You cannot use this power on yourself

You have touched on the single most glaring example of "parity" in this game; that being the Defender primaries. Since these sets are shared by Corruptors, Controllers and Masterminds, you can see why any issues with these powersets get "amplified" or "extended" to other ATs besides Defenders. Its my personal belief that this issue has been "over-looked" for a long time because;

A) Players of Defenders (being the worst case scenario for this idea of self-buffing) are, for the most part, satisfied with the situation. The ones that are not, represent a small sub-set of a small sub-set of the overall population. If such an example in "dis-parity" existed with say Scrappers, they would solve it much faster. Dark Armor ? Anyone ?

B) Looking at the "balance" concerns of Buff versus Debuff and how it interplays with each effected AT as well as solo versus team performance is no simple task. Should they spend a year on this little "NUT" or develope new content for the population as a whole. I think we all know what choice they have consistently made here.

Everyone seems to think this is either easy or impossibly hard. I happen to believe its difficult, but not intractable. Its a question of designing on good foundations to begin with, so that you aren't resting on the crutch of iterative rebalancing, which *is* doomed to fail if you were to attempt to implement such a system with its precepts.


Just to be clear, the most important aspect of skill trees, in my opinion, are not the skills but the trees. The forking decisions implicit in that structure provides the *potential* for complex distinct build differences in theory.

But really, skill trees are actually the pretty wrapping paper that rest on a much more complex (if they are built correctly) numerical balancing system. The system that generates the tree options, basically. And its entirely possible to dispense with the trees and go straight to a flatter points-based or synergy-based ability system that would be even more powerful. But you'd be flying without a net: a skill tree can hide failures to properly counterbalance certain kinds of options. A points based or synergy-based system can't: you'd be hit in the face with every mistake by reasonably intelligent players constantly.


By the way, I've often stated, and still assert, that the HERO system (Champions PnP) would be an awful system to base a combat-centric MMO on. But that's not an indictment of points-based systems, just the HERO system itself, which was designed for role playing paper-based d20 gamers. I'm pretty sure, for example, that I could convert the CoX framework into a points-based system without too much difficulty. It wouldn't be as balanced as one built from scratch, but it would be any worse balance-wise than what we have now; maybe a bit more balanced actually, because that balance would be enforced at a deep design level.

That's not an idle guess. Its something that, off and on, I've put actual time into thinking through. I even have a rough idea of how the framework would work. It all comes down to normalizing the value of every kind of attribmod of every power in the game relative to the primary balancing metrics of the game: specifically kill speed and survivability envelope. Rather than trying to balance thirty thousand powers in the game, you'd only need to balance about 50-60 "micro-powers" that all other powers are constructed out of. That's like a six month project, rather than a sixty year one.

I think the bigger issue is that there is a greater divide amongst players of Defenders than of any other Archetype. Defenders cover a lot more territory than the other ATs. You have the "pure healer", you have the mage-like offensive debuffer, you have the mix of control and damage/debuffing, you have the psuedo-pet user, and the tank mage combo of Ranged and Defense. All of these fall under the guise of various Buff/Debuff power sets. Scrappers, by contrast, may fit into numerous categories, but they for the most part fall into the same combination of melee offense and personal defense.

The split of the buffer/debuffs into Defender, Controllers, Corruptors and Masterminds was meant, to an extent, to address this, I think. But these AT share fewer Power Set types than Scrappers, Tankers, Brutes and Stalkers. The latter can differentiate their role through Inherents, but it is more up to the former to specialize with their non-Buff/Debuff capability.

I think perhaps Buff/Debuff was made TOO varied. It is both buff and debuff, plus control, aggro management, and pet use as well. Often it seems like a catch-all, utility grouping. There is no commonality, unlike Melee, Ranged, Control and the hybrid sets of Summon, Manipulation and Assault, which are pretty much built around the same structure.

OTOH, Defense can be equally as varied as Buff/Debuff. And Buff/Debuff is, as I used to say a long time ago, very much a sort of ranged version of Defense. You can cast protection not only on yourself, but also on others, or reach out and weaken your foes.

Also, because those problems tend to be exaggerated. If the disparity was as bad as some claimed, this would show up in their datamining as penalties in performance. To the best of my knowledge, it does not.

