Anything past Heroic is just gravy, so how rich that gravy is is ultimately irrelevant.
No. Especially now, with the power creep becoming more relevant with Onslaught.
Power creep and unnecessary gear progression has created a huge disparity between builds and Archetypes as well. So much so that it's impossible to balance new content to any sort of standard. And now with Onslaught, there are some players who are unkillable by some villains. Power creep and unnecessary gear progression. And you want to add more powerful gear on top of that so that even more people can become more unkillable and needlessly more powerful for all other kinds of content? For what purpose?
Turning a blind eye to power creep and unnecessary gear progression and just calling it gravy only serves to make a game that was already difficult to balance even more difficult to balance. I don't think that's a fair trade off just so people with the strongest builds and the best gear can stroke their egos a little more.
You can't introduce new gear that isn't better than old gear. No one will desire it. They tried that. It flopped. That's why we're getting mod slots.
The hardest content I can think of in CO is Fire & Ice and we're in no danger of hordes of players soloing that from this minor per-character primary super stat upgrade. I'm sure somewhere in CO, someone exists who can go toe-to-toe with Frosticus ALONE without danger of dying, and successfully complete the rampage alone, but I've never seen it. I'm sure there's someone who can face a level 60 Mega Destroid invasion without threat of dying, but they aren't the norm and this gear isn't going to make it common. Maybe next year's tier will make that possible.
I've seen broken power creep in other games. This isn't it. Broken power creep is one mage doing a 25 man hardmode raid. It's one Romulan Scimitar ripping through elite group content like it's wet paper.
This isn't game-changing. It's just going to add something fresh, new, and time-consuming to collect for your already-unkillable paper doll collection. The sky isn't falling.
Unless there is a high amount of stronger content coming our way, such an increase in power is a bit much.
That's the issues isn't it? How many people get pissed off when we have stuff like Frosty, the Mega-Ds from the anniversary event, Forum Malvanum's Duriclad, or any of the other new content that include ridiculous damage / defense?
Those bosses are insane because players are capable of being so damn powerful.
"Also, I think many forumites have lost touch with the average player experience. Especially silver players."
That is actually the issue with having gear that keeps getting more powerful. There is already a massive difference between the average player and someone with a high end build rocking justice / vigilantees / r7+ mods. Those are the people with tanks that do more damage than the average DPS characters. We end up with new content being made too difficult for most players and they simply opt out. That's why no one wants to do Fire and Ice. Even Gravitar isn't all that popular anymore because it's not AT friendly and requires a minimum level of defense. And Forum Malvanum was never even remotely popular. Hell, every time I run Warlord, it's with most of the same people every time. So that's not done much.
Who do you think villains were balanced against? The high end builds that are most likely to be on the PTS. If a villain can cleave off half my HP through a rank 3 block, imagine what it's doing to someone that doesn't have justice / r7 / vigilante / invuln / wardicator. And there are players with much more powerful builds than what I have.
"I think it's a great way of providing something Good but making you work for it. You can't get it through G or money you have to spend the time on each toon you have."
*Opens up wallet. Buys keys. Gets Onslaught device. Buys Zen. Sells Zen for Q. Chain runs Onslaught device on Q by rolling face over keyboard. ROFLstomps 'heroes' for an hour. Gains boatloads of villain tokens.*
Yes. Effort.
Wow you are just a bundle of hate.
I find it idiotic that people even bother with power creep in this game. I've seen this game since closed beta and there is no saving it in terms of balance. Also, it's not the gear that makes the difference it's the powers. I have a Quarry toon with blues not even Mercenary gear on it and I do Onslaught just fine. You people are crazy, there is no balancing it now. CO is living on Cosmic Keys and the Legon's Gear is basically pay to win BUT there is nothing to win.
So why are people complaining about pointless things. There is no reason to bother with balance because we have none. We needed the content to warrant the gear but only got the gear because it brings in $$$$$$$ with 0 to no effort. (Lockboxes / legion's anyone?)
Let it rest. Co is as unbalanced as it comes and it's not the gear it's the fact that you have FF and that is impossible to balance.
You guys should take a break from CO like I do. You'd see things is a different light after a couple of months. Nothing is as serious as ppl make it out to be.
Nobody cares about power creep except for crazy people. CO is beyond power creep, you'd have to remove FF and anything above Heroic to reach balance. Let it rest, let people enjoy this game as long as they still can because if you think CO will last forever you are deluding yourself.
No, the sky isn't falling. Good thing I didn't say anything close to that. I said this is just piling more problems on top of an already-existing problem.
Giving players more power for no reason is pointless. If the previous sidegrade "flopped" then think of something outside the box that will make people want it. Add some sugar to it instead of just saying "oh, forget it, just add more stats."
Vigilante Hastened is bugged, it's not supposed to give health. Not the best piece to compare it to.
Unsure where you're getting the lower defense from, as every piece of Onslaught gear has higher defense compared to its vigilante counterpart.
Vigilante Hastened is bugged, it's not supposed to give health. Not the best piece to compare it to.
Unsure where you're getting the lower defense from, as every piece of Onslaught gear has higher defense compared to its vigilante counterpart.
An increase of 4.3 defense, not a decrease of 2. And zero health for both. Not significant either way. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Y'know, I'm seeing a lot of folks in here who seem to be suffering from Leet Syndrome.
Just an update - there are a lot of players who've never even seen R7 mods. They're very expensive on the AH, and they just don't come up that often unless you're dropping cash on keys. R8? R9? For a player like me, those are pipe dreams.
Basing your concept of balance on slotting R9 mods is a bit akin to wealthy folks who base their concept of "a good account balance" on the million or so they've got stashed away.
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
Y'know, I'm seeing a lot of folks in here who seem to be suffering from Leet Syndrome.
Just an update - there are a lot of players who've never even seen R7 mods. They're very expensive on the AH, and they just don't come up that often unless you're dropping cash on keys. R8? R9? For a player like me, those are pipe dreams.
Basing your concept of balance on slotting R9 mods is a bit akin to wealthy folks who base their concept of "a good account balance" on the million or so they've got stashed away.
The difference between and r6 and an r7 or even r9 is not that significant. It's 14 point difference between r6 and r9, IE someone that uses just r6's will see a 52 point gain as well. It's still significant, no matter what mods they use.
The disparity created, since I know someone who doesn't know better will try to counter argue this, is between those who have, and those who cannot get, due to level difference or time spent. The onslaught gear is definitely time spent phenomenon. And while certain people are trying to make a hullabaloo and act like children such as discussing Heroic versus Legion versus Justice, the power difference between those three gear types is actually minor since all legion did was add utility slots, and all Justice added was a set bonus.
The Onslaught gear is not only upping the secondary stats, quite a bit actually, it's also providing up to a 66 STAT point difference. This is SIGNIFICANTLY larger than Utility stats which provide minor differences. Stats are still the main focus here in this game, despite they keep saying they want to make secondaries worth more. And this is on top of their, in some cases, overpowered ability they give for the offensive gear. I am willing to bet to, most people will pick the tanking item because that shield is ridiculously powerful.
Easy, breezy content is not good for the health of an MMO. There is 18 years of proof of that now. From Ultima Online to World of Warcraft. Even Champions and City of Heroes offer evidence to that proof. Adding in this new power without having the content to go with it is a bad move.
