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So with the clipping issue resolved*, you see absolutely no way that critter melee AI could be improved beyond "scramble madly over one another to form a sphere around the object of their aggro?" That seems to me to be a lingering AI issue.|
Originally Posted by Moonlighter
The problem with dumpster diving wasn't an AI issue.
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*It actually isn't resolved at all, but it is more difficult to reproduce on demand now.
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Actually, one of the run conditions the AI tracks is when a significant number of allies are defeated in a short span of time. Another is when the critter for some reason cannot seem to hit the target they are aggroed onto for an extended period of time.|
Originally Posted by Hopeling
If the fleeing was from situations they can't win, it would be less annoying. (Arguably that's most of the situations in the game, but...) But the fleeing has very little to do with their chances in the fight, and very much to do with certain effects being arbitrarily scarier than others. Your buddies getting eviscerated next to you: not scary. Somebody carrying a lighter: Very scary.
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You can actually induce the latter. Make a critter with no attacks in the AE but enough regen to survive, and then stand there and brawl it. Eventually, it will simply run away, even if its health bar is still full and you are no real threat, because its decided something has gone horribly wrong if it cannot attack you at all, its just not sure what.
I think the problem with DoT is that its a "lingering effect." The AI recognizes when there's a lot of debuffing effects on it and that counts towards its tendency to flee: DoT is I think being registered as a kind of "debuff." But this is *not* unconditional as Uberguy put it in the general case (meaning: with most AI "brains" - critters can have different AI brains with different preferences, vis-a-vis the purse snatcher spawn groups). I have yet to find a reproducible set of conditions which will cause DoT alone to force a critter to flee that isn't already predisposed to flee for other reasons.
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Across the widest range of situations, from leveling to 50, from SO builds to invention builds, when played by neophytes to experts, I believe Scrappers and Brutes have the best all-around performance across all of their powerset combinations. Some controller and mastermind powerset combinations sometimes outperform them. When built powerfully enough Crabs, Widows, and Warshades can outdo them. But you can use a random number generator to make a Scrapper or Brute build, and its going to do far better than any other archetype under the same condition, because the wheel always lands on a winner for those two archetypes. And no one says their top tier performance is anything but great.|
Originally Posted by Moonlighter
Plus, in the greater scheme of things people often act like Scrappers and even Brutes are on top of the food chain. But honestly those ATs are middle of the pack in effectiveness. Crabs and Widows, Doms and some Controllers, well built Masterminds, and some corruptors and defenders can all eclipse scrappers and even brute in raw effectiveness over a wide range of tasks. There's nothing wrong with Scrappers and Brutes, and I'm not saying they needs buffs, but what I am saying is that knocking down scrappers and brutes by getting rid of taunt aura or anything else will not make blasters balanced.
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The problem is people comparing peak performance of a specific condition to the average performance of a wide range of other conditions. "So long as Ill/Rad can solo Giant Monsters, no Brute is overpowered" would be an example, or "a rad/rad soloed Lusca, so Corruptors must be fine" would be another. These are less than meaningless statements, because they have absolutely nothing to do with archetype balance.
I recently slotted up the Scrapper's Strike proc into my MA scrapper, and decided to give it a test drive by going to Monster Island. As expected, it did not change the fact that MA doesn't generally have the damage output to take down a GM. I thought adding in Lore pets would help, but actually they hurt a little: the GM starting running away with them up, whereas it would just stand and fight if it was just me.
So after maybe fifteen or twenty minutes of goofing off, I decided to give up. But not after I had chased the GM all over that island, and not after I had aggroed two other GMs, and not after I tried to take them down as well. Yeah, it sucks I can't bring down a GM. Even after tanking three for ten minutes I still just couldn't bring that GM down. I suck.
