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Congratulations! You've just slaughtered every Super Reflexes and Energy Aura scrapper or brute, Ice Armor tanker, everyone who's ever struggled to IO slot themselves into Softcap, and Force Field defenders utilizing Personal Force Field to escape from a big-bad's attention!|
Originally Posted by Cayenne
Missing isn't fun, and everyone hates it when they miss after eating a yellow or using a build-up.
Why not change the game a bit? Instead of a miss, why not have a 'graze' doing maybe 1/5th damage? A moment of 'Oh, I barely hit' is a lot better than 'I just used Sands of Mu and now I get to stand here looking stupid for three seconds while I whiff again and again'. Maybe leave minions, lieutenants, and bosses with the normal rules, but change EBs and AVs to also never miss? |
You've further marginalized the utility of Force Fields and Ice Shields, in general since the only thing they apply is defense and made "Healers" even more popular, since it's the only "Sure" mitigation against EBs and AVs.
With the "Flaming" out of the way, allow me to explain more clearly.
By removing the single "Awesome" point of Defense (Absolute mitigation on a "Miss" which occurs on 95% of attacks, roughly) you've removed the one and only lure of Defense. With Damage Resistance at 90% (the current cap) yuo take 10% of all incoming damage... That's amazing! You get hit all the darn time, but you take a tiny portion of what was once huge damage.
With Defense you take full damage when you're hit unless you have some resistances in reserve, so you get hit 1/20th of the time, but take unmitigated damage. Between these two situations you get -roughly- similar amounts of mitigation. By removing the ability for AVs to miss a target you make Defense useless. Every attack deals damage as if the player had 80% damage resistance instead of near impenetrable defense.
This means tankers or brutes with a 90% damage Resistance (the current cap) are better off than any soft-capped scrapper or even an actually-capped Tanker.
Suddenly, adding Defenses onto a blaster, defender, or controller is a moot point, since they'll still take a decent portion of the damage from an AV's AoEs. It becomes far more useful to just bring a Thermal/Sonic/Kin/Empath/Pain Dom and completely ignore defensive ability.
This is why it's a bad idea. You make Defense useful against large portions of the game, then completely ineffective against what (few/some/many/most) people perceive as the "Core" of the game, fighting AVs and EBs in high-end story arcs and task forces.
-Rachel-
But I note you didn't say anything about the HEROES not missing. Do you think that that's a good idea, or are you simply preparing a similar flame about the poor slaughtered minions, lieutenants, and bosses in the game?
To be a little less facetious, though... really, is there a problem with players never missing? Ignore the EBs and AVs for now.
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I think there is.|
Originally Posted by Cayenne
But I note you didn't say anything about the HEROES not missing. Do you think that that's a good idea, or are you simply preparing a similar flame about the poor slaughtered minions, lieutenants, and bosses in the game?
To be a little less facetious, though... really, is there a problem with players never missing? Ignore the EBs and AVs for now. |
With players never missing all AVs, EBs, Bosses, Lieutenants, Minions, and Underlings would have to be reconfigured to deal with perfectly accurate PCs. They'd need to have different HP totals or Damage Resistance methods to keep fight length/effort comparable to what we currently deal with. Otherwise fights would just be over even faster than they are, now, making the game feel trivial.
If they didn't revamp the damage resistance and HP of all the enemies, they'd need to turn right back around and severely increase their damage output, so that they're more of a threat during their incredibly short lives. This could jeopardize the lower-HP squishies who might get killed off the bat thanks to the increased damage output. Again this would be implemented to keep the game's difficulty on roughly an even-keel.
And then you get into the issue of all enemies being sacks of HP and Damage resistance. Think of the variety you're missing out on! Rikti Drones, for example, have incredibly high Melee and Ranged defenses, but nearly no AoE. It makes me feel good to wade into the middle of a group of Rikti and toss off a foot stomp and watch the fireworks as I manage to drop every Rikti Drone in the AoE.
Paragon Protectors would become trivial, as well. Since the single most dangerous protector seems to be the /Regen protectors who pop the old Moment Of Glory that lasts -forever- and grants them insane defense for a short while. Instead of being hated, despised, and spiked with damage before they could pop MoG, they'd just be another sack of HP with a self-heal and nothing more.
-Rachel-
The simple way to fix that problem is to let some enemies still keep the normal settings. It's pretty reasonable for EBs and AVs to be missed occasionally, like they are now, and you do have a point about the drones and PPs. I still think it would be beneficial to make the default game mechanic be a graze instead of a miss, except for special enemies.