Be honest with us, everyone: Before the Onslaught gear gained mod slots, you weren't going to touch it with a ten-foot-pole.
On the contrary, I found the tanking and ally energy gain pieces quite interesting and was planning on eventually getting them. However, the secondary defense and utility pieces were ignored and I'm not a power player. While we badly need new content (or revamps to old content...), I feel more interesting gear is needed more than stuff that's just crazy powerful.
Suggestion: Change the gear cost to 3000 villain and 3000 guardian tokens.
This sounds pretty solid. It fits into the idea of players actually having to play the content instead of just shortcutting past it. Would also help with the problem of Guardian Tokens having little worth once a villain is unlocked.
"Interesting builds are born from limitations not by letting players put everything into one build."
I rarely express any emotion, so no, I'm not a bundle of hate. You're counter argument is "you're wrong because you're crazy!" ... Yes. Very good. Golf claps for you.
Why are people OK with unbalanced players but not ok with unbalanced enemies? How do you balance npcs with such huge variance in player power levels? Op players are why we have powerful pve content that most people won't participate in. How can anyone complain about unkillable tanks and support gear that makes the problem worse?
There is a huge difference between a modest buff to current onslaught gear and making it lol op. And yes, for high-end builds, every point counts.
I rarely express any emotion, so no, I'm not a bundle of hate. You're counter argument is "you're wrong because you're crazy!" ... Yes. Very good. Golf claps for you.
Why are people OK with unbalanced players but not ok with unbalanced enemies? How do you balance npcs with such huge variance in player power levels? Op players are why we have powerful pve content that most people won't participate in. How can anyone complain about unkillable tanks and support gear that makes the problem worse?
There is a huge difference between a modest buff to current onslaught gear and making it lol op. And yes, for high-end builds, every point counts.
And in the end none of this matters. People are unkillable now without this gear with this gear it won't make them more unkillable lol. At some point, if you can't get killed more gear/stats won't make a difference.
The update is good. Balance will never be achieved give it up. That train has left the station 4-5 years ago when CO had a glimpse of a chance. Now? Seriously? Now you talk about "balance"?
How exactly do you figure this gear makes someone OP? Currently people are OP and making them more OP won't change anything. At the very least it will give CO a couple of weeks worth of "content" due to sheer grind of gear. Take away the gear and this content update might as well not exist same as with the rest of CO's lairs.
I remember a time where decent gear could be got as drops from lairs. Now, it's all in Lockboxes. You think you have an argument because you spout out "balance"? Nope, no argument there. There is no balance in CO because there never was balance in CO.
You want balance? How about removing legion's gear from the game? But wait, people used money to get it through gambling for it!
There is no argument for trying to balance CO. Any and all such statements are nothing but nonsense filled with the delusion of "future content" as if that's ever happening. CO is on life support and whatever brings in players or makes people play is what keeps this game alive.
Who really cares about how strong you are? Who cares how strong people can be ? In all honesty what is people's problem if someone wants to be strong and trivialize content. You want a challenge, drop Legion's and get Heroic. Don't take the most OP powers out there. Play an AT etc... You want challenge then make your own difficulty don't impose it upon others.
Y'know, I'm seeing a lot of folks in here who seem to be suffering from Leet Syndrome.
Just an update - there are a lot of players who've never even seen R7 mods.
If you can put in the grind to get Onslaught gear, you can put in the grind to get R7 mods; with the exception of Con, they simply aren't that expensive (the amount of time you need to spend running Smash alerts is way smaller than the time to get the Onslaught gear). r8 and r9, sure, they're both a pain to get and not really worth the effort.
Note, however, that people are willing to pay 150,000Q for 7 stat points (diff between generic purples and Vigilante) plus minor secondary effects. Earned in-game, 150,000Q is actually a bigger grind than 5,000 villain points.
Mainly because being stupidly powerful is fun, and fighting stupidly powerful things is not.
Uh... yeah, actually, it is. You may be personally allergic to challenge, but you don't speak for everyone. One of the major reasons for leaving games is that they have no remaining challenge.
Mainly because being stupidly powerful is fun, and fighting stupidly powerful things is not.
For about 5 minutes. That's about how long it takes before someone who is playing overpowered gets bored and finds something else to do. Hell don't even have to go outside of Champions to see that fact.
By introducing slots on the secondaries you are trivializing Vigilante secondaries. They are one of the few things to buy with questionite. You do not want to make them irrelevant.
The Onslaught gear should be on par with Vigilante. With their current stats if they are to get bonuses to superstats they should, at the very best, add a total of +20 to a superstat.
Slotted mods can be scaled down, if you're going to go with slots this needs to happen.
Completely agree with this. Onslaught secondaries should either have mods scaled down, or simply be given a +22 to primary super stats. Also a good idea to consider is buffing the passives or stats that the gear gives, which according to my parsing would be roughly doubling their numbers (20% DoT instead of 10% on sniper and shredded, doubling the amount of off/defense/max energy/etc in exchange for no SSs).
Legion gear was a full upgrade over heroic, then justice was a full upgrade over legion, and I fully expect stuff like that after a few years in an mmo. But the top end secondary gear has been vigilante since on alert was introduced. So having an upgrade to secondary gear after 3 years is not a big problem in my opinion.
With the Q exchange how it is, you can just buy a piece of vigil gear for less than 4 dollar/euro without doing a single minute of questionite farming yourself, which is rather silly for the top end gear in my opinion. At least onslaught gear requires you to do your own farming, and so it adds a reason to actually play the game. And the onslaught token prices seem to have actually made the Q exchange drop a little, so questionite is actually increased in value for the time being.
And we've long since passed the point where the old content needs an update to be a challenge to a top performing build. Any new content can be balanced to what ever balance point is chosen.
So I don't really see a reason to not have a secondary gear upgrade at this point. We just need to get some content that justifies all the power creep after on alert.
Justice was a straight improvement over legion, but this is a very mixed analogy to make for onslaught to vigil. Legion was only available from lockboxes and very rare. Justice is awarded via gameplay. It should be stronger since having the strongest gear in the game rewarded only through lockboxes was horrible. However, vigil can be earned via gameplay. Sure, you can buy it with real money if you get zen and transfer that to Questionite, but I doubt anyone minds seeing more zen on the market. Plus, vigil is only a secondary and does not vastly outperform purple gear.
Onslaught gear with a mod slot is vastly outperforming vigil, there is really no reason not to have it. It sort of takes out the need for Questionite since the most important item in the store is now obsolete.
And in the end none of this matters. People are unkillable now without this gear with this gear it won't make them more unkillable lol. At some point, if you can't get killed more gear/stats won't make a difference.
The update is good. Balance will never be achieved give it up. That train has left the station 4-5 years ago when CO had a glimpse of a chance. Now? Seriously? Now you talk about "balance"?
How exactly do you figure this gear makes someone OP? Currently people are OP and making them more OP won't change anything. At the very least it will give CO a couple of weeks worth of "content" due to sheer grind of gear. Take away the gear and this content update might as well not exist same as with the rest of CO's lairs.
