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Balance Philosophy.
gradii
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The STO Dev team has a philosophy behind their balance changes which is as follows.
Increase the fun – Games are about having fun, and players should not be made to feel that their fun is “wrong.”
Player investment retains value – While things need to be adjusted, a setup that was optimized before should still be useful and effective afterwards.
Choices should be meaningful – Anywhere the game gives you a choice, there should be no choice that you always take nor one you never take.
Can the CO dev team say the same?
Increase the fun – Games are about having fun, and players should not be made to feel that their fun is “wrong.”
Player investment retains value – While things need to be adjusted, a setup that was optimized before should still be useful and effective afterwards.
Choices should be meaningful – Anywhere the game gives you a choice, there should be no choice that you always take nor one you never take.
Can the CO dev team say the same?
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The next addition to the game is one such event. It is designed for a range of levels, heroes, and playstyles.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Which they fail to do, due to the current nosebleed mechanics in play. PTS feedback says damage on the Snake Gulch event is too high, but nothing will be done. The CO dev team appear to be rather winnie-the-pooh esque on these matters.
Should I answer this? Probably not but I am going to anyway.
Player investment in certain aspects continually retains value despite changes and additions so far (I am referring to tanking set ups mostly). Player investments in other areas may still function but due to unnecessary or unexplained changes fall far behind what they were optimized to do and as a result are either forced to "suffer", rebuild or cling to the "this functions at a basic level" status.
Value is a term which can be viewed as subjective, so what someone else may deem "effective enough for what it is meant to do" I could disagree with and say it needs to be better.
In the main I think most set ups retain their effectiveness but some do not for various reasons. I say this because there have been negative responses to changes in the past and some changes have forced players to alter their builds accordingly.
I do think some changes made benefit or at a stretch cater to players with a certain mind set or desire for content which is of a certain difficulty.
The answer to such an opinion is usually "Don't like it? Don't do it.", which is all well and good until you consider that rewards people want are locked behind that content.
It would be nice to have alternative ways to obtain the same rewards but at present there seems to be no plans to make this a possibility so "grind away folks! \o/"
Choices in CO...well...they are meaningful in that you can select non standard pathways or ways to play the game at present and they work to an extent. This is, as always, subject to change. If the Development Team decide a certain play style or set up is not valid or would cause complications for future events it will either be nerfed repeatedly to make it undesirable or changed completely to resolve the possible issue.
The roles we have access to in CO allow for a great many different builds to be run using the free form system, these may not be optimized for end game content but they work.
I don't think it is fair to say that ALL builds no matter what gear/stats/powers they have can be competitive in endgame content but it isn't fair to say that endgame content is only for specific builds.
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I imagine CO is a very different game to STO, I'm not going to make someone rage by stating what I think goes on in STO, because it would be a completely uninformed opinion since I don't play it but I think there is room for improvement in CO...it does depend mostly how players respond to changes and how in turn Developers acknowledge those responses and work with them within their time constraints (if and where ever possible).
Personally I don't know where CO is going, but it would be silly to suggest that it has been in a better place as far as TLD is concerned (Tender Loving Development) within the time frame of the past couple of years (especially during that development drought season).
I strongly disagree with some of the (what I would call) negative changes made to some things with which no reasoning was given on but that obviously doesn't matter once a decision has been made.
All in all, CO is progressing it may not be in a direction that everyone is happy or comfortable with but unfortunately (in some instances) I agree that it is better than sitting in one place and stagnating.
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Increase the fun – Games are about having fun, and players should not be made to feel that their fun is “wrong.”
Different people have different definitions of fun, and some definitions of fun actually conflict. No game can possibly cater to all definitions of fun. As such, I can guarantee that STO fails at this.
Player investment retains value – While things need to be adjusted, a setup that was optimized before should still be useful and effective afterwards.
What do 'retains value' and 'useful and effective' mean? There are only two ways of achieving these things: either never make balance changes, or define your terms as "less valuable, but still worth something" and "less useful/effective, but still somewhat useful/effective".
Choices should be meaningful – Anywhere the game gives you a choice, there should be no choice that you always take nor one you never take.
This is generally the goal of balancing; if you aren't trying to do this, you aren't balancing.
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As far as STO increasing their fun, they utterly failed for me. Nothing about STO inspires me to feel like I am in my own Star Trek adventure exploring strange new worlds and seeking out new life or pursuing diplomatic ends. Instead, I generally log in, set my facebook game status (aka crew member objectives) and log out because there is literally nothing else to do for the next 20 hours. Most of the time, if you do anything in that game beyond the facebook simulator, is combat related. There are no meaningful dialog choices to make or story events that you even have an impact on. It's following the guided storyline and you aren't allowed to have a choice. Never mind I am playing a Federation Officer in the UFP and 99% of the game world is like watching Star Trek Generations with their 3 different uniform styles but at least that was forgivable against the many out of place outfits and uniforms you see from a military organization in STO.