I suppose giving the enemies 1% more HP than they have now, if you really think that the extra 1% damage you'll be doing really needs to be balanced, would be a good idea. (5% miss into 1/5th damage is an extra 1% damage)
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5% miss?|
Originally Posted by Cayenne
The simple way to fix that problem is to let some enemies still keep the normal settings. It's pretty reasonable for EBs and AVs to be missed occasionally, like they are now, and you do have a point about the drones and PPs. I still think it would be beneficial to make the default game mechanic be a graze instead of a miss, except for special enemies.
I suppose giving the enemies 1% more HP than they have now, if you really think that the extra 1% damage you'll be doing really needs to be balanced, would be a good idea. (5% miss into 1/5th damage is an extra 1% damage) |
Where does -that- come from? Players don't have a 95% chance to hit even con minions, they've got a 75% chance modified by their powers (Some powers have higher or lower accuracy) Which means a 25% increase in hits, rather than a 5% one.
And that's not even tinkering with the Purple Patch. Bear in mind that you miss higher level enemies more often due to level scaling. You're talking about causing 1/5th damage on what could be most attacks made against higher level bosses, Elite bosses, and AVs.
Accuracy becomes less about ensuring you do damage, and more about ensuring you do -full- damage. And even then, it makes Controllers into -monsters- when it comes to crowd-control, which is now an auto-hit function. Or will auto-hit controls only last 1/5th of their normal duration? How will a player be able to tell that?
Regardless of whether they've got 1/5th duration or not, enhancing for accuracy becomes a moot point for controllers and dominator control powers, debuffs of any kind, or even "Accurate Healing" powers. Oh. And even if control effects last 1/5th their normal duration, that still completely stops an entire spawn (or however many maximum targets the controller can affect) except bosses, EBs, and AVs, who are suddenly far easier to hold/immob/etc thanks to the ease of applying short-duration effects which auto-hit.
-Rachel-
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What do you have for the Holds, Confuses, Stuns, etc.?|
Originally Posted by Cayenne
To be a little less facetious, though... really, is there a problem with players never missing? Ignore the EBs and AVs for now.
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Transfusion: miss=1/5 of normal heal?
Detention Field: miss=1/5th duration?
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Yet another missing thread? Didn't we just a couple in the last couple of weeks? |
Originally Posted by Cayenne
Missing isn't fun, and everyone hates it when they miss after eating a yellow or using a build-up.
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I must have missed a patch or something since the game I play is ridiculously easy. You miss once in a while, it's all a perception thing - you remember missing that big attack on a lowly min or a box or whatever. You don't remember the countless mobs you defeated before that.
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The conceit of defense is much more than you just whiffing. Defensive is an active (Super Reflexes) or a passive (Ice, Tough Hide) mitigator.|
Originally Posted by Cayenne
Missing isn't fun, and everyone hates it when they miss after eating a yellow or using a build-up.
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In the former case, the target is actively moving to get out of the way. The idea that you will be able to perfectly predict every move of every target is simply not reasonable. Many game systems use two rolls to adjudicate attack and defense and more accurately represent this, but CoH compresses this into a single roll.
In the latter case, the defense basically takes away all the damage. When you hit ice armor it just sort of crumbles away harmlessly. When you hit someone with Tough Hide it just bounces off without any effect at all.
When you look at it this way, it's not about you hitting every time; rather, it's that you always have at least a 5% chance of getting missed no matter how stacked the odds are against you.
Now, looking at it from that point of view, don't you think it would be unfair if you had no chance at all of avoiding an attack?
The game needs to be symmetrical: the same rules must apply to both parties, otherwise what's the point? Heroes already have a tremendous advantage with a base to-hit chance of 75% versus an even-con mob's 50%.
The game also has a streak-breaker built in, so if you really do have high accuracy and you should be hitting every time, you won't be penalized by a string of bad rolls (unless you're actually debuffed and should be missing).
If your character dies because of one miss, it says more about your playstyle, knowledge of the game and the character's build than a deficiency of the system.
You should monitor your last to-hit chance with the combat monitor. If you're missing a lot, it may be because you're debuffed. Under some circumstances your to-hit can easily be at 10% or less (against Nemesis with Vengeance, PPs, bubbled Rikti drones, etc.). So popping a yellow will still leave your base to hit chance at much less than 50%.