I remember a time where decent gear could be got as drops from lairs. Now, it's all in Lockboxes. You think you have an argument because you spout out "balance"? Nope, no argument there. There is no balance in CO because there never was balance in CO.
You want balance? How about removing legion's gear from the game? But wait, people used money to get it through gambling for it!
There is no argument for trying to balance CO. Any and all such statements are nothing but nonsense filled with the delusion of "future content" as if that's ever happening. CO is on life support and whatever brings in players or makes people play is what keeps this game alive.
Who really cares about how strong you are? Who cares how strong people can be ? In all honesty what is people's problem if someone wants to be strong and trivialize content. You want a challenge, drop Legion's and get Heroic. Don't take the most OP powers out there. Play an AT etc... You want challenge then make your own difficulty don't impose it upon others.
Wow, I've heard "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" but this is the first I've heard "it's broke, so instead of fixing it lets just break it more."
It's not about making our own difficulty. The game is what should provide the difficulty, but there is such a huge disparity in player character power levels that it's hard for the developers to judge at what point the difficulty should be at. Dogpiling on the problem doesn't do anything positive for the game.
lets see;
gear is now secondaries because people didn't want it better than Rampage gear.Becuase people would stop queuing for Rampages. People stopped queuing as soon as they worked out, they weren't getting anything.
now people don't want it better than vigilante gear.
IF it's anything with only SS's, I don't want it.
Even with the stat slot, I still wouldn't bother with this gear.
I am only using Spot for farming because that's who I'm levelling currently. Once she's levelled, those tokens will sit and vegetate. UNUSED, unless I get the AF.
IF the tokens were acct bound, like the rampage tokens, they might get used.
as for the new gear obsoletes old gear.
Yes they do but those games also have lots of things to do with the better gear.
Here it's get out your ruler(or maybe micrometer) and start measuring.
Once you start doing damage to a OV, you still count for when they get to a certain level as damage and get tokens.
It's strange that anyone has this dream of it being possible in CO. What do you balance around? Duels? Soloing single-player missions? Therakiel? Smashes? Rampages? Adventure packs? Each of these is a vastly different approach or difficulty.
Who do you balance for? ATs? Freeforms? Healers? Tanks? DPS? People in Merc gear? People in Legion Gear with Rank 9 mods?
Before these new mod slots were added, I wouldn't have bothered with Onslaught gear at all. After all, what's the point in a player sidegrading if the ultimate goal is to improve performance in content like F&I? If you don't like or want more powerful gear, don't get it? It's well-established in this thread that you don't need it, you won't be left behind without it. It's just something new to collect.
There's no new, more difficult content coming. Stop pretending there can or will be. The hypothetical situation of low-geared people being unable to participate in fictional "difficult" content is null and void, not simply because such alleged content will never happen, but also because anyone can relatively quickly obtain a full set of Heroic and highly effective 11K Questionite gear and jump right in. I still tank F&I in Armadillo secondaries!
Demanding balance is nonsensical when there isn't any single difficulty curve in the game and there can't ever be. Can we move on from such silliness?
gear is now secondaries because people didn't want it better than Rampage gear.Becuase people would stop queuing for Rampages. People stopped queuing as soon as they worked out, they weren't getting anything.
The problem isn't with the items. The problem is that the structure provides no incentive for heroes to show up, and without heroes there's not a lot of interest for villains to do.
Who really cares about how strong you are? Who cares how strong people can be ? In all honesty what is people's problem if someone wants to be strong and trivialize content. You want a challenge, drop Legion's and get Heroic. Don't take the most OP powers out there. Play an AT etc... You want challenge then make your own difficulty don't impose it upon others.
*claps* my respects, your words
Just another reptile lover, known in game as @nacito
This is a big journey, so far if you're reading this, wish you a good day
Wow, I've heard "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" but this is the first I've heard "it's broke, so instead of fixing it lets just break it more."
It's not about making our own difficulty. The game is what should provide the difficulty, but there is such a huge disparity in player character power levels that it's hard for the developers to judge at what point the difficulty should be at. Dogpiling on the problem doesn't do anything positive for the game.
And here you fail to understand the state of CO. If you think this game can be ever balanced they you are out of your mind. I am a developer myself I can tell the state of this game and the amount of effort it would take to balance and unless you have a couple millions to spare to hire a team full time for a couple of months then CO is broken and will remain broken.
Having said that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is exactly the sate of CO namely, completely and utterly broken. That is the normal state of CO. Any attempts of balance are an attempt in breaking what we currently have.
As I said, you can't undo the broken because people paid money for it (legion's , Justice). You can't claim to want balance when what breaks this balance cannot be removed from the game. Moreover it is what is keeping this game alive.
None of you understand this because you don't handle code or manage any software projects. If you did you would understand that your ideas or desires for balance are unfeasible. The amount of work needed is monumental and is by no means something that can be done without significant investment into CO. Take a look at the state of CO and it's current resources. The only course of action that is left is to let people be OP, sell key, make some money and then get out some more costumes, gear and maybe some small quick content. This is what "maintenance" mode looks like. This games needs to get people to play it more than it requires "balance" so all your talk is truly just detrimental to CO. But again, you don't understand it because you think fixing/balancing CO can actual be done. Truth is that it can't.
-snipped all the other good bits-
This games needs to get people to play it more than it requires "balance" so all your talk is truly just detrimental to CO. But again, you don't understand it because you think fixing/balancing CO can actual be done. Truth is that it can't.
And there we have it. Crazy that it had to be spelled out.
I don't think 1/2 would be good enough to justify getting it. Let's look at the numbers.
A piece of Vigilante gear will give you +44 to your Primary Super Stat. The most popular tier of modifications to obtain are Rank 7, which provide +62 to a single stat.
That's only 18 points more. That's hardly game-breaking, but it's definitely better than Vigilante, compelling enough to warrant the grind to collect. If it was only half that, it would be 13 points worse than Vigilante, and we'd be back to square one.
On the other hand, those points are not locked into your primary superstat but in whatever stat you wish. That freedom of choice is worth a lot in my book.
And here you fail to understand the state of CO. If you think this game can be ever balanced they you are out of your mind. I am a developer myself I can tell the state of this game and the amount of effort it would take to balance and unless you have a couple millions to spare to hire a team full time for a couple of months then CO is broken and will remain broken.
Having said that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is exactly the sate of CO namely, completely and utterly broken. That is the normal state of CO. Any attempts of balance are an attempt in breaking what we currently have.
As I said, you can't undo the broken because people paid money for it (legion's , Justice). You can't claim to want balance when what breaks this balance cannot be removed from the game. Moreover it is what is keeping this game alive.
None of you understand this because you don't handle code or manage any software projects. If you did you would understand that your ideas or desires for balance are unfeasible. The amount of work needed is monumental and is by no means something that can be done without significant investment into CO. Take a look at the state of CO and it's current resources. The only course of action that is left is to let people be OP, sell key, make some money and then get out some more costumes, gear and maybe some small quick content. This is what "maintenance" mode looks like. This games needs to get people to play it more than it requires "balance" so all your talk is truly just detrimental to CO. But again, you don't understand it because you think fixing/balancing CO can actual be done. Truth is that it can't.