If it did, the devs would be essentially forced to address the issue, as they were forced to with blasters. If you asked someone in I10 who soloed slower on average, solo defenders or solo blasters, probably most people would say defenders, particularly the non-debuffing ones. And they would have been horribly wrong. That discrepancy between what actual players do with the powersets on average and what forum analysts predict happens often produces a very strong credibility gap.

When the devs have said in the past that defenders were the "most balanced" archetype, we now know (or at least I do) that what the devs were hinting at is that the defender archetype has the fewest performance outliers - high or low - across all of its powerset combinations and across all playing conditions (solo, teamed, at different level bands). That contradicts most commonly accepted views of defender performance: that there are big winners and losers in performance with regard to primaries and (to a lesser extent) secondaries.

I tried to make a PnP verson of that type of system once when tinkering with some diceless rpg ideas. Personally I prefer skill trees.

One thing I have to say I've noticed with ideas for straight point buy systems balanced in the mentioned micro power method; which is just saying effect x is base, effect two is worth 3x, three is 1/2x... and a point buys you an ammount of effect times the balance modifier, is that they tend to be like the Costume creator. Endless ammounts of options, but most choices are very shallow in reality as they end up being all too similar with too little difference. Take a look at a costume contest, and you'll see a lot similar stuff while every once in a while you'll get something stunning. Similar stuff happens with point buy power systems, when you give those options to players.

When you take the building blocks away from players, those 50 or 60 micro powers, you can build the best, most compelling stuff. Though adhearing to strict balancing equations usually prevents breaking convention else you screw the pooch everywhere else. Gated point buy systems let you screw around a bit. Thats one of the biggest things I like about them. Not to say a straight point buy system couldn't be made to work, I just believe there is more margin for error, more diversity, and more freedom to act when building skill trees as opposed to just skills.

Though there will always be a need for proper encounter design with any system. In fact I always felt that to be the biggest failing of CoX. I mean, from what I've seen, in the begining it seemed like the developers where suprised at what powers even did when people started using them against the designed content, and PvPs biggest failing has always been the lack of any encounter design whatsoever preventing any workable structure or balance.

In my perfect world, Power designers and encounter designers would be practically married. They'd argue, fight, and get on each others nerves every so often, but at the end of the day they'd cuddle and make beautiful gameplay babies with the best attributes the both of them have to offer. I believe this would make any system work beautifully.

Aett Thorn is absolutely correct. The main idea behind Buff Sets is to make you attractive and a huge asset to a team. If you want to solo get away from Buff sets and go with ones that Debuff.. RAD or DM.. you still get a heal and rez which can come in handy on a team but the primary focus is making it easier to take down the villains in front of you... Always popular on teams and still just as effective if you are solo.

Not knowing how the Devs actually achieve their data-mining results I may be going out on a limb with my comments, but here goes anyway.

How much effect on the data does the fact that players who are playing a "poor" soloer actually attempt to do such things on a more than infrequent basis ? Are the good soloers teaming less and solo-ing more, while the poor soloers teaming more and soloing less ?
Wierdos like myself that attempt to solo on EVERY character, in EVERY game just to challenge themselves are probably not within a certain standard deviation tolerance.

Secondly, how much of the data results pre-date the change in difficulty sliders. Back then, the developers may not have been able to differentiate a person playing on Invincible while solo at X1 or padded all the way to x8. With the new sliders, I would be VERY curious what their data shows. The reason that I think the "older" results would represent a skewed result is that my Empath (now that he is IOed out) could easily do missions at the old "Invincible" setting, with Bosses even, but would not then (just as now) be able to "pad" a mission to x8 and succeed. Yet data gathered before would have shown (possibly) my performance as "balanced" against a tanker doing a x8 padded mission.

Any guesses ?

Wow, lot of assumptions in this post. First off, I have never had difficulty putting together a team. Then again, to me 'a team' doesn't mean '8 people' like it does with many other folks. I'm a team all by myself (2boxing). I recruit in a global channel I frequent and can add anywhere from 1 to 7 more people (dropping one of my boxes if necessary), pretty much at any time of the day (right JD? ).

