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Should hybrids/tuff dps have more of a role at cosmics?

spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
Currently if all the tank roles are filled and you show up as a tank, or a tanky hybrid, or a tuff dps you're basically just "making the whole thing take longer" or "making us fail checks". That's kinda lame and kind of a bummer to people who never seem to be able to fill those tank roles but don't want to see their tuffness going to waste. So, should there be something for them to do?

On the other hand, sometimes we're struggling to find a tank, any tank at all, just to get the cosmic started so making a fight require even more tanks could slow things down. However, if it was known that there was more tanky stuff to do then people might be more willing to show up as their tanky characters. Lots of maybes.

My obvious idea is: adds.

- Teliosaurus roars and calls in a swarm of tough very dangerous raptors that will shred the dps. The tanks on mom and dino can't get them cause they have to stay put so we need some tuff heroes to round them up. The raptors have a stacking buff that makes them more and more deadly, so we have to nuke them down before they carve even the tuff heroes to pieces. They don't actually have that many hit points so it doesn't take too long.
- Ape roars and calls down several glowing hot molten rocks. These rocks have a damage reflect aura which means squishy dps will have a hard time dealing with them, but tuff heroes will be able to lay into them and smash them before they, you guessed it, blow up and kill everybody! ( or just give everyone a nasty debuff that will make ape's next big aoe kill them )
- Eido's portals stay open permanently at some point in the fight.
- Kiga says "I" and summons a number of kamikaze ice demons. They hit pretty hard, and after a bit they explode dealing massive damage around themselves. We need tuff heroes to aggro them and then lead them away from the group so they can explode safely.


Obviously all these ideas have their own issues that the fight would need to be adjusted around ( for example the ape one would make it so we would only want tuff dps at ape, so the fight would need to be adjusted to make squishy dps still desired ) but that's more of a "deal with it later" thing. Also as I mentioned before this would add more required roles to fights and potentially more time spent searching for those roles, as well as more time spent explaining things to people.



The main question here is should cosmics be changed so that tuff heroes other than the 1-3 main tanks can feel useful? also, some ideas on additions that could achieve this.
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Comments

  • championshewolfchampionshewolf Posts: 4,375 Arc User
    edited September 2017
    The role restriction isn't really game enforced it is player enforced, and this is something of a discussion that should be had with them. And that problem is a double edged sword. Most that come in hybrid role tend to do very little to meet the basics of their roles potential, let alone the maximum, which further increases the stereotype that hybrids are useless. Add into that facet that ones with support passives tend to not even focus on those passives thus disrupt the more useful passives, such as AoPM and such, which requires presence to make them useful to anyone but themselves, and you just got a hot mess with how the system works.

    It also doesn't help that many of them always refuse to take help or advice to improve themselves. Again a double edged sword.
    Post edited by championshewolf on
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  • servantrulesservantrules Posts: 312 Arc User
    To a certain extent, I agree some new additions to the cosmic (or an entirely new cosmic... c'mon Megalodon) fights could keep things fresh. However, I'm not entirely sure it should be skewed to the "tuff" hybrids just to have them do something other than be average, rather than shine in these fights.

    On that note, I agree with championshewolf, it's more a concern with many hybrid players not being able to adapt (which is odd, given the nature). My main is a hybrid, but it tanks and DPS's well enough by switching roles and passives on the fly, whichever is needed. That said, it took a while to get everything right, and it can't be the best (dedicated Tanks and DPS will outperform me pound for pound). But that's the tradeoff. Great at both, but not the best.
  • nacito#6758 nacito Posts: 969 Arc User
    I always saw hybrids for kind of like support like role, helping specifically a designed role to extend their job, I can see this with some of the hybrid ATs, they look like all have something thought behind to make them useful in team content, which is kind of cool, like every hybrid AT has like his own meta and ways to help a raid​​
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  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    Heals isn't a role, support is, and support is the buff role, in addition to heals, crowd control, and debuffing. Splitting it off into nice neat little "do this and nothing else" roles sounds, to be frank, really boring.

    Anyways, back to the topic :D
  • aesicaaesica Posts: 2,537 Arc User
    spinnytop wrote: »
    - Ape roars and calls down several glowing hot molten rocks. These rocks have a damage reflect aura which means squishy dps will have a hard time dealing with them, but tuff heroes will be able to lay into them and smash them before they, you guessed it, blow up and kill everybody! ( or just give everyone a nasty debuff that will make ape's next big aoe kill them )
    - Eido's portals stay open permanently at some point in the fight.
    - Kiga says "I" and summons a number of kamikaze ice demons. They hit pretty hard, and after a bit they explode dealing massive damage around themselves. We need tuff heroes to aggro them and then lead them away from the group so they can explode safely.
    While I appreciate what you're trying to do, the more roles you add, the harder it can be to assemble an acceptable group in a game with a small population like this one. Maybe instead of trying to carve out a niche for these "tuff" characters, maybe we should try to close the gap a bit between hybrid and dedicated damage.

