Give Scrappers a real inherent power

Ditto.

I would say to that, that the devs should make their intentions known. For all his faults, Statesman would be pretty open about what he was thinking. And he had a thick enough skin to take it when we excoriated him on his reasoning.

I still remember the portable game anecdote. Players can only divine what the devs intend from their actions most times. And for me at least, I can't see a consistent balance target in their actions.

Agreed.

I was actually talking about the lowbie game. The end game is supposed to be crazy. I actually find character power against the trials to be almost right on target. In that you can still fail and still die if you aren't paying attention.

I look at the low level game and I think your train analogy is apt.

Of course they don't think they're doing that. But that's what they are doing. I can't agree that they are trying to mitigation the inflation, I would like to think that, but it's difficult to be honest.

I was just now playing with a lowbie Stalker (level 21). You know that painful level before SOs. I was just plain shocked at how powerful he was. The character had yellowed out DOs and was tearing through missions like there was no tomorrow. Then I hit 22, slotted SOs and...wow. This Stalker is a Kinetic Melee and has the same amount of AoE that my Kin/EA Scrapper has. And a crapload more ST damage besides.

I don't know, I'm probably wrong. I don't necessarily have the same level of investment in my arguments that some others have. But that's what I perceive. We are so far from where we were a few years ago, that I wonder what is the point of pretending that maintaining even a minor level of challenge is a goal.

He wasn't really good at communicating it, though, because people got the wrong impression about 90% of the time. That's why people still think he expected players to have a hard time defeating three minions, why Johnny_Butane still thinks Brutes stole Fury, why people didn't realize that after the I4-I5 power balance pass an enhancement pass was coming next, why I had to go figure out personally what exactly defiance 1.0 was doing, the most likely reason Statesman was against publishing numbers, what he thought about discretionary respec, and basically nearly everything he actually said anything about.

It took me a while to realize Jack tended to speak in generalities and specifics intermixed, so he was often more general than people thought he was being, then over-generalized when he was trying to be very specific.

I'm certainly not an expert at Jack, but in my opinion nearly everything commonly believed about Jack with regard to the design of this game is probably wrong. And that's a lesson the devs learned about being "open" about intentions. You can be open, but unless you're eloquent being open doesn't mean the players will actually know what you're trying to express to them. If anything the players are more likely to invent a narrative that vaguely resembles what the devs actually said.

I still shake my head over the whole "three minions" thing.

Being flexible with Statesmans statements I agreed with practically everything he had to say. There were a couple of things wrong like a mathematical error but not much.

I can see a balance target in their actions, the game was more or less balanced to the endurance bar (ball park thinking) not against time itself. Most players balance things against the second. In general I like what's changed so I like the direction things have taken it's just sometimes you can't change anything that is ingrained at the start that's the problem and put out more new content etc.

Some examples might be helpful, especially because I'm still having difficulty placing you in the context of those early game balance discussions.

This is an especially jarring statement because with as much benefit of the doubt as I give Jack, a significant number of things he said were either exactly the opposite of what he meant to say, or completely wrong. And not just in terms of small mathematical errors either. When Jack said *anything* about the design or implementation of this game, I always read the thread, and almost always participated in it. I know what his batting average was. The Blaster/Scrapper damage changes were particularly egregious, and I'm the source of the "in the hallway" comment regarding his ED statements.

Also, most of Jack's forum statements date from before your forum registration. Did you swap accounts at one point? That's a serious question, because you have implied in the past you participated in discussions that my recollection says occurred before September 2005. Most of Jack's game balance pronouncements, for example, date from before that date, like the three minions statements, the boss changes, the invuln changes, etc; even his statements about respec date from long before then.

I will say doing some memory refreshing going through all my saved threads and PMs brought back some blasts from the past, The_Gamesmaster, Circeus, Amauros, even Mieux and da5id. Also, I'm a lot more certain I was the first to talk about DPA, because every time I did I got questions about what the heck that stood for.


You're aware that the devs messed around with endurance before settling on the way it factors into the balance equations now, right?

Well, I was just playing my level 12 Street Justice/Super Reflexes scrapper and getting wiped across the floor by Ghouls.

I don't know. There must be at least one person at Paragon Studios who has mastered the art of writing cleanly. EDIT: And failing that, the devs should recognize that the players are trying, some fairly, some not to understand what they are trying to do. Observation doesn't give us insight into the devs thoughts. So if that's the primary means of communication between players and developers, then the developers have no right to complain that they are misunderstood. And they should recognize that and filter what the players are saying accordingly.

I agree with you about how Jack tended to communicate. It took me awhile to introduce my own filter into what he said.

