Change to AV scaling in the 6/8 Patch

Hey everyone,

I wanted to pop in to speak about changes made to scaling enemies in the recent patch. We've disabled archvillains from scaling beneath their minimum level. Regular enemies, minions, lieutenants, bosses, etc, will still scale down beneath their minimum level. We made this change because combat scaling affects Archvillains/Hero class critters much more than other foes. This leads to strange numbers at the extreme low end, numbers that were never designed for or balanced against. Coupled with the rewards of defeating an AV, a fix was necessary.

I hope you all understand the reason why this was changed. Please feel free to let me know if anything isn't working as it should be or if anything is unclear!

Dr. Aeon

Oh good, no more big reds, I presume?


Can we have some new lower level versions of the Sig characters though?

Weatherby made a good suggestion. Many AVs in game to scale down to Elite Bosses, which the XP and other rewards seem fine for.

Maybe AV at less than minimum level -> automatically an Elite Boss, not AV. Should take care of at least some reward problems. They'll still be available for story reasons but won't give larger rewards that AVs normally do.

Just my 2 cents.

Hrm..............so if I enter an AE mission @ lvl 23 designed to scale to that level, and the AV used does not scale to that level, then I could be facing a 30, 40, 50+ av?

And this is a good idea? I can see how scaling on these creatures could be abused, knowing how creative players can be, but I can also see this driving people (me in particular) all kinds of crazy when I've invested time in an arc and then am suddenly facing a vastly higher lvl AV than myself.

Bad enough that AE does not recognize my difficulty preference, now It can not recognize my lvl with no warning?

Are mission arcs that will be affected by this going to be marked in some way? Or de-activated

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr. Aeon Hey everyone, I wanted to pop in to speak about changes made to scaling enemies in the recent patch. We've disabled archvillains from scaling beneath their minimum level. Regular enemies, minions, lieutenants, bosses, etc, will still scale down beneath their minimum level. We made this change because combat scaling affects Archvillains/Hero class critters much more than other foes. This leads to strange numbers at the extreme low end, numbers that were never designed for or balanced against. Coupled with the rewards of defeating an AV, a fix was necessary. I hope you all understand the reason why this was changed. Please feel free to let me know if anything isn't working as it should be or if anything is unclear! Dr. Aeon

Ah, well, it seems as though their focus will continue to be to tilt at the exploiter windmill instead of doing things that might increase MA's popularity again. This would have been the greatest tool in the history of online gaming for the player population. Now, unfortunately, it is sadly dead.

Do you mean 6/15? 6/8 was last weak? I don't remember reading anything about AV scaling last week.

Patching exploits is entirely necessary and all the time spent to do so is also unassailably wise. Can you imagine if the Summoned Husks from Death Shamans were actually to give xp in a direct ratio to the way they actually deal and absorb damage? The game would self-destruct from the horrible imbalance of that equality.

It's too horrible to even contemplate. I'm just glad I don't have to live in a world with untimed warwolf missions.

Totally understand why. Sounds in theory that dropping lower than normal level AVs to EBs would possibly work better, assuming that tech can be put into place, to avoid yet again invalidating genuine arcs of non-exploiting players.

Still waiting patiently on other XP/AE fixes, would like to use it again without fear of drastically reduced rewards.

Mmm

I see a bit of dev bashing, and some pointing fingers at them for not developing well enough to pre-empt them.

In general that is grossly unfair, when you have say 4 variables, you could have 4x3x2x1=24 possible combinations. Now just imagine all the combinations CoH has to offer, and to make it worse, its not a simple combination! For instance say instead of two numbers at a time, CoH is easily a complex conglomeration I would say of no less than 8 sets of numbers (parameters) [ie 00000001, 00000002, 10000001] so the number of combinations is simply staggering. I frankly find it impossible for any dev or group of devs to account for over a billion possible combinations. So there are going to be cracks on the wall, its the nature of the beast. If you really think of it, the fact that there are so few exploits, its a tribute to their professionalism.

Now, perhaps, how they go about fixing these exploits or errors could be done better. But when the dam is cracking, no one cares if the concrete poored on it is of the right color.

Hugs

Stormy

If 10% of the population of the game defines "Winning" as "finding something exceptionally easy and rewarding and doing it" the devs are playing defense against 10,000 people.

(none of whom, to be fair, are apparently smart enough or social enough to just run TopDoc style superteams...)

EDIT:

And now we've got another generation of useless exploit farm arcs, the majority of which will never be deleted, cluttering up the MA. Time to reiterate the request for some kind of purge mechanism to hide arcs that nobody wants to see anymore.