    *Queue the freakout*

    Okay, now with that out of the way, consider these damage numbers on a junk character of mine in the powerhouse using an offensive passive and a ranged damage power:

    No Role Bonus: 2,917 :: 100% (using melee role)
    Hybrid Bonus: 3,062 :: 105%
    Ranged Bonus: 3,646 :: 125%

    Now I know the hybrid bonus is a little weird because it's based on superstats rather than set values, like ranged and melee's 125%. This character is a test character using full armadillo gear, so testing it on a better-geared character yielded about 109%. Still pretty lousy. The question that's open for debate is where should this bonus sit? 115%? 120%? Obviously no higher than that. Either way, lifting up hybrid damage would be one way to make tougher characters less of a hindrance to group content. Dedicated damage would still have the upper hand at 125%

    (Of course, all this is operating on the assumption that these tougher characters in question are hybrids, as they're traditionally tougher at the cost of damage output.)​​
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  • avianosavianos Posts: 6,021 Arc User
    edited September 2017
    spinnytop wrote: »
    My obvious idea is: adds.
    I'm sorry but this really isn't going to work, it would make the fights more annoying if anything and more laggy
    The role restriction isn't really game enforced it is player enforced, and this is something of a discussion that should be had with them. And that problem is a double edged sword. Most that come in hybrid role tend to do very little to meet the basics of their roles potential, let alone the maximum, which further increases the stereotype that hybrids are useless. Add into that facet that ones with support passives tend to not even focus on those passives thus disrupt the more useful passives, such as AoPM and such, which requires presence to make them useful to anyone but themselves, and you just got a hot mess with how the system works.

    It also doesn't help that many of them always refuse to take help or advice to improve themselves. Again a double edged sword.
    pretty much this​​
    Post edited by avianos on
    POWERFRAME REVAMPS, NEW POWERS and BUG FIXES > Recycled Content and Events and even costumes at this point Introvert guy who use CO to make his characters playable and get experimental with Viable FF Theme builds! Running out of Unique FF builds due to the lack of updates and synergiesPlaying since 1 February 2011 98+ Characters (7 ATs, 91 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User

    The role restriction isn't really game enforced it is player enforced.

    This is not entirely true. The basic situation is that you don't want (major) wasted capabilities in a fight, and a defensive passive on a character who isn't taking damage is wasted capability, and if you're splitting your abilities between multiple roles, whichever you aren't doing at any given time is wasted.

    However, I'm not sure how you design your fights around that. You can put minimum tank thresholds on a fight (e.g. Rampage Gravitar, where if you can't take 8-10k to the face you'll be decorating the ground) but that just excludes a different set of characters. You can design a fight to require more tanks, but then it's impossible if you don't have those tanks.

    The other half of this, though, is that the people who are showing up as hybrids, or as tanks who don't tank, are people who are unwilling to adapt their play to the needs of the fight. It is not likely that changing the fights will make them suddenly willing.
  • more adds = more effects going off = more chances for the game to crash just as a cosmic goes down for one or more people, screwing them out of their rewards​​
    #LegalizeAwoo
  • roughbearmattachroughbearmattach Posts: 4,784 Arc User
    I think the main issue is simply AoPM.

    Many folks love this passive, since it is super useful for going solo. It was also useful in TA, with a very tough DPS being useful (taking pressure off the healer). Most of my toons used to use it, and I had to retcon out of it for all my main characters to show up at Cosmics. Why? As SheWolf pointed out, the way auras work just makes a non-Presence, hybrid-use AoPM a liability to most groups.

    Until a hybrid passive that is a personal-only AoPM is made, I don't think this is gonna work.

    P.S. I would love to see a personal-only AoPM like passive in game.
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  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    gradii said:

    How about having more roles than just "Heals" "Tank" and "DPS" why isnt "Buff" ever powerful enough to be a role?​​

    Because the way buffs work in CO, you can do them along with being a healer. Any one of the offensive support auras (AoAC, AoED, AoPM) is an enormous team bonus (far outweighing one more dps), but they're mostly passive, and if you've got 600-800 Pre and are in support role, you might as well heal.

    I think the main issue is simply AoPM.

