Jack Emmert?

I remember doing an analysis of Defense, Resistance, and Regeneration against each other during the "Nerf Regen Every Update" period, where I took a generic hero with a fixed amount of HP, then set them up with either Regeneration, Resistance, or Defense as their protection, a fixed amount of outgoing DPS, and a number of attacking mobs, each with a fixed amount of HP and DPS, then ran simulations with varying numbers of attackers. Unsurprisingly, Resistance characters fared the best; they had a stable, predictable rate of HP decline. Defense characters fared next best; their survival was more random, as a bad set of numbers coming out of the RNG could faceplant them quickly. Regeneration fared better than the 'unluckiest' Defense characters, but otherwise came off the worst of all; their survival depended heavily on being able to survive long enough to grind down the incoming damage -- HP dived faster than either of the others, which matched what I'd seen in play; Regen characters would either die in the first ten seconds of a fight or come out of it uninjured.

When I fiddled with the parameters to add Defense to Regen and Resistance characters, and Resistance to Regen and Defense characters, things turned around completely. It took only a relatively small amount of Defense and Resistance to make a Regeneration character obscenely survivable -- Resistance cutting down the incoming damage and Defense preventing a hit entirely (allowing the regeneration to work on 'old' damage) flattened the HP valley for Regen characters hugely, to the point that they became the most survivable option.

Looking at the way Regeneration worked, it became obvious to me that the fundamental premise -- really fast healing that healed incoming damage again and again until it was gone -- was going to be incredibly hard to balance, and that all of the changes that Cryptic kept making didn't address the perception of Regen characters (that they would come out of a fight barely injured, so they were clearly overpowered, without noticing that that character was at 10% hit points a quarter of the way into the fight), but just slid the line that divided 'groups a Regen Scrapper could jump into and beat' from 'groups a Regen Scrapper could jump into and get their *** handed to them'.

The more I looked at it, the more it seemed as if the problem could be solved by changing one power in the Regeneration powerset -- Instant Healing. Instead of making it be a big boost to regeneration rate (as either a toggle with an obscene End cost or a click power with a long recharge), make it truly 'instant' healing, by having it treat every incoming attack the same way that Spectral Wounds is handled -- you take all the damage, but a second or two later, some percentage of it 'instantly' heals. As this would be applied once to each attack a character receives, it changes the power from 'heals the same damage over and over again until it's gone' to 'stop X percent of incoming damage', making it equivalent to, and balanceable against, both Resistance and Defense, allowing it to be turned back into a toggle that didn't cost obscene amounts of End to run.

It probably should happen that way. But I do think that the treatment of Statesman in semi-official lore, and especially the comic book, does show evidence of some cross-contamination there. For this game, the character Statesman has ever been something of a blank slate. This contrasts with the persona of Defender, who came with a backstory before Jack Emmert stepped into the role.

The character cross pollination seems fairly obvious in the official comics. It's hard to say how much. Some writers just aren't fond of Superman-style heroes, and hang "kick me" signs on the backs of any such character they write; think of Superman by Frank Miller. I suppose we could just ask Troy Hickman.

Edit: that particular issue was Wohl's, not Hickman's

Statesman seems relatively inert in the game itself. He was not a permanent fixture of the actual game world until i9, while Recluse has been in game since the villain level cap went from 40 to 50, and villains are sent to him on several story arcs apart from his strike force. No content currently requires you to interact with the Statesman character other than the STF. His current location isn't particularly inspiring, either; he probably ought to be hanging around the AP city hall, or Portal Corps, or maybe Galaxy City, which needs to be buffed somehow anyways. (Removing a section of Galaxy NW of the train and turning it into a grand Freedom Phalanx HQ would do minimal harm IMO.) Apart from that, Statesman appears only as a victim in need of rescue or a villain from several evil alternate dimensions.

I do think that the developers who write in game content probably ought to rehabilitate the Statesman character, and integrate him better into the game world. He's center stage in the loading screen; he ought to be a bit more prominent in game.

Because its not just about DPA. Its also about EPS and the perception of activity level. You want the early attacks to have fast recharge so they can be used often, because in the early going that's all you'll have. But if you jettison recharge time as the primary limiter on total DPS, you have to be a lot more careful about DPA: it has to start low and get higher, or there's nowhere for the higher tier attacks to go. If DPA has to get higher for the higher tier attacks *and* they also get longer in cast time, you have a ridiculous balancing situation.

