches was "reasonable", yet that clearly wasn't the case. Some also believe that full team content should be easily solo'd by lone players. What quite a few players expect from this game does not often match with "reasonable".
"the reason there are so many sarcastic pvpers is we already had a better version of pvp taken away from us to appease bad players. Back then we chuckled at how bad players came here and whined. If we knew that was the actual voice devs would listen to instead of informed, educated players we probably would have been bigger dicks back then." -ConFlict
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After two years of trying, I'm sure most people and quite a few animals would have figured that out.
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How long have Dominators been needing a change? How long have people been asking for power customization? For side swapping?
The fact is, the devs move at a glacial pace. Two years is nothing really. One of these days they'll get sick of hearing it. meanwhile, I've got got more than enough fuel to keep this up and Tankers are worth it.
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Prove it.
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To you? I don't have to.
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What the developers believe as "reasonable" does not always match what the player base does. What quite a few players expect from this game does not often match with "reasonable".
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And what the developers say is "reasonable" changes over time. Once upon a time, power cutomization wasn't reasonable.
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The funny thing is, the faster you kill the faster you loose damage. You may find eventually sticking to old fashioned AoE damage (that is not buffed at all, just as it always was) may be a better strategy.
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You may want to read my very basic proposal again.
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Then what's the point of it? It'd provide not a whole lot of benefit over time and be a considerable amount of work. That is, assuming you'd actually want to put forward this idea as an actual suggestion and this isn't all pie-in-the-sky theory-work (which is fine and dandy, but I tend to try and weigh dev's benefit-to-cost as well as I can).
Speaking of pie-in-the-sky, if Stalkers didn't already have something like this already, another fun idea would be to have a long non-rechargeable inherent power that, for an extremely short duration (like 2 seconds short) adds a small debuff and (maybe) fear against all enemies in a radius around the target. The biggest mechanical problem with that would probably be limiting it to ST attacks only.
Honestly, in the end, I really want to have nothing to do with directly raising or lowering Tanker damage directly. That just sounds like too troublesome a kettle of fish when considering Scrapper/Tanker balance.
The obvious best solution would to have had only one melee AT that could change stances, but the chance for that is...5 years past.
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Prove it.
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To you? I don't have to.
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What the developers believe as "reasonable" does not always match what the player base does. What quite a few players expect from this game does not often match with "reasonable".
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And what the developers say is "reasonable" changes over time. Once upon a time, power cutomization wasn't reasonable.
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Yup, however, changing a Tanker's damage mechanics is considerably simpler than power customization was, yet they still haven't done that.
Guess the idea isn't nearly as reasonable as you thought it was.
"the reason there are so many sarcastic pvpers is we already had a better version of pvp taken away from us to appease bad players. Back then we chuckled at how bad players came here and whined. If we knew that was the actual voice devs would listen to instead of informed, educated players we probably would have been bigger dicks back then." -ConFlict
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How long have Dominators been needing a change? How long have people been asking for power customization? For side swapping?
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There's a big difference between improving the game and (in your case) just plain not understanding it.
Every other player who wants Scrapper/Brute level damage output figures out, within a few months at least, they should play a Scrapper or Brute.
And in the case of a REAL problem, they show definitive proof that one exists. Angry_Citizen's number crunching on the viability of stalkers vs brutes was very large sign that something was wrong.
"the reason there are so many sarcastic pvpers is we already had a better version of pvp taken away from us to appease bad players. Back then we chuckled at how bad players came here and whined. If we knew that was the actual voice devs would listen to instead of informed, educated players we probably would have been bigger dicks back then." -ConFlict
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however, changing a Tanker's damage mechanics is considerably simpler than power customization was
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No it's not. Power customization is extremely simple, yet time consuming. It requires no balancing, just an investment in revamping art assets. It's largely a question of building an interface and lots of tedious graphic chores. Compared to adjusting balance issues, it's fairly self contained and modular. A larger undertaking? Absolutely. Simpler than devising a new mechanic for at AT who's not gotten attention in some time and carefully balancing and testing it? I'd say.
Major AT changes are typically spaced far apart to allow the results of the changes made to be monitored better. Blasters, Stalkers, Doms felt like a natural progression to me. Defenders are likely next, and in my opinion deserve to be. I expect some other ATs to get to get looked at in anticipation to GR, perhaps as well as a result of it, and hopefully that includes Tankers.
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it's fairly self contained and modular.
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Depends on what level of customisation. Changing colours is far, far different than say, replacing Spines' bananas with, say, metal spikes (i.e. changing models), especially when considering "hit" special effects.
I fully expect to see a whole lot of people disappointed when detailed information on I16 comes out. Pinkish purple Fire Control is way different than, say, replacing Hurl's chunk-o-concrete with a Yugo.
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I fully expect to see a whole lot of people disappointed when detailed information on I16 comes out. Pinkish purple Fire Control is way different than, say, replacing Hurl's chunk-o-concrete with a Yugo.
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I agree with you on this. I don't think the customization will be much more in-depth than tinting an entire primary and secondary a color. I'll be surprised if there's even tinting on a per-power basis.
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Probably not. They probably would've included that in Posi's screenshots if it was possible. It's still...technically possible, but considering that this "power customisation" will be tied to the character creator (where else would it go?), then I fully expect one tint for the entire set. With a lot of sets left out, too.
Still, might be nice to make my Fire/Ice Blaster have green fire and white(r) ice, so I'm happy it's coming. I'm just pragmatic regarding results.
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I'll sit on my damned throne of bayonets if it helps Tankers get closer to the comic book ideal they should be.
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Which ideal though?
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One of the ones that aren't about being a mediocre damage rodeo clown.
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Like Atom Smasher? Oh, right, the Annihilator is a GM... But Superman would have beaten it easily... even though Wonder Woman couldn't without help... but Superman is still a tanker just like Atom Smasher...