Personally, I think 'balance' is highly over-rated...

I'm just saying. I've been playing here from the beginning and have leveled literally hundreds of characters into their 30's, but only have a couple of level 50 characters. I don't suffer from altitis because I'm desperately trying to find the 'uber-build', I do it because I'm inspired by different looks, different backstory ideas and different power set combos. I absolutely love the variety of this game, and suspect there would be even more of it if the dev's weren't bound by some kind of covenant to ensure 'balance' in all things.

Facts are facts. Someone will always be stronger, faster, more capable... people didn't love Wolverine or Spider-man or Batman or The Flash because they were so 'balanced' against one another and the foes they fought. Entire teams would get together to conquer a threat Superman could level with one punch. Superman and Geen Arrow were on the same team - the SAME TEAM - and they seemed to make it work okay. That's the way the world works, in comics and in real life.

As far as the gaming world works, there will always be the min/maxers, the hardcore players willing to spend exhaustive amounts of time and influence perfecting or even exploiting aspects of the game. Let them. They make up by far the smallest percentage of players so who cares if, in their little circle, their IO's out build is 'teh uber'? The benefits to the game to constantly scaling back characters to 'balance them' and disappointing more casual gamers (the larger number by far) who never had any intent to exploit anything seem to be a case of diminishing returns. In my opinion the dev's time would be much, much better spent looking into individual powers so bad that no one ever takes them, and replacing them with options that will make the power sets even more diverse (Temperature Protection, I'm looking at you buddy).

Anyway, my two cents. If a power can pass the design and play-testing phase, then the only time to really look at it is when new complimentary powers sets or new, easily available IO enhancements become available. Data-mine a bit to find out what powers nobody ever takes and improve upon those, give players more options, rather than taking options away that they've already worked hard to earn.

... so you're saying that when Fire/Fire tanks were overpowered they DIDN'T make up half the total players? Huh, not how I remember it.

I think the OP has a valid point, and while I don't remember half the playerbase being Fire/Fire Tankers or AR/Dev Blasters back in the day on my server, I'd say that's justified because both Fire/Fire and AR/Dev are thematic combos that may attract many players regardless of power level (they still do) and are fun to play, to boot.

What are the overpowered combos nowadays? I'd say Illusion/Radiation. It fits the OP's analogy in the sense that entire teams gather ingame to tackle threats that an Ill/Rad can do while semi afk, and I don't see half the playerbase today being Ill/Rad. Why? because it's not exactly a thematic-friendly build like Fire/Fire or AR/Dev, nor they have the same level of 'fun factor' (IMO, highly subjective). In fact, Fire/Fire and AR/Dev builds are still more common nowadays than Ill/Rad

Balance is inconsequential if you are only going to play CoH like a single player game, and have no interest in comparing your capabilities with someone elses.

However the moment you start seeing a lower level character of the same AT vastly outperform your character, you are going to start asking questions. Either you're doing something wrong, or the developers are. (I admit, too many people given this scenario instantly view it as a balance problem when in reality, they just don't know how to play.)

Well, let's also not compare pre-ED days to now. ED was (arguably) a necessary game-changer at the time, and in turn necessitated a look at all power sets and archetypes.

The idea of Dev's looking up at a never-ending list of things that need to be 'balanced' (nerfed) and perpetually saying 'What's next?' makes me cringe. Time could be better spent and priorities better arranged than constantly trying to 'balance' things that a relative few players have managed to exploit... because then those players move on to something new and the Dev's chase them in an endless circle that leaves everybody else on the outside wondering what they are going to do with yet another character they have spent so much time and effort on now that he's been altered because of the actions of others.

Silverado:

Things that work in a story do not work in a game the same way. This is the key difference between the comics and the game based on them. If oyu teamed with someone who could solo the +4/x8 mission and was doing so, and you die in one hit, never land a blow and never contribute you might as well doorsit and it won't be any fun for you unless being powerleveled is fun.

This is why sidekicks are -1 level and not -3, and why exemplaring puts you at the same level, not at +1. Those are good decisions from a game standpoint, but not exactly simulationist against real life.

The other consideration is that unbalanced often leads to exploitable. Exploits lead to sheeps following the crowd. SO for a dev, pursuing balance is a pretty good thing.

Letting it be an all consuming obsession is too extreme the other way 'round and I don't agree with that idea either. If one set does more damage and another more mitigation, even if damage is generally more useful, I feel that this is "balanced enough" unless the damage is sooooo much higher that it is "broken". These are subjective terms, but for example I feel that shield defense is broken in being too good and fire armor is currently broken being too weak.

I think the game should be about skill.

Fair enough; data is not the singular of anecdote and seven data points is not significant. I don't have any data, neither do you; but we agree that there are an awful lot of people playing their Fire/Kins. My interpretation is "It's stayed FOTM for the last 36 months because it's very effective, especially in the 44+ game." Yours is "They all suck but they don't know it."

One of these explanations seems a little simpler than the other to me. Occam's Raptor.

EDIT: I can't find the link. Occam's Raptor: "If you disagree with you I will disembowel you with my foot."

