Regarding Defenders and Controllers

Looking at the data and the graphical representation, I think I'll refer to this theory of Defender unpopularity as "The Defender's Cross To Bear" or just The Defender's Cross for short.

I really doubt that the controller/defender differential has anything to do with their perceived value on teams, whether they are played well or poorly. Experienced players know that support powers speed up a team remarkably, and don't really need AoE control to survive. New players look for a tank and a healer.

What makes defenders unpleasant for me, at least, is the combination of low damage and low mitigation when soloing. Tankers are no shining stars in the damage department, but at least they can survive their long fights. Controllers can be pretty poor on damage depending on choice of powersets, but the combination of control and support makes even the very slowest controller combos safe as houses. Blasters have worse mitigation, but with their high and guaranteed damage output they have a good chance of shortening the fight to the point where their HP outlasts their opponents'.

But for defenders, especially in the 41-50 range, you end up fighting a lot of enemies who circumvent debuffs and/or throw a lot of mez. And the longer a fight drags on with one of these enemies, the more likely it is that they'll get lucky, cut through my protections, and leave me vulnerable. I can't even begin to express how much I hate this. It's basically why I never play my Rad/Rad def unless I'm specifically asked to by a friend - and this is supposed to be one of the more solo-friendly combos.

The other problem with measuring the rate at which Defenders can solo is it depends greatly on the powersets chosen.

Having a -res primary such as Rad, Dark and Storm does help compared to say Empathy or Force Fields.

They are still slow but for me its the difference between bearable and not.

Tying into what I said before, I think it's worth noting that faster soloing is safer soloing. Solo speed is determined almost entirely by DPS, and high DPS also means being able to get rid of threatening enemies faster - that is, before they manage to degrade or circumvent your defenses.

I'm going to jump in at this point because I find some inherent flaws in some arguments here, along with the equally strong inherent accuracies. I'd like to keep the accuracies but at least point out some of the flaws I'm seeing.

First, Phil, I think your methodology is very sound and definitely goes quite some distance towards proving TS's, and now your, point. Defenders need to be adjusted and it seems obvious. The problem, however, is not with your methodology or your final analysis, but with how you get from the data to the conclusion. You're using inductive, rather than deductive reasoning. This has been pointed out indirectly at least once in this thread, but I think it's important to be more direct and explicit so that the main strength of your argument can shine through more fully.

Your premise is that Underplayed = Underpowered. That is inductive reasoning based on the assumption that Power = Fun. The problem there is that "power" is subjective rather than objective, just as is "fun", and therefore cannot be used in the factual analysis. You have, without a doubt, proven that defenders are underplayed. That does not prove, nor is necessary or even relevant to prove, that they are underpowered. What it proves is that the player base doesn't like them nearly as much as they like the other ATs. Different players like different kinds of things, true, and therefore will tend toward different play-styles and goals. Using some simple sociological truisms (I do not say "facts" because there are no "facts" in the soft science of sociology) we can build towards a deductive application of the results of your survey.

1) The long tail is a vital part of marketing in a massive customer base.
2) Massive, in the context of the MMO, does not equate to a massive customer base in the context of marketing.
3) Discounting the long tail, due to the size of the customer base, the importance of each product (AT in this context) in the product line must draw and keep customers.
4) One of the best product development strategies is to "manage from the bottom". This means to find the least productive product and adapt it until it is no longer the least productive.
5) In this case, it has been shown to be obvious that the Defender product is the least productive, and therefore in the greatest need of modification.

The next step is not to argue about how to change the defender product, but instead to discover the truth of why it is underproducing. We can make assumptions based on our own preferences and how we feel about other ATs, but those assumptions are inherently biased and therefore invalid. Instead, I'd recommend we use the methodology you've already established to narrow down the field.

First, we need to discover the base-line of defender performance. By "performance" I mean the productivity of the AT relative to acquiring and keeping customers. In order to do this, it would be best to make another survey of only the starting level defender counts. Lets see the ratios from level 1-10 by themselves and not as they relate to anything outside that range. This will show us how well they are liked based on, essentially, the views of new players seeing only the description during character generation; short-term players seeing only how they relate to other low-level ATs; mid-term players who have seen a bit of how they solo and how they team without knowing about the end-game values; and long-term players who have seen defenders run the whole spectrum of strengths and flaws. This will give us our base-line.

We then would need a "drop-off" chart showing not how defenders rate against other ATs, but how defenders of level 1-10 rate against defenders of level 12-20, etc. I would recommend using two surveys with one having no overlapping datapoints and the other having half-mark overlaps. In other words, the first survey would study 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40 and 41-50 and the second survey would study 6-15, 16-25, 26-35 and 36-45. Both surveys could then be combined for a more detailed overlap study. This would show us in much greater detail if it's the basic function of the AT or if it's how the AT relates to other ATs (Controllers getting the last of the Defender AT's powers at level 35 and 38 would cause a significant drop-off at 35-40, Tanks getting taunt and therefore being stronger protectors would cause a significant drop-off at 10-20, Blasters doing a ton more damage would cause a significant drop-off at 30-40 when both ATs have gotten their nukes, etc.).

Right now all we can say for sure is that Defenders are under-appreciated. We don't know why and claiming to merely shows our biases. We don't have access to the datamining capabilities of the developers so we have to rely on our own datamining techniques. I think Phil's methodology gives us some excellent extrapolation possibilities and combining that with Turbo's understanding of data-interpretation can get us what we need to find out exactly what is wrong, why it's wrong and how to correct it.

Thank you for your time. I know I'm very long winded.

Robin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha ...I have the patience of a coffee-fueled flea...

While I agree with c., Skeet, I'd like to point out that since teams can have up to 8 people and only one of them needs to lead, it should be basic logic that only 1 in 8 players needs to be a leader-type personality and therefore 7 in 8 shouldn't have to be the kind of player that likes the star.

I hate the star. With a comment by Phil I have started to be willing to start teams and run with them, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer to have someone else do the starting. Even if you assume half the people who aren't the leader-type are willing to lead, you've still got 4 in 8 players who would rather just go roll a scrapper or some other AT who can solo better. Being a defender is kind of a "behind the throne" play-style and therefore isn't going to generally appeal to leader-types. That further decreases the number of defenders as those people give up and go build something else. That's the real problem here. Attrition. We are trying to stop that and we're not going to do it by telling people "well your personality just isn't cut out for being a defender 'cuz if it was you'd just start your own team". To a lot of players saying "start your own team" is going to be the same as saying "go play something more solo-able." That promotes attrition.

Robin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha ...I have the patience of a coffee-fueled flea...

Had my FF/NRG Defender since at Least June of 2004. Mostly soloed, except a little bit of teaming in the late 40's. Always wanted my blasts to do more damage, but always told that's the give and take of it, quit complaining make a blaster, or make a Real defender (meaning one with green numbers). Still play him, often. He's my main.

Guess I'm wierd.