As to taunt auras, getting rid of them won't specifically help blasters, and I'm not advocating getting rid of them either, but conversely the move to give them to everything exacerbates the problem with Blasters in a very tangibly uncomfortable way, because it continues to shrink the options for remedies that target buffing Blasters without causing any collateral damage to other archetypes. And as I said, if melee causes the problem by insisting they have the tools to keep everything in melee, they become the first in line to take the hit when it comes to determining who will have to be intruded upon when we buff Blasters.
And since I said Blasters have no champion, I thought it would be a good way to spend my time for the next two or three years.
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I did say "unconditional with respect to their current health". I did not mean that it is perfectly reproducible, but rather that deciding to run when debuffed/DoTted is that seems to happen irrespective of current health.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
But this is *not* unconditional as Uberguy put it in the general case (meaning: with most AI "brains" - critters can have different AI brains with different preferences, vis-a-vis the purse snatcher spawn groups).
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| I have yet to find a reproducible set of conditions which will cause DoT alone to force a critter to flee that isn't already predisposed to flee for other reasons. |
Edit: You did say "DoT alone", and a Night Widow is also laying on nasty -speed. However, this is heavily mitigated by GM resistances, so I think it's an AI issue if gross debuff is being considered instead of net. However, I do have another example: my DB/Regen Scrapper. I play this character on high settings using a rather Leeroy Jenkins "kill them fast before they kill me". I pile into spawns and AoE the minions to death ASAP, using Regen's clicks to survive the heavy initial damage. By the time I'm out of clicks, the incoming DPS has been attenuated by me attenuating the spawn size with swords. When I picked up Reactive Interface, this character's play changed dramatically. The reason was that foes were quicker to retreat from melee because of Reactive. This actually dramatically reduced incoming melee damage against large spawns, which made it easier to stay alive. I consider that highly reproducible when it's consistent enough to allow playstyle change.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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I misparsed that, my mistake. Fleeing can happen at any level of health, although I'm not certain its *independent* of health.|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
I did say "unconditional with respect to their current health". I did not mean that it is perfectly reproducible, but rather that deciding to run when debuffed/DoTted is that seems to happen irrespective of current health.
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| Go fight either Deathsurge or Scrapyard with a Night Widow. I have never failed to set either of them running within seconds of starting to beat on them, even when all by lonesome. |
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| Edit: You did say "DoT alone", and a Night Widow is also laying on nasty -speed. However, this is heavily mitigated by GM resistances, so I think it's an AI issue if gross debuff is being considered instead of net. However, I do have another example: my DB/Regen Scrapper. I play this character on high settings using a rather Leeroy Jenkins "kill them fast before they kill me". I pile into spawns and AoE the minions to death ASAP, using Regen's clicks to survive the heavy initial damage. By the time I'm out of clicks, the incoming DPS has been attenuated by me attenuating the spawn size with swords. When I picked up Reactive Interface, this character's play changed dramatically. The reason was that foes were quicker to retreat from melee because of Reactive. This actually dramatically reduced incoming melee damage against large spawns, which made it easier to stay alive. I consider that highly reproducible when it's consistent enough to allow playstyle change. |
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Here's another example, though it's not for melee.
Back when they first introduced the Defender damage bonus for being solo, I took my Dark/Psi Defender out and soloed a couple of lowbie GMs - Paladin and Babbage. It wasn't fast, but I pulled it off. The GMs did run around some, because that character flies and uses Darkest Night. Mostly, however, they seemed to be running to try and get to me. The character has +defense, but not very high levels of it.
Once I got Reactive interface I went and tried them again. It was almost comical how much more they ran from the same character, with the only difference being the DoT from Reactive. I seriously chased Paladin all over the north end of King's Row. They were not trying to get to me - they were distinctly fleeing my presence. It was just amazing how much they ran. It was seriously noticeable how much it completely gutted Tar Patch, which had not happened to that extent the first time around.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Hm. Well, the key here may be "accurately and consistently", but it does break out individual buffs and debuffs by caster and instance in the main CAM. (The big detailed window, not the smaller one that's limited to 10 attributes.)