    I don't really. The most popular passives for hybrid users are probably Regeneration, Invulnerability, and then AoPM, probably because the first two passives utterly trivialize pre-endgame content.
  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    edited September 2017
    Actually, here's a really simple way to make 'tough dps' a more reasonable option. Change certain of the 'blocking mandatory' attacks into 'blocking needed if not tough'. For example, the dino's DoT is 6 tics of 20% of health, irresistible, canceled with a properly timed block, which basically kills anyone who doesn't have direct healer attention unless you tap block at the right time. If it was instead 6 tics of 3k damage (normal), not canceled by blocking, most builds could block their way through it, and tougher builds could just keep attacking.
  • 3K before or after resists and presumably with healer assistance? because being able to survive that without outside help would require above 18K HP...and that's generally tank level, not hybrid​​
    #LegalizeAwoo
  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User

    3K before or after resists and presumably with healer assistance? because being able to survive that without outside help would require above 18K HP...and that's generally tank level, not hybrid​​

    Before resists. Any defensive passive will withstand that handily unless you have no con.
  • omnilord#8416 omnilord Posts: 348 Arc User
    Nope. Nuh-uh. No. Negative. NOOOOOOOOO!!!

    Giving these assholes their own mobs is a horrible idea.

    Besides Kiga and Ape the other two fights are enough of a pile of ****. I'd go into reasons why, but I've been there before and don't need to do it again. My Hybrid can tank it's way through most alerts if a dedicated tank isn't there, is able to ignore Kiga's storms (which I know is largely thanks to being buffed by support and healer toons), and often places high enough on the scoreboard with the need to scroll down. Whatever the value at the end, that's good enough for me.

    The Cosmics DO NOT NEED ANYTHING ADDED TO THEM. Barring something like an environmental device that provides a temporary massive HoT to those present in the Team-Up, you know, so healers can have maybe five seconds without trying to provide a constant stream heals to 20 people or more.

    I mean, I've already completely stopped going to the dino fights because the bubble spam is utterly ridiculous. It would be different if it was -possible- to lure the baby away so melee toons only had to worry about the bubbles from mama-dino. Often though even my ranged toons fall within both sets of bubbles.

    Really the intricacies of these raids should involve changing tactics, not retconning characters.

    In short, just because you're bored with them doesn't mean it's time to make these things EVEN MORE difficult. It would be the Eido revamp all over again. Which I've just started to try and go when I see the callout because I find the current strategy effective especially with participating in it.
  • hyenagenki#9321 hyenagenki Posts: 40 Arc User
    edited July 2022
    Cosmics are fine as they are, unless you want ADHD fest simulator.
    Post edited by hyenagenki#9321 on
  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    avianos said:


    pretty much this​​

    So then if it's only player-enforced, lets have a hybrid-only Dino and Eido owo
  • championshewolfchampionshewolf Posts: 4,375 Arc User
    edited September 2017
    spinnytop said:

    avianos said:


    pretty much this​​

    So then if it's only player-enforced, lets have a hybrid-only Dino and Eido owo
    That would be interesting. I think the issue is that hybrids for the most part always pick a defensive passive or AoPM. AoPM would not be as bad if they would actually devote points to presence, but it just ends up making everyone else weaker as a result, and the only other solution would be to remove the aura effect from the aura. The others, just picking a defensive passive, just end up being a mildly stronger (damage wise but weaker defense realistically) tank rarely being able to match the power and damage they could do in a hybrid role. Again a double edged sword, and many who play the hybrid role (that aren't forced into it because of being an AT that is) essentially want their cake and eat it to with hybrid and it just ends up being mediocre across the board.
    Post edited by championshewolf on
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  • kamokamikamokami Posts: 1,633 Arc User
    edited September 2017
    I don't think the issue is about Hybrids vs Not Hybrids. Right now, with the exception of Eido, most Cosmics are not much of a challenge and more of a GCR farm, in which case it's not vital to bring your absolute best and it's more about just not dragging the group down. And while Hybrids are not the absolute best for anything, they are capable of contributing positively...if the players know what they're doing.

    We've had plenty of times where we needed tanks at Dino and were standing around with people who were in tank role with def passives but were unwilling to tank. The issue is more to do with people showing up and expecting others to carry them. It's the "I need GCR and even though you need it too, I won't be helpful while hoping that you and others will be" mentality. I don't think it's possible to firmly fix this issue in open world content as there will always be unhelpful people that drag others down.

    Willfully unhelpful people are not going to be liked...anywhere. Unfortunately, the Hybrid role icon has become an easy lazy way to quickly identify them. I'd urge some restraint here. It'd be best to judge people's performance by looking at parses of fights to determine their degree of helpfulness.

    Luckily, many people actually want to be helpful as long as they have information, a low-pressure environment in which to make mistakes to learn via experience, and some incentive to take the first step.

    The entitled group that expects others to procure their gcr for them and then whines about the game when it doesn't happen is relatively small.
    spinnytop said:

    My obvious idea is: adds.

