City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Pay To Win: Performance Shifter

Angry_Angel

By Angry_Angel,
Posted on: 2012-03-08 11:34 in The Market and Inventions

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilGeko View Post
Because that presents an unfair advantage to some powers. A flat proc rate is ridiculous. Faster sets have enough advantages, they don't need that one too.
Ok that makes sense some but, it was OK for every proc up until now but now it's not O.o.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucky666 View Post
I don't get it why did they change market IOs and even the new atos procs to proc per minute? why couldn't they just leave them like 20% to fire or whatever?
They could. The question you may be looking for is "why didn't they?" And to answer that, we have to look at "why DID they?" And the answer is that, presumably, they wanted to try it out, and because the PPM does not favor really fast powers the way a flat proc chance does. It kinda favors slow powers instead, considering how attack chains actually work, but not by nearly so wide a margin.

I like the PPM procs overall, but I think it's quite odd and inconsistent that the attuned versions of the procs use PPM, while the crafted versions have a flat proc chance. This means the crafted version is better in some cases, and the attuned version better in others, which seems to go against the general idea of selling sets that are otherwise identical to the crafted versions. What I wonder is "why did they make these with PPM and leave the old ones the same?" To avoid irritating players? To make the attuned versions more desirable? Some other reason? I dunno.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucky666 View Post
Ok that makes sense some but, it was OK for every proc up until now but now it's not O.o.
It wasn't OK. It was just how it was.

The real problem is how they have procs check in passives. The every 10 sec. rule was intended to address that passives don't require action on the players' part and activate every time they refresh.

What they need is some kind of limit on the procs fire rate, but I'm not sure if that's possible.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by SlyGuyMcFly View Post
Of course, if the PPM PShifter were available in-game (say, as a Catalized version of the regular proc), that concern would disappear.
Pay to win concerns would go away - Power Creep concerns would not.

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Shubbie View Post
Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by DarkSideLeague View Post
Pay to win concerns would go away - Power Creep concerns would not.
That ship sailed a long time ago.

The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by SwellGuy View Post
I can only speak to my experience but I saw it was for sale on the market and assumed it was identical to the one already in the game with the benefit of it scaling to my level offset by it being nontransferable. It was this thread which made me aware that it is better than the original in game version.

My comments about what they should do to fix this are merely from the point of view of what response I would expect for good customer service. If they feel they must adjust the proc for game balance then they should be expected to offer refunds to the people who bought it from the market whether those people assumed as I did it would be less effective or whether they knew it was better and thought they were getting a good deal.

What I expect they will actually do is downscale the one on the market without any more than an "oops" to the people who did buy it. This bothers me because I think that is terrible customer service because people can and do buy paragon points to buy things on the market so there is a real money for items aspect to this.

Meanwhile they remain up on the market with a growing knowledge that it is better than the regular one and the problem is getting worse. They need to be pulled from the market immediately.
Indeed I can see some people to who have refused the invention system until the attuned IOs came out for cash.
They will be particularly annoyed when/if it stops working as it has been for them. It is noticeably better than the original IO.

On the other hand, it doesn't promise a certain PPM in the store description, and store brought stuff should be able to be buffed/nerfed/altered like anything else in the game, I don't want to see store brought stuff get special treatment.

I hope it is sorted soon though. It will leave a really bad taste in my mouth for it getting an adjustment only after the sale ends.

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Thank you Devs & Community people for a great game.

So sad to be ending ):

 

Posted

I hope they nerf the **** out of all these procs.

 

Posted

I'm sorry-- "power creep"? Is that anything like a shifty stalker? Not familiar with those two words used together.


Personally, I don't have a problem with the change to the proc per minute change, but I think it's bad form to change it, offer it in the store while the in-game version is different. Undoubtedly, they will either boost the one in game to match the one in store and risk the "balance" of some powersets - adjust the one in the store to match the one in game and irritate those who bought them in bulk. Alternatively, they could change both to a third alternative.
Either way, someone will get upset. I know I did, because if I'm leveling up now and am able to manage my end issues - which are still there, later, when I exemp to an adjusted/changed proc, it will likely create some problems with my attack chain. And then I'll have to respec. or spend a good bit more time on mids and use up some unslotters to make some changes for the change they will make.
I honestly don't put much thought into our enhancements being "too" powerful. The integrity of balance between a tanks higher hitpoints and the brutes higher dps isn't lost completely on me, but the damage dealt by an attack, the endurance that attack used, the recharge rate all coupled in with the base endurance recovery rate is a bit more complicated than I want to think about.
All I can say is it is the way it is. I'll have to adjust accordingly or not.