If you're getting stuck with PPs and unhittable Nemesis minions, these are situations you can prevent. You need to mez PPs before they get to about 25% HPs, and you need to take out Nemesis LTs last -- preferably whittling each LT down at the same rate so they are defeated at the same time with an AoE. There are similar tactics you can use against Fake Nemesis even if you don't have a mez (hit them with a couple of DoTs when they're below 50%, then hit them with a big damage attack -- the Fake will put up the PFF and the DoT will finish off the last few hit points).
i have just this to say: LRN2USETHESEARCH. that is all.
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Besides the entire engine being built on the construct.......naw, nothing else wrong with the idea.
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Originally Posted by Cayenne
But I note you didn't say anything about the HEROES not missing. Do you think that that's a good idea, or are you simply preparing a similar flame about the poor slaughtered minions, lieutenants, and bosses in the game?
To be a little less facetious, though... really, is there a problem with players never missing? Ignore the EBs and AVs for now. |
Idea failure. /unsigned
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Flaming or not, this is a fairly good point. A suggestion though... what if we lowered that 95% to say 90% instead in exchange for these grazing hits?|
Originally Posted by Steampunkette
Congratulations! You've just slaughtered every Super Reflexes and Energy Aura scrapper or brute, Ice Armor tanker, everyone who's ever struggled to IO slot themselves into Softcap, and Force Field defenders utilizing Personal Force Field to escape from a big-bad's attention!
You've further marginalized the utility of Force Fields and Ice Shields, in general since the only thing they apply is defense and made "Healers" even more popular, since it's the only "Sure" mitigation against EBs and AVs. |
You know, I think there's potential for a whole new defensive mechanic there.
[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: STOP!
[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: WAIT ONE SECOND!
[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: WHAT IS A SEAGULL DOING ON MY THRONE!?!?
Another miss thread....plz bury this
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I wouldn't be opposed to a game that did something like this from the start, but such a big change this late in a game's life seems like a huge mistake to me.
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Originally Posted by Rebel_Scum
You know, I think there's potential for a whole new defensive mechanic there. |
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You know that by posting you helped prevent the thread from being buried right? |
Originally Posted by Dr_HR
Another miss thread....plz bury this
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Anyway, I used to think the minimum 5% chance to hit should be lifted from things like destructible objects, since it's not like they can dodge. But then I remembered that it's not just dodging, it's dodging/deflecting, and that's where the problems come in. As far as themes go it would have been nice if defense was separated into two different stats: Evasion and Deflection. That way the game could differentiate between something moving out of the way, like super reflexes, and something deflecting a blow, like parry. But it's way too late in the game's life to be making such a huge change.
But as far as NEVER missing, yeah, that would just break way too many things. Think of it this way, no matter how accurate you are, someone could still trip and evade your attack by accident, or if you're firing a bullet at them it could just happen to hit a metal button on their jacket at just the right angle and be deflected.
Now a "hex" temp power buff that makes things like that go in your favor would be kinda cool. Give it a long recharge and a short duration, say 10 seconds, but anything you do that has a % chance of happening WILL happen in that time, be it crits, IO procs, secondary effects, and just plain hits landing. If that's too powerful just lower the duration even more to limit how much you can do while it's active.
So much flaming...from what I read of the OP, at least he wasn't acting like a d*** about the suggestion, which should lay down the base of a discussion...
That said, the idea of never missing? To always land a % chance of damage? No. I can't agree with that. Because, no matter how awesome a hero is, there will always be an awesomer enemy to face that can evade/block them. If there wasn't, then that hero is boring. Superman is bad enough, but at least he has kryptonite...and even without kryptonite, there are still enemies that can and will clean his clock or thwart his attacks.
The whole 'graze' mechanic? That's another story. I think there might be room, somewhere in the formulas, for a possibility that, instead of completely missing or completely hitting, the attack 'grazes' or 'partially penetrates' resulting in 0%-20% of the base damage of an attack.
Because, as is, it's not fair in my eyes that defense can simply circumvent attacks while resist *must* deal with it and all the baggage of the attack. And when I say baggage, I mean the controls/debuffs. Resist sets don't get to shrug off those extra effects as easily.
So having the possibility that, instead of an attack missing completely, it does 0 dmg but still applies its debuff seems totally fair, IMO. Balance that out by, occasionally, having attacks that *do* get past your defense to do a fraction of its normal damage.
Finally someone willing to think about the idea rather than just knee-jerk flame!
I can totally agree that grazes would be more fair to resist-based sets by letting the secondary effects leak through defenses on defense-based sets. Minimal damage, and perhaps a slightly reduced effect from the controls and debuffs?
