Questioning the MMO Trinity?
By
Ahmon,
Posted on: 2009-07-26 05:07 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
When you have the freedom to make your own hero with ANYTHING available to you.
This is what happends. 99% of people in the game make the EXACT same power choices. And 1% of people "rough it" and make something creative.
Look ma, I can heal myself. I can herd stuff. I can blast stuff. I can do everything all by myself. I really dont need anyone else.
Sure statistics are all conjective or whatever. BUT that is what I have seen in games OFFERING such a feature. And BALANCE makes everyone even MORE the same.
Why bother calling this that when they do the exact same thing.
Really, while the grass may seem greener someplace else. I think the grass is Greener right where I am.
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Please understand that this is not a put-down or anything of the sort, but merely an explanation of what my experience and observations have been over they years.
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How dare you belittle my point of view! 
Hah! Don't sweat it Sam, it'd take something for me to think that was your goal with any of your posts. My experience is that MMs are pretty strong most of the time, but there are enough "fiddly bits" that prevents them from being fully realized. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this; I don't see either of us changing our views so discussing back and forth for a couple pages won't do us any good. I'd rather just call it here and save us both the trouble. 
AS far as Masterminds go. They make extremely useful tank mages. I lead charges guaranteeing the guard part of bodyguard will activate and let the pulse lasers fly. I then Drop traps at my leisure and let off a pulse rifle blast now and again for a piece of burst damage on an enemy that is low. Then as teh fight winds down I can pull out of bodyguard mode and start focusing if I want.
With a tank it is different. You don't have the punch a MM has even while they are in bodyguard mode. However you also don't have to worry about as much. There are a few instances but it has ben my experience wiht MAstermidns that when things start to go wrong they go wrong very quickly.
Of course with a defence based tank sometimes you can just get a really bad set of rolls...
With the build I have on Dame Demolition, there's not much I won't take on. And there are ways to manage aggro (seeker drones make great 'fishing lures' to pull spawns) so that you don't get in too deep.
Even after they nerfed PGT, I saw little to no change in my strategy. The nice part about MM Bots is, unlike Battletech, you can alpha strike and NOT worry about your mechs overheating.
Plus if something is about to die, Detonate it and resummon.
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
Back to front:
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Plus if something is about to die, Detonate it and resummon.
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I love, love, LOVE Detonator Most of the time I detonate my minion class henchmen. If one dies, I might as well detonate another one, since I'll be resummoning them all anyway. Usually, if my Commando is dying, I'm more likely to feed him Serum, but I've detonated him plenty of times, too. I'd take that over Poison's final power, as a dead henchman can be resummoned, but a poisoned one will be dragging his feet the entire time.
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With the build I have on Dame Demolition, there's not much I won't take on.
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This is the quintessential point of this whole thing, as far as I'm concerned - having the guts to take on, if not anything, then almost anything, is what makes an interesting character to me. This is less a point about tanks, themselves, and more about the world of sissies they allow, and indeed REQUIRE, to exist. Tankers are, at least in this game, largely able to take care of their own problems by themselves, albeit very slowly, as this game isn't dependent on a tank that's being healed. Tankers are just naturally tough. But aside from Tankers and a few other tank-like classes, a lot of characters are DESIGNED with the idea that a Tanker will be present, and as such there are a great many problems that they really don't want to take on because they'll be killed. Granted, we can sort of kludge a solution to most of this, but there is no denying that we have ATs which can take on anything without batting an eye and AT that can't take on anything without trembling for their lives.
I wouldn't really be against the notion of "the holy trinity" as a concept, were it not for the fact that developers use it to justify what characters can do and, even worse, what characters CANNOT do. I don't need a character to be able to do EVERYTHING, but I need a character to be able to do ENOUGH. Not only is this not true for all characters even most of the time, but even some of those who CAN do enough do so just barely, while others do more than enough all the time with little effort.
Take Scrappers, for instance. They're not especially versatile characters. They can really do one thing for the most part - deal damage. They're also pretty good at surviving long enough to deal that damage, but that's about it. No fancy tricks, no wide-scale support, pretty much nothing other than "stand and fight." And yet even a mediocre Scrapper can face pretty much anything within reason and triumph without too much trouble. I don't want to get into a debate about what ATs can't do enough as I'm sure it'll go on for pages and pages, but suffice it to say I'd like to play in a game world where no-one is designed with the idea that a tank, a healer or a damage dealer will be present.
If anything, I'd like to see MMOs of the future designed more like arcades or single-player games, where each character is designed with his own strengths and weaknesses, but each is self-sufficient and able to play the game, because ultimately these games have to be played by a single player, even if they feature multiplayer support. There is room for team roles and team dynamics even if players aren't gimped by design.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this; I don't see either of us changing our views so discussing back and forth for a couple pages won't do us any good. I'd rather just call it here and save us both the trouble.