Secondly, you're assuming that adding the features you favor would be some kind of panacea for the problems you perceive with grouping. Look, teaming has issues that many people (myself included, with the exception of folks in the aforementioned global channel) don't want to deal with. For example, I don't want your (general 'your', not you specifically) real life impeding on my free time. Crying baby? Your real life. Having to constantly go afk makes you a drain that isn't really contributing as much as a person who'd be there full time. Yes, I understand quite well the issues that come with things like that. It's one reason why I won't join or make a team if I'm going to be distracted constantly (or at all).

Thirdly, while you get more xp by teaming, you do not get more drops. Thus, you level fast but are often poor (at least for those not initiated enough to mitigate that). So people get to 50 and then complain about IO prices because they haven't made any scratch along the way. This is one reason (perhaps not the biggest though) AE missions remain somewhat popular. EVERYONE on the team gets tickets. Everyone is rewarded in kind for contributing. That's not the case with teams in "normal" content.

All that said, the autogroup thing would be a good idea if it was opt-in (not opt-out, like in STO). My niece loves PUGs to death for the sheer carnage and chaos that often occurs in them (she says, "It's like watching two Japanese bullet trains collide. All you can think to say is, OMG"). I can't say I share that view. But an autogroup mechanic would be awesome for those passive types who don't like making groups (which takes time, especially if you're one of those 'group = 8 people' types) or don't like global channels.

The devs' efforts fell down and went boom the day I9 went live.

I completely agree. Even as a primarily solo player, I have team oriented characters that I use for that purpose (even if that purpose is only served as being the caddy for characters on my other account).

Not exactly. Anyone who remembers 'City of Blasters' would know that. Groups often slowed you down without providing anything necessary to improve your XP per time....unless the group was all AR/dev, that is. What would you need a group for with Smoke Grenade? You're already pretty much unhittable and that defender isn't going to do any damage worth mentioning and their buffs are largely unnecessary. Use them to pad, hit cloaking device, and superspeed through the map to set spawns then drop the dead weight ("Thanks!").

My primary issue with teaming in CoX (for reasons other than socializing) is trading inf/income for XP that may or may not exceed what I could do on my own (depending on the team). So I'm literally paying for that XP, which is a fair trade for me (because I regularly interact with the market) but may not fit for most players (who don't, quite frankly). I do recall struggling to afford SOs at 22 whereas now, I can afford that by level 10 (if not sooner). Or maybe that's just the difference between the 'leave it overnight' types and the 'GOTTA HAVE IT NAO!' faction. But I do have several friends who zoomed through the levels jumping from team to team and wound up with lint in their pockets (figuratively speaking) at 40+.

A few:

1. Most of my understanding of what the devs datamine and how they datamine it comes from information gleaned from the pre-I11 blaster buffs. In relative terms, that was very recent. Certainly it post-dates things like the difficulty sliders. Although, knowing what I know now, I can also reasonably extrapolate a lot of what the devs said about performance and datamining going back all the way to release.

2. To the extent that I was able to learn (which is limited by the fact that the devs do not want to discuss the specifics of precisely how they datamine performance, lest those metrics get "gamed" or overanalyzed - not even with me) I did learn, and did state back then, that the devs datamining is capable of seeing the difference between solo and teamed performance, and performance at different combat level ranges. Its not apparently "blurry." Although Castle would not give me specifics at the time, he was willing to answer yes or no question about whether his datamining data could tell *where* blasters were having the problem: was it at certain levels, with certain powerset combinations, while solo or teamed. The answer was basically yes to all three.

3. The devs usually look at a date range of performance that is long enough to provide enough data, while still being temporally relevant. My guess is that they are typically looking at performance numbers from six months to one year from the moment they are looking at performance, unless they have a specific reason to look at longer term trends. That is an educated guess, however, not a specific thing told to me.

4. Individual weird players and playstyles are unlikely to affect the statistics enough to matter. Even for our playerbase size, the numbers are simply too large to be influenced in that way for most cases, except maybe at level 50 where there is a logjam of players and much more farming than at any other level. This too is an educated guess, based on the (very) limited information I have about the kinds of statistics the devs gather. Which mostly revolve around how fast players earn rewards (i.e. influence, XP, drops, etc). That is, in fact, the very definition of "performance" to the devs when it comes to game balancing. How fast you can earn rewards, including XP.