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@Ukase

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopeling View Post
Kosmos had a theory that proc rate is being calculated based on (recharge + cast), instead of just recharge. I don't know if that addresses any part of what seems off to you, but it's worth mentioning.
It's very definitely not just Recharge, and Recharge+Cast seems to fit the data I have very well.

I suspect Arcanaville's unease is similar to mine when I learned the PPM was a simple formula for the proc chance instead of some sort of throttling mechanism. Too many possibilities for weird outliers.

However, the problem illustrated by this thread is much simpler. The devs equated a 20% proc chance with 3 PPM, which only balances out for powers with a base cycle time of 4s. In anything longer than that it will over-perform because the proc chance will be (Cycle Time / 4s) * 20%.

Here's the base formula I have for proc chance...

Proc% = Cycle * PPM / 60s

Rearranged that gives...

PPM = Proc% * 60s / Cycle

And someone clearly chose 4s for the standard cycle time for SBEs which produced insanely overpowered procs. They even rounded up to half point increments for the 15% procs and gave them a 2.5 PPM rating instead of 2.25. In my opinion 12s would have been a much more reasonable standard. And frankly, using something with non-linear elements would have been better. Maybe they do have such elements in there, though I haven't seen any evidence of it.

It seems what Arcanaville expected (and so did I, though I have no idea where I got that idea) was that the PPM was the maximum the IOs would produce. And for all practical purposes they chose a formula for deciding the PPM of SBEs that makes that value pretty much the minimum they will produce in a single target power.

Kosmos

Global: @Calorie
MA Arcs in 4-star purgatory: Four in a Row (#2198) - Hostile Takeover (#69714) - Red Harvest (#268305)

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kosmos View Post
It seems what Arcanaville expected (and so did I, though I have no idea where I got that idea) was that the PPM was the maximum the IOs would produce. And for all practical purposes they chose a formula for deciding the PPM of SBEs that makes that value pretty much the minimum they will produce in a single target power.
That's part of it. Based on what people are saying about testing and what the devs are saying about its mechanics, PPM procs aren't being crafted to be restrained, but to have a floor of performance.

But its also how far you have to go to get there. Whenever the devs oversimplify a technical description and in the process drop a critical element (cycle vs recharge, for example) I get nervous. Because the usual trajectory for tech is someone designed PPM, then someone else assigned someone else to code PPM, then someone else was told how PPM works and assigned another someone to use PPM to design something. Colloquially fudging precisely what it does, and more importantly what its intended to do, doesn't just have the potential to confuse the players.

Testing seems to show PPM behavior is more or less reasonable, so I don't think something wild happened. But I would not bet cash that its currently doing precisely what it was originally intended to do.

Incidentally, basing firing percentage based on unbuffed cycle time causes some interesting skews when it comes to the performance of the PPM procs under high recharge.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ukaserex View Post
I'm sorry-- "power creep"? Is that anything like a shifty stalker? Not familiar with those two words used together.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_creep

@Roderick

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kosmos View Post
It seems what Arcanaville expected (and so did I, though I have no idea where I got that idea) was that the PPM was the maximum the IOs would produce. And for all practical purposes they chose a formula for deciding the PPM of SBEs that makes that value pretty much the minimum they will produce in a single target power.
I never expected it to work this way. Probably because I've seen this done (frankly better) in Everquest II. Almost all procs there are normalized by cast and recharge time. But the math over there is more complicated than I was able to figure out.

Here, the PPM idea is the right one, but the standard needs to go up. I think 12 seconds is too high if the formula is going to remain linear. But if it got progressively harder to reach 100% as you approached 100%, that would be cool. I still think it should be possible to reach 100% for powers that recharge in the 45s+ range.

The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.

 

Posted

It could be a typo on the Market, why would they make a different Performance Shifter Set.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenFIame View Post
It could be a typo on the Market, why would they make a different Performance Shifter Set.
*FACEPALM*

I'm seriously considering ignoring everyone who jumps into a thread without even bothering to read the OP.

