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Hence the "adjust numbers to taste" bit. I was in History class, and didn't have a chance to make a full accounting of attack lengths. The long and the short of it is that gauntlet would add to the aggro cap like defiance adds to damage for blasters. Possibly even with differing magnitudes and durations depending on the attack used. Of course, this all assumes that something like this is possible with the aggro cap- changing it may not be possible outside of changing the value across the board for all ATs.
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Originally Posted by _Deth_
This would be an interesting way of going about the issue. But the time of the bonus would have to be longer, you would lose any bonus just during the activation of certain attacks, like ET.
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My story arcs: #2370- Noah Reborn, #18672- The Clockwork War, #31490- Easy Money
Sartre once said, "Hell is other people." What does that make an MMO?
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And I was asserting that what you are stating is not true. |
Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
It makes perfect sense. I was addressing Kruunch's assertion that activities, methods, and strategies are only ever popular because they are entertaining. This is just not true. Some activities are popular because they are wildly more rewarding than more entertaining options. I assert that herding was one such activity, and AE farming is another.
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Herding was not more rewarding. The perception is that it is more rewarding. The rewards for killing the mobs is exactly the same as it is for those that don't herd. Instead of getting those rewards steadily over a period of time, there is a period of time with no rewards, and a period of time with a lot of rewards. Some people find it entertaining to see lots of big orange numbers fly through the air. Some people find it more entertaining to see lots of things die in large piles.
The devs stopped herding because it was part of the risk vs reward argument. At the time, one tank could herd up a whole map, and kill it all at once, all by himself. If you added a blaster to the mix, you could do it incredibly fast. This did not give larger rewards, it gave the same rewards it would have if the whole team killed everything one group at a time. The major issue was, 6 or 7 people could essentially sit at the door and do nothing, with all the risk being on the tank, or tank and blaster. It was just a lot more efficient. With the GDN, ED, and the aoe cap, this is no longer possible. Aggro cap or no aggro cap.
Saying that this was not entertaining, well, it all depended on what part you played in this whole equation.
When it was possible, it was very entertaining, at least for the tank. For the people sitting at the door, not so much. And to be honest, if I did have people sitting at the door it was people I was friends with, so we were shooting the breeze and entertained across the board anyway.
At the end of the day, if you ran missions with your friends, and were a competent group, you could achieve the same thing the farmers did.
The same is the case with the AE, sort of. The big difference with the AE and the old school PLing and farming, to be efficient, the entire group has to contribute, and actually has to be good. If you are on a crappy team, or there are doorsitters, it becomes less and less efficient. On top of this, again, the rewards are the same as normal content, the mobs are just not distributed the same way. Instead of minions, lts and the occasional boss, they are all bosses, of maximum level. If normal content had the mobs in it distributed the same way, the rewards would equal what can be gained in AE.
Either way, amending the aggro cap will have no real affect on either of these. It won't bring back pulling full maps, and it won't turn AE farms into the old herding mishes.
What it will do is allow those who enjoy pulling large numbers of mobs to do so in a team setting.
Dark Armor is like that kid you knew in school that didn't know when to shut up, and no matter how bad he got beaten down, he got right back up again and kept on talking.
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I hate it when you keep making sense, Kruunch...|
Originally Posted by Kruunch
Also I find it ironic that "herding" an entire floor is bad, but skipping 90% of the content in most TFs is considered great!
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They blamed getting rid of it on dumpster diving. They said it promotes "diviant play" or somesuch. Personally, I could care less at this point either way. Back when they did it, our attacks were broken and I hated the cap, however, since they've learned how to push an issue live without breaking Gauntlet, it really doesn't matter.
Now, that being said, herding the entire Eden trial again or U-mann's suggestion of herding the last ITF mission onto Romulous does have it's appeal.
"I never said thank you." - Lt. Gordon
"And you'll never have to." - the Dark Knight
So run all-tank ITFs and you can sit back with 136 enemies aggroed at a time with many more waiting in the wings ready to come streaming in as you kill them off.
For the record, I hated map herding teams in the past as much as I despise teams that skip 90% of the TF content.
Some of us just play to watch enemies fall down.
Would I gripe if tanker aggro cap was bumped to 23 or 27 or 32? Nope. I wouldn't. The devs have made several decisions that I didn't see the point to but in the end didn't mean enough to me to matter.