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Fair enough. I'm just playing high-level Masterminds at the moment, so my perspective may not be objective
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Oh how rich.|
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
We talk about ideas like this all the time in the Tanker forum. We talk and talk and debate and deal with trolls and talk and debate and nothing ever happens and no progress is ever made because a red name never comes in and validates the discussion or says "yeah, we'll think about this".
It's massively frustrating for all parties involved and the fact it's gone on as long as it has (even before Jack promised Tankers Fury and even after they got a damage scale increase instead) is a joke at this point. |
You do not talk and debate in the tanker forum, you put down, you derail, and you incite. You are the reason that this debate has gone absolutely no where, and why when anyone actually brings up a legitimate change topic it turns into the biggest joke that no dev would ever consider. The only time a red poster has actively engaged you was when BaBs called you out on your foolishness about something you implied he said which he did not.
I find it so ironic that you put yourself in both sides of the forum. In the tanker forum when everyone calls you out on your stupidity you claim that everyone in the rest of the forums clearly agree's with you. It's obvious you are now doing exactly the same outside of the tanker forum claiming everyone in the tanker forum agree's with you. How funny, and sad at the same time. It's quite obvious hardly anyone agree's with you.
The moment you leave your crusade and this game to go play your superman and complain about how some other game won't let you be an invulnerable Juggernaut capable of 1 shotting anything can't come soon enough, because then people who actually have good ideas can have a chance to be heard and discussion can occur without your ranting, raving, and babbling nonsense.
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Armor was expensive, both to make and to maintain; so were swords. A landowner (lords down to franklins) could, if he was wealthy enough, afford to equip the troops he was required to supply to his lord with the trappings of mounted men-at-arms; if not, he would supply archers, levied from the yeomanry. The perception of the bow was, as a result, that of a 'lower-class' weapon -- the French knights, in particular, at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, fixated heavily on combat against their 'social equals', allowing the English longbowmen, shooting from prepared defenses, to shred their ranks. These three battles fomented the myth of the longbow, and battles like Vermueil and Patay, where the longbowmen were unable to set up their defenses and were overrun or routed, were ignored. The stereotype of the English yeoman archer, however, was what created the stereotype of the unarmored or lightly-armored archer (the lack of armor allowing them to run away if it looked as if they were going to be overrun, as they were too poor to offer a ransom and would therefore be killed outright).|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Allow me to make an aside for a second. Who ever decided that archers are fast, light, agile fighters who are weak and ill-protected? Drawing your average non-modern-technology-enhanced bow actually requires MORE strength than swinging a sword around, and many, many archers wore chest plates and chain mail, if we want to go into medieval history. That's only still no match for a mounted knight plate mail armour, but it's hardly a flannel shirt and a green hat. And people keep making them acrobatic. What the hell?
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Prior to the medieval period, archers also tended to be more lightly armored than the shock troops -- armor worn by the Roman sagittarii, Parthian mounted archers, and the chariot archers of the Egyptian, Hittite, and Vedic militaries was much lighter than the standard infantry.
With the decline of the longbow and its replacement by the crossbow -- it took many years of practice to make a good longbowman, while a crossbowman could be trained in a few weeks, making it much more suitable for intermittent levies and mercenary units -- the armor worn by the average archer improved, at least partially due to the need for them to be able to fight as infantry when the rate-of-fire issues with the crossbow allowed enemy troops to close with them.
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| As long as we have the ability in this game to IGNORE hand-to-hand combat attacks coming at us without having to stop and protect ourselves, there will never be a "tank" threatening enough to actually tank. |
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| The point, I suppose, is to make melee DANGEROUS unless you're specifically engaged in it, which would in turn lock people in melee like it really should be. The click-n-kill system that transforms melee combat from a lockdown duel into a battle resembling an artillery duel between two battleships, only they're smaller and 5 feet apart. Trading blows is NOT melee combat, and as long as that's all we have for melee, then we will never be rid of tauntbot tanks. |
On a related note, consider that virtually all RPGs, MMO and paper, have missile weapons disappearing if they miss their target, or allow you to shoot past your 8-foot-tall teammate to hit the 5-foot-tall target on the other side of him. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way in real life. Shoot an arrow at a man-at-arms 150 yards away charging at you, and if the arrow misses, it will land somewhere around him. Shoot an arrow at a man-at-arms 40 feet away that your teammate is exchanging sword blows with, and if the arrow misses, you may very well perforate your teammate. Or they may shift and interpose themselves between you and your target, getting an arrow in the back for their trouble if you can't stop yourself before you loose.
