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Energy Cost, Power Nerfs and Fatigue
magpieuk2014
Posts: 1,268 Arc User
Carried over from the 2GM thread.
Power cost increases are a really blunt instrument and always cause aggro. They're divisive because certain player groups feel picked on, and in the end they increase inconsistency and make the game less balanced.
Rather than tinkering with power costs on a per-power basis I think there needs to be a mechanism to increase the underlying issue; that there's not much variability in the cost of powers during the course of a battle.
At the moment it is too easy to make a build which never has to worry about energy. That's not realistic - you can't fire a machine gun indefinitely in reality, and even Superheroes can become exhausted over time - and it leads to the the "hold to win" aspect of some builds with powers such as 2GM, Lightning Arc, etc which seems to have wound so many people up. But per-power nerfs are unfair, and changing underlying powers such as Energy Unlocks not much better, considering some trees are dependent, and others don't have them. So my suggestion is a Stamina/Exhaustion balancing mechanism based on what the player does. I've come across the mechanism in other games and think it would work well here.
Each time the player charges a power over halfway or maintains a power for half its duration they receive a debuff: Fatigue. Each stack of this debuff increases a player's energy costs by 2% (1% + 1%, the second part being reduced by their REC/END stats). Fatigue can stack up to 99 times. Tap powers, Combo powers, or any power without a charge or maintain aspect would not generate Fatigue. Powers with a long charge time (Force Cascade, for example) would naturally not generate as much Fatigue stacks as 2GM, etc.
Stacks of Fatigue are removed by:
Debuff removal powers such as Celestial Cleansing and Medical Nanites
Use of the Energy Builder power (each successful hit with an EB removes a stack of Fatigue)
So... for any stand-and-spam power like 2GM/LA/Gatling Gun, the player would have to manage the effect of Fatigue and look to mitigate it (by hooking up with a healer with CC, having Med Nanites as a power, or having to close the range on their enemy to use EB). Long battles would actually start to have a cumulative effect on a character other than simple loss of health. Overall it's much more elegant than random power nerfs / cost increases, makes gameplay as much about what the player does in the room as it is about their build, and shouldn't take a vast amount of dev time to implement, as they've added similar debuffs to TA and Onslaught.
(If I was feeling adventurous I'd remove the base 10% energy cost increase from toggled Energy Forms such as Concentration and make each stack they build also apply also add a stack of Fatigue... lower cost to begin with, higher as damage increases. )
Power cost increases are a really blunt instrument and always cause aggro. They're divisive because certain player groups feel picked on, and in the end they increase inconsistency and make the game less balanced.
Rather than tinkering with power costs on a per-power basis I think there needs to be a mechanism to increase the underlying issue; that there's not much variability in the cost of powers during the course of a battle.
At the moment it is too easy to make a build which never has to worry about energy. That's not realistic - you can't fire a machine gun indefinitely in reality, and even Superheroes can become exhausted over time - and it leads to the the "hold to win" aspect of some builds with powers such as 2GM, Lightning Arc, etc which seems to have wound so many people up. But per-power nerfs are unfair, and changing underlying powers such as Energy Unlocks not much better, considering some trees are dependent, and others don't have them. So my suggestion is a Stamina/Exhaustion balancing mechanism based on what the player does. I've come across the mechanism in other games and think it would work well here.
Each time the player charges a power over halfway or maintains a power for half its duration they receive a debuff: Fatigue. Each stack of this debuff increases a player's energy costs by 2% (1% + 1%, the second part being reduced by their REC/END stats). Fatigue can stack up to 99 times. Tap powers, Combo powers, or any power without a charge or maintain aspect would not generate Fatigue. Powers with a long charge time (Force Cascade, for example) would naturally not generate as much Fatigue stacks as 2GM, etc.