This would be one of those changes. I'd still quit teams with tanks that demanded to herd or ignore them and run off to take on spawns on my own.
Would I utilize the higher aggro cap on my tank? I don't know. I'd have to test it to find out.
Be well, people of CoH.
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Nothing wrong with that at all. I don't mind either of those when I am not on one of my tanks, but I do like to be told first. Just like I won't just mindlessly go start pulling the whole map unless someone else brings it up and it is agreed upon. Then I am more than happy to oblige.|
Originally Posted by BillZBubba
For the record, I hated map herding teams in the past as much as I despise teams that skip 90% of the TF content.
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Originally Posted by BillZBubba
Some of us just play to watch enemies fall down.
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Originally Posted by BillZBubba
Would I gripe if tanker aggro cap was bumped to 23 or 27 or 32? Nope. I wouldn't. The devs have made several decisions that I didn't see the point to but in the end didn't mean enough to me to matter.
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I duo with my gf a lot, we both switch off from tanker to support role. Taking on single groups is not fun for us, however, because not all spawns are the same size, when one of us gets over the cap, it's not unusual for the other to have to run or faceplant. This isn't a lack of skill.
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Originally Posted by BillZBubba
This would be one of those changes. I'd still quit teams with tanks that demanded to herd or ignore them and run off to take on spawns on my own.
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Dark Armor is like that kid you knew in school that didn't know when to shut up, and no matter how bad he got beaten down, he got right back up again and kept on talking.
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Again, this is a good thing. Enemy AI is already extremely low, why make it even lower? Some of them should think, "Hey, why are we all piling on this guy and ignoring the person buffing him?"|
Originally Posted by _Deth_
I duo with my gf a lot, we both switch off from tanker to support role. Taking on single groups is not fun for us, however, because not all spawns are the same size, when one of us gets over the cap, it's not unusual for the other to have to run or faceplant. This isn't a lack of skill.
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Let's keep some level of challenge in the game, not just "Tank takes all aggro, everyone else blasts with impunity."
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If it weren't for the current mechanics of taunt, I would agree. The fact that if I am already aggro capped, hitting taunt on a mob going after another teammate is useless. Sometimes it takes multiple hits to get its aggro. When I played WoW, one of the great things about tanking was that I could hold all the aggro, I just had to work for it. And if one did turn on another team member, there wasn't an arbitrary cap that kept me from getting it's attention back.
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Originally Posted by Vox_Populi
Again, this is a good thing. Enemy AI is already extremely low, why make it even lower? Some of them should think, "Hey, why are we all piling on this guy and ignoring the person buffing him?"
Let's keep some level of challenge in the game, not just "Tank takes all aggro, everyone else blasts with impunity." |
Dark Armor is like that kid you knew in school that didn't know when to shut up, and no matter how bad he got beaten down, he got right back up again and kept on talking.
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Thanks |
Originally Posted by Kruunch
Welcome back man
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I get that, I do. But at the same time, the devs at that point should have said, "you know, about this herding, I know a aggro cap was talked about as a fix, but lets see what weakening the characters does for us first."
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Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn
Well, ED and the GDN weren't done to specifically limit the ability to herd. They were done to weaken the characters, and bring the power levels closer together, to allow for more balanced content in the future. Basically, the Devs, without the GDN and ED couldn't have created content that challenged Tankers without it being nearly impossible for someone else to do.
Now, those did have an impact on the feasibility of herding, since your power levels weren't up to snuff to herd whole maps anymore, but they were not done to specifically limit herding. The aggro cap and the AoE target caps were specifically done to limit herding activities. The aggro cap has a completely different purpose from ED and the GDN, though they are corrolary. |
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Where did you see me say this?
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Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
It makes perfect sense. I was addressing Kruunch's assertion that activities, methods, and strategies are only ever popular because they are entertaining. This is just not true. Some activities are popular because they are wildly more rewarding than more entertaining options. I assert that herding was one such activity, and AE farming is another.
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When you argued that the popularity of a playstyle was indicative of its entertainment value. The phrase "contented customers" was used, IIRC. And then you brought up both herding and AE farming as examples of highly popular - and therefore positive - phenomena.|
Originally Posted by Kruunch
Where did you see me say this?