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
[ QUOTE ]If you want an offensive melee toon, play a scrapper. You seem to want the tank to be as indestructible as they are now, but to have the power of scrappers or blasters.[/QUOTE]
I don't think of a comic book tanker as Superman or Thor. Those guys are over the top powerful; they both occupy and transcend all of the traditional MMO roles.
A comic book tanker is Power Man (lower end), Dynamo (mid-range) and the Thing (top end). These guys can take lots of punishment and hit back hard. They aren't fast hitters, but a single punch goes a long way.
A comic book scrapper is the Wolverine/Daredevil type of character, they get hurt if they get hit but they are still extremely effective. Lots of accurate strikes with lots of skill.
CoH gets both of these ATs a little wrong. Scrappers do more damage than tankers while also hitting faster with less endurance cost. Tankers are slower, endurance-heavy hitters but their punches aren't show-stoppers. I would fix both of these design problems by slowing tanker attack recharge way down and making the attacks twice as devastating, maybe more, than they are now.
Scrappers would stay the same, tankers would move way up in burst damage like in the comic books, with whatever recharge and accuracy penalties that might be necessary for balance.
Alternatively, I would add for tankers just one thing: a brute-style fury bar that fills up slowly and only while the tanker is being beaten on and while the tanker is not attacking. The fury bar empties completely after the tanker unleashes the stored energy via a single gigantic punch. Then the fury bar can start to fill up again. If the tanker doesn't want to wait for the fury bar to fill, he or she can just attack normally, just the way things are now.
Goldbrick 50 inv/ss tank
Other 50s: Power Beam, Rocky Mantle, STORMIE Agent, Matchless, Major Will, Knightmayor, Femstone, Space Maureen, Crimebuster Ako, Dr. Twilight, Doc Champion, American Gold Eagle
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My stone/stone brute is both tanker-tough and very hard-hitting. The damage penalty of granite armor isn't much when you have a full fury bar. So far, the game hasn't been thrown off its axis.
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Originally Posted by Dersk
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[ QUOTE ] Please, by all means, enlighten me as to a method to ensure all archetypes are well-played if a single archetype has as much or more damage than a scrapper and all the survivability of a tanker. How much of a buff would you have to give the other archetypes AND the villains to keep the game both fair and challenging? You can't? How shocking! [/ QUOTE ] Brute defined. Next question. [/ QUOTE ] Are you grossly ignorant of the survivability differences between tankers and brutes, or do you just want people to think you are? |
Goldbrick 50 inv/ss tank
Other 50s: Power Beam, Rocky Mantle, STORMIE Agent, Matchless, Major Will, Knightmayor, Femstone, Space Maureen, Crimebuster Ako, Dr. Twilight, Doc Champion, American Gold Eagle
Tanker damage is fine, they don't need more burst.
They especially don't need more burst than scrappers or blasters.
Editing to add more detail:
Doubling tanker recharge times and damage would be a huge buff to tankers, especially with access to IOs and global recharge reduction bonuses, which would push overall tanker damage into the stratosphere relative to every other AT. This is before you figure in the huge benefit tankers would suddenly get from red inspirations, their own damage boosts (build up, rage, fiery embrace), as well as team buffs and debuffs. It looks deceptively balanced, but the outcome isthat tankers would be seriously out of balance with the other ATs.
And this is all supposedly about how tankers are supposed to have this powerhouse feel (as if they don't) because the people who are constantly agitating for tanker damage buffs really want to play Superman in a game not balanced around that power level, and never really address how that power would come at the expense of other ATs - or sometimes, explicitly defining how they want that power to come at the express of other ATs as a desirable outcome.
Also: doubling recharge would screw leveling tankers so hard it's not funny.
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Originally Posted by Inquizitor
Champions online is open Archtype.
As was SWG before they destroyed it by closing the classes |
Yea. neither's ever been touted as exactly a paragon of completely balanced play
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By this he means "the next time someone posts some topic tertially related to it that i can derail as usual with my copypasta whines"
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Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
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What can you do to the tanker class that will make it more interesting for you and Johnny to play WITHOUT turning it into a Brute, a Scrapper, or a "Perfect" character? Come up with that and we'll talk about how to make it work in City of Heroes. [/ QUOTE ] People been discussing mechanics distinct from Scrapper and Brutes for Tankers to allow then more damage (or the equivalent in debuffs) for ages. Starsman just posted one a couple of days ago. It, and also many of them a number of players have agreed, wouldn't be overpowering or result in a "perfect AT" and are at least worthy of trying out IMO. Here is not the place to discuss them however, but you're welcome to come by next time they come up in the Tanker forum. . |
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Actually, the biggest problem is that players would LOSE to the AI. Gamers play these games in order to feel powerful. The worst thing you could do from a marketing standpoint is to make an AI that actually behaves intelligently. You'd have most of your players quitting because the game was "too hard".