I use shields as a point towards perceived "good" sets being over popular. Nearly every time I pug, there's at least one shield user on the team. Shield is still a bit new/shiney, but for random teams to have multiple users of one powerset is a bit extreme. The amount of times I run into multiple shields vs multiple regen, or multiple /SR (let alone multiple darks >.<) is way out of balance. The funny thing is, shields suck until you get Shield Charge, and even then are only a small bit better than other sets. If they can't kill the alpha with SC, then they will die without support or strong mitigation from the primary. (This is using SO performance as a comparison. Once you take into account IOs, then Shield will shine, simply because they can SC more often and are softcapped, making the alpha strike mitigation of SC unnecessary.)

What this means, to me, is that the OMGAwesome of SC is unbalancing peoples perspectives. Someone sees a shielder SC a spawn, nearly annihilating it, and they decide that they want to do that, too. I wonder how many Shield toons get deleted before SC is available, simply because folks can't stand the grind with a subpar defense set....

Ill/Rad was mentioned, but Ill/Rad isn't really overpowered until you put a good amount of IOs into it. On SOs alone it can be end heavy; it's also really short on AoE capabilities (it's aoe mitigation is fine, because Rad is good at that, but it can't really kill large quantities of mobs on it's own until epic levels). Fire/Kin is in that boat as well. It's mitigation against large numbers is subpar for most of it's career. Until it gets an decent aoe attack and fulcrum to cap it's damage, it can't kill large spawns before it's stun/hold wears off. I deleted 2 fire/kin controllers before I finally got one to 50, and the one that made it was teamed 95% of the time and had a good chunk of it's later levels PLed through.

Folks look at what the end-game level performance of a build is and say "I wanna do that!" not realizing that that level of performance takes many levels of subpar performance to get through first. Still, because they see how "awesome" it is, they decide to roll it up, and we see more of them than most other builds, many of which give a steady performance, increasing at an appropriate rate, never subpar, never overpowered. This throws the whole "balance" equation out of whack.

Wiggz, you're just plain wrong.

Say I pick Trick Arrow/Archery because of a long held character concept that I've lovingly recreated in game. I've made the costume, written a bio, figured out a build and collected IOs to reinforce my idea of what he does.

And every time I get on a team some Fire/Kin called Fiery KinDude who looks like they pressed the random button says that I'm lame because I chose the wrong powerset, and deep down, I know they're right because I keep dying while they take out groups of enemies by themselves?

I can grow a thick skin, or solo, or re-roll as a Fire/Kin?

Thats an unbalanced game at its worse, and it would drive players away.
In this scenario, why even bother developing the graphics and animations for TA/A, if its going to be an unpleasant experience for anyone who plays it?

Luckily, the devs have taken time to balance the powersets so they're within 20% or so effectiveness of each other. There are a few underperformers or overperformers by some metrics, but nothing thats twice or half as effective as other sets.

Balance between sets is VITAL to a multiplayer game. Its what lets Green Arrow and Superman (or equivalents) fight on the same team in this game.

I tend to feel both ways about this issue. On one side I think balance for the sake of balance, which is many of the changes put through, serve to do nothing but aggravate people. This is because even while many of the changes are positive in nature they are pretty small and don't really impact you emotionally. At the same time the small downward shifts are subjectively larger than they actually are and just cause people to be upset.

ie. Energy Melee changes - numerically the set wasn't actually changed that much, but the changes to the set were (imo) made for the sake of change. The result is that many existing EM players absolutely hate the set now (me included). IMO the time spent changing EM (even if it was only 5 minutes) would have been better spent literally doing anything else; even if that includes just going to the can.

The other end of the scale is of course the larger balance changes both positive and negative. These imo do need to occur. Things like the entire revamp to dominators. Even though it was done in a way that I wouldn't have because creativity isn't the strong point of the person doing the changes. It did need to occur. Stuff like ED/GDN/Purple patch, all that stuff needed to happen in one way or another.

At the end of the day a lot of the changes really come across like "make work projects" to me, which is upsetting because there is soooooo much work that actually needs to happen in terms of balancing. But what can you do really? we all know from our own jobs that knocking off the low hanging fruit from our to-do list and even manufacturing low hanging fruit is a lot easier than tackling the overarching issues. And at the end of the day/reporting period if you can show your boss that you were at least doing something then they will often overlook the fact that you didn't tackle anything of substance.

The way I see it you can approach it two ways. Balance qualitatively or balance quantitatively. You can find examples of good developers doing one or the other. You can find examples of great developers doing both. Castle seems only able to focus on quantitative measures. That is fine, but you have to be really good at it when systems are as transparent as they are here. If you actually examine the powers database there are so many errors it will make your head spin.

Just want to preface this by saying I'm not disagreeing with the essence of what you are saying.

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Originally Posted by DrMike2000 Thats an unbalanced game at its worse, and it would drive players away. In this scenario, why even bother developing the graphics and animations for TA/A, if its going to be an unpleasant experience for anyone who plays it?

It hasn't driven players away yet. Or if it has it hasn't had a significantly quantifiable impact on the game.

Quote:

Luckily, the devs have taken time to balance the powersets so they're within 20% or so effectiveness of each other. There are a few underperformers or overperformers by some metrics, but nothing thats twice or half as effective as other sets.

Are you sure about this statement? It certainly sounds nice and if you never stray from scrappers it may even hold true provided you ignore shield defense for the time being. If you look at any other AT though the last part of your statement can be frequently seen and that is being conservative with the numbers.