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Originally Posted by Emperor_Justin
Idea failure. /unsigned
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Does this mean you approve the idea? Since you /unsigned the failure of the idea, meaning you've disagreed with the idea failure so are agreeing with the Idea succession. How do unsign something that hasn't been signed? And accomplishing it in past tense as well. That's a paradox that all the supercomputers of the world must spend the rest of there operations calculating?
If it ain't broke set it on fire, then say it was a fault in the design.
Main:50 Force Encephalon Mind/Kinetic Controller, Protector Server
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There's no idea to talk about.........your suggestion can't be implemented. Go back to the drawing board, within the confines of this game, and come back with something that will work. |
Originally Posted by Cayenne
Finally someone willing to think about the idea rather than just knee-jerk flame!
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If the premise of the discussion is flawed, the discussion is flawed. That's why you're not getting any real discussion.
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Excuse me, but I didn't "Knee Jerk" or "Flame".|
Originally Posted by Cayenne
Finally someone willing to think about the idea rather than just knee-jerk flame!
I can totally agree that grazes would be more fair to resist-based sets by letting the secondary effects leak through defenses on defense-based sets. Minimal damage, and perhaps a slightly reduced effect from the controls and debuffs? |
You still have yet to answer how to handle the wide and varied issues I listed in my initial posts in this thread. Those being:
- Marginalized Sets and Powers: Accuracy and Defense take a backseat to damage buff and resistance/healing
- Enemy Balance issues: Players either wiping groups out en-masse or at far greater risk of two-shot kills and alpha strikes with higher damage values.
- Controls and Debuffs: Duration mitigation? Strength mitigation? Both?
- Changing the Game for Defense Built Characters: Players who make high-defense characters will have their normal defenses against low-threat enemies, but EBs, AVs (and I assume GMs) will bypass it? Changing the rules mid-game is kinda rude.
- Monotony: You remove the challenge inherent to some enemies and turn everything into HP and DR with no variation whatsoever. No high Defense enemies dodging your attacks but taking full damage when you land a shot, for example.
- Changing Attack Mechanics 6 years into the game's life: Yeah, I didn't bring that one up, but it -is- a valid point. Every Vet will suddenly have to relearn the defense system or ignore it completely and focus on Damage Reduction.
On top of all that you also have the issue of re-balancing and re-writing the invention system. And let's not forget about the issues of NPC inherent buffs and debuffs.
As for the idea of making Debuffs land on a miss... No. That's a horrible idea, it really is. Defense characters already suffer from issues of cascade failure against lethal-damage utilizing enemies (read: Most Enemies) thanks to the inherent defense debuff component to most bullet and blade attacks. Causing the debuff to land on missed shots would only hasten the cascade failure and demise of defensive players.
As it is, no single enemy can ignore Damage Reduction (Aside from Hamidon, who ignores EVERYTHING) and they're all forced to chip away at the self-healing DR sets (Dark, fire, stone, electric, and invuln all have self-heals) regardless of how much damage they're capable of throwing out. However -accurate- enemies (Overseers, Rikti Drones) or defense-debuffing enemies (Fifth Column, Council, Hellions, Skulls, Knives of Artemis, Shivans, PPD Kheldians, Kheldian NPCs, Positron/Antimatter, Family, Freakshow, Rikti, Warriors, Tsoo, Banished Pantheon, Circle of Thorns, Arachnos, Vahzilok, Rogue Isles police, Longbow, Cage Consortium, Cimeroran Traitors, Cimerorans, Lost, Sky Raiders, Slag Golems, Luddites, Malta, Contaminated, Nemesis, Outcasts, Vanguard, Red Caps, Wyvern, Mooks, Spetsnaz, Infected, Arachnoids, Crey, and others) can either ignore the Defense-based character's defense buffs in large part, or destroy them.
So I heartily disagree that further penalties be applied to Defensive powersets to satisfy those who feel DR sets underperform. I also disagree that Players should always hit their enemies, since it would skew the balance of the game, drastically, and require some fairly heavy alteration of enemy damage and HP calculations to balance things out (not even going into the control resistance increase required to handle auto-hits with Hold powers)
-Rachel-
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You could also look at it like the popup text the game uses.|
Originally Posted by Rodion
The conceit of defense is much more than you just whiffing. Defensive is an active (Super Reflexes) or a passive (Ice, Tough Hide) mitigator.
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Powers such as those in Super Reflexes produce messages like "Dodged" or "Avoided" - wherever the attack was, you weren't there. Force Fields, Shields, and the like produce "Deflected" - the attack hit its mark, but it was averted by the thing protecting you. Demonic Aura/Eye of the Magus* produces "Absorbed" - the attack hit, the attack stuck, the attack was not deflected away or altered by any external force... it just had no effect on you.