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That one, I really couldn't let pass without comment.
@SPTrashcan
Avatar by Toxic_Shia
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Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn
Kruunch, one other thing I thought of here:
The old Herding methods took a great deal of advantage of the mob stacking bug, where a good deal of mobs could exist in one spot, allowing for great stackability of mobs in a very tight spot. This bug has since been fixed. What this would mean now is, if you were to herd up an entire map, and brought them to one spot, there's no way that you could hold aggro on all of them, since you'd be losing aggro from not being able to affect them all with your aggro aura or gauntlet (and trying to cycle Taunt among a couple hundred enemies wouldn't be possible). I would think that this would lead to significant team deaths due to aggro loss if massive herding was performed. Hmmm...maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing... ;-) |
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Originally Posted by Kruunch
Or ... you might need another Tanker.
*gasp* Tanker stackability fixed! OMGWTFBBQ!!!! (seriously I think you are correct ... another horse I hadn't beat to death for the pundits yet) |
I see no benefit to mass herding if, ultimately, you can't hold the aggro anyway now.
Just plow instead of tractor.
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Nahh, you obviously don't get it, so why should I bother?
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Originally Posted by Kruunch
You're seriously going to explain tanking to me?
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Be well, people of CoH.
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Originally Posted by KaliMagdalene
Oh, and while I don't think raising the aggro cap to 25 or so would go very far toward hurting the game, I think removing it entirely would be a fairly big mistake. The only purpose for such a move would be to facilitate farming, not to improve overall gameplay.
This was part of a series of changes in issues 5 and 6 (global defense reduction, ED, AoE caps, and others) that were intended to shift the scale and focus of the game. Removing the aggro cap would simply be a retrogade move. |
I respectfully disagree.
The issue of 'herding' was never primarily the tanker bringing all the bad guys to the kill zone.
The issue was AOE damage then scaling to infinity.
IE, you'd stack up a zillion mobs and the blaster would get FULL DAMAGE against them all.
Scaling to infinity breaks game systems, it's a fact.
However, the fix implemented was hamfisted and waaaay too much. They should have capped aggro, OR capped AOE damage, never both. Of the two, the cap on aggro is the most immersion-breaking, in my book.
Test removing the aggro cap with the damage cap still in place. Nobody will WANT to herd whole maps, because it will take forever to kill them, because the damage output will remain constant. BUT, tankers will have the ability to provide quite a lot more for teams.
Heck, if desired, raise the tanker cap to 34, or 51, and leave all the other AT's the same.
But it is VERY annoying to see team-mates faceplant while being able to do nothing about, because the invisible aggro gods are angry at me right now.
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I notice you identify the problem as "scaling to infinity" but you try to sell the idea that threat management scaling to infinity was not itself a problem.|
Originally Posted by mauk2
I respectfully disagree.
The issue of 'herding' was never primarily the tanker bringing all the bad guys to the kill zone. The issue was AOE damage then scaling to infinity. IE, you'd stack up a zillion mobs and the blaster would get FULL DAMAGE against them all. Scaling to infinity breaks game systems, it's a fact. |
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| However, the fix implemented was hamfisted and waaaay too much. They should have capped aggro, OR capped AOE damage, never both. Of the two, the cap on aggro is the most immersion-breaking, in my book. |
I find it interesting that you think that a fireball only hitting 16 people is more realistic than mobs being more likely to spread their attacks out among multiple targets. Also, a common complaint about threat control is how it artificially forces mobs to attack one person.
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| Test removing the aggro cap with the damage cap still in place. Nobody will WANT to herd whole maps, because it will take forever to kill them, because the damage output will remain constant. BUT, tankers will have the ability to provide quite a lot more for teams. |
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Heck, if desired, raise the tanker cap to 34, or 51, and leave all the other AT's the same. But it is VERY annoying to see team-mates faceplant while being able to do nothing about, because the invisible aggro gods are angry at me right now. |
Seriously, though, while I won't say it's necessarily impossible to have different aggro caps for different ATs, I strongly suspect it's not designed to bend that way.
This isn't the fix that will make everyone love tankers more.
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I'm all for removing the aggro caps for tankers. However, I think it needs to be done with certain conditions.
First, no extra range or target increase on aggro auras or taunt.