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Originally Posted by Umbral_NA
Of course, the biggest problem I can imagine with [a system that takes calculated risks] is the number of processing cycles that would need to be devoted to regularly updating the AI,
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This should tell you something about how successful Sony and LucasArts believed the open class system was.|
Originally Posted by Inquizitor
Champions online is open Archtype.
As was SWG before they destroyed it by closing the classes |
*hint* They believed it was a failure because it was too complex and too flexible. They changed to the current system because their research showed that players preferred "classes" as opposed to choice.
Whether their research was flawed or not is open to debate, but the fact remains that in their eyes the open archetype system was driving players away instead of attracting them.
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Given that closing the archetypes made them lose 90% of their playerbase, I really wouldn't trust their logic at all.
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Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
This should tell you something about how successful Sony and LucasArts believed the open class system was.
*hint* They believed it was a failure because it was too complex and too flexible. They changed to the current system because their research showed that players preferred "classes" as opposed to choice. Whether their research was flawed or not is open to debate, but the fact remains that in their eyes the open archetype system was driving players away instead of attracting them. |
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Is it open to debate that SWG lost a significant portion of its userbase after changing the game?
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Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
This should tell you something about how successful Sony and LucasArts believed the open class system was.
*hint* They believed it was a failure because it was too complex and too flexible. They changed to the current system because their research showed that players preferred "classes" as opposed to choice. Whether their research was flawed or not is open to debate, but the fact remains that in their eyes the open archetype system was driving players away instead of attracting them. |
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It would be if the specifics of the change were the ONLY thing contributing. Any change at all is going to drive people away no matter how small or how beneficial. People will leave. You've been here long enough to know that. As an extension of that, a MASSIVE change to the status quo is very likely to upset a lot of people who quit based not on how better or worse things became, but simply based on the fact that things are DIFFERENT and they want the old status quo. Add to that the fact that such a change isn't just big, but also one that fundamentally alters the game in many, many ways, and you have a recipe for disaster before the merit of the actual change ever comes into consideration.|
Originally Posted by KaliMagdalene
Is it open to debate that SWG lost a significant portion of its userbase after changing the game?
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It would be open to debate if they launched SWG2 with these changes and it tanked, and even then it wouldn't be entirely based on the changes, themselves. Let's not indulge in tunnel vision and grasp at only one of a multitude of reasons for failure and proclaim it to be THE reason. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. It's more complicated than just that.
As for giving Tankers more damage, I'm well aware of the "damage to survivability" ratios and how they must be upheld. Interestingly, they aren't upheld very much in this game. Blasters have significantly less survivability than, say, Scrappers, yet they don't have a proportionally higher level of outgoing damage. They have more, just not as much as their defences are lacking. Brutes have more survivability than Scrappers, but their are much farther behind in damage than Scrappers are behind in survivability. In fact, Scrappers aren't very far behind survivability at all, yet they deal significantly more damage even WITH Fury taken into account. Masterminds have, all things considered, about as much survivability as your typical Scrapper. In fact, in certain instances, they may have even more, such as a Forcefields Mastermind defence-capping all his henchmen and nearly defence-capping himself. Their damage is less, obviously, but not by too much AND they have the benefit of providing team support on top of that.
The game isn't consistent when it comes to who has how much survivability to how much damage. Scrappers and, to a large extent, Masterminds get the most beneficial ratios while Tankers, with a few exception, get the short end of the stick, being regarded as taunt bots and sheep herders. Walk into any Taunt debate and you're likely to get at least a few people who believe it's not a Tanker's "job" to do damage but rather to run around slapping things so they don't attack his team-mates. Not doing damage, but applying threat. Forgive me for saying this, but for a big, hulking monster's greatest output to be imaginary threat rather than, you know, PUNCHES, is disappointing.
I wouldn't say Tankers need a straight-up damage increase. That'd turn them into Scrappers. Yet Brutes, with below-Tanker damage, still somehow manage to have their cake and eat it, too, yet not become Scrappers in the process. There ought to be some way to allow Tankers to hit REALLY hard without being Super Strength or Energy Melee (and even then that's only on a couple of attacks altogether) without making them vastly overpowered in terms of sustained damage. Right now, as balance is made based on endurance cost to SCALE DAMAGE and Tankers don't benefit as much from their scale damage as true damage dealers do, they feel like those damsels in distress you see in cartoons, where the girl is slung over the bad guy's shoulder and is banging her fists against his back while he doesn't even feel it. A lot of energy spent for not a lot of return.