Stacks of Fatigue are removed by:
Debuff removal powers such as Celestial Cleansing and Medical Nanites
Use of the Energy Builder power (each successful hit with an EB removes a stack of Fatigue)
So... for any stand-and-spam power like 2GM/LA/Gatling Gun, the player would have to manage the effect of Fatigue and look to mitigate it (by hooking up with a healer with CC, having Med Nanites as a power, or having to close the range on their enemy to use EB). Long battles would actually start to have a cumulative effect on a character other than simple loss of health. Overall it's much more elegant than random power nerfs / cost increases, makes gameplay as much about what the player does in the room as it is about their build, and shouldn't take a vast amount of dev time to implement, as they've added similar debuffs to TA and Onslaught.
(If I was feeling adventurous I'd remove the base 10% energy cost increase from toggled Energy Forms such as Concentration and make each stack they build also apply also add a stack of Fatigue... lower cost to begin with, higher as damage increases. )
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My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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Also looking at what the devs are hinting at, there are many more power changes planned, MA EU, combo stuff, and tgm were just the first. So even if some change to energy management is needed, I'd like to wait and see what's coming up first.
Your suggestion would mean the end of any build which uses powers which have even a moderately high energy cost.
Honestly? It wouldn't. 1.5-2% power cost increase per maintain period would stack quite slowly; and there's a balancing aspect in how quickly the stacks would drop away (more slowly in combat than out, naturally), and there's always the ability to remove them with the EB. In the normal short game you'd barely notice. Over the longer forms (lairs, etc), though, it would become something the player had to think about and manage, especially in respect of short maintain single target attacks, which would generate more stacks of the debuff than longer held AoEs.
Like why would charge powers generate less fatigue?
Most of these are Tap/Charge powers. Tapping powers wouldn't generate any effect. Charging the power for more than half it's duration would. The intention is to refocus away from long maintains, full charges and power spam without damaging basic powers or those types of power set which have less access to Energy Unlocks.
So even if some change to energy management is needed, I'd like to wait and see what's coming up first.
I admire your hope, but the devs are barking up the wrong tree. They're about trying to Fix The Endgame, which is virtually impossible, and will consist of nerf-o-rama indefinitely. The best we can hope is that they don't break the Core Game (lvl 1-40) while they're at it.
Personally I would like more attention paid to the Core Game and perhaps some changes made for reasons of developing the game, not necessarily just fixing "problems" and nerfing the (apparently) OP.
To my mind combat in Core Game Champions in too linear and too based on stats, builds and gear, not what the player does. The way in which you play the game doesn't really have to change much based on the situation, and the boss AI isn't particularly clever or subtle - I've seen people refer to how things are "scripted", which pretty much says it all. Stand-and-spam is often the order of the day.
I would add some complexity and player involvement through things like...
1) Power costs that vary depending on use (Fatigue)
2) Ranged damage where range often actually has an effect (i.e with 2GM, proximity increases damage, distance reduces damage/gives a chance to miss altogether)
3) Dodge being a control for the player to use, as well as a stat.
4) It being more difficult to create an "invulnerable" tank with immense DR to all damage forms (and certainly more difficult to bolt this on to DPS!). Invulnerability is boring - that's why they invented Kryptonite - and like that, every defence power should have an antagonistic damage type which debuffs/reduces defence against it. This already happens to certain ATs which don't have the universal block powers (Force/Energy/TK Shield) and it certainly does make things more interesting....
Generally we know it's too straightforward because so much of the "challenge" in End Game content is based around breaking the Core Game rules: silly mini-games, knock spamming, massive spike damage, inescapable AoEs, unblockable attacks, travel power lockouts - and there's a pretty vocal group of players whose attitude to everything is "nerf it to make the End Game work" - powers have to apply self-roots, power costs must soar if the power is popular... all of this diminishes the Core Game and what it's about (Superheroicness) and (worst of all) is not flagged anywhere else, which means you can get a character to 40 and then suddenly be faced with a completely different set of requirements that you've not build for or not experienced before.