Second, no increase to the AoE cap for any AT.
Basically, if the aggro cap is removed, I want ABSOLUTELY NO BUFFS to any AT or power. So if a tank aggros 45 mobs, the tank shouldn't get any extra tools to maintain that aggro.
To me that means your poor to above average team won't see any difference. Only the great teams will improve. Why, you ask? Simple, because most tanks are too ******* ****** to handle the current aggro cap.
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So, herding was not more rewarding; it was just a more efficient way to receive rewards. Gotcha. |
Originally Posted by _Deth_
Herding was not more rewarding. [snip] The devs stopped herding because it was part of the risk vs reward argument. At the time, one tank could herd up a whole map, and kill it all at once, all by himself. If you added a blaster to the mix, you could do it incredibly fast. This did not give larger rewards, it gave the same rewards it would have if the whole team killed everything one group at a time. The major issue was, 6 or 7 people could essentially sit at the door and do nothing, with all the risk being on the tank, or tank and blaster. It was just a lot more efficient. With the GDN, ED, and the aoe cap, this is no longer possible. Aggro cap or no aggro cap. |
My Tanker could solo Crey's Folly, back in the day -- herding up half the map, maneuvering everything into one tight little ball, and at one point, KO Blow actually would hit stacked foes. It was sickly more rewarding than just about anything else I could have done at the time on that character --
Excuse me; it was sickly more efficient at providing rewards than anything else I could have done on that character.
If your team were comprised of eight people, among them a Tanker and a Blaster, then maybe herding wasn't all that much faster than having the entire team fight spawn-to-spawn -- but if the team is just a Tanker and a Blaster, there would have been no contest. In many cases, the rest of the team was comprised of builds which either weren't capable of helping in a meaningful way (too low in level), or which had no intention of helping (afking while the experience pours in), so the alternative method of spawn-to-spawn play wouldn't have been viable, anyway.
In any case, if all you're interested in is the rewards for your Tanker, and perhaps a friend's Blaster, then there's no point in taking the time to recruit a team.
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| At the end of the day, if you ran missions with your friends, and were a competent group, you could achieve the same thing the farmers did. |
In fact, given the vast array of build possibilities presented by IOs, and the (nearly) practically limitless ability of players to create alts, the appeal of gaining more and more rewards as efficiently as possible, ad nauseam, is far, far higher than it would have been back in the old days.
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| On top of this, again, the rewards are the same as normal content, the mobs are just not distributed the same way. Instead of minions, lts and the occasional boss, they are all bosses, of maximum level. If normal content had the mobs in it distributed the same way, the rewards would equal what can be gained in AE. |
The fact that we can pad missions with bosses only points to a revival for Tankers, because Controllers can no longer reliably lock down a single spawn except in pairs -- just as Tankers can no longer reliably manage multiple spawns without help, often from another Tanker.
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Either way, amending the aggro cap will have no real affect on either of these. It won't bring back pulling full maps, and it won't turn AE farms into the old herding mishes. What it will do is allow those who enjoy pulling large numbers of mobs to do so in a team setting. |
So recruit some Tankers or people you know to have sturdy builds besides, and go to town.
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Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze
Nice build
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Bingo!
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Originally Posted by MunkiLord
I'm all for removing the aggro caps for tankers. However, I think it needs to be done with certain conditions.
First, no extra range or target increase on aggro auras or taunt. Second, no increase to the AoE cap for any AT. Basically, if the aggro cap is removed, I want ABSOLUTELY NO BUFFS to any AT or power. So if a tank aggros 45 mobs, the tank shouldn't get any extra tools to maintain that aggro. |
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The outcome of what you are saying Bingo to would be the same ingame outcome if 3 people went in and aggroed 45 enemies into the same small area.|
Originally Posted by Kruunch
Bingo!
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I honestly think that 17 per person is fine.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
I find it ironic that the vast majority of people posting here (both pro and con) have never really experienced true herding from back in the day.
I can only assume that for many of these people, they are picking up the pro/con debates that older players have made, based upon preference for the player and their own thoughts on hypothetical situations that haven't actually encountered.