I'd honestly hate to have to work under you for any of your software projects judging by the way you approach problems. If I would take a guess, I'd say you've acted as Producer before, because you seem to have the same kind of attitude as many producers I've worked for.
Handling the code is far beside the point. This is a design issue, not a code issue.
Now, if you'd please point out where I said the game should be balanced? Can't find it? It's because I didn't say it. So throw away your argument of "you don't understand because you don't know that they'd have to hire a whole team of blah blah" now, because you're not reading what I'm actually typing.
Like I said, it's a design issue, and it should be handled by a designer. Fact: there is a large disparity in power levels throughout the entire game, not just when you get to 40. But when you do, that disparity grows even larger. And my point is: don't make that disparity even larger than it is now. This would not require hiring an entirely new team to do.
As far as trying to bring balance to the game, I know it's a big job, but a systems designer would probably be able to come up with some ideas as to how to bring power levels closer to each other. Your defeatist attitude is a terrible one to have.
And also, for someone supposedly in the software business, you have a serious lack of understanding of what maintenance mode means.
I don't think it's realistic to think that nothing short of spending a ton of money on a new team to fix everything is the only way to make a step towards balance. He's saying it's impossible so why bother trying. That's defeatist.
I'd honestly hate to have to work under you for any of your software projects judging by the way you approach problems. If I would take a guess, I'd say you've acted as Producer before, because you seem to have the same kind of attitude as many producers I've worked for.
Handling the code is far beside the point. This is a design issue, not a code issue.
Now, if you'd please point out where I said the game should be balanced? Can't find it? It's because I didn't say it. So throw away your argument of "you don't understand because you don't know that they'd have to hire a whole team of blah blah" now, because you're not reading what I'm actually typing.
Like I said, it's a design issue, and it should be handled by a designer. Fact: there is a large disparity in power levels throughout the entire game, not just when you get to 40. But when you do, that disparity grows even larger. And my point is: don't make that disparity even larger than it is now. This would not require hiring an entirely new team to do.
As far as trying to bring balance to the game, I know it's a big job, but a systems designer would probably be able to come up with some ideas as to how to bring power levels closer to each other. Your defeatist attitude is a terrible one to have.
And also, for someone supposedly in the software business, you have a serious lack of understanding of what maintenance mode means.
First of all it's not a design issue. The issue is that while we got better gear the content requiring that gear never showed up. That is not a design issue that is a business decision.
Let me clarify something. Whether you would like to work under me or not is completely irrelevant. Nevertheless, I guarantee you that the impression you currently have of me is utterly wrong. What I pointed out is not a "defeatist" attitude it's simply reality. At some point in time, back in the day, CO could have taken a different path and it could have allowed for a chance of balance. I have argued for it for years, literally YEARS!! That did not happen but instead a series of absolute nonsensical decisions have been made (for reasons I do not know) such as the catastrophically day 1 Patch. This game never did or ever will recover from that blunder. As such, there comes a time when you have to face reality and realize that the project is hopeless.
In Software Engineering there is the concept of "If something should fail it should fail as soon as possible". Now CO failed early on, but it was kept alive against it's will. Currently CO survives by following the "most bang for your buck" mentality. Take a look at the Onslaught content. The ability to transform into SV was available to admins from the days of closed beta. The only thing that was done is some more polish and a port of those abilities to the players. This is cheap and fast content by reusing exiting code. Compare this to an actual zone or a lair in terms of work. The point is, CO survives on the least amount of work possible nevertheless, if CO has no players then it will finally die. That people are OP or not makes no difference and has no impact on this game in terms of it's longevity. Players having no reason to play or a goal to achieve on the other hand has a real and visible impact.
Again, you think a designer can help? No they can't help. I worked on all aspects of development including design and I can tell you that the time for that has passed. Here are the order in which a project is performed: requirements elicitation, design, analysis, implementation, testing, maintenance. CO's design has been finalized and cannot be changed. Any and all attempts to do so would break this game and by breaking I mean it will be impossible to be played anymore from a technical point of view.
I think the fact that they're still doing things to bring in balance, like the cooldown reduction nerf (heavy-handed as it may be), directly contradicts your "reality" of balance never happening.
Now, you think this issue with the onslaught gear is a business issue and not a design issue? Do you think the business guys, the bean counters, said "we'll make more money if we add a slot to the gear!" It's a design thing. Onslaught wants to bring in money, yes, but a good designer should be able to think of items that would be as desirable as a stat increase. Off the top of my head, why not take some old power replacer powers and apply them to the new gear? Or put the powers on mods and stick them on the onslaught store. People have been asking for these things to make a comeback somehow. Listen to the players. Nobody got vigilante gear and said "this ain't good enough, give me more stats!" did they? People weren't asking for stronger gear. Strong gear is already there. But you put s new piece of gear somewhere and people start saying it should be stronger than he last piece of gear by like, default. Just because it's new they think it has to be better, not just different. I don't think that's right.
You're saying that power levels are irrelevant at this point, right? Then why bother increasing them? Why mess with them at all? You want to mess with them so that players have this futile treadmill to run on for a dangling carrot that's irrelevant? There are better and more creative ways to create that dangling carrot that in the meanwhile doesn't break further something that's already broken.
Also, you say that the game's design is done,mainland and complete. You're taking the broadest description of what design is and using that for your argument. You don't fire all your designers after your game ships, do you? Who do you think created the powers for the villains? The new powers for the lockboxes and onslaught store? You still need designers. Specializations were a design change, and they came far after launch. So yeah, I still think a good designer can create some better goals for the players to work after.
Without getting pedantic, let me cut through to the finer points of the gear issue as I see it.
Onslaught primaries would have given me the chance to own decent Justice competitive gear after a year of playing second fiddle to a crappy RNG circus (still not seen my first token from that.)
You guys, by which I mean the testers who shot that idea down, managed to rob me of that chance. Now that Onslaught secondaries are actually being made competitive, you're trying to do it again.
Please stop.
Onslaught gear is going to be better than vigilante gear. Lets just accept that and move on.
I don't think it's realistic to think that nothing short of spending a ton of money on a new team to fix everything is the only way to make a step towards balance. He's saying it's impossible so why bother trying. That's defeatist.
You're at a Clearance Sale and you're asking them when they're getting new stock in. It's not realistic.
You're at a Clearance Sale and you're asking them when they're getting new stock in. It's not realistic.
Instead of using a bad analogy, I'll just state some facts. I'm a guy who plays a game in which balance is all over the place, and I see that they've recently made some changes for the sake of balance, and I'm asking for them to not push a change that'll mess up balance even more. That's quite in the realm of reality.
I think the fact that they're still doing things to bring in balance, like the cooldown reduction nerf (heavy-handed as it may be), directly contradicts your "reality" of balance never happening.
Now, you think this issue with the onslaught gear is a business issue and not a design issue? Do you think the business guys, the bean counters, said "we'll make more money if we add a slot to the gear!" It's a design thing. Onslaught wants to bring in money, yes, but a good designer should be able to think of items that would be as desirable as a stat increase. Off the top of my head, why not take some old power replacer powers and apply them to the new gear? Or put the powers on mods and stick them on the onslaught store. People have been asking for these things to make a comeback somehow. Listen to the players. Nobody got vigilante gear and said "this ain't good enough, give me more stats!" did they? People weren't asking for stronger gear. Strong gear is already there. But you put s new piece of gear somewhere and people start saying it should be stronger than he last piece of gear by like, default. Just because it's new they think it has to be better, not just different. I don't think that's right.
