Buff Trick Arrows 2.0! Now with more begging!

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

Yeah, you and me both. I would love to dust off mine - I tried it out again a few weeks back on some iTrials but didn't feel particularly effective outside of Disruption and Oil Slick.

YES, however at least it's been acknowledged which is the first step.

No offense taken, Garent.

I disagree, actually. I think Ice Control, Energy Melee, Force Fields, and Trick Arrow all sit in this area where the devs recognize that they don't perform as well as they should or aren't as enjoyable as they could be, but they're not sure what they can do to 'fix' them without changing a lot or making them too powerful.

Ice Control can really neuter a group of enemies with it's slows and recharge slows. Energy Melee actually gets pretty good DPS and burst damage. Force Fields offer a level of survivability that many other sets... can't touch (ba-dum-psh). Trick Arrow can use most of it's abilities more often than other sets, and because it's the most offensive support set, it can significantly increase the damage output of ATs not typically associated with doing a lot of damage.

But none of these change the fact that:

Ice Control has very little synergy with itself and has unnecessary penalities on a couple of powers.

Energy Melee feels too slow for a set that appears to be built for ST Burst damage.

Force Fields has 6 of it's 9 powers considered "optional", and the remaining 3 considered "boring".

Trick Arrow has to use most of it's abilities more often just to perform moderately close to, but not actually at, the same level other sets get with much less effort.

I feel like these sets are kind of in this place where the devs aren't sure what to do to fix what feels "off" without affecting what works well.

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

Well I'm not sure about Energy Melee (since I've not played it) but I definitely agree with you on the other two. It's pretty easy to see why they have issues form a numerical viewpoint but harder to make a fix that doesn't make the set into something completely different.

There are several buff/debuff sets where I kind of get the feeling that the goal of the set was essentially to make a new set that attempted to capture the feel of one of the older sets without the design flaws inherent in it. Cold Domination to Force Field, Thermal Radiation to Empathy, Traps to Trick Arrow.

Didn't Arbiter Hawk recently say that he thought that trick arrow was undervalued and not as bad as people thought?

I didn't hear that, no. Where was it?

I think you're thinking of when Redlynne spoke to Arbiter Hawk at the Player Summit.

I PM'd him about it, and this was his response:

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

And now I feel really dumb because I participated in the thread where you posted that before. Considering that I just missed an entire post by JayboH in another thread that was two posts above mine, I think it's time to take a break from the forums.

Hey it's ok, I mess up now and then too.

As the person who talked to Arbiter Hawk at the Player Summit, let me give some more context to what he said then, and what I reported he said then. The first thing you need to realize is that Hawk is a pretty soft spoken guy (as you can see on this week's Coffee Talk with Zwillinger) who isn't a very "forward" sort of fellow (like, say, Positron, Dr. Aeon or Protean, for example). That means he isn't all that prone to "volunteer" all kinds of information and tidbits about Stuff™. He like to play conversations (both on the forums here and in person as well) with his cards held close to the chest (as it were) ... which is a good thing for a man in his position at Paragon Studios. So he's good at keeping info in "lockdown" and not revealing too much.

Secondly, when I was talking to him personally, I could practically see the wheels spinning in his head as he checked and cross-checked his lists of what he COULD and COULDN'T say about things, and was constantly on guard about confusing what was already LIVE in the game (and thus public knowledge) versus what he was actually actively working on for internal builds, and trying to keep that ALL straight in his head while standing in a hallway at a hotel on a saturday. Then add in the fact that I was peppering him with some reasonably specific questions pertaining to specific powers within a specific powerset ... and understandably if I were in *his* shoes (which don't have toes, while mine do ... but I tangent) I would want to have access to either City of Data, or better yet the in-house Powers Spreadsheets at my fingertips to be able to discuss SPECIFICS on powers and how they fit together without needing to reconstruct all of that information from memory (and probably get something wrong in the process).