I did a *ton* of herding back in the day. I herded whole mission maps and entire sections of zones. Let me try to debunk a little of the misinformation about herding (and the agro cap):
1) Herding was primarily done (after the yaya factor) to clear mission maps faster and/or gain XP faster. It was back then, not the most efficient method of XP/inf farming. CoT portal missions (which were nerfed) and bridging the demon farms (which still exists today) were far more efficient. It would even be less efficient then doing the AE farms today (as is all other forms of prior farming). If the farming aspect is what bothers you, then I suggest you take a look at the genre of game you are playing. MMOs are built on repetitive game play as part of their business model ... in other words they depend on players farming.
2) Players getting kicked from teams for not wanting to herd ... I never kicked a player once from one of my teams because they didn't want to herd ... in fact I only ever had one complaint about in the entire time we did it, and that was a simple "I don't like herding" and the person left of his own volition. If you don't like it, you don't to do it. Fairly simple.
These are the only two real debates I've heard against lifting the agro cap. I can understand if it does nothing for your game, but why would you go out of your way to try and block something that many other people would enjoy very much?
Again, the sad truth is that CoH doesn't offer the content to continue characters. That leaves the player with a few choices ... continually build new characters and/or farm with max level characters. I *want* more content. I've wanted more quality content for this game since beta. Alas, Paragon Studios and Cryptic before them either don't understand what content for an MMO entails or don't have the development team to keep up (or both). To that end, the only things we are left with are ways to make the current content more interesting ... lifting the agro cap would help achieve this in a very simple to implement way.
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Except for where, when something is sufficiently rewarding, most people are doing it. Which means if you dislike it enough that you don't consider the superior rewards worthwhile, you are in the minority. Sure, there may be others like you, but beyond a certain critical mass it becomes increasingly difficult to find a group of people to play with who don't want to maximize their reward.|
Originally Posted by Kruunch
I only ever had one complaint about in the entire time we did it, and that was a simple "I don't like herding" and the person left of his own volition. If you don't like it, you don't to do it. Fairly simple.
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And you still haven't explained why anyone would want to let you herd at present, since it no longer offers the incentives that made it popular in its heyday, and still has all the faults. So, as I said, I have no objection to lifting the aggro cap for solo tanks in instances, since the only purpose seems to be entertainment for Tankers who just like seeing a big crowd of enemies.
Actually, if you really just want to see a big crowd of enemies, do this: create an AE mission, fill it with glowies that spawn large ambushes, and run through clicking on them. Come I16, you'll even have the option of having them all spawn for 8-man teams. Enjoy!
@SPTrashcan
Avatar by Toxic_Shia
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And that is fairly natural. The problem here is not with the agro crap, but the risk/reward system and content within CoH currently.|
Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
Except for where, when something is sufficiently rewarding, most people are doing it. Which means if you dislike it enough that you don't consider the superior rewards worthwhile, you are in the minority. Sure, there may be others like you, but beyond a certain critical mass it becomes increasingly difficult to find a group of people to play with who don't want to maximize their reward.
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| And you still haven't explained why anyone would want to let you herd at present, since it no longer offers the incentives that made it popular in its heyday, and still has all the faults. So, as I said, I have no objection to lifting the aggro cap for solo tanks in instances, since the only purpose seems to be entertainment for Tankers who just like seeing a big crowd of enemies. |
Along those lines, lifting it for just solo Tankers makes no sense whatsoever.
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| Actually, if you really just want to see a big crowd of enemies, do this: create an AE mission, fill it with glowies that spawn large ambushes, and run through clicking on them. Come I16, you'll even have the option of having them all spawn for 8-man teams. Enjoy! |
Run along like a good boy now.
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Well I knew them days and as far as I am concerned they're best left where they are. I think you'd be flogging a dead horse with this idea as the game undeniably has moved forward a ton in terms of PvE balance based on quantities such as the aggro cap figure.
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Originally Posted by Kruunch
I find it ironic that the vast majority of people posting here (both pro and con) have never really experienced true herding from back in the day.
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He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
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You still have yet to give a reason why.|
Originally Posted by Shannon_EU
Well I knew them days and as far as I am concerned they're best left where they are. I think you'd be flogging a dead horse with this idea as the game undeniably has moved forward a ton in terms of PvE balance based on quantities such as the aggro cap figure.
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My contention is that the current PvE balance has made the agro cap a relic.
In fact, one could say that the PvE balance has moved backwards a ton, not forwards.
Shrug.
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