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Consider that even today Real Numbers can tell you what debuffs are on you, and what the net of all those debuffs are, but not what each individual debuff is doing to you accurately and consistently, because that would take too much computation.
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Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Sorry, where did I suggest that the AI needed no improvements? My point is exactly what you said; that "fixing" dumpster diving wasn't so much a giant improvement in AI as not allowing creature stacking, having definitive AoE caps, and having an agro cap.|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
So with the clipping issue resolved*, you see absolutely no way that critter melee AI could be improved beyond "scramble madly over one another to form a sphere around the object of their aggro?" That seems to me to be a lingering AI issue.
*It actually isn't resolved at all, but it is more difficult to reproduce on demand now. |
The person I was replying to was suggesting that any AI fixes we were talking about (ie. less sensitivity to debuffs and DoTs when checking for a flee condition) would re-introduce dumpster diving, and one could even interpret their response to suggest that the goal of those who wouldn't mind AI tweaks would be to re-introduce dumpster diving and similar tactics. I was refuting that, pointing out that the "solution" to dumpster diving wasn't really an AI solution in the first place, and the changes we are talking about wouldn't allow us to replicate those tactics.
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My point though was that even now Real Numbers doesn't consistently and correctly factor in things like resistances and such, so the "net" effect of debuffs is even less likely to have been factored into the AI brains of the critters in 2004, and also unlikely to have been patched into the brains of the critters at a later date. In 2007 when Real Numbers was being first worked on, that was even at that time considered too much work and too much computation, and doing it for all critters would have been more computationally expensive than for the fraction of the players that use Real Numbers attribute displays.
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
Hm. Well, the key here may be "accurately and consistently", but it does break out individual buffs and debuffs by caster and instance in the main CAM. (The big detailed window, not the smaller one that's limited to 10 attributes.)
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Ah, right. I get what you're saying. Sorry, that should have been an obvious follow-on from my comments about net vs. gross values.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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The fact these at's can take down GM's was stated not only to point out how they can do things scrappers and brutes flat out cannot do, but also to show how powerful buffs/debuffs, and stacking buff/debuffs, are in this game. |
Originally Posted by Shred_Monkey
The majority of players of the game desire a balance of reward vs time, and the Dev's also seem to follow that direction most of the time. Since soloing GMs and soloing/duoing high level TFs and GMs gives practically no reward and takes many times longer then the normal method for the same reward, asking for the Dev's to make changes and balance shifts in order to allow all (or no) ATs to complete those tasks is "laughable and ridiculous."
Dev's should be concerned about making sure different ATs can contribute equally to the rate of completion of reward granting content. That's what 99.9% of the players really mean when they talk about balance. |
If you want to focus on how ats can contribute equally to rate of completion of reward granting content, NOTHING comes even close to shifting the balance of how fast and easily something can be completed in this game as a good buffer/debuffer does, and with stacking buffs and debuffs, even more so.
Have a race to complete say the RSF, one team gets 3 scrappers, the other team gets 3 buff/debuffers, and the scrapper team will lose by a mile, if they could even complete it. And that would be true with just about any content in this game.
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The devs have made statements in the past that are consistent with saying that Scrappers have tended to perform above average, and Defenders about average, of all the blue-side archetypes. This is inconsistent with the belief that buff/debuff consistently wins and wins big in most or all content.|
Originally Posted by Cyber_naut
The fact these at's can take down GM's was stated not only to point out how they can do things scrappers and brutes flat out cannot do, but also to show how powerful buffs/debuffs, and stacking buff/debuffs, are in this game.