Personally, I'd rather make Tankers into a REAL threat, rather than a pretend one. I saw an idea around the time this thread was posted about making Taunted enemies take more damage from your own attacks, but Castle said he didn't see a need for it. I guess as long as people are happy, I can just as well wait for Brutes to become available hero-side via Going Rogue and use them, instead, but that still leaves an AT that is designed more with the MMO trinity in mind than with making complete characters on the agenda.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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AI's aren't stupid to make them easy, they're stupid to make them predictable. People don't understand what the AI is doing unless they know what the AI knows and how it acts on it.|
Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
Actually, the biggest problem is that players would LOSE to the AI. Gamers play these games in order to feel powerful. The worst thing you could do from a marketing standpoint is to make an AI that actually behaves intelligently. You'd have most of your players quitting because the game was "too hard".
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Losing to an AI you don't understand isn't much different from losing to, say, a bugged enemy with 10 times the normal attack power.
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If I can "Tank" an Elite Boss effectively on a Corruptor, then this holy trinity business is a load of crap. Me and my friend, both on Corruptors, have taken down several EBs like this. Your archetype means nothing in comparison to tactical superiority. In other words: Think for yourself, break the "rules", and nothing can stop you. Don't try and lock yourself into a specific role, this isn't WoW...
The off-beat space pirate...Capt. Stormrider (50+3 Elec/Storm Science Corruptor)
The mysterious Djinn...Emerald Dervish (50+1 DB/DA Magic Stalker)
The psychotic inventor...Dollmaster (50 Bot/FF Tech Mastermind)
Virtue Forever.
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I think you're splitting a lot of hairs I didn't even begin to imply. SWG was a fairly successful MMORPG prior to the NGE change. IIRC, this change was announced within a week to a month of ED, and is ultimately behind a significant number of subscribers leaving SWG. You can argue specifics all you want, and even argue over whether or not the game was objectively worse after the changes, but I think that's largely irrelevant. People liked the game before, and the game it was after was no longer the game they wanted, they quit. You can find ex-SWG players all over the place who are more than happy to explain this. My current WoW guild is full of them. Don't pretend this is a theoretical discussion about a theoretical game with theoretical changes. There's a real documented history.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
It would be if the specifics of the change were the ONLY thing contributing. Any change at all is going to drive people away no matter how small or how beneficial. People will leave. You've been here long enough to know that. As an extension of that, a MASSIVE change to the status quo is very likely to upset a lot of people who quit based not on how better or worse things became, but simply based on the fact that things are DIFFERENT and they want the old status quo. Add to that the fact that such a change isn't just big, but also one that fundamentally alters the game in many, many ways, and you have a recipe for disaster before the merit of the actual change ever comes into consideration.
It would be open to debate if they launched SWG2 with these changes and it tanked, and even then it wouldn't be entirely based on the changes, themselves. Let's not indulge in tunnel vision and grasp at only one of a multitude of reasons for failure and proclaim it to be THE reason. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. It's more complicated than just that. |
It may be that it was the last straw for people after the combat rebalance and other changes, I wouldn't be surprised. But it was such a huge straw, and people who say they were happy with the game until then left.
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| As for giving Tankers more damage, I'm well aware of the "damage to survivability" ratios and how they must be upheld. Interestingly, they aren't upheld very much in this game. Blasters have significantly less survivability than, say, Scrappers, yet they don't have a proportionally higher level of outgoing damage. They have more, just not as much as their defences are lacking. Brutes have more survivability than Scrappers, but their are much farther behind in damage than Scrappers are behind in survivability. In fact, Scrappers aren't very far behind survivability at all, yet they deal significantly more damage even WITH Fury taken into account. Masterminds have, all things considered, about as much survivability as your typical Scrapper. In fact, in certain instances, they may have even more, such as a Forcefields Mastermind defence-capping all his henchmen and nearly defence-capping himself. Their damage is less, obviously, but not by too much AND they have the benefit of providing team support on top of that. |
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| The game isn't consistent when it comes to who has how much survivability to how much damage. Scrappers and, to a large extent, Masterminds get the most beneficial ratios while Tankers, with a few exception, get the short end of the stick, being regarded as taunt bots and sheep herders. Walk into any Taunt debate and you're likely to get at least a few people who believe it's not a Tanker's "job" to do damage but rather to run around slapping things so they don't attack his team-mates. Not doing damage, but applying threat. Forgive me for saying this, but for a big, hulking monster's greatest output to be imaginary threat rather than, you know, PUNCHES, is disappointing. |
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| I wouldn't say Tankers need a straight-up damage increase. That'd turn them into Scrappers. Yet Brutes, with below-Tanker damage, still somehow manage to have their cake and eat it, too, yet not become Scrappers in the process. There ought to be some way to allow Tankers to hit REALLY hard without being Super Strength or Energy Melee (and even then that's only on a couple of attacks altogether) without making them vastly overpowered in terms of sustained damage. Right now, as balance is made based on endurance cost to SCALE DAMAGE and Tankers don't benefit as much from their scale damage as true damage dealers do, they feel like those damsels in distress you see in cartoons, where the girl is slung over the bad guy's shoulder and is banging her fists against his back while he doesn't even feel it. A lot of energy spent for not a lot of return. |
Brutes pay for their damage parity with scrappers by needing to maintain fury, which promotes a higher-risk level of play.