As far as player investment retains value, ha. Then explain to me why my $25 dollar starship I bought a couple of years ago has no value against any of the new items that have entered the game? Why have all the gear items from yester year become useless trash? Items do not retain value, nor do the adventures of my time with my character. I have less investment in STO because I am being forced to be less invested since most of the activities I participate in is just the same thing I would do if I played some facebook game like Farmville.
As far as choices should be meaningful, yes that should be a goal, but in STO there are no choices and no meaningful decisions. Plain and simple. The idea of choice in STO is either make everything equally worthless or make a select group of powers got to haves. You have no reason to pick anything outside of the best of the best stuff, so in this area, they utterly failed.
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The problem with CO is that it is a large number of things, which has happened largely because people keep taking it off in different directions, leaving elements of the game marooned and unfinished. Some over-riding design principles would be a good idea as they might actually bring some harmony or continuity to whatever the developer/developers do. And yes, maybe they haven't always met their aspiration or plan in STO,
but at least they seem to have one.
I'm happy and grateful for whatever small amount of attention we get.
I'm not. (sorry). Too much going on at once and not all of it is well thought through or properly tested. I would much rather have a regular cycle where they focus on creating content (at various levels of difficulty) and resolving content system issues (queues, old lairs, Unity, Rampages, new events, new Cosmics), then a period where they let us play it, and then the power passes and balance changes, etc. At the moment it's just a blizzard of changes, and it makes me not want to invest time in trying to keep up, when there are numerous other games I can just play.
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I will always take the higher mk of gear for my away team unless the gear is something I just do not care for at all.
I just wanted to point that out before someone breaks out some ludicrous example in CO of "not providing meaningful choices".
It's not universal in STO, either, so if you are going to cite examples, make them good.
Of course, STO has gotten to a point of being nearly unplayable for me, as my PC will freeze up quite a bit while playing, so I have mostly stayed away and when I have logged in recently it has told me that I will not be able to play after the end of the month because of some update they are doing and what I have in my PC isn't good enough for it any more.
So much for my investment retaining value.
I won't even be able to access my investment in a few days.
There is a general Cryptic issue with their support for AMD graphics cards. Cryptic are only supporting older drivers but the new ones work fine - just tell the silly popup message to use Default settings (i.e. as you were) and it'll be fine. The other message is about the end of support for DirectX9; and unless you're still running a computer on Windows Vista, you already have support for DX10/11/12, all you need to do is to go into the Graphics settings and tell STO to use a newer version of DirectX. Is simples.
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For the upcoming event, the PTS has lots of testers, with real time interaction with the devs. Our suggestions are being used, lots.
I'm not making this up, and other playtesters will agree.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Which it failed to do. Mostly because the scaling tech worked brilliantly from level 6-39 and then skippped straight to level 45, Q zone difficulty, ignoring all points inbetween. And it put people off. I will believe that the devs have succeeded in attracting a "wide" audience when I see their boss event running simultaneously, successfully, in more than one zone.
For the upcoming event, the PTS has lots of testers, with real time interaction with the devs. Our suggestions are being used, lots.
I know, I came along for a bit. It was all a bit Alpha but nice to have the devs around. Unfortunately I've tried the event again since then and it's the same old story. Just flying along and then Boom! "Unknown Entity delivers 9000 damage to you with an Unknown Power". Well, gee, thanks.
It is a bit of a shame as this event looks exactly like the type of event I'd like and have asked for - multiple objectives, some team play, less "memorise the pattern of boss attacks or die immediately" schtick - but they'll overcook it. They always do.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
The scaling tech did not make it easier for lower level players to solo the non-boss encounters, it just made them survivable (you could back off, blocking, with a level 8 character and the combination of scaled damage and mobs that simply ran away when they reached a certain distance from their spawn point meant you'd probably escape, a strategy that doesn't work at all in the rest of the game). Scaling tech makes lower level participation possible, not success. The main problem we have with these events is that there's no such function at level 40 - the Difficulty slider doesn't do anywhere near the same thing, and consequently many level 40 builds were neither successful, nor survivable, in that encounter.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
I currently have no interest in events that last 1-2 weeks anymore.
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The point is that the Scary monster Tech allows lower level characters to participate in events which previously they couldn't, because the events were set up for level 40: damage didn't scale and lower level characters would die in seconds. Now they can join in (but success is not guaranteed). It's a brilliant idea and it works really well. However there's no equivalent mechanism to cope with the variation in level 40 characters. And really, there needs to be, because there is a quite significant variation in player skill and character power at that level (regardless of how people try to say otherwise).