If you want to focus on how ats can contribute equally to rate of completion of reward granting content, NOTHING comes even close to shifting the balance of how fast and easily something can be completed in this game as a good buffer/debuffer does, and with stacking buffs and debuffs, even more so. Have a race to complete say the RSF, one team gets 3 scrappers, the other team gets 3 buff/debuffers, and the scrapper team will lose by a mile, if they could even complete it. And that would be true with just about any content in this game. |
Defenders buffing Scrappers cannot help Scrapper performance relative to Defenders, because they are generally on the same team and there is no reason to believe that Defenders were sidekicking Scrappers more often than the reverse, which would be the only reasonable explanation for how buffing could skew the performance in the wrong way.
The only other possibility is that buff/debuff Defenders had horrible solo performance which dragged their average performance down relative to the high performance they got when teamed. But that's also impossible because then they would have low solo performance, and according to Castle *only* Blasters had consistently significantly below average performance in any regime of play, solo, small team, or full team.
The only option that is reasonable is that the edge in buffing and debuffing in increasing the Defender average upward was either low or nonexistent relative to the huge advantage Scrappers probably had when solo. The buff/debuff advantage could not be extremely high unless Defenders teamed very infrequently, which seems highly unlikely.
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Actually, dumpster diving was in large part an AI issue. Back then any aggro'd mob would literally chase you from one end of the zone to the other. I still remember herding all of PI, monsters included, on my Inv/SS tank. Even with today's aggro limit the AI has improved to stop chasing you after a while, whether it's after the taunt effect wears off, or if you haven't damaged them in a while. |
Originally Posted by Moonlighter
The problem with dumpster diving wasn't an AI issue. It was the game allowing enemies to stack / overlap each other combined with no real AoE caps. A character with a taunt aura can still get enemies to clump, and no one is suggesting a change to the agro cap.
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Until recently you could still do a pretty good job of imitating the old system by making AE ambush farms, surrounding yourself well over the aggro cap with rezzing enemies, providing non-stop easy xp, inf, and tickets. But that was never very popular now, was it?
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Originally Posted by Moonlighter
The person I was replying to was suggesting that any AI fixes we were talking about (ie. less sensitivity to debuffs and DoTs when checking for a flee condition) would re-introduce dumpster diving, and one could even interpret their response to suggest that the goal of those who wouldn't mind AI tweaks would be to re-introduce dumpster diving and similar tactics. I was refuting that, pointing out that the "solution" to dumpster diving wasn't really an AI solution in the first place, and the changes we are talking about wouldn't allow us to replicate those tactics.
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I'm sure that many players would love nothing more than making an already easy game easier still. That was my point. It clearly missed the mark, unfortunately.
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I'd love to see this study the devs conducted, and how they came up with statistics that suggest scrappers outperform the at's I've suggested to be superior in top end performance, especially on teams. Of course when you mention castle, the architect of the pvp revamp disaster, I don't need to see the study to know it was probably critically flawed. Perhaps they were using level 10 characters on training enhancements solo...|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
The devs have made statements in the past that are consistent with saying that Scrappers have tended to perform above average, and Defenders about average, of all the blue-side archetypes. This is inconsistent with the belief that buff/debuff consistently wins and wins big in most or all content.
Defenders buffing Scrappers cannot help Scrapper performance relative to Defenders, because they are generally on the same team and there is no reason to believe that Defenders were sidekicking Scrappers more often than the reverse, which would be the only reasonable explanation for how buffing could skew the performance in the wrong way. The only other possibility is that buff/debuff Defenders had horrible solo performance which dragged their average performance down relative to the high performance they got when teamed. But that's also impossible because then they would have low solo performance, and according to Castle *only* Blasters had consistently significantly below average performance in any regime of play, solo, small team, or full team. The only option that is reasonable is that the edge in buffing and debuffing in increasing the Defender average upward was either low or nonexistent relative to the huge advantage Scrappers probably had when solo. The buff/debuff advantage could not be extremely high unless Defenders teamed very infrequently, which seems highly unlikely. |
But again, I dont' think I'm stating some radical claim when I say adding a good buffer/debuffer speeds up say a task force faster than adding a scrapper. And again, the buff/debuff at's can duo stf's and rsf's, try to do that with two scrappers. How do you explain that if said at's are supposedly 'on par' or if as you claim the devs implied, buff/debuffers were subpar?