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| Personally, I'd rather make Tankers into a REAL threat, rather than a pretend one. I saw an idea around the time this thread was posted about making Taunted enemies take more damage from your own attacks, but Castle said he didn't see a need for it. I guess as long as people are happy, I can just as well wait for Brutes to become available hero-side via Going Rogue and use them, instead, but that still leaves an AT that is designed more with the MMO trinity in mind than with making complete characters on the agenda. |
I mean, no one's obligated to be happy with the state of the tanker AT, and it's fair to be dissatisfied with the state of affairs where they're not the #1 damage AT (where Johnny Butane seems to be coming from) or don't simply have the hardest hitting attacks in the game (where Goldbrick seems to be coming from), but I think it's pretty easy to confuse what one wants with what's best for the game as a whole, and I think it's pretty hard to demonstrate that tankers are actually incapable of dealing damage.
I guess if this were WoW, where every character is designed to perform a particular role (and every class is designed to potentially fill 1-3 roles), I'd be more inclined to agree with you, at least WoW the way it was before the expansions. But right now in CoH, it seems to me that the MMO trinity is more of a polite suggestion.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
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qft. I sometimes wonder what game some folks are playing.
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Originally Posted by KaliMagdalene
I think you're splitting a lot of hairs I didn't even begin to imply. SWG was a fairly successful MMORPG prior to the NGE change. IIRC, this change was announced within a week to a month of ED, and is ultimately behind a significant number of subscribers leaving SWG. You can argue specifics all you want, and even argue over whether or not the game was objectively worse after the changes, but I think that's largely irrelevant. People liked the game before, and the game it was after was no longer the game they wanted, they quit. You can find ex-SWG players all over the place who are more than happy to explain this. My current WoW guild is full of them. Don't pretend this is a theoretical discussion about a theoretical game with theoretical changes. There's a real documented history.
It may be that it was the last straw for people after the combat rebalance and other changes, I wouldn't be surprised. But it was such a huge straw, and people who say they were happy with the game until then left. I believe that several tests have made it debatable whether scrappers deal significantly more damage than brutes, unless Castle or another dev has made a point of posting datamined figures. BillZBubba has two threads in the scrapper forum about this, and more than a handful of players (who play scrappers and brutes) feel their damage is too close relative to brute survivability vs. scrapper survivability. I would think at this point that there's really not a strong consensus on how scrappers and brutes compare to each other. Tankers hit fairly hard and their punches do respectable damage, with some exceptions. Ice and War Mace have received needed buffs. Tanker powersets hit hard enough that a noticeable number of forum posters have talked themselves into the notion that giving those powersets to scrappers would make scrappers overpowered. Tankers can dish out a ton of damage - the problem isn't that they're weak, because they're not weak. The problem is, apparently, that scrappers can do more damage than tankers. I've played tankers, and in my experience, they're not as ineffectual as you paint them. Seriously, they're not that bad, and they haven't been that bad ever. Not even before issue 3 and the damage buff they received then. Back then, everyone overslotted their already overpowered defenses and underslotted their attacks, leaving them with the impression of weak attacks. ED finally made it ridiculous to six-slot defenses at the expense of slotting attacks, but somehow, the impression that tanker attacks are incredibly weak has stubbornly remained. Tankers don't need to have ways to boost their damage output. They're already respectable damage dealers - some secondaries more than others, yes, but Castle's apparently been working on bringing those into line. Looking over the patch notes since the last time I played, I just don't see how people are saying exactly the same things about tanker damage now that they were saying five years ago. It does not make sense. There's a reason that while tankers were complaining about how they ran themselves out of endurance trying to take out a handful of minions in issue 1, I was running around with Confessor's Inv/Fire tanker and watching him burn down hazard zone-sized spawns without needing any help I had to offer. Brutes pay for their damage parity with scrappers by needing to maintain fury, which promotes a higher-risk level of play. I think this is a false dichotomy, esp. in a game like CoH where you can build a team out of most (if not all) combinations of ATs and powersets and manage to deal with 99% of the situations you'll encounter in the game. I also do not believe that designing characters around the MMO trinity makes them incomplete characters, unless all characters are supposed to be equally proficient in all situations, which doesn't make any sense - even the comic books aren't written that way. I mean, no one's obligated to be happy with the state of the tanker AT, and it's fair to be dissatisfied with the state of affairs where they're not the #1 damage AT (where Johnny Butane seems to be coming from) or don't simply have the hardest hitting attacks in the game (where Goldbrick seems to be coming from), but I think it's pretty easy to confuse what one wants with what's best for the game as a whole, and I think it's pretty hard to demonstrate that tankers are actually incapable of dealing damage. I guess if this were WoW, where every character is designed to perform a particular role (and every class is designed to potentially fill 1-3 roles), I'd be more inclined to agree with you, at least WoW the way it was before the expansions. But right now in CoH, it seems to me that the MMO trinity is more of a polite suggestion. |