Even if the OP ISN'T me.

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Shubbie View Post
Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilGeko View Post
I never expected it to work this way. Probably because I've seen this done (frankly better) in Everquest II. Almost all procs there are normalized by cast and recharge time. But the math over there is more complicated than I was able to figure out.

Here, the PPM idea is the right one, but the standard needs to go up. I think 12 seconds is too high if the formula is going to remain linear. But if it got progressively harder to reach 100% as you approached 100%, that would be cool. I still think it should be possible to reach 100% for powers that recharge in the 45s+ range.
Because of the potential for abuse in passives, toggles and pseudo-pets, I wouldn't have even considered anything much less than 10s. Maybe 8s at the lowest. That puts an SBE proc at 25% better than the equivalent IO when slotted in a passive.

As for leveling off near 100%, consider the OP: The PS +END SBE outperforms it's IO brother by 2.5-to-1 at a mere 50% proc rate.

For those reasons my thinking was just the opposite of yours: I would have picked 12s (just above the 10s that makes SBEs and IOs perform the same in passives, toggles and such and also a value that produces a tidy 1 PPM rating for the 20% chance proc) and then used a non-linear, probably hyperbolic, element to cause the function to level off as it neared (a relative term) a floor of 5%. That 5% also had something to do with AoE performance for me.

When you add in the AoE complications for SBEs, this whole balancing a plane on a single point act they've done with the mechanical Proc% -> SBE PPM rate formulae becomes rather tricky. It's quite possible they chose the extremely low 4s midline for the cycle time to offset the AoE penalties SBEs suffer from. Whatever the thinking it results in any SBE that goes into medium-to-long cycle time single target power being MUCH better than it's IO counterpart for such use (up to 6.67x for a 15% proc in a 24s cycle time ST power). On the flip side, any SBE in a short cycle AoE is going to be notably worse than the IO version. Though usually not to the same extent, as the AoE factors don't seem to reach that 6.67 value and because AoEs rarely have a cycle time under 8s (for example, I'm seeing about a 1.4:1 advantage for the Trap of the Hunter proc IO over the SBE in Fire Cages in limited testing).

The bottom line is that the "provides the same value in all powers" concept seems to have trumped any desire to make the SBEs and IOs perform similarly. The result is that some SBEs (those with a high value effects when applied to a single target - usually the caster) have been provided with very long levers that players can use to boost performance.

Kosmos

Global: @Calorie
MA Arcs in 4-star purgatory: Four in a Row (#2198) - Hostile Takeover (#69714) - Red Harvest (#268305)

 

Posted

Color me surprised...

I put a Performance Shifter +rec level 21 recipe on WW's last night, listed it for 100 for lulz.

Logged in this evening to see that it sold for 77,777,777.

Poor guy should've tried to lowball.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by MaestroMavius View Post
Color me surprised...

I put a Performance Shifter +rec level 21 recipe on WW's last night, listed it for 100 for lulz.

Logged in this evening to see that it sold for 77,777,777.

Poor guy should've tried to lowball.
But then they might of lost out to the guy who bid 66,666,666...

I don't suffer from altitis, I enjoy every minute of it.

Thank you Devs & Community people for a great game.

So sad to be ending ):

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kosmos View Post
Because of the potential for abuse in passives, toggles and pseudo-pets, I wouldn't have even considered anything much less than 10s. Maybe 8s at the lowest. That puts an SBE proc at 25% better than the equivalent IO when slotted in a passive.

As for leveling off near 100%, consider the OP: The PS +END SBE outperforms it's IO brother by 2.5-to-1 at a mere 50% proc rate.

For those reasons my thinking was just the opposite of yours: I would have picked 12s (just above the 10s that makes SBEs and IOs perform the same in passives, toggles and such and also a value that produces a tidy 1 PPM rating for the 20% chance proc) and then used a non-linear, probably hyperbolic, element to cause the function to level off as it neared (a relative term) a floor of 5%. That 5% also had something to do with AoE performance for me.