You're saying that power levels are irrelevant at this point, right? Then why bother increasing them? Why mess with them at all? You want to mess with them so that players have this futile treadmill to run on for a dangling carrot that's irrelevant? There are better and more creative ways to create that dangling carrot that in the meanwhile doesn't break further something that's already broken.
Also, you say that the game's design is done,mainland and complete. You're taking the broadest description of what design is and using that for your argument. You don't fire all your designers after your game ships, do you? Who do you think created the powers for the villains? The new powers for the lockboxes and onslaught store? You still need designers. Specializations were a design change, and they came far after launch. So yeah, I still think a good designer can create some better goals for the players to work after.
I guess it boils down to you being naive. I understand what you want to say BUT at this point in time it is a business decision. If people don't play the new content then the development cost was wasted. Adding a slot into gear is a trivial thing compared to actually making real content.
Even what we got is a diluted form of content. The %CDR nerfs were done because of this update. They needed to bring the power lvls down because they could not make SV powerful to the degree at which they could defeat someone who was doing AD cycling. Again, its a business decision. You don't understand it because you lack general insight of what is going on. The developers themselves have no choice in this either. At this point in time they make due with what they have. The current goal of CO is not balance but increasing it's population.
New has to be better, always. It's an obvious thing in a MMO. You can't bring out content with gear on the level of existing gear. That's just idiotic, it's like having a new car model for 2016 that is the same as the model of 2015 but called "NEW". Nobody is that stupid to fall for it. People need something that "feels" new even if it's reused code.
They should simply keep the gear and move on from there. No pint in putting effort into trying to blance gear. The true OP part comes from the FF aspects. People were OP since FF exists, gear does nothing and it won't change anything. Having stronger gear makes no difference because everyone is OP, as such it at least give people a sense of "progression" and "purpouse/goal". That is what makes people play this game and that is what CO needs.
The point I'm trying to explain to you is that the only course of progression CO has is to further break things. It has to continuously break balance further and further because it needs to give people incentive to play. Better gear has always been one of the more popular incentives in CO, together with Costumes. Nothing else matters, it is irrelevant how strong someone can be and how he can trivialize content. That is not done because of gear but because of powers. I can do Onslaught with Blue primaries. The reason they need to make more and more OP gear is for people to grind it and thus spend time on CO and maybe money. Simple as that.
I guess it boils down to you being naive. I understand what you want to say BUT at this point in time it is a business decision. If people don't play the new content then the development cost was wasted. Adding a slot into gear is a trivial thing compared to actually making real content.
Oh was that the argument I was making? I must be going out of my mind because I never said that instead of adding a slot onto gear, they should be "actually making real content." But I'll take your word for it that I did. I mean, I am really naive.
Even what we got is a diluted form of content. The %CDR nerfs were done because of this update. They needed to bring the power lvls down because they could not make SV powerful to the degree at which they could defeat someone who was doing AD cycling. Again, its a business decision. You don't understand it because you lack general insight of what is going on. The developers themselves have no choice in this either. At this point in time they make due with what they have. The current goal of CO is not balance but increasing it's population.
Not everyone was doing active defense cycling for a 100% uptime. There are plenty of people out there that weren't doing that before and aren't trying to do it now. It would not have been impossible for the Villains to get their kills.
I do happen to understand that all of this is done with hopes of making more money. You should think about getting off your high horse because you're not impressing anyone with that. I understand the business side of decision-making. Every time people complain about how lockboxes killed the game and they hate lockboxes for this and that reason and all Cryptic does is nickel-and-dime people to death, I'm one of the very few that explains to people why these things are there and why they are justified. It doesn't take industry knowledge to grasp these concepts; anyone who thinks about it instead of just blurting out their first impression can figure it out. And for the record, I've worked in the video game industry before. I shouldn't have to say it because you shouldn't be acting like you have all the answers just because you've done it too.
And just to put a button on it, balance is a factor in the game's population. Therefore, working on it is justified.
New has to be better, always. It's an obvious thing in a MMO. You can't bring out content with gear on the level of existing gear. That's just idiotic, it's like having a new car model for 2016 that is the same as the model of 2015 but called "NEW". Nobody is that stupid to fall for it. People need something that "feels" new even if it's reused code.
Again, the analogies. Okay, let's work with yours. Stats are horsepower. Damage is speed. Do you only buy a new car because it'll go faster than your old one? No, that's just idiotic. You buy a new car because you're starting a family and need more room. You buy a new car because it's safer. You buy a new car because it gets better mileage. You buy a new car because it's safer for the environment. Get it yet? New gear doesn't have to have higher stats to feel new. It just has to have something NEW. Let's say this piece of gear is the same thing as Vigilante except it doesn't have any defense, but it turns all your attack into Physical damage. Hey look, fun new ways to build a character!
They should simply keep the gear and move on from there. No pint in putting effort into trying to blance gear. The true OP part comes from the FF aspects. People were OP since FF exists, gear does nothing and it won't change anything. Having stronger gear makes no difference because everyone is OP, as such it at least give people a sense of "progression" and "purpouse/goal". That is what makes people play this game and that is what CO needs.
In bold: WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. Gear does do something; it creates a wider gap in power levels, which makes content harder to design! Right now, no matter what content Cryptic makes, whether it's a new Rampage or whatever, there will always be people who say it's too easy while others say it's too hard. I know you can't please everyone all of the time, but you can at least put yourself in a place where you can at least try to.
Also, you might not want to speak for everyone when it comes to why people play the game. Not everyone lives for the gear and progression.
Power creep and unnecessary gear progression has created a huge disparity between builds and Archetypes as well. So much so that it's impossible to balance new content to any sort of standard. And now with Onslaught, there are some players who are unkillable by some villains. Power creep and unnecessary gear progression.
You can do that in heroic gear too. That is more a problem with certain powers/devices and blocking well than with gear.
It's strange that anyone has this dream of it being possible in CO. What do you balance around? Duels? Soloing single-player missions? Therakiel? Smashes? Rampages? Adventure packs? Each of these is a vastly different approach or difficulty.
Who do you balance for? ATs? Freeforms? Healers? Tanks? DPS? People in Merc gear? People in Legion Gear with Rank 9 mods?
You need to keep things balanced for maximum performance and average performance. Otherwise, there can be no new content. Can the average person do [Whatever] and can the the strongest performers still complete [Whatever] and can the strongest performers do [Whatever] and still have it be fun? It is relative balancing, and CO DOES still do this, which is why there have been changes to powers and CDR recently. Don't be a doomsayer and say balancing no longer matters or is possible.
None of you understand this because you don't handle code or manage any software projects.
Why would you even say something like this? The amount of people who play a game or read a a forum you are going to be wrong - for example I am a software engineer. And if you actually are a software engineer/programmer, you'd know balancing isn't a software issue, it is a mathematical one. There are tweaks to powers and gear and mechanics of the game all the time. Like I just pointed out, CDR just got nerfed.