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
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It would be interesting to see what would happen if the Tanker inherent were changed to be loosely similar to the old Defiance mechanic -- a Tanker's damage multiplier goes up as they take damage. Not by being attacked -- that's part of how Brutes crank Fury -- but by being hurt. It occurs to me that this would have a better claim to the name 'Defiance' than the Blaster inherent; as a Tanker gets beat on, the beating he's taking inspires him to greater feats of violence in return.|
Originally Posted by KaliMagdalene
Doubling tanker recharge times and damage would be a huge buff to tankers, especially with access to IOs and global recharge reduction bonuses, which would push overall tanker damage into the stratosphere relative to every other AT. This is before you figure in the huge benefit tankers would suddenly get from red inspirations, their own damage boosts (build up, rage, fiery embrace), as well as team buffs and debuffs. It looks deceptively balanced, but the outcome isthat tankers would be seriously out of balance with the other ATs.
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It would also introduce an interesting dichotomy into the build for a Tanker; the better the Tanker's defenses are, the less damage they take under normal circumstances, and their damage boost will be smaller as a result.
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
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The question isn't whether or not it happened. It did. The question is whether or not it was because of the introduction of classes, or whether other factors had a role in it. I, myself, wouldn't feel confident to claim it was classes that caused it, and as such am not very confident in accepting the failure of SWG as evidence as to either that a classless system is good or that a class system is bad. I find its failure to be inconclusive on both counts.|
Originally Posted by KaliMagdalene
I think you're splitting a lot of hairs I didn't even begin to imply. SWG was a fairly successful MMORPG prior to the NGE change. IIRC, this change was announced within a week to a month of ED, and is ultimately behind a significant number of subscribers leaving SWG. You can argue specifics all you want, and even argue over whether or not the game was objectively worse after the changes, but I think that's largely irrelevant. People liked the game before, and the game it was after was no longer the game they wanted, they quit. You can find ex-SWG players all over the place who are more than happy to explain this. My current WoW guild is full of them. Don't pretend this is a theoretical discussion about a theoretical game with theoretical changes. There's a real documented history.
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| I believe that several tests have made it debatable whether scrappers deal significantly more damage than brutes, unless Castle or another dev has made a point of posting datamined figures. BillZBubba has two threads in the scrapper forum about this, and more than a handful of players (who play scrappers and brutes) feel their damage is too close relative to brute survivability vs. scrapper survivability. I would think at this point that there's really not a strong consensus on how scrappers and brutes compare to each other. |
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| Tankers hit fairly hard and their punches do respectable damage, with some exceptions. Ice and War Mace have received needed buffs. Tanker powersets hit hard enough that a noticeable number of forum posters have talked themselves into the notion that giving those powersets to scrappers would make scrappers overpowered. Tankers can dish out a ton of damage - the problem isn't that they're weak, because they're not weak. The problem is, apparently, that scrappers can do more damage than tankers. |
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| I've played tankers, and in my experience, they're not as ineffectual as you paint them. Seriously, they're not that bad, and they haven't been that bad ever. Not even before issue 3 and the damage buff they received then. Back then, everyone overslotted their already overpowered defenses and underslotted their attacks, leaving them with the impression of weak attacks. ED finally made it ridiculous to six-slot defenses at the expense of slotting attacks, but somehow, the impression that tanker attacks are incredibly weak has stubbornly remained. |
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| I think this is a false dichotomy, esp. in a game like CoH where you can build a team out of most (if not all) combinations of ATs and powersets and manage to deal with 99% of the situations you'll encounter in the game. I also do not believe that designing characters around the MMO trinity makes them incomplete characters, unless all characters are supposed to be equally proficient in all situations, which doesn't make any sense - even the comic books aren't written that way. |
And, also, I do believe that designing characters around the holy trinity, or indeed any "ideal" team structure, does leave characters incomplete. Designing an ideal team structure requires that you take way from everybody something that is vital to success, and place that in the hands of another, who in turn is missing something else vital that he can find in the hands of someone still else. This way, these characters are penalised for trying to play alone because they lack something vital (damage, survivability, etc.) and ever so subtly forced to find other people to help them either overcome their lack, or at least marginalise it. This isn't a question of everybody being proficient at everything, but rather about everybody being proficient alone, such that everybody levels up at roughly the same speed. If it takes one character twice as long to level up, and he often meets enemies he cannot defeat (be it because they kill him or because he can't overcome their regen), then to my eyes, it doesn't matter how proficient this character is at their speciality. I don't intend to sit down on the team seek tool every single time I launch the game, and for the times I'm not on a team, I like to feel I'm moving ever so slowly because my AT gives up a strength I need for more of a strength than I actually have any use for.