But DPA is critical as well. I had a conversation with Castle where I proposed that 1 DS/sec be the baseline DPA for a "standard" attack. Powers intended to be weaker would be lower than that (powers that aren't primarily damage, for example) and special attacks would be higher than that, to a point. Castle seemed to think that was a reasonable idea and I think based partially on that conversation the blaster tier 1/2 attacks were rebalanced around ensuring that no one had much less (Flares) or much more (Ice Blast). Following this logic, you'd expect attacks intended to be stronger, like Blaze, to have higher DPA and they do. Not counting the DoT, Blaze has a DPA of 2.12 which is probably near the top of what you want to be giving out most of the time.

So where does that leave Power Burst? Its cast time is 2.0s. Do you want to give it twice the damage of Blaze? Heck, just to get to the same DPA as the tier 1/2 attacks it has to have the same damage as Blaze, and in fact that's what it is: it has a DPA of 1.06, just barely above the tier1/2 standard 1.0 DS/sec.

If as you go up the tiers you want to increase DPA *and* cast time, eventually the damage of the attacks gets absurd.

Completely separate from this line of thought, if your first two attacks were, say, about 1.5s - 1.67s in cast time, and had recharges in the 2-6s range, you'd be spending a greater fraction of your time actually shooting at things than if you have 1s cast time 8s recharge time powers. The early level activity would be higher, and that's a psychological gameplay win as well.



Its more correct to say that whenever melee attacks are designed within some "special purpose" they tend not to sacrifice damage in the process, so they are always attacks first, and anything else second. Even powers that used to be secondary effect first and damage second were revised: Parry, KO Blow, and Crippling Axe Kick are examples.

It is odd that the damage-focused archetype doesn't get that advantage.


I would never recommend that.

Or they just need to turn him heel in our dimension as well.

I found that tough (at least for smash/lethal) had a disproportionately higher benefit to regeneration than weave did, because without stacking additional defense it would only forestall damage bursts that regeneration couldn't overcome in a small proportional fashion. Tough reduced their magnitude across the board, which created a skew that created near-exponential benefit by setting the critical threshold for bursts higher, and therefore their statistical likelihood far lower. That result (among others) is in my scrapper comparisons analysis linked in my sig, somewhere near the bottom of post three.


Of course, no one relies on the regeneration mechanic alone. Regeneration scrappers have dull pain, which is essentially a form of (surprisingly high) resistance. The uptime/downtime essentially creates a case where regeneration is extremely strong at times, and has windows of vulnerability at times based on DP's uptime. That's a much easier situation to balance empirically.


You know, this is an oft-suggested idea, but I actually looked at it in my discrete simulator. It wouldn't have helped during the I2 salad days, because the levels of damage were so high the healback would need to be too quick to be effective: it would essentially be instantaneous with no delay. Now, it would work to a point, but I think people would quickly realize that its Achilles heel is higher damage attacks from things like bosses. The technical aspects are a challenge, but I think the feature would create a swirling controversy that would be difficult to resolve without resorting to technical math above and beyond what can ordinarily be managed in an open discussion.

I made an alternate suggestion back in the day: give regen scrappers two health bars, one of which was allowed to regenerate much faster than the other one. The "outer" fast regenerating one was a form of healing protection, but anything that blew through that would hit their "core" health bar which would heal much more slowly. So they could be fast, insanely regenerating monsters in combat, but they would slowly take nicks and scrapes their monster regen couldn't heal instantly, and that would build up over time to eventually force them to stop and recover that damage more conventionally.

The core of that idea is actually mathematically congruent for the most part with the force fields seen in Champions Online and Star Trek Online, actually, although some aspects are different (such as the construction and maintenance of the secondary health bar, and the relationship between healing and regeneration as it pertains to the two health bars).

Well, he was a permanent fixture on tyrant's wall before then - although he was still pretty inert

That is still one of my favorite missions in the game.

I think I see what you mean. When you said "slower," I immediately thought of something on the order of Bitter Freeze Ray to Total Focus as slow, and that sort of thing as a bread and butter attack is just crazy. But the numbers you're giving do actually sound interesting.

Incidentally, wouldn't it be counter-intuitive to have attacks that are weaker AND slower than later attacks once you get a full attack chain? I understand that bigger attacks need to have better DPA because that's what people would expect (hence why it's odd that Energy Punch has better DPA than Bone Smasher), but it just seems backwards to have the smallest attacks also be the slowest. It would feel, at least to me, like compounding insult upon injury.

How would you feel about the following: All attacks have more or less the same DPA, but later attacks have a slightly higher DPA the same way they tend to have a slightly lower DPS? Yes, the numbers on damage might be absurd (although animation times could go down instead of damage scaling up), but high DPA also comes with a very high EPA, which makes it more costly to do more damage right away. Wouldn't that in itself be a decent balancing factor?