Gauging how to balance things is the tricky part - it is not technical and you don't need tons of resources to do it. You just have to have the right amount of data and adjust appropriately but cautiously. More often than not tweaks for balancing do not take place as a reactionary measure because you don't want to cause more problems with your actions.
I totally support Lyn's idea of changing the price of onslaught gear too a combination of 3000 Villain tokens and 3000 Guardian tokens (give or take some tokens). This is such a good idea - SUCH a good idea - I'm surprised I did not think of it myself
It would definitely give people a reason to fight against villains more since they'll need those guardian tokens to get their gear, and in turn villains will get more kills and tokens with more players engaging them.
None of you understand this because you don't handle code or manage any software projects.
Why would you even say something like this? The amount of people who play a game or read a a forum you are going to be wrong - for example I am a software engineer. And if you actually are a software engineer/programmer, you'd know balancing isn't a software issue, it is a mathematical one. There are tweaks to powers and gear and mechanics of the game all the time. Like I just pointed out, CDR just got nerfed.
Gauging how to balance things is the tricky part - it is not technical and you don't need tons of resources to do it. You just have to have the right amount of data and adjust appropriately but cautiously. More often than not tweaks for balancing do not take place as a reactionary measure because you don't want to cause more problems with your actions.
Not even close. Balancing numbers is almost trivial. The problem is that we have FF and thus any power combination is possible yet it is impossible to balance for every such combinations especially when you add specializations on top. Some will have extraordinary results combined while individually they seem balanced. In such scenarios you cannot balance things from a numerical point of view but have to introduce new mechanics to handle such combinations. Naturally someone needs to identify those combinations and introduce mechanics to prevent abuse. If you think that's not technical then I have to seriously question your credentials. Those prevention/handling mechanics won't code themselves.
The issues of balance at the core are purely technical.
Not even close. Balancing numbers is almost trivial. The problem is that we have FF and thus any power combination is possible yet it is impossible to balance for every such combinations especially when you add specializations on top. Some will have extraordinary results combined while individually they seem balanced. In such scenarios you cannot balance things from a numerical point of view but have to introduce new mechanics to handle such combinations. Naturally someone needs to identify those combinations and introduce mechanics to prevent abuse. If you think that's not technical then I have to seriously question your credentials. Those prevention/handling mechanics won't code themselves.
The issues of balance at the core are purely technical.
Actually, she's right. The problem isn't FF, as the design of the powers themselves can be adjusted through mathematical equations. The problem is a mathematical one, and the fact they keep making the numbers bigger. Every power in this game can be adjusted and balanced properly on mathematical equation but considering the average player thinks nerfs are bad and only thing to do is buff, well... see Villain Onslaught and the unreasonably high damage that the OVs must do in order to compete with the average high level player now.
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You can't introduce new gear that isn't better than old gear. No one will desire it. They tried that. It flopped. That's why we're getting mod slots.
The hardest content I can think of in CO is Fire & Ice and we're in no danger of hordes of players soloing that from this minor per-character primary super stat upgrade. I'm sure somewhere in CO, someone exists who can go toe-to-toe with Frosticus ALONE without danger of dying, and successfully complete the rampage alone, but I've never seen it. I'm sure there's someone who can face a level 60 Mega Destroid invasion without threat of dying, but they aren't the norm and this gear isn't going to make it common. Maybe next year's tier will make that possible.
I've seen broken power creep in other games. This isn't it. Broken power creep is one mage doing a 25 man hardmode raid. It's one Romulan Scimitar ripping through elite group content like it's wet paper.
This isn't game-changing. It's just going to add something fresh, new, and time-consuming to collect for your already-unkillable paper doll collection. The sky isn't falling.
I find it idiotic that people even bother with power creep in this game. I've seen this game since closed beta and there is no saving it in terms of balance. Also, it's not the gear that makes the difference it's the powers. I have a Quarry toon with blues not even Mercenary gear on it and I do Onslaught just fine. You people are crazy, there is no balancing it now. CO is living on Cosmic Keys and the Legon's Gear is basically pay to win BUT there is nothing to win.
So why are people complaining about pointless things. There is no reason to bother with balance because we have none. We needed the content to warrant the gear but only got the gear because it brings in $$$$$$$ with 0 to no effort. (Lockboxes / legion's anyone?)
Let it rest. Co is as unbalanced as it comes and it's not the gear it's the fact that you have FF and that is impossible to balance.
You guys should take a break from CO like I do. You'd see things is a different light after a couple of months. Nothing is as serious as ppl make it out to be.
Nobody cares about power creep except for crazy people. CO is beyond power creep, you'd have to remove FF and anything above Heroic to reach balance. Let it rest, let people enjoy this game as long as they still can because if you think CO will last forever you are deluding yourself.
Giving players more power for no reason is pointless. If the previous sidegrade "flopped" then think of something outside the box that will make people want it. Add some sugar to it instead of just saying "oh, forget it, just add more stats."
Vigilante Hastened is bugged, it's not supposed to give health. Not the best piece to compare it to.
Unsure where you're getting the lower defense from, as every piece of Onslaught gear has higher defense compared to its vigilante counterpart.
An increase of 4.3 defense, not a decrease of 2. And zero health for both. Not significant either way. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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Just an update - there are a lot of players who've never even seen R7 mods. They're very expensive on the AH, and they just don't come up that often unless you're dropping cash on keys. R8? R9? For a player like me, those are pipe dreams.
Basing your concept of balance on slotting R9 mods is a bit akin to wealthy folks who base their concept of "a good account balance" on the million or so they've got stashed away.
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The difference between and r6 and an r7 or even r9 is not that significant. It's 14 point difference between r6 and r9, IE someone that uses just r6's will see a 52 point gain as well. It's still significant, no matter what mods they use.
The disparity created, since I know someone who doesn't know better will try to counter argue this, is between those who have, and those who cannot get, due to level difference or time spent. The onslaught gear is definitely time spent phenomenon. And while certain people are trying to make a hullabaloo and act like children such as discussing Heroic versus Legion versus Justice, the power difference between those three gear types is actually minor since all legion did was add utility slots, and all Justice added was a set bonus.
The Onslaught gear is not only upping the secondary stats, quite a bit actually, it's also providing up to a 66 STAT point difference. This is SIGNIFICANTLY larger than Utility stats which provide minor differences. Stats are still the main focus here in this game, despite they keep saying they want to make secondaries worth more. And this is on top of their, in some cases, overpowered ability they give for the offensive gear. I am willing to bet to, most people will pick the tanking item because that shield is ridiculously powerful.
Easy, breezy content is not good for the health of an MMO. There is 18 years of proof of that now. From Ultima Online to World of Warcraft. Even Champions and City of Heroes offer evidence to that proof. Adding in this new power without having the content to go with it is a bad move.
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-Sterga
Why are people OK with unbalanced players but not ok with unbalanced enemies? How do you balance npcs with such huge variance in player power levels? Op players are why we have powerful pve content that most people won't participate in. How can anyone complain about unkillable tanks and support gear that makes the problem worse?
There is a huge difference between a modest buff to current onslaught gear and making it lol op. And yes, for high-end builds, every point counts.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
The update is good. Balance will never be achieved give it up. That train has left the station 4-5 years ago when CO had a glimpse of a chance. Now? Seriously? Now you talk about "balance"?