When you add in the AoE complications for SBEs, this whole balancing a plane on a single point act they've done with the mechanical Proc% -> SBE PPM rate formulae becomes rather tricky. It's quite possible they chose the extremely low 4s midline for the cycle time to offset the AoE penalties SBEs suffer from. Whatever the thinking it results in any SBE that goes into medium-to-long cycle time single target power being MUCH better than it's IO counterpart for such use (up to 6.67x for a 15% proc in a 24s cycle time ST power). On the flip side, any SBE in a short cycle AoE is going to be notably worse than the IO version. Though usually not to the same extent, as the AoE factors don't seem to reach that 6.67 value and because AoEs rarely have a cycle time under 8s (for example, I'm seeing about a 1.4:1 advantage for the Trap of the Hunter proc IO over the SBE in Fire Cages in limited testing).

The bottom line is that the "provides the same value in all powers" concept seems to have trumped any desire to make the SBEs and IOs perform similarly. The result is that some SBEs (those with a high value effects when applied to a single target - usually the caster) have been provided with very long levers that players can use to boost performance.
For me, I would have taken the opportunity that the players practically begged them for when SBE procs were devised. I.e. make all procs work that way. If they did that, then they could deal with how passives and outlying powers work in a way that doesn't need to balance standard and SBE procs.

I still think that the proper fix for the performance shifter issue the OP talks about is to change Stamina, not the proc. I look at it like this, most endurance modification powers have SIGNIFICANTLY longer cycles than Stamina's 10 second window. It's why placing a proc in Energy Drain or Power Sink is a waste of a slot. But with the SBE enhancements, you can be sure the proc is going to go off and so that changes the evaluation.

I think that's completely fair for longer cycle powers. Where a fast power might get 3-5 procs per minute, a long recharge power only gets to check once, maybe twice a minute under high recharge. Why should those powers continue to have no legitimate option for procs? Better IMO, to just disallow the SBE procs in Stamina. The performance shifter set isn't made for passives as a rule anyway.

The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilGeko View Post
For me, I would have taken the opportunity that the players practically begged them for when SBE procs were devised. I.e. make all procs work that way. If they did that, then they could deal with how passives and outlying powers work in a way that doesn't need to balance standard and SBE procs.

I still think that the proper fix for the performance shifter issue the OP talks about is to change Stamina, not the proc. I look at it like this, most endurance modification powers have SIGNIFICANTLY longer cycles than Stamina's 10 second window. It's why placing a proc in Energy Drain or Power Sink is a waste of a slot. But with the SBE enhancements, you can be sure the proc is going to go off and so that changes the evaluation.

I think that's completely fair for longer cycle powers. Where a fast power might get 3-5 procs per minute, a long recharge power only gets to check once, maybe twice a minute under high recharge. Why should those powers continue to have no legitimate option for procs? Better IMO, to just disallow the SBE procs in Stamina. The performance shifter set isn't made for passives as a rule anyway.
Well, you'd still have issues with a lot of other procs. For example, an SBE Mako proc is also roughly twice as effective in a typical power as an IO Mako in the same manner as the P Shifter. To illustrate, let's say I slot Makos into all of the ST attacks on my recently respec'ed DM/Regen Stalker (which I intend to do as he levels up from 38). The ratio of SBE performance to IO for each is... Boxing 0.89:1, Smite 1.74, Siphon Life 2.98, Assassin's Eclipse 4 (I don't think the Interrupt period counts in the PPM calculation, but I need to test that with a lower PPM than Stalker's Guile, which is 100% either way) and Midnight Grasp 4.27. Weighting by my usage rates in logs that comes out to the SBEs being 2.39 times as effective as the IOs (which would up my ST DPS by 9%, essentially letting me piggy back 1.4 additional procs onto each attack by using SBEs). And since Mako's are only supposed to go in ST attacks, the AoEMod provides no excuse for the PPM given either.

As you said, they should have switched all procs to the PPM model to put the "pay to win" issue completely to rest. But even then, I think they needed to do a better job with the Proc% -> PPM conversion.

Kosmos

Global: @Calorie
MA Arcs in 4-star purgatory: Four in a Row (#2198) - Hostile Takeover (#69714) - Red Harvest (#268305)

 

Posted

If they changed stamina not to accept Performance Shifters (regulars, I don't have SBEs), I will hop on an airplane, take a cab to your house, knock on the door, ask for EvilGeko, then slap you silly for giving them such an idea.

As to the main topic of the thread: I didn't like the concept of the store bought stuff being different than the in-game stuff in any way. But that ship sailed long ago. My hope now is that the SBEs are as close to in game items as possible. Performance Shifter is clearly not.