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| I mean, no one's obligated to be happy with the state of the tanker AT, and it's fair to be dissatisfied with the state of affairs where they're not the #1 damage AT (where Johnny Butane seems to be coming from) or don't simply have the hardest hitting attacks in the game (where Goldbrick seems to be coming from), but I think it's pretty easy to confuse what one wants with what's best for the game as a whole, and I think it's pretty hard to demonstrate that tankers are actually incapable of dealing damage. |
But I simply don't agree with the notion that a large, hard target can ever be perceived to be a threat without actually having anything more threatening to offer than just about EVERYBODY else. Tankers right now are threatening because the system gives their attacks a high threat rating. However, from a purely practical standpoint, they're the most harmless AT of them all. What does a boss or an AV stand to lose by completely ignoring a Tanker and focusing on the Blaster or the Controller? When we actually have an answer to that questions that's something other than "nothing" will I ever be able to accept that any Tanker is actually threatening.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Please understand that this is not a put-down or anything of the sort, but merely an explanation of what my experience and observations have been over they years.
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A Tanker is in full control of their abilities, not AI.
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To a point, yes. You can't tell your Spec Ops when to use Flashbang, can't tell your Jounin to use Soaring Dragon after activating Smoke Flash on him, and you have to keep telling your Bruiser to go into melee and fight (or at least used to have to). This much I will concede, though by and large, Mastermind henchmen tend to compensate for this by simply having an excess of powers to burn.
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A Tanker won't freak out when hit by Burn or Caltrops.
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No, but a Tanker needs to worry about other things such as Sappers, psychic damage, ghosts stacking to-hit debuffs, hideously melee-centric enemies and so on. Granted, not all tankers have to worry about all of these at the same time, but Tankers, and indeed every AT, has enemies, powers and situations that plain and simply suck. Yes, Masterminds have their fears, but Tankers aren't immune to these, either.
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A Tanker doesn't need to worry about mezzes (for the most part).
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Nor need a Mastermind the majority of the time. When your secondary doesn't actually provide overt status protection (say, Dispersion Bubble), your primary may have status resistances, and even failing that, it takes large-scale, repetitive AoE control to affect a Mastermind in any meaningful way. From my experience, it's not uncommon for a controller-type enemy to incapacitate a henchman or two, but even then, I have 4-5 more, and whoever is held will wake up soon enough. Granted, Malta Stun Grenades are EVIL, but then that's Malta.
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A Tanker can 'focus' on one target without sacrificing defense.
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I'm still not convinced a Mastermind actually gives anything up by going Bodyguard. As I said before, the situations you most need bodyguard in are the situations where focusing fire matters the most. And even that aside, it's very, very doable to simply hang back and not be attacked, yourself. The henchmen do a good job of holding aggro. Seriously.
Granted, those are derived of current play experience, and that experience is of a level 49 Mastermind who has... Well, everything he's ever going to have. Those aren't necessarily true for lower-level Masterminds, but even at lower levels, those still hold true to a large extent. I know a properly-built Tanker can probably walk away from the keyboard and still not die. Well, a properly built Mastermind can walk away from the keyboard and WIN. Seriously. I've had instances where I'll get up to get a drink, then come back just as my henchmen are finishing up an ambush that apparently struck while I was away. That's without me at the controls at all, forget about tactics and strategies.
Personally, though, I don't find this to be overpowered. As far as I'm concerned, Masterminds have just the right balance of tool versitility and tool strength. They have damage, but not too much, survivability, but not too reliable, and support, but not too strong. They're not better than Tankers at tanking, probably (wouldn't know, I haven't played Tankers past level 6), but there is nothing about them that makes them truly weak in any one area. Pretty much the ONLY other AT in the game I'm aware of that comes even close to this level of all-roundedness is the Scrapper, and only because Scrappers have a LOT of both things they're good at.