How many times must I die to ambushes before I can re-complain?

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SUPPORT - IT'S NOT JUST A GROUPING OF ATs
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More Than a Game
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Virtually everything about the game you play except the visual artwork is math. Everything you are allowed to do, and everything that is allowed to happen in this game is dictated by math, and only math. All of the critters, powers, and effects in this game are in a single set of Excel spreadsheets.

The only question is whether the devs control the math, or the math controls them.

True story. When Claws was revisited the first time, the devs - both Castle and BaB - claimed their changes would only affect Claws by maybe 5 to 15%. I did some back of the envelope calculations and concluded the changes would increase Claws damage by a whopping 40%. BaB in particular thought I was nuts until BillZBubba invented pylon soloing - that's where the idea of testing damage by soloing a pylon really started: Bill took a test Claws scrapper and proceeded to rip the pylon apart, proving Claws had been buffed astronomically. If anything, I had underestimated slightly.

The problem was that the effects of activation time on attack chains was still poorly understood. Moreover, at the time Powers and Animation were not tightly coupled in making or changing powersets. BaB could make an animation that looked good, but he didn't fully appreciate the fact that adding or deleting just a few frames here and there could seriously buff or nerf an entire powerset, due to the huge leverage he sometimes had on the cast times of certain powers.

Moreover, many powers had rooted animations longer than the cast time of the power. Meaning: Castle thought it was this fast, but Bab had made it actually slower in practice. This means even people who knew how to analyze attack chains correctly had totally wrong data. Including Castle.

After discussing the situation with BaB many times, and not just with Claws, Bab had a much better understanding of the mathematics of the effects of rooted times on power efficiency, due to DPA calculations. What was the "fun" effect of understanding the math correctly? BaB decided to speed up most of the melee attacks, particularly the slow ones, keeping the animations more or less visually similar but now seeking to spare frames whenever he could.

Knowing the math helped BaB influence the way our powers work to be more efficient and powerful while still allowing him to make them visually appealing (as he saw it). And prior to that, sixty player powers ran slower than their listed cast times in at least some circumstances, sometimes by as much as twice the amount. All those became important bugs to fix, rather than just curiosities.

So is math important to fun? You tell me. How many people liked the melee speed ups, and thought they made those sets more fun? Credit the devs learning the math and then putting it to use.

Now just think how much time would have been spared and how much better and funner the powersets might be today if the design bible had forced Powers and Animation to work together on DPA balance specifically starting from the beginning of time. Think how much funner Energy Transfer might be now if there had been a proper balancing rule in place to handle that power when it was adjusted back then.

As always, I am overawed and impressed by your math skills, Arcana. I'm not, and have never been good with math. To be honest, I failed Math 1 three times in high school. I can't grasp the basic concepts for some reason, be it genetic, mental or just plain ignorance. Math was one skill that's always eluded me. I grasped English, History, Social Studies and Science without even trying, but numbers always leave me cold.

I do know the creative parts of a story quite well, having been a tabletop GM/DM/Storyteller/Marshall/Weaver/ Narrator for 25+ years, with a few writing credits to boot.

To clarify further, I'm not questioning the devs on creativity per se. I like the devs, I like this game, and I know how complex creating games are. Back in school, in the ninth grade (and I'm dating myself here) when I was learning BASIC, COBOL and FORTRAN, I was asked as a project to create a video game out of something I loved. That love was Robotech, and I created a text-based adventure involving it that got me an A.

What I am questioning is why they chose to change things up so much, without considering the ramifications of what those changes meant to the playerbase.

As Samuel mentioned, fights are won and done before you ever accept a mission, at least it used to be. Now it seems that fights are over with you on the losing side if the mission calls for multiple ambushes if you're not playing an AT who can deal with hordes of mobs at once.

Of course, I could be wrong, and maybe the new people coming in, who don't have multiple 50's and tricked-out builds, actually have the advantage on us vets.

They slog through Praetoria and survive, and find Paragon and the Rogue Isles to be easy for the next 30 levels because of the time they spent gold-side.

I almost forgot. Unless they changed something recently and I didn't notice, that's not quite correct. Placate does three things: it puts you in the hidden state, it stealths you, and it applies the placate mez effect on the target. Note that stealth doesn't break aggro: whether a critter can "see" you or not, if they are already aggroed on you they will attack you.

Furthermore, damage breaks the hidden state (which they should just call the critical state, because that is what it really is) but it does not break the placate mez effect. The specific target you placated cannot target you while they are placated until the placate wears off.

Maybe. Art and math have a long history together. So while math may not have been a conscious factor for the artists in the game, I suspect it plays a role in the artwork. Quite possibly an important role.

I agree with completely with everything you said besides that. Math is fundamental in game design. Hell, math is everywhere, even if we can't see it.

I promise you that is not true. Really, truly and very sincerely I promise you that. If you attack the target, it will attack you back immediately (assuming it has a recharged attack), whether you hit it or not. The only exception to this is AS, which does not notify the mob if it misses.