It should be fixed to make it comparable in performance (heh. a shift in performance) for all of them, whether already purchased or not, and have those with a complaint submit a ticket to have them reimbursed.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kosmos View Post
As you said, they should have switched all procs to the PPM model to put the "pay to win" issue completely to rest. But even then, I think they needed to do a better job with the Proc% -> PPM conversion.
I think they probably would have liked to but were worried about the outcry from making such a dramatic change to existing enhancements.

Yes, even one that makes them perform better in many cases. There still would be wailing and gnashing of teeth about them performing worse in quick recharging AoEs.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bionic_Flea View Post
If they changed stamina not to accept Performance Shifters (regulars, I don't have SBEs), I will hop on an airplane, take a cab to your house, knock on the door, ask for EvilGeko, then slap you silly for giving them such an idea.
What EvilGeko wrote:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Me
Better IMO, to just disallow the SBE procs in Stamina.
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The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Codewalker View Post
I think they probably would have liked to but were worried about the outcry from making such a dramatic change to existing enhancements.

Yes, even one that makes them perform better in many cases. There still would be wailing and gnashing of teeth about them performing worse in quick recharging AoEs.
True. But they either need to produce a much better fit for the SBE-to-IO relationship, or bite the bullet. I think they meant to balance the AoE cost and the ST benefit but seem to have ignored the fact that some procs are balanced around only being able to be slotted in ST powers to begin with (or in the case of the P Shifter, are far more useful slotted in certain passives than elsewhere). Having SBEs outperform IOs to the extent they've produced is just not a good idea unless they really do want a "pay to win" model.


Here's a little math to consider...

p = IO Proc %

P = SBE PPM
P = ceiling(30 * p) / 2 {I think}

A = SBE AoE modifier for a given power
p' = SBE proc % in a given power
p' = min(Cycle / 60s * P / A, 100%) {best guess}
p' = min(Cycle * ceiling(30 * p) / 120s / A, 100%)

R = Ratio of performance between an SBE and corresponding IO in a given power
R = p' / p
R = min(Cycle * ceiling(30 * p) / 120s / A, 100%) / p

Simplifying by losing the ceiling function and breaking down the minimum function...

R = Cycle * 4s / A : Cycle * p / 4s / A < 1
R = 1 / p : Cycle * p / 4s / A >= 1


I think I got that right, but I've been up all night, so cut me some slack if I missed something. It was right in my head, but I'm not sure it made it to the computer intact.

Looking at the second to last line note that Fireball has a base cycle time of 17s and an A value somewhere around 3. So even in what I'll call a "standard" AoE, we see the SBEs outperforming the IOs. It's only powers with a Cycle/A value under 4 that are hurt by using SBEs, and that seems to be mostly AoE Immobs and Tanker ST attacks with punch-voke.

Moving to the last line you see that most SBEs can theoretically outperform their IO counterparts by at least 5:1 in the right situation.

The more I look at it the more it appears that the SBEs were deliberately set to perform at least as well as IOs except in some strange outlier cases. And the more I look at it the more I think the only practical fixes - assuming they aren't deliberately going to a "pay to win" model - are to make IO procs use the PPM code or SBE procs use the old straight percentage method. Which would leave the PPM code for just enhancements specifically designed and balanced to use it such as ATOs. Any other solution is going to require a more sophisticated formula for calculating proc % from PPM and power specifics and a lot of balance work on the PPM values for individual procs.

Kosmos

Global: @Calorie
MA Arcs in 4-star purgatory: Four in a Row (#2198) - Hostile Takeover (#69714) - Red Harvest (#268305)

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kosmos View Post
It's only powers with a Cycle/A value under 4 that are hurt by using SBEs, and that seems to be mostly AoE Immobs and Tanker ST attacks with punch-voke.
And the latter is arguably a bug since procs are already set to not go off on Gauntlet targets (otherwise you'd be able to slot Perfect Zinger procs in ST attacks and have them hit random enemies).

Moving to the last line you see that most SBEs can theoretically outperform their IO counterparts by at least 5:1 in the right situation.

For the record I'd be fine with IOs using PPM so long as the outstanding bugs are fixed. It could be that the SBEs are a "test run" to see if it's viable.