Mentioning studies that were supposedly conducted is useless unless we know how the study was conducted. I've stated specific situations that demonstrate buffers and debuffers speed up content completion, and even make content completion possible with smaller groups. I think that shows conclusively that there are speed bumps in content that buff/debuffers can get through faster than melee at's like scrappers, and some they can get through that scrappers flat out can't. And now, with all the survivability improvements available to buff/debuffers, the stuff scrappers could do that they couldn't is pretty much non-existant. I was hoping the new content would remedy this imbalance by giving melee some of the tools said ats have since they've steadily received survivability improvements, and maybe in time they still will.
On the plus side, the one thing I still agree with you on is that blasters are still at the bottom looking up. The one thing they used to have value in, pvp, has been euthanized by castle, so now they are left with nothing. As the devs apparently agree, and have for some time, I wonder what they're waiting for in terms of improving said at.
You're comparing edge cases to consistent performance. Not all of the debuffer characters can solo giant monsters. Putting a scrapper on a team with buffing and debuffing ATs means the scrapper will benefit from those buffs and debuffs as well as the ATs doing the buffing and debuffing. On the other hand, scrappers can just blow through the vast majority of leveling content with little difficulty, whereas controllers, defenders, corruptors, etc. are often more vulnerable during the leveling process, especially solo. This isn't always the case, but it does seem frequent enough.
The study in question, if I recall correctly, was based on datamining number of defeats, leveling speed, etc. across the board. That is, looking at behavior across the entire playerbase.
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I could see where SOME buffer/debuffer types could have a slight edge...but I would venture to say that as an average for the whole those ATs are going to be on par or perhaps a tad behind. Not every controller is an Ill/Rad or a Mind/Time that can lock down things easily and has lots of built in mitigation in the set...and likewise not every defender is a Dark/Dark that plays more like a controller in many respects than say...a kin/ anything or an emp/anything because those are pure buff sets.
Take something from the low ends and compare disparity...
Example...Grav/Storm controller...arguably not a bad combo, as storm fills the holes in grav well...but anyone who plays control toons would tell you it is not the most desirable combo to play if you are a min/maxer. This set would easily perform far less efficiently solo then say...a DB/ scrapper. DB is easily not the "preferred" set for a min/maxer on a scrapper...it will deal damage in AoE type stuff and blow through minions but is not an ideal ST set for bosses, etc...
The range of disparity is much greater in the buff/debuff sets...try to solo an emp/anything defender and let me know how well that works out...then run any combo melee toon...ANY...and see how much easier a time you have...
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Originally Posted by Cyber_naut
The fact these at's can take down GM's was stated not only to point out how they can do things scrappers and brutes flat out cannot do, but also to show how powerful buffs/debuffs, and stacking buff/debuffs, are in this game.
If you want to focus on how ats can contribute equally to rate of completion of reward granting content, NOTHING comes even close to shifting the balance of how fast and easily something can be completed in this game as a good buffer/debuffer does, and with stacking buffs and debuffs, even more so. Have a race to complete say the RSF, one team gets 3 scrappers, the other team gets 3 buff/debuffers, and the scrapper team will lose by a mile, if they could even complete it. And that would be true with just about any content in this game. |
You're comparing all scrapper teams vs all buffer/debuffer teams. That's not the right question.
A team of 7 scrappers and 1 defender is better then a team of 8 scrappers.... AND... a team of 7 defenders and 1 scrapper is also better then a team of 8 defenders. That is a form of balance. (note: there's going to be some room for argument as to the definition of "better").
Granted, All-rad superteams, for example, are impressive and they destroy content with very little effort... HOWEVER, that's not the ultimate best team for running a record time ITF or STF, or for running regular team missions with maximum reward/minute. A mixed team is better. And that's the balance we want the game to have.