How exactly do you figure this gear makes someone OP? Currently people are OP and making them more OP won't change anything. At the very least it will give CO a couple of weeks worth of "content" due to sheer grind of gear. Take away the gear and this content update might as well not exist same as with the rest of CO's lairs.
I remember a time where decent gear could be got as drops from lairs. Now, it's all in Lockboxes. You think you have an argument because you spout out "balance"? Nope, no argument there. There is no balance in CO because there never was balance in CO.
You want balance? How about removing legion's gear from the game? But wait, people used money to get it through gambling for it!
There is no argument for trying to balance CO. Any and all such statements are nothing but nonsense filled with the delusion of "future content" as if that's ever happening. CO is on life support and whatever brings in players or makes people play is what keeps this game alive.
Who really cares about how strong you are? Who cares how strong people can be ? In all honesty what is people's problem if someone wants to be strong and trivialize content. You want a challenge, drop Legion's and get Heroic. Don't take the most OP powers out there. Play an AT etc... You want challenge then make your own difficulty don't impose it upon others.
Note, however, that people are willing to pay 150,000Q for 7 stat points (diff between generic purples and Vigilante) plus minor secondary effects. Earned in-game, 150,000Q is actually a bigger grind than 5,000 villain points.
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For about 5 minutes. That's about how long it takes before someone who is playing overpowered gets bored and finds something else to do. Hell don't even have to go outside of Champions to see that fact.
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Justice was a straight improvement over legion, but this is a very mixed analogy to make for onslaught to vigil. Legion was only available from lockboxes and very rare. Justice is awarded via gameplay. It should be stronger since having the strongest gear in the game rewarded only through lockboxes was horrible. However, vigil can be earned via gameplay. Sure, you can buy it with real money if you get zen and transfer that to Questionite, but I doubt anyone minds seeing more zen on the market. Plus, vigil is only a secondary and does not vastly outperform purple gear.
Onslaught gear with a mod slot is vastly outperforming vigil, there is really no reason not to have it. It sort of takes out the need for Questionite since the most important item in the store is now obsolete.
It's not about making our own difficulty. The game is what should provide the difficulty, but there is such a huge disparity in player character power levels that it's hard for the developers to judge at what point the difficulty should be at. Dogpiling on the problem doesn't do anything positive for the game.
gear is now secondaries because people didn't want it better than Rampage gear.Becuase people would stop queuing for Rampages. People stopped queuing as soon as they worked out, they weren't getting anything.
now people don't want it better than vigilante gear.
IF it's anything with only SS's, I don't want it.
Even with the stat slot, I still wouldn't bother with this gear.
I am only using Spot for farming because that's who I'm levelling currently. Once she's levelled, those tokens will sit and vegetate. UNUSED, unless I get the AF.
IF the tokens were acct bound, like the rampage tokens, they might get used.
as for the new gear obsoletes old gear.
Yes they do but those games also have lots of things to do with the better gear.
Here it's get out your ruler(or maybe micrometer) and start measuring.
Once you start doing damage to a OV, you still count for when they get to a certain level as damage and get tokens.
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It's strange that anyone has this dream of it being possible in CO. What do you balance around? Duels? Soloing single-player missions? Therakiel? Smashes? Rampages? Adventure packs? Each of these is a vastly different approach or difficulty.
Who do you balance for? ATs? Freeforms? Healers? Tanks? DPS? People in Merc gear? People in Legion Gear with Rank 9 mods?
Before these new mod slots were added, I wouldn't have bothered with Onslaught gear at all. After all, what's the point in a player sidegrading if the ultimate goal is to improve performance in content like F&I? If you don't like or want more powerful gear, don't get it? It's well-established in this thread that you don't need it, you won't be left behind without it. It's just something new to collect.
There's no new, more difficult content coming. Stop pretending there can or will be. The hypothetical situation of low-geared people being unable to participate in fictional "difficult" content is null and void, not simply because such alleged content will never happen, but also because anyone can relatively quickly obtain a full set of Heroic and highly effective 11K Questionite gear and jump right in. I still tank F&I in Armadillo secondaries!
Demanding balance is nonsensical when there isn't any single difficulty curve in the game and there can't ever be. Can we move on from such silliness?
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This is a big journey, so far if you're reading this, wish you a good day
Having said that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is exactly the sate of CO namely, completely and utterly broken. That is the normal state of CO. Any attempts of balance are an attempt in breaking what we currently have.
As I said, you can't undo the broken because people paid money for it (legion's , Justice). You can't claim to want balance when what breaks this balance cannot be removed from the game. Moreover it is what is keeping this game alive.
None of you understand this because you don't handle code or manage any software projects. If you did you would understand that your ideas or desires for balance are unfeasible. The amount of work needed is monumental and is by no means something that can be done without significant investment into CO. Take a look at the state of CO and it's current resources. The only course of action that is left is to let people be OP, sell key, make some money and then get out some more costumes, gear and maybe some small quick content. This is what "maintenance" mode looks like. This games needs to get people to play it more than it requires "balance" so all your talk is truly just detrimental to CO. But again, you don't understand it because you think fixing/balancing CO can actual be done. Truth is that it can't.
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And there we have it. Crazy that it had to be spelled out.
On the other hand, those points are not locked into your primary superstat but in whatever stat you wish. That freedom of choice is worth a lot in my book.
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Handling the code is far beside the point. This is a design issue, not a code issue.
Now, if you'd please point out where I said the game should be balanced? Can't find it? It's because I didn't say it. So throw away your argument of "you don't understand because you don't know that they'd have to hire a whole team of blah blah" now, because you're not reading what I'm actually typing.
Like I said, it's a design issue, and it should be handled by a designer. Fact: there is a large disparity in power levels throughout the entire game, not just when you get to 40. But when you do, that disparity grows even larger. And my point is: don't make that disparity even larger than it is now. This would not require hiring an entirely new team to do.
As far as trying to bring balance to the game, I know it's a big job, but a systems designer would probably be able to come up with some ideas as to how to bring power levels closer to each other. Your defeatist attitude is a terrible one to have.
And also, for someone supposedly in the software business, you have a serious lack of understanding of what maintenance mode means.
Defeatist? I would call nightr0d a realist.
Let me clarify something. Whether you would like to work under me or not is completely irrelevant. Nevertheless, I guarantee you that the impression you currently have of me is utterly wrong. What I pointed out is not a "defeatist" attitude it's simply reality. At some point in time, back in the day, CO could have taken a different path and it could have allowed for a chance of balance. I have argued for it for years, literally YEARS!! That did not happen but instead a series of absolute nonsensical decisions have been made (for reasons I do not know) such as the catastrophically day 1 Patch. This game never did or ever will recover from that blunder. As such, there comes a time when you have to face reality and realize that the project is hopeless.
In Software Engineering there is the concept of "If something should fail it should fail as soon as possible". Now CO failed early on, but it was kept alive against it's will. Currently CO survives by following the "most bang for your buck" mentality. Take a look at the Onslaught content. The ability to transform into SV was available to admins from the days of closed beta. The only thing that was done is some more polish and a port of those abilities to the players. This is cheap and fast content by reusing exiting code. Compare this to an actual zone or a lair in terms of work. The point is, CO survives on the least amount of work possible nevertheless, if CO has no players then it will finally die. That people are OP or not makes no difference and has no impact on this game in terms of it's longevity. Players having no reason to play or a goal to achieve on the other hand has a real and visible impact.