I do have great sympathy for the CO devs/dev. Trying to come up with an open world event playable by every level, skill set and build in a game as all-over-the-place as this one is nightmarish. Other games don't even attempt it, but CO is very nearly there.
Eh... from what I've seen they undercook it cause it can never be tested with a full zone then end up having to buff it after it goes live cause it's too easy.
Too easy for who? This is the Mechanon problem; launch event, experienced/high-power players zoom in, and zerg it. Devs increase difficulty. Now it becomes a challenge for players with organised groups, tactics, skills, builds. Tick box. Except.... it becomes a one-zone game. People try and launch a second zone but their possiblity of success is low, so they either give up or try and jump into zone one, where they might be able to ride on the coat tails of others. Really, there needs to be some kind of adaptive measure in the event - a high power, high reward instance, a low danger, lower reward instance to that people get to choose what to play, what level of reward they want or, at the most basic level, can get involved without getting mashed.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
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However, that right there is one of the major differences between Blizzard and Cryptic Dev teams... Blizzard floats their deparments between games as needed, while Cryptic devotes teams to each game with no departments that float between.
Surely no one is making such an argument???!!!
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As far as skeleton, 12 to 15 is about right, if you call that a skeleton crew, as in general you don't need that many devs to maintain an MMO with 7 to 10 being more believable for a skeleton crew. Most of them are shifted to new projects or the next expansion this is a fact of development in itself. You also seem to be under some baffling ideology and don't understand how most development departments work in general. Cryptic would undoubtedly have an art department, but they are working on all the projects at Cryptic. They would have engineers, but again working on all departments at Cryptic. Realistically, CO probably only has 3 to 5 full time devs. Hell I can tell you now that their lead dev is lead over multiple projects, aka not full time on CO. How do I know this? Because he puts his name on Neverwinter to.
Again, dev time has to be rationed and based on how much the project makes. And people expecting huge content updates don't understand that Champions doesn't get that kind of budget because it doesn't pull in that much money. Unless they can justify the cost they aren't going to get a huge number of art devs to make swaths of new content or programmers to remake certain areas of code or anything for Champions. Just the reality there. And you continue to put your foot in your mouth, not understanding how much of a difference having resources actually makes. Majority of the devs that worked on Legion were actually new hires and inexperienced, for the record. Considering how many big names quit Blizzard just recently. But then again, it's obvious you've never played WoW before if you believe Blizzard has never made mistakes or still isn't making mistakes or even repeating the same mistakes from before.
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And me going out of my way to misrepresent facts? Not a chance, I have not misrepresented anything.
Lemme guess... FOO strategies? ~.^
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And yes, you have misrepresented the facts. You seem to instill that when people say full time devs that the entire cryptic team involves things. You seem to have little understanding of actual reality when people say full time devs they mean devs devoted to only this product. I would wager CO has 3 major full time devs. The rest tend to be floaters, and are rationed off basically based on resources and requirements needed.
You seem to assume that what Blizzard says, which makes remarkably more money, some how constitutes how all development houses actually work which is just not even true. If we were to go down to bare basics, after launch, a full team would only need to be comprised of a programmer, an artist, an animator, a sound designer and a team leader, and in most cases tend to float around. That would essentially be a skeleton crew and at that point several of those posts can be carried by one person, and being a developer sometimes you tend to wear multiple hats.
In WoW's case, I would not doubt their idea of a skeleton crew constitutes ten to fifteen developers. But they can actually afford that and they still get a big enough income to WoW to afford such things.
In Cryptic's stance however, many of the departments tend to overlap for multiple projects and time that can be spent on a project is denoted by how much income said project makes as well as the need of said project. While Cryptic might have an art department I am sure said art department covers all of Cryptic's games, not just Champions, or STO or Neverwinter. Same with animation. The only full time developers Champions probably has at this moment are scripters and programmers. So taking all that into consideration, the number of full time devs on Champions is undoubtedly less than ten, and most likely hovering between 3 to 7, in a best case scenario.
Or in short, Cryptic isn't going to write checks for a game that has a provable track record of being unable to pay for updates each time it makes such a huge investment. While Champions continues to make enough for what it currently gets, people wanting more have to come to terms either people are going to have to start actually buying more, or getting more people to play the game, or the huge updates are going to be rare, if ever happen, because of lack of budget to off set the risk of such an investment. And it would be a huge risk since Champions is now going on 8 years old.
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My super cool CC build and how to use it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.