The ultimate question we're discussing here is... "is a blaster desired at all in that mix?" Some people are saying "no."
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Based on what I know about it, which is probably far more than I'm supposed to know, I have every reason to believe the data reasonably supported their conclusions.|
Originally Posted by Cyber_naut
I'd love to see this study the devs conducted, and how they came up with statistics that suggest scrappers outperform the at's I've suggested to be superior in top end performance, especially on teams. Of course when you mention castle, the architect of the pvp revamp disaster, I don't need to see the study to know it was probably critically flawed. Perhaps they were using level 10 characters on training enhancements solo...
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The devs were not "using" anything. The devs collected the performance of the players. All of them. There was no possible way to misrepresent the playerbase, because the data was the playerbase.
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It's the right question if you want to see why I'm saying stacking buffs and debuffs are more powerful than any other factor in this game. That's why two or three top end buff/debuffers will blow through content that two or three scrappers will struggle with or even be unable to eveb get through.|
Originally Posted by Shred_Monkey
You're comparing all scrapper teams vs all buffer/debuffer teams. That's not the right question.
A team of 7 scrappers and 1 defender is better then a team of 8 scrappers.... AND... a team of 7 defenders and 1 scrapper is also better then a team of 8 defenders. That is a form of balance. (note: there's going to be some room for argument as to the definition of "better"). Granted, All-rad superteams, for example, are impressive and they destroy content with very little effort... HOWEVER, that's not the ultimate best team for running a record time ITF or STF, or for running regular team missions with maximum reward/minute. A mixed team is better. And that's the balance we want the game to have. |
If you can duo a stf or rsf with two buffers/debuffers, any extra spots for non buff/debuffers are basically mercy spots. Adding another at really doesn't help all that much outside of the obvious numerical advantage. And I'm not saying that to be 'mean' to those who like playing melee, because I prefer melee myself (I've got something like 20 lvl 50 scrappers/brutes and 3 buff/debuffers, and I know I'll make more melee at's, but probably not any more buff/debuffers), but having seen the game from both sides, nothing makes content in this game easier than the right combos of buffs and debuffs.
And to those saying I'm only judging the ats at the top end, best case scenerio, that is correct - obviously if you look at them from 1-50 with various builds and various players with different levels of ability playing them there are too many variables to get an effective or useful comparison.
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| The ultimate question we're discussing here is... "is a blaster desired at all in that mix?" Some people are saying "no." |
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They were 'using' data - without knowing what the 'data' was to show 'performance', saying 'performance was about equal' is meaningless. What exactly was being measured and how?|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Based on what I know about it, which is probably far more than I'm supposed to know, I have every reason to believe the data reasonably supported their conclusions.
The devs were not "using" anything. The devs collected the performance of the players. All of them. There was no possible way to misrepresent the playerbase, because the data was the playerbase. |
If you want to share your secret info, that's great, if not, you really shouldn't just expect poeople to say 'ok, if you guys say so, I guess the ats are even', especially when your buddy castle thought he fixed the pvp situation using his 'data' and testing, lol. And I'm not saying that to be an ***, I'm just trying to point out that the devs are not infallible.
Regardless, I've got all the data I need from seeing the at's in action over the past six years or so, in game. I've seen groups struggle though content, and then easily get over the hump by adding the right buff/debuffer. I've seen buff/debbuffers pull stuff off that scrappers flat out can't do, and that's irrefutable fact. And I'm not saying it to gloat or because I'm happy about the situation, since I by FAR prefer the playstyle of scrappers, but reality is reality.
Those at's were always supposed to be better team multipliers - but I think where things got wonky is when as the game progressed, more and more has been introduced to improve those at's in terms of solo performance by flat out buffs and via survivablility improvement options (io's, incarnate abilities - and yes, I know these benefit all at's, but those with little to no survivability could achieve far greater improvements in survivability vs those that already had it), yet little to nothing has been added to the ats that started with the solo advantage to improve their team play.