If the devs are going to do anything - and sometimes I think it's better if they don't - then I'd prefer some new mechanics in the Core Game over more top-down tweaks based on making things tough in the End Game for over-geared Lvl40+ toons made by Master Builders.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
One of the big problems with "mature" forums like this one is that they tend to become full of old-timers and their indignation at things which were discussed back in 2011 (having not realised that they and three of their mates are all that remains from back then). Please to be explaining for those of us who haven't been here forever.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
The suggestion only came about due to the normal Cryptic nerf process of "trying to stop people using things by jacking the energy requirements up to silly levels", as they did with vehicles/Plasma Beam, 2GM, and probably whatever else is next on the OP list. I was trying to think of ways to make things less attractive through over use rather than flat out nerfed. It just seems silly to me that I can now spam Gatling Gun more than 2GM because it has a lower cost, or - if I build for it - use something like Sword Cyclone as much as I like, once I've got over the Energy return hump. These are powers which should have some form of increasing cost attached to their use, not a flat figure. That all feels far too linear, and as such, too easy to abuse. Something which evolves during game play feeds into my wish for the game to be more of an ARPG than "Spods & Spreadsheets". It would be good to achieve in-game greatness without the help of Pivot Tables and DPS parsers.....
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
It's a gradual and player-manageable one, which is the entire point, rather than increasing the overall cost of a single power by 200-400% without exception, which is the way the developers approach it. Unsubtle mechanisms produce an unsubtle game, which is where we are. But - hey! - no point in falling out over things which aren't going to happen.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Where is everyone getting the idea this isn't possible. This is an honest question. I got into a debate last night with someone who had a level 40 who was complaining the only way that 2GM was usuable now was with level 8+ mods?????
Where are these notions coming from? I can go on test right now and create a lvl 40 that can handle 2GM with Ego/Dex/Int and using just Merc and questionite gear. Or even all questionite gear.
Seriously and honestly confused where some of these ideas about 2gm are coming from.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I agree with you. I am currently on PTS with a lvl40 2GM build and it works fine. But then I had geared that toon to have a little more REC/END anyways, due to taking Gatling Gun late on in the power progression and finding the energy requirements more difficult to manage (longer maintain time takes longer to build overdrive stacks, IIRC). However.... if you had a build which wasn't tuned that way then it might be more of an upset - and in any case, I don't think it's too unreasonable to feel bad about a power being nerfed from "works fine at level 6 up" to "works fine at level 35+ only, really".
To be fair, some of them are just doing that because they want the unbalanced powers they use to stay unbalanced, cause it's easy for them that way.
Well, "easy" could also be "comprehensible" ... people wouldn't go so hard on the obvious solutions if the whole process of character building, power selection and equipping was better documented and less of a pain in the rump. For a game that's promoted on customisation and free choice it does a great job of losing you in the maze of power trees, passives, roles and specialisations. If people are presented with a choice between a straightforward button-pushing power and some almightily complex arrangement of synergies, stacks, buffs and lord knows what then I know where they're going to go. Balancing isn't just about levelling stats, it's about making the creation process more harmonious - they've done a few good things towards that (the WoTW/Unstoppable buff) but they could do more. (Personally I'd love a "Heroic Form" passive that would slot in anywhere, with anything - it wouldn't be as good, overall, as specialised passives but it would save a lot of headscratching in the Powerhouse, and it would let me make that popular hero with Eye beams, Frost breath and a Haymaker).
I don't think it's particularly demanding of people to read a power description, see the energy cost, and match "crushing damage resistance" with "crushing damage". If you know anyone who is lost and confused about these things feel free to send them my way, I have two minutes I could use to explain it for them.
You want something overly complex that just makes the whole system more needlessly convoluted? Check the OP, it gives a perfect example of something like that. On the other hand "this power debuffs them, and this other power takes advantage of that" is a fairly simple concept present in many games.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.