* I don't know offhand of any power other than these two which produces this message
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
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I was careful not to point fingers. Taking it personally... well, that's your choice.
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Originally Posted by Steampunkette
Excuse me, but I didn't "Knee Jerk" or "Flame".
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Well, if the other part of the suggestion (the part where, if an attack *does* land, it has a chance to 'graze' anyway, reducing the damage received, possibly based on your defense base before debuffs are applied), it actually gives more utility to those without high amounts of -def resistance. There's still cascading failure (apparently, this is a mechanic that is suppose to be there. -def is suppose to work) but defense would still *do* something in those situations.|
Originally Posted by Steampunkette
As for the idea of making Debuffs land on a miss... No. That's a horrible idea, it really is. Defense characters already suffer from issues of cascade failure against lethal-damage utilizing enemies (read: Most Enemies) thanks to the inherent defense debuff component to most bullet and blade attacks. Causing the debuff to land on missed shots would only hasten the cascade failure and demise of defensive players. |
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| As it is, no single enemy can ignore Damage Reduction |
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| However -accurate- enemies (Overseers, Rikti Drones) or defense-debuffing enemies (Fifth Column, Council, Hellions, Skulls, Knives of Artemis, Shivans, PPD Kheldians, Kheldian NPCs, Positron/Antimatter, Family, Freakshow, Rikti, Warriors, Tsoo, Banished Pantheon, Circle of Thorns, Arachnos, Vahzilok, Rogue Isles police, Longbow, Cage Consortium, Cimeroran Traitors, Cimerorans, Lost, Sky Raiders, Slag Golems, Luddites, Malta, Contaminated, Nemesis, Outcasts, Vanguard, Red Caps, Wyvern, Mooks, Spetsnaz, Infected, Arachnoids, Crey, and others) can either ignore the Defense-based character's defense buffs in large part, or destroy them. |
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| So I heartily disagree that further penalties be applied to Defensive powersets to satisfy those who feel DR sets underperform. |
I guess since ToHit and -def exists, that justifies the differences and should support the status quo? Rather than trying to find some kind of solution to the woes of defense and aid the other side as well?
I could see a mechanic for some attacks to have a guaranteed chance to deal some damage and have some effect even on a "miss", though I wouldn't do it in the way the OP suggests.
The first thing I would do would be to generate various categories of hits and misses:
Hits (full effect all around)
Grazes (partial effect)
Dodges (no effect whatsoever)
Deflections (no damage but the chance to deflect another attack over the next few seconds decreases)
Misses (functionally identical to a dodge)
Critical hits (more than full effect)
From this, I would then assign some basic rules about how these effects are made available:
1. You cannot "dodge" an attack unless you have a power that adds positional defense
2. You cannot "deflect" unless you have a power that adds typed defense
3. You can miss, but the chance is small (i.e. 5%)
4. Some attacks are incapable of missing (i.e. your tier 1/2 attacks and AoEs) and some powers are capable of making all of your attacks incapable of missing (BU, Aim)
5. All attacks are capable of critical hits, but the chance is comparatively low for attacks that aren't specifically designed around critical hits (i.e. Scrapper and Stalker attacks, Corrupter attacks when targets are low on health)
Of course, to do all of this, you'd have to completely overhaul the entire accuracy mechanic the game uses, how different con levels are treated, and which buffs are used and where they're used. I would probably start from the bottom up (determine deflect/dodge chance, modify that to account for player accuracy, determine chance to graze or miss based off of the power in question, and then fill the rest out with simply hitting the target), but that would also require completely revaluing absolutely every single attribute factored into the equation.
All in all, it's more of a conceptual idea to apply to a new potential system sometime down the line (like CoX2). Players don't like binary hit chances, and it's not like a computer game is necessarily forced to use simple structures so it's not like it isn't possible to create a more complex "hitting" structure that allows for multiple potential points on the hit-miss continuum.
Missing isn't fun, and everyone hates it when they miss after eating a yellow or using a build-up.
Why not change the game a bit? Instead of a miss, why not have a 'graze' doing maybe 1/5th damage? A moment of 'Oh, I barely hit' is a lot better than 'I just used Sands of Mu and now I get to stand here looking stupid for three seconds while I whiff again and again'.
Maybe leave minions, lieutenants, and bosses with the normal rules, but change EBs and AVs to also never miss?