Erm, I think that was more a case of unintentional consequences. I mean, Powers thought activation time was X, and it wasn't. Probably would have been better handled by better unit-tests of the systems in question before heading to productive. Most likely, the differences fell within their acceptable tolerances, so even if the discrepancy was observed, it wasn't considered significant. And perhaps unforunately, there's a very wide range of performance in this game, so I suspect acceptable tolerances are higher than perhaps they should be.

Of course, that's all conjecture. Math is certainly important though . Checking your math is even more important [ie, Statesman's Super Scrapper].

But there are going to be aspects that the math by itself can't convey too well. Defiance and Vigilance come to mind here [mostly the emotional outcry issues]. Then there is the 'creative aspect' of establishing the weights for various powers in their critters power budget.

Anycase, not really disagreeing with you [especially on specifics ]. Math doesn't lie, that is true, what has been put into the math may obfuscate actual issues [creative assigned weights, player perception, special synergies].

I guess for me that doesn't really feel like an appropriate example. Nobody is going to die if SR is 10% less survivable than Invul (Well, unless you go berserk and raid Paragon Studios. )

Sure you need to use some baseline math to build your game around, I said that before, but the precision that you claim is necessary, that's what I'm struggling with. Let's say you do get to perfect balance. Say for example all the defensive sets are exactly equal in terms of their ability to mitigate or restore damage. But they all do it in different ways. One set is substantially easier to manage and so gets played more and is valued more. Another requires more micromanagement. But they are equal in their ability to protect the character if played with average skill. Just one happens to be more fun. What do you do?

See I don't quarrel with the proposition that good creative design and good mechanical design are not mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that the are times when good creative design diverges from good mechanical design. Not always and sure there needs to be a sufficient justification for abandoning your mechanical design principles. But likewise, I don't think you can become a slave to the maths.

Would you agree with that?

What are you even asking here?

If you attack the target with an attack that "notifies target" you will break your own placate. But the quote I was responding to said if you *take* damage your placated target will be able to attack you, and I don't believe that has ever been true.

Oh, apologies, I completely misread that then.

I agree, to my knowledge it's never been affected by the Stalker taking damage.

I never claimed precision is necessary. In fact, I've stated many times in the past that its theoretically possible to make games that are successful while being wildly unbalanced. In fact, I commented most recently that Star Trek Online's reward system intrinsicly grants the developers wide latitude in powers balance, because (good or bad) rewards are usually backloaded in time consuming missions. Even if you manage to make a starship ten times more powerful than mine, you aren't going to earn even 20% more rewards, because as long as I can defeat stuff and get to the end, your engines won't get you to the finish line ten times faster than me either way. And if you kill ten times more stuff, the stuff is worth only a tiny fraction of mission complete.

However I do say that to the extent that a value must hit a target its always possible to hit the target on the first try in theory, provided only that you're given a good description of the target. You never have to guess, and you never have to datamine a value. Datamining should only be used to determine the incalculable, like the skill level of your players.


You proceed from a false assumption. "Balance" isn't about something trivial like numerical equality. Balance is about making sure all elements of your game align with the requirements of your design. When its said that the PvE content is balanced around a particular skill level, that doesn't mean someone somewhere computed the skill level of the players to be X, the PvE content to be Y, and proved X = Y. The PvE content is balanced around the skill levels of the players in the sense that dozens of different requirements are met, from the rate at which players defeat things, to the rate at which they die, to the degree of difficulty they tend to gravitate to, to the spread in performance across one standard deviation of player population, to the minimum worst case performance for a minimal player, to the computed performance of a typical build, to the playtested performance of a hypothetical typical player. Its juggling lots of different parameters you care about, given that you explicitly care about them.

What do you do if one powerset is played a lot and one is not? If one of your parameters in your design is to ensure that the difference between the most popular and least popular powersets is less than a factor of three, you change something given the datamined preferences of your players, something which has to be measured because its not computable. But if your design doesn't have that requirement - if it explicitly states that its ok if some powersets are more challenging than others, and recognizes that only a minority of players want that challenge but they are worth giving some options to address that desire then that imbalance is intended by design, and you do nothing.


No, never. Because good mechanical design is all about delivering on the goals of the creative design. Its never about numerical awesomeness for numerical awesomeness sake. If I'm told to make a powerset that will make EvilGeko giggle his *** off when he plays it, either I deliver on my requirements or I don't. I come up with a target that I think will deliver on that requirement and then I implement it correctly or I don't. You can fault my creative attempt at satisfying that requirement but I'm never going to blame the fact that "game design is hard" if I fail to hit *my own* target. The powerset will do what I set out to make it do. If it doesn't make you laugh, its because my design is a creative failure, not because "math isn't fun." That's a cop out.

Here's what you'll hear me say: "oh, I thought you'd like it if that attack simultaneously fired a toxic cone out of your butt directly behind you for headsplitter damage. I didn't realize you tend to take point on teams."

Here's what you'll never hear me say: "I'm sorry but I when I gave you Butt Splitter six months ago I didn't realize it would synergize too strongly with Pelvic Thrust. I'm afraid I'm going to have to nerf Spinning Halitosis and datamine your damage for a while to make sure you aren't still outdamaging Boomerang Fish for corruptors. " Because that is no way to live.

Math is a tool. Engineering is a tool. To say that sometimes you have to abandon it is like saying the game is programmed in C, but fun cannot be programmed, so sometimes you just have to abandon your programming skill and just bang your face against the keyboard while listening to Mozart until the game servers start to sparkle with the goodness.

Coders code. Designers design. Analysts analyze. Their methodologies adapt to the field, whether that field is game design or pizza design. And in the real world everywhere but in game design**, there's no excuses for not having a methodology that purports to generate a good design the first time. People make mistakes, and fields evolve. The start of the art constantly improves. Good design principles are a moving target. But even if you don't possess the state of the art, you should possess the art itself.


** Actually, its a failing of the software development industry itself. On behalf of the industry, I apologize to planet Earth.

I like Super Reflexes too. I also like Shield Defense. Now every once in a while I expect an enemy, especially in end-game content which is supposed to be more challenging and with my difficulty cranked up as I am wont to do, to come along and smack me with the "HEY! You're not supposed to be invincible!" stick. I don't expect to be smacked repeatedly with a Mac truck.

I agree, it should have a decent level of challenge to all players. Keeping in mind that what any given player considers a "decent level of challenge" is liable to differ from any other given player's notion of the same.

Personally, I still want the ability to adjust the difficulty down as far as it can be adjusted up. Hooray for -2 to -4 missions!

That's just the DE. Here's my description of the Master Illusionist: A boss level critter that has 50% of its attacks bypass all my defenses, that casts three pets that have 50% of their attacks bypass all my defenses, all of which can attack while phase shifted.

When you really stop and think about it, geko really really hated defense. In exchange for being able to avoid getting hit, he made sure you were never actually going to avoid getting hit.

An ambush will be 2-3 (either 3 minions or 1 LT/1 minion) critters.

One ambush is. I would not have made this thread if I were having to fight one ambush at a time. I made this threat after fighting three ambush waves at a time for mission after mission after mission.

Last night, I said the following to a friend of mine: "FFS! Even on Primal Earth I still can't escape from ambush spam!" This was said in response to the mission to capture Eddie Crush, where upon saving him, ambushes begin to spawn. This was a knee-jerk reaction, however, as that consisted of just three ambush waves, one spawn per wave, each ambush staggered to trigger about 10 seconds after the previous one was defeated. Eddie was unexpectedly weak for a Tank Smasher and did almost get killed, but at no point were we actually overwhelmed by 20 people like I was in Praetoria. And this was +0x2 ambush spawns (I'm 24 now. I can handle myself.), to boot.

Maybe it was that this was the Council ambushing me, with minions and lieutenants, maybe it was that this was just one ambush spawn at a time, maybe it was because they were staggered, maybe it was SOs, but I didn't feel like the game was cheating when this happened. I was so jaded on ambushes at the time that just the NPC text pissed me off, but the actual fight wasn't so bad. This is how I feel ambushes should be done - add pressure on the player, but don't drop a bridge on him.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Hmmm, I'm going to need to double check this, but I don't this this is this case. If you placate at the same time as the placatee attacks you the hide is broken and placate is ignored. I've had a number of occasions where this has happened and it's very frustrating.

You are mistaking Game design with Game programming, they are not the same thing. Programming is the maths side of thing, it deals with making a game actually work.

The design side of things isn't maths based, there was never a time where some one at Nintendo said "This new Mario isn't fun enough, add ten more turtles.". There is no mathamatical equation that gives the correct ratio of how many bips to boops will give a good game.

I remember there being a bug like this, actually, and now that you mention it, I remember seeing this in person at one point. It shouldn't work like this, since being able to attack a target that you cannot target via AoE doesn't break the Placate until it times out or the target attacks you, but there could be some kink in the code that's the culprit here.

I do know that the Hidden portion of Placate is interrupted if your target manages to key an attack in a specific time window where he hits, suppresses you, but is still placated and won't attack.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Hmm, I'm going to have to check on the placate status. I could be assuming that because hide is broken they will still attack, so I attack and break it anyway.

Frankly, I'd be for allowing that for standard Praetorian content before I would be for reducing the ambushes.

If you have to fight three ambushes at a time *you are doing something wrong*. (There are three exceptions: The mission where you have to defend the news network against a horde of destroyers, the one with the ghoul horde and one with the syndicate, and all of those are very unusual (they're not normal spawns and they give you a big honking warning and a time limit)

All the rest of the time the ambushes are staggered. *Precisely* to ensure you never have to fight more than one spawn at a time. (Unless you go off aggroing another spawn in the meantime ofc.)