Again, you think a designer can help? No they can't help. I worked on all aspects of development including design and I can tell you that the time for that has passed. Here are the order in which a project is performed: requirements elicitation, design, analysis, implementation, testing, maintenance. CO's design has been finalized and cannot be changed. Any and all attempts to do so would break this game and by breaking I mean it will be impossible to be played anymore from a technical point of view.
Now, you think this issue with the onslaught gear is a business issue and not a design issue? Do you think the business guys, the bean counters, said "we'll make more money if we add a slot to the gear!" It's a design thing. Onslaught wants to bring in money, yes, but a good designer should be able to think of items that would be as desirable as a stat increase. Off the top of my head, why not take some old power replacer powers and apply them to the new gear? Or put the powers on mods and stick them on the onslaught store. People have been asking for these things to make a comeback somehow. Listen to the players. Nobody got vigilante gear and said "this ain't good enough, give me more stats!" did they? People weren't asking for stronger gear. Strong gear is already there. But you put s new piece of gear somewhere and people start saying it should be stronger than he last piece of gear by like, default. Just because it's new they think it has to be better, not just different. I don't think that's right.
You're saying that power levels are irrelevant at this point, right? Then why bother increasing them? Why mess with them at all? You want to mess with them so that players have this futile treadmill to run on for a dangling carrot that's irrelevant? There are better and more creative ways to create that dangling carrot that in the meanwhile doesn't break further something that's already broken.
Also, you say that the game's design is done,mainland and complete. You're taking the broadest description of what design is and using that for your argument. You don't fire all your designers after your game ships, do you? Who do you think created the powers for the villains? The new powers for the lockboxes and onslaught store? You still need designers. Specializations were a design change, and they came far after launch. So yeah, I still think a good designer can create some better goals for the players to work after.
Without getting pedantic, let me cut through to the finer points of the gear issue as I see it.
Onslaught primaries would have given me the chance to own decent Justice competitive gear after a year of playing second fiddle to a crappy RNG circus (still not seen my first token from that.)
You guys, by which I mean the testers who shot that idea down, managed to rob me of that chance. Now that Onslaught secondaries are actually being made competitive, you're trying to do it again.
Please stop.
Onslaught gear is going to be better than vigilante gear. Lets just accept that and move on.
You're at a Clearance Sale and you're asking them when they're getting new stock in. It's not realistic.
Even what we got is a diluted form of content. The %CDR nerfs were done because of this update. They needed to bring the power lvls down because they could not make SV powerful to the degree at which they could defeat someone who was doing AD cycling. Again, its a business decision. You don't understand it because you lack general insight of what is going on. The developers themselves have no choice in this either. At this point in time they make due with what they have. The current goal of CO is not balance but increasing it's population.
New has to be better, always. It's an obvious thing in a MMO. You can't bring out content with gear on the level of existing gear. That's just idiotic, it's like having a new car model for 2016 that is the same as the model of 2015 but called "NEW". Nobody is that stupid to fall for it. People need something that "feels" new even if it's reused code.
They should simply keep the gear and move on from there. No pint in putting effort into trying to blance gear. The true OP part comes from the FF aspects. People were OP since FF exists, gear does nothing and it won't change anything. Having stronger gear makes no difference because everyone is OP, as such it at least give people a sense of "progression" and "purpouse/goal". That is what makes people play this game and that is what CO needs.
The point I'm trying to explain to you is that the only course of progression CO has is to further break things. It has to continuously break balance further and further because it needs to give people incentive to play. Better gear has always been one of the more popular incentives in CO, together with Costumes. Nothing else matters, it is irrelevant how strong someone can be and how he can trivialize content. That is not done because of gear but because of powers. I can do Onslaught with Blue primaries. The reason they need to make more and more OP gear is for people to grind it and thus spend time on CO and maybe money. Simple as that.
Oh was that the argument I was making? I must be going out of my mind because I never said that instead of adding a slot onto gear, they should be "actually making real content." But I'll take your word for it that I did. I mean, I am really naive.
Not everyone was doing active defense cycling for a 100% uptime. There are plenty of people out there that weren't doing that before and aren't trying to do it now. It would not have been impossible for the Villains to get their kills.
I do happen to understand that all of this is done with hopes of making more money. You should think about getting off your high horse because you're not impressing anyone with that. I understand the business side of decision-making. Every time people complain about how lockboxes killed the game and they hate lockboxes for this and that reason and all Cryptic does is nickel-and-dime people to death, I'm one of the very few that explains to people why these things are there and why they are justified. It doesn't take industry knowledge to grasp these concepts; anyone who thinks about it instead of just blurting out their first impression can figure it out. And for the record, I've worked in the video game industry before. I shouldn't have to say it because you shouldn't be acting like you have all the answers just because you've done it too.
And just to put a button on it, balance is a factor in the game's population. Therefore, working on it is justified.
Again, the analogies. Okay, let's work with yours. Stats are horsepower. Damage is speed. Do you only buy a new car because it'll go faster than your old one? No, that's just idiotic. You buy a new car because you're starting a family and need more room. You buy a new car because it's safer. You buy a new car because it gets better mileage. You buy a new car because it's safer for the environment. Get it yet? New gear doesn't have to have higher stats to feel new. It just has to have something NEW. Let's say this piece of gear is the same thing as Vigilante except it doesn't have any defense, but it turns all your attack into Physical damage. Hey look, fun new ways to build a character!
In bold: WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. Gear does do something; it creates a wider gap in power levels, which makes content harder to design! Right now, no matter what content Cryptic makes, whether it's a new Rampage or whatever, there will always be people who say it's too easy while others say it's too hard. I know you can't please everyone all of the time, but you can at least put yourself in a place where you can at least try to.
Also, you might not want to speak for everyone when it comes to why people play the game. Not everyone lives for the gear and progression.
Gauging how to balance things is the tricky part - it is not technical and you don't need tons of resources to do it. You just have to have the right amount of data and adjust appropriately but cautiously. More often than not tweaks for balancing do not take place as a reactionary measure because you don't want to cause more problems with your actions.
http://forum.arcgames.com/championsonline/discussion/1203268/what-do-pts-users-and-or-forum-people-think-of-the-og
This is a big journey, so far if you're reading this, wish you a good day
It would definitely give people a reason to fight against villains more since they'll need those guardian tokens to get their gear, and in turn villains will get more kills and tokens with more players engaging them.
This is a big journey, so far if you're reading this, wish you a good day
The issues of balance at the core are purely technical.
Actually, she's right. The problem isn't FF, as the design of the powers themselves can be adjusted through mathematical equations. The problem is a mathematical one, and the fact they keep making the numbers bigger. Every power in this game can be adjusted and balanced properly on mathematical equation but considering the average player thinks nerfs are bad and only thing to do is buff, well... see Villain Onslaught and the unreasonably high damage that the OVs must do in order to compete with the average high level player now.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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