To a large extent, you have a point. Melee ATs have basically "just attacks," with some of them trading off a slight bit of efficiency for secondary effects. However, most melee sets still have at least one pure utility attack like Cobra Strike or Touch of Fear or Fault, plus Taunt, plus Build Up, plus at least one very inefficient AoE, but that still leaves them with five redundant attacks to make an attack chain out of.

Blasters and Blast sets in general, on the other hand, give up one power for a nuke, one for aim, one for a Snipe, one for utility and typically have two AoR attacks which just doesn't leave much room for other things. I honestly don't see what you could do to make room for more, outside of canibalising existing powers. Nukes are out, Aim is out, the AoEs don't count, so the only thing you can really think about canibalising is either Snipe or the Utility power. I wouldn't mind seeing serious damage on, say, Beanbag in addition to the stun, but I don't expect to see it.

Snipes are... Odd powers, and I've taken enough heat over them to last me for a while. Basically, they have the WORST DPA of any power in a Blast, they have indecent DPS AND they're interruptible. This makes them bad in a pinch, bad during Build Up, bad in the middle of a fight and basically only really good as openers, which you'd think would make them recharge a little slower and hit a little harder. They're something I'd look to canibalise into a decent attack, but I'll just get trodden on for suggesting it.

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.

Yeah - it makes you feel really powerful to be the one who has to rescue him

I wonder how they'll present it once GR goes live?
I think the lava lair would have to be changed, and the street thugs as his guards will go for sure.

Good question. But lets take a step back a bit and look at this from the perspective of whole attack sets, and power progression.

We start off with only one attack. Which one do you want:

a: 0.8 DS, 1.6s cast, 2s rech
b: 2.0 DS, 1.0s cast, 12s rech

The second one has higher damage (2.5x) and higher DPA (4x).

Except: the first one does 0.8 DS every 3.6 seconds, for a total of 0.22 DS/sec. The second one does 2.0 DS every 13 seconds, for a total of 0.15 DS/sec. If you only have one of them, the first one is actually better: it deals more damage over time (almost 50% more). You'll kill a lot faster with the first one than the second one. And the first one will be animating an attack 44% of the time, and allowing the player to act ever 3.6s. The second one will be doing nothing 92% of the time and only allowing the player to act every 13s.

As a *first* attack, (a) is actually better than (b), unless (b) is so high its a one-shot kill.

But take a look at this set:

1: 0.8 DS, 1.6s cast, 2s rech
2: 0.8 DS, 1.6s cast, 2s rech
3: 2.0 DS, 1.0s cast, 12s rech

Once you have the first two powers, you can practically alternate them. You have a nearly full attack chain without recharge slotting, and dealing about 0.44 DS/sec. When power #3 comes along, its DPA is always better than any other alternative, so you'll probably use it as often as possible. But you'll still be using the bread and butter attacks because #3 simply doesn't recharge fast enough to be a mainstay. It essentially provides an occasional damage boost, and it improves the set. So even though it was a bad Power 1, its a really good Power 3. By giving it higher DPA, we make it valuable, and something to look forward to. It will always be a good power to use when it comes up, and yet it doesn't totally replace the first two, because its not up continuously.

Until you have a full attack chain, higher DPS powers are better than lower DPS powers, regardless of DPA. But once you do have a full attack chain, higher DPA powers are better to add than lower DPA powers, regardless of DPS. That's a bit simplistic, but close to the truth. So powersets should be designed with high DPS/low DPA powers at the top, and low DPS/high DPA powers at the bottom. That way the lower tier attacks are valuable when we get them, and the higher tier attacks are more valuable than the lower tier attacks when we get them. Nothing seems wasted or pointless.

The one with the coolest animation

I always use snipes as openers. They're good for pulling.

One such thing is about to be implemented, the "mailing Influence/Infamy" system.

I remember arguing with players about a year ago that such a thing should be implemented. I was informed that many players were quite terrified that such a thing could only encourage Gold Farmers.

In short order, I expect such concerns will be dissolved.

I can't speak to any of this except the comics. Actually, MY take on Statesman WOULD be kind of a cross between a Cary Bates Superman and a Kurt Busiek Capt. America. I'm not an "edgy" kind of writer in general. With my issues of the comic, I was doing the second arc, after Mark Waid's initial run. Mark wrote a version of Statesman (as well as some of the other characters) that was darker than the way I saw the character, but I don't like just jerking characters around, continuity-wise, so I started my arc with States being a little more high-strung (though definitely not a creep), and by the end of it I had him much closer to where I wanted him, ostensibly with a bit of character development to explain the difference. Hopefully it worked for the readers. Anyway, that was my mindset with it.

I don't have a lot of information on a lot of situations, but isn't that kind of how powersets are ideally already balanced? I'm sure there are outliers, but pulling a random sample out of the grid to test because that's what I'm playing now, Battle Axe seems to fix that design specification to a T. From Beheader to Chop to Gash to Swoop to Cleave, DPA just keeps going up and up and DPS drops ever so slightly. In fact, not counting Whirling Axe, animation times still go 1.33, 1.33, 1.5, 1.83, 2.33, respectively, so despite powers slowing down as they go up in Tier, their DPA still steadily increases, and without any specific serious problems of absurd damage that I've been able to see. Granted, Battle Axe went through a revision when it was proliferated to Brutes, but still.

Or are we looking for large-scale differences here? Where low-Tier powers have markedly better DPS than high-Tier attacks, but high-Tier ones have markedly better DPA? Because looking at Battle Axe, the change is there, it's just on the matter of smaller steps. Off memory, 40 to 60 to 80 to 90 to 110 or some such. And DPS is fairly the same, with minor drops between the Tiers.

I know not all sets are designed like this, and I know few have such a clear hierarchy of attacks, but it seems like setting up attacks to both slow down AND increase in DPA isn't so out of the question, provided the increase isn't too profound.

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.

I guess I should kiss your *** a bit, Troy. You did right a more classic view on Statesman and you introduced the greatest hero ever (Breakneck).

My spreadsheets are at home, but a quick glance at City of Data's info for Battle Axe shows DPA values of:

Beheader: 0.75 DS/sec
Chop: 1.23 DS/sec
Gash: 1.31 DS/sec
Swoop: 1.25 DS/sec
Cleave: 1.18 DS/sec
(intrinsic cast time, not ArcanaTime)

And for the most part, Battle Axe's cast times (for single target) are fairly close together: the longest (2.33s) is only 75% longer than the quickest (1.33). That's not typical. Dual Blades highest (OTC: 3.3s) is 3.2x higher than its fastest (NS: 1.03s). Fire Melee's highest is 2.33x higher than its fastest. Martial Arts highest is 3.0x higher than its fastest.

I think of all the attack sets, significantly less than half of them have a cast time spread of less than 2x between their fastest and slowest single target attacks. And I think no set has a spread significantly lower than Battle Axe. When cast time increases by only 75%, there's room to increase damage to compensate and overtake. But its much harder when the spread is 2x or 3x.

Separate from that, as mentioned previously there is the other side of the equation. Do the early Battle Axe powers allow for reasonable levels of activity for players as the set progresses? Well, the total efficiency of the first couple of powers (without recharge) is:

Beheader: 25%
Chop: 14%
Gash: 13%.

Beheader is rather unusual as low tier powers go: very few have 25% animation to cycle time ratios. Anyway, the total of the first three powers is 52%. With those three powers, the best you can do is be active about 52% of the time, and your average time between actions is about 2.6 seconds. On average, you'll be using an attack once every 2.6 seconds.

And this is actually one of the best attack sets in terms of these metrics. Nearly all attack sets are worse.


The problem is that the gaps are so high that while this might have been easy at the beginning of time, we now have players used to powersets designed differently. There's no way to bridge this gap for a set like Martial Arts, which has a gap of 3.05. Slowing down TK and SK wrecks the set, and speeding up EC breaks the animation most MA scrappers love. It would be extremely difficult to retrofit this philosophy into existing powersets in many cases, although it would be easier to make new powersets that fit the philosophy. It would require cooperation from the powers designers and the animation designers, though: they would have to both agree this is reasonable.

QFT.

coincidentally, I'm loving my new DP/Storm corrupter.

Funding, brand name, recognizable producer, and 'the snowball effect'.

I remember reading a conversation between various game developers which took place in 2006 or 2007. The subject of the conversation was how to deal with MMO players with differing amount of time available. If Jim and Joe are best buddies, but Joe has twice as much time to play than Jim, they'll eventually be unable to play together in the game, because of power differences. Sidekicking was the perfect fix for the issue (and wasn't even mentioned in the discussion I read), and there have been a number of MMOs implementing similar features in recent years.

Hey, my starter pokemon joins me in battle against the Elite 4!

But yes, I definitely enjoy game where your starting abilities remain useful even at the end of the game. CoH isn't the only one, but such systems do tend to be uncommon.

Can I have your brainmeats?