    I like this idea a lot. I think the fights have been an easy farm for a very long time and could use an update with a fresh challenge. Giving offtanks a more active role and introducing more movement to the fights via more mobs seems like a good idea. Once they are actually challenging again then it will be vital to bring, not just who can pass the lowest bar of helpfulness, but your actual best to the fight. The idea will also, hopefully, reduce the easy 100% win ratios of these fights and the entitled attitudes that accompany such win ratios.
  • avianosavianos Posts: 6,021 Arc User
    edited September 2017
    kamokami wrote: »
    I like this idea a lot. I think the fights have been an easy farm for a very long time and could use an update with a fresh challenge.

    Instead of recycling cosmics over and over and over again to the death, how about NEW CONTENT?


    You cannot keep the game alive with the same 4 cosmics forever (Grond and Megalodon say hi along with new epic lairs)
    People ask for more than just open world bosses​​
    POWERFRAME REVAMPS, NEW POWERS and BUG FIXES > Recycled Content and Events and even costumes at this point Introvert guy who use CO to make his characters playable and get experimental with Viable FF Theme builds! Running out of Unique FF builds due to the lack of updates and synergiesPlaying since 1 February 2011 98+ Characters (7 ATs, 91 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    edited September 2017
    avianos said:


    Instead of recycling cosmics over and over and over again to the death, how about NEW CONTENT?

    Yeah cause the last time they added a new more challenging open world boss people were instantly excited and started doing it instead of the regular three cosmics o3o

    Also epic lairs are super popular right? Let's have some more of those for people to not run u3u
  • avianosavianos Posts: 6,021 Arc User
    edited September 2017
    spinnytop wrote: »
    Yeah cause the last time they added a new more challenging open world boss people were instantly excited and started doing it instead of the regular three cosmics o3o
    It's lazy design, Cosmics are already perfect right now, you cannot recycle them forever, CO's content is already stale (exluding events and lockboxes)

    add new cosmics if you want to with new challenges
    spinnytop wrote: »
    Also epic lairs are super popular right? Let's have some more of those for people to not run u3u
    Their loss for being Snobs against TA, refusing to learn the basic strategies and thinking it's only a "Buddy fight" lair for only Cool kids onion-24.gif

    also their lose for not having enviromental awareness onion-24.gif

    have a happy Onion​​
    POWERFRAME REVAMPS, NEW POWERS and BUG FIXES > Recycled Content and Events and even costumes at this point Introvert guy who use CO to make his characters playable and get experimental with Viable FF Theme builds! Running out of Unique FF builds due to the lack of updates and synergiesPlaying since 1 February 2011 98+ Characters (7 ATs, 91 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    kamokami said:

    Unfortunately, the Hybrid role icon has become an easy lazy way to quickly identify them.

    Tank role in among the dps is a far better indicator of being somewhere between horribly useless and actively contributing to failure.
  • aesicaaesica Posts: 2,537 Arc User
    spinnytop wrote: »
    Yeah cause the last time they added a new more challenging open world boss people were instantly excited and started doing it instead of the regular three cosmics o3o

    Also epic lairs are super popular right? Let's have some more of those for people to not run u3u
    That's because...well I'll just use this quote to answer it:
    kamokami wrote: »
    Right now, with the exception of Eido, most Cosmics are not much of a challenge and more of a GCR farm
    At the very least, I'd say this problem is twofold:

    1) Why should anyone bother with repeated wipes and failures against the harder content when they can just hop on the gravy train and get the same rewards from the easier content?

    2) While people love to say they want harder and harder stuff, the fact that they're shunning TA and Eido seems to indicate otherwise. The sooner the bulk of the playerbase can come to terms with the fact that "increasingly difficult content" isn't as good for the game nor as interesting to the majority of the playerbase as "new, interesting content with regulard, high-quality events," the better off this game will be.​​
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  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    edited September 2017
    For someone who tries to act like a game design expert you sure don't understand basic stuff like interest curves. Increasingly challenging content is used in nearly every game ever for a reason. It's working in CO as well, just very slowly due to how soft the population gets from the extremely easy pre-endgame content. See what needs to happen is that the pre-endgame actually becomes more challenging, so it has a more normal difficulty curve. People think our end game is actually hard because they're comparing it to the stuff they were doing one level ago.

    Also saying TA is harder than cosmics... lol. TA bridges the gap between pre-endgame content and cosmics. It even has a mini version of Dino in there for people to train with. With literally a nerfed version of a cosmic in TA, I'm not sure how anyone could say TA is "the harder stuff".

    Also, the people who say they want harder and harder stuff are the ones running Eido and TA... and some other people who didn't even say that. I know you got your hopes up just now when I said "those contents are so unpoplar!" but fact is people do them more and more over time. They're gaining momentum, not losing it - which means they're good for the game. We just don't need any new ones cause people are still growing into what we have. ;)
  