And finally, let me add, to avoid misunderstanding, I'm not saying the gap is ridiculously enormous, it's nothing 'gamebreaking'. Top end at's can do pretty much everything any other at can do at various levels of performance, and the gaps can overlap depending on powerset combos, player ability, etc. But all things being equal, top set ups vs. top sets ups, there is most definitely a gap, and melee is looking up at the buff/debuffers in that situation.
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"Performance" as defined by this game's design parameters, refers to the rate of reward earning across all possible standard content rewards, from experience to influence to reward drops. A powerset combination is said to be underperforming within a certain circumstance if it earns less than a certain percentage of the average earning rate of all players within that same circumstance. The datamining that was done that showed Blasters underperformed showed that for every blaster powerset combination, at every level range from 1-10 to 41-50, across all teaming situations from being solo to being in small teams to being in full teams, their reward earning rates were consistently significantly below average. Blasters were the only archetype for which it could be said that *every* powerset combination underperformed.|
Originally Posted by Cyber_naut
They were 'using' data - without knowing what the 'data' was to show 'performance', saying 'performance was about equal' is meaningless. What exactly was being measured and how?
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It could not be said that any other archetype underperformed across all its powerset combinations, nor could it be said that any other archetype overperformed across all its powerset combinations outside the tolerable margin of performance.
I was told directly under other circumstances that Scrappers did not need help, they did not underperform under almost *any* circumstances.
Beyond that, you'll have to ask them yourself.
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| Regardless, I've got all the data I need from seeing the at's in action over the past six years or so, in game. |
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No, it is the only way to get an effective or useful comparison - scrappers, brutes, defenders, corruptors, controllers, and masterminds are all played by players with various builds and different levels of ability, so comparing across the entire player base is going to give an accurate perception of how well these characters handle teaming and solo situations while leveling up.|
Originally Posted by Cyber_naut
And to those saying I'm only judging the ats at the top end, best case scenerio, that is correct - obviously if you look at them from 1-50 with various builds and various players with different levels of ability playing them there are too many variables to get an effective or useful comparison.
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You don't get accurate data by dismissing data that doesn't fit one's assumptions. That's the same kind of thinking that leads to pathological science.
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It's not secret info. It's been talked about repeatedly over the past several years. Castle alluded to it when it came time to revise the blaster inherent.|
Originally Posted by Cyber_naut
They were 'using' data - without knowing what the 'data' was to show 'performance', saying 'performance was about equal' is meaningless. What exactly was being measured and how?
If you want to share your secret info, that's great, if not, you really shouldn't just expect poeople to say 'ok, if you guys say so, I guess the ats are even', especially when your buddy castle thought he fixed the pvp situation using his 'data' and testing, lol. And I'm not saying that to be an ***, I'm just trying to point out that the devs are not infallible. |
Your argument that the data must be bad because you don't like how Castle revised PVP is irrelevant. Datamining doesn't tell you how to fix disparities, it can simply show you the disparities that exist. Analyzing the data (which is going to be the same unless you twist it or change it to fit your perceptions) is a separate process from implementing solutions to the disparities identified in the data. Thus, your reference to PVP changes is completely irrelevant.
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| Regardless, I've got all the data I need from seeing the at's in action over the past six years or so, in game. I've seen groups struggle though content, and then easily get over the hump by adding the right buff/debuffer. I've seen buff/debbuffers pull stuff off that scrappers flat out can't do, and that's irrefutable fact. And I'm not saying it to gloat or because I'm happy about the situation, since I by FAR prefer the playstyle of scrappers, but reality is reality. |
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Can you name an example of this content? Because I'm drawing a blank.
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Originally Posted by Cyber_naut
That's why two or three top end buff/debuffers will blow through content that two or three scrappers will struggle with or even be unable to eveb get through.
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