You might not realize it Arcanaville but some of us came from the European forums with only a European game account. I have difficulty placing you in our discussions but atleast I know why. No I didn't take part of any conversations pre september 2005. I have never said otherwise also he was around quite sometime after I joined the forums and of them I did agree with. People took what he said in one light. I took what he said in another. We argued over this on the European Forums. To not consider the european forums is a bit vacant I think.

Actually, I do realize that: I wouldn't know that much about what happened on the Euro forums, but by about the middle of 2005 I started to get pointers to balance discussions on them, particularly when it involved posting of data. That's how I became familiar with Dr Rock, for example.

But that just means I wasn't pointed to any of your posts. My prior request still stands. Some examples would be nice, because even if you come from Pluto the statement that you agreed with everything Jack said (about game design) except for a couple minor math errors is still rather astounding.

Unless they were also sending Jack's posts through Babelfish at the time.

Dr Rock was a friendly guy ingame and out, he wanted to pass on to me his damage sustainability calculator. I had a different name then, I changed it when coming over. Infact I changed it 3 times. We were allowed to change our names in coming over. Basically if you want to dig up the archives then please do. I tried but they're not always easy to find. I have nothing to prove to myself.

The calculator was ahead of its time:



But as to proving yourself, I'm not asking you to prove your existence, I'm asking for some examples of these things Jack said that you agree with. Because he said some very bizarre things at times in a game balance sense.

Yes it was very nice. I did give it a 2 minute attempt to find something Statesman said but came up with nothing. If you would like to come up with something he said or was quoted on the European forums I might be able to scroll down on it and find me.

Edit: One other thing, did you know Dr Rock at all? Like on talking terms? Oh and this is more like me proving my existence.

I tried doing this : http://tomax.cohtitan.com/digest/ind...y=9&european=1

What you got?

Pfft. The fans are well aware she's quite capable of defending herself and more competently than anyone else can.

I do play Champions Online and Star Trek Online. I was one of the few without something against him. I didn't find everything people said about him justifiable. I didn't agree with most things people derived from what he said. All this was on the European Forums. The day ED came out I took my Invuln and tanked a +2 Neuron mish for a PuG and wondered what all the commotion was about. Never had a problem adapting.

I have no reason to be worried.

See, I am not even talking about just in the MMO and Video Gaming community. Glad you didn't and don't have an issue with him, just don't expect that view to be shared.

Then whatever it is you are talking about do you have links to it?

Unless someone is keeping minutes at the gaming cons I attend, nope... Man I hope no one is taking notes of the things said and done at some of those Cons. Now, if you want to know how the majority of this community feels about him, that is not hard to find.

Saying that I know how people feel about Jack is a lot different than listing the names of RL friends who work in the gaming industry.

Much of his quotes are gone. But here's something for which there is at least fragmentary evidence still about. At one time Scrappers had a 500% damage cap while Blasters had a 400% cap, while both had the same damage modifier (1.0). Jack's explanation was that Scrappers were at higher risk because they were in melee all the time, while Blasters could function at range, and they needed the higher damage cap to compensate for that. Why you would need a higher damage cap for being in melee range is only trumped by the question of how Statesman could possibly believe that Scrappers were at higher risk than Blasters factoring in their defenses, when at about the same time they were easily testing Scrappers against missions scaled for six.

Gets better: Scrappers had their damage modifier increased to 1.125 while Blasters had their damage cap increased to 500%. When I objected to the fact that Scrappers were getting a higher modifier than Blasters, even though Blasters were supposed to be the "kings of damage," Jack said "but they had their damage increased also: their caps increased by more than Scrapper damage increased."

Which might have been the first time I actually said Jack was insane. I was a little less level headed back then. A thread discussing this still exists here.


Which is not to say that I think *everything* people say about Jack hits the mark. I have rather unpopularly defended him in the past as well, when I think he was being misunderstood or blatantly lied about. But the guy is just not very good with balance conceptualization and he gets details wrong a lot. Somehow he made the same mistake twice by thinking Defiance worked on tiers, then thinking the SR scaling resists worked on tiers. In both cases I had to correct those errors.


I exchanged pleasantries with him a couple times, but I knew him by reputation more than anything else. There was a strange rumor at one time that we were the same person posting on the two different forums, but honestly Dr. Rock seemed a lot less "animated" than I was back then.

Don't know what you mean by that exactly but the european forums was a lot less animated than the US. Sometimes problems were ironed out quicker, sometimes slower as they just werent thought of. It's a shame that Dr Rock from Union didnt collab with Mids from Defiant then the builder would of been cooler. Dr Rocks sustainability calculator was moving towards a more complete model. There is and always was more than just relying passively with shields. I had been telling him that. I thought I might go through this bit before looking at what you said Statesman said.

That is 25th April 2005. I logged into the forums September 2005. That to me may of never been quoted about after my join date on the European Forums. Atleast I don't remember it. I can only go from my join date. What I said was relevent from my join date.