And bear in mind, I wasn't just talking with him about Trick Arrow ... I was engaging him in a conversation about multiple powersets (Peacebringers, Warshades, Dual Pistols, Trick Arrow, others that I can't recall now because it's 3 months later) and without reference material "in hand" to aid you in conversations like that it's just really hard to keep everything straight in your head at all times what everything does and how it all "fits together just so" and what the little itty bitty gritty details we argue about are all relevant to ... and so on. So I can hardly blame him for not wanting to get too deep into the weeds with me on the specifics of powersets while I was chatting him up at the Player Summit (although he probably felt like I was putting him On The Spot somewhat), in part because I can understand the delicacy of his position.

Plus it's hard to remember EVERY DETAIL of EVERY POWER in EVERY POWERSET if you don't have either Mids' Hero Planner, City of Data or the in-game Spreadsheets (or cheatsheets of notes derived therefrom) in hand while talking about this stuff. I know *I* can't do it, and it would be quite "unfair" to expect Arbiter Hawk to do it just because manipulating that stuff is his Day Job (speaking of which, I wonder if he's gotten a badge for that yet?).



So in that respect, our conversation was somewhat necessarily limited to more generalized/generic themes and issues of powersets than I personally would have liked (because I *do* like getting down into the weeds of stuff like this) and we were not exactly interacting on the same plane/level of information (ie. I felt like I was a little better prepared, simply because I had a focus and knew my ground, while Hawk had to know "EVERYTHING" in order to respond, which isn't quite fair to him, honestly). Plus, he had limits to what he could talk about which I was *NOT* about to push or pressure him on!

And in an objective sense, he was actually correct in his point (made at the time) that Trick Arrow played well is far more effective than when it is played badly (let alone incompetently) ... but that was actually more of a side issue to the points I was trying to make with him about Trick Arrow is effectively "penalized" for its specialization, particularly when compared "on balance" (in multiple meanings of that term) with other buff/debuff powersets, in that Trick Arrow needs to "work harder to break even" with the performance of other powersets it is "competing" against.

The thing is, there really wasn't any way for Arbiter Hawk to just come right out and say, "You're right, what should we do about it?" or anything even approximately similar, and then have a discussion about proposals to "fix" Trick Arrows. And to be even more fair, in a casual setting like the Player Summit, *ANY* conversation about powersets would essentially require him to give very conservative answers to questions about powersets, the perceptions about what should be "done" with powersets in the future, and so on ... which is precisely what he did, and which is entirely right and proper for a Dev in his position and with his responsibilities (which are considerable).

In diplomatic speak, I like to think that we had a "fair exchange of views" on a ramble of topics (to the point where I'm sure he wanted me to go pester someone else after a while ), and although he certainly couldn't *commit* to saying (or *doing*) something about the powersets we talked about ... I am equally sure that the feedback I gave him personally at the Player Summit on powersets like Trick Arrow will be given consideration when/if Trick Arrow ever gets put on the schedule for review. Meaning, even if I couldn't see the seeds I planted sprout, grow, flower and bear fruit during the course of our conversation, at least the ground was tilled and the seeds were planted for "something" to come of threads like this one at some later date.



The problem is that Players think of "later" in terms of days/weeks or maybe a month or two. The Devs of this game have to think in terms of NEXT YEAR ... maybe ... because their schedules are already booked that far in advance with the stuff that's already in process/progress right now. So a lot of the disconnect between Players and Devs on things like this is just how the Development Cycle "churns" through stuff in ways that are not transparent to the Players.



</ramble>

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

I'm confused.

Oh, I asked if there was any changes for Trick Arrow in the Freedom Friday thing they do on FB/G+, and they said none would be in Issue 24, but it was still a powerset on their list to review.

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

Originally Posted by EarthWyrm But I do understand that there is an internet rule that any bad idea must be presented by someone at least twice a year to remind everyone who hasn't already read every previous thread on the topic precisely why the idea is bad.