Discussion: Formspring.me 4/23 Dev Q&A Transcript

Originally Posted by Sermon

Is there a technical reason why we can't have more than 36 slots?

I have 24 full slots at the moment. It's not exactly a pressing issue in my case, but I hope that it will be an option to go beyond 36 eventually!

Originally Posted by Mr Bandwagon

Wouldn't calling the hospital Cole Memorial mean Cole is dead?

Originally Posted by Severe

seriously two issues..one you actually had someone ask when issue 17 is?

and the 2nd issue is the fact out of all the other questions you picked this one like your doing us a favor?

who picked this question ..this question should have been ignored ..i had 2 better questions then that. and you wonder why the playerbase is dead

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

This ventures into territory the devs can't discuss in too much detail, so they are usually cautious try to avoid discussing too deeply. Its also something that they have historically found difficult to articulate precisely even in areas they are allowed to discuss.

I'm not as cautious, and extremely wordy.

First: we were never meant to be "equal" to 3 even minions. Even back when Statesman was making that statement, I discussed with him the fact that statement was misleading and contradicted other things he said about the game balance. What he said was that 3 even minions was originally meant to be a challenge to players, because that was the standard spawn in a mission (for one player). Obviously, when you are designing a game, you try to generate opposition for the player to overcome that is within their means to do so but generally not trivial to do so.

We were meant to be challenged by three minions, but generally win. By definition, that means we were always supposed to be superior to three even minions. Just not so superior that they were meaningless to us.


Today, that rule is just a whisper of a guideline. The devs now recognize that because of the way the level progression works, the players get more powerful relative to the critters as they get higher. And the devs now *want* the players to get more powerful relative to the critters, to provide the psychological feedback of progress. So we are "balanced against" increasingly higher levels of threat as we get higher.

But as I said, that's just a guideline. The game balance is based around a set of boundaries that define a range of acceptably balanced performance, rather than a specific "target." To the best of my knowledge, these are the parameters the game is balanced *within*:

1. Every powerset combination where the player makes reasonable choices to do so should be able to reasonably solo the core story content of the game.

2. When averaged across all of the players that play the game every powerset combination should generate performance similar to that of the average performance of all players playing all powerset combinations, to within a specific range centered around that average. This should be true under a set of different specific circumstances, such as different combat levels.

3. A player should be theoretically be able to level from level one to level 50 by playing and completing some subset of the core story content less than 100%. In addition, the amount of time for the average player to complete that content should fall within a certain leveling range. Above average players can level significantly faster without generating unacceptably high performance up to some unknown (and possibly non-specific) limit.


There are other minor rules here and there I'm aware of that I doubt you'd be interested in. The problem is that I have only a vague sense of the actual numbers involved in #2, and absolutely no idea (except what basic logic tells me) about the numbers involved in #3, and the devs are explicitly barred from discussing either. To the extent that I know anything about those quantities I'm equally barred from discussing them except in vague terms comparable to what the devs have already said in public.


This is just unfortunately one of those topics for which the devs could give answers, but for most people they cannot give satisfactory ones and would be forced to terminate the discussion at almost every turn. The fact that there are still people who think we were, are, or were ever considered to be "equal to three minions" attests to the difficulty in communicating about this specific topic. That statement was never, ever true and even when Statesman was here I worked hard to correct that misunderstanding, with only very limited success. Its just a very difficult topic to cover without falling into a lot of misunderstandings and general arguments.

Originally Posted by Mr_Zek

I wish someone would have told me I was dead before I got up this morning!

Originally Posted by Mr Bandwagon

Wouldn't calling the hospital Cole Memorial mean Cole is dead?

Originally Posted by Resolve

The part about the per-server character limit not going up was really disappointing to me. I do agree with Evilanna that 36 slots is a lot, but there' something about CoH that really encourages (just mine? hope not) altitis and so while 36 slots is nice more would be better.

Much, much better. Enough that I'd pay for it, as a matter of fact.

Originally Posted by Castle

Hopefully, you'll be pleased. I've been playing the set in our internal playtests the last couple weeks and I'm having a blast.

Originally Posted by FitzSimmons

I'm pretty sure the DR to pve thing was a joke. PVPers are bitter and have raised this before. "How would you PVE-ers like it if you had to deal with DR?" So on and so forth.

I hate pvp now. I hate the fact that the rules are different and they're not documented anywhere. It sucks balls. Big balls. HUGE balls!

Originally Posted by Zombie Man

And yet, here I am, a PvE-er who's *asking* for Diminishing Returns to come to PvE. Not only wouldn't I mind, I'd cheer for it. The PvE-ers who wouldn't like it are the same crew, or at least the same mentality of the hard core PvP crowd who min-max to hit the caps. Diminishing Returns reduces that hard-target obsession.

And in fact, we *do* have DR in the PvE world, it's called ED, which, once the IO system came out, is regarded by most PvE-ers who understand game mechanics and balance, a good thing.

Originally Posted by Elric

The Q&A was useless.

[...]
I'm sorry,but i can't help but be upset this whole thing. If you can't answer the questions that you know everyone has at the tip of their tongue, then please don't hold a Q&A.

Originally Posted by Zombie Man

And in fact, we *do* have DR in the PvE world, it's called ED, which, once the IO system came out, is regarded by most PvE-ers who understand game mechanics and balance, a good thing.

Originally Posted by Terror1

Wow i did not know you people don´t like vodka. VERY interesting.

Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha

Hmm. Some of it was interesting little tidbits...

Will you ever change or update the Loading Pictures when you enter a zone?? by Magma09
[David Nakayama] Yes, this is in the works!

I didn't know that. But I'm glad I do now.

Originally Posted by PC_guy

Am I the only one that is angered/confused by people asking for DR in PvE?

Originally Posted by Terror1

This was not really much of a Q&A. It was more PR to promote GR and all question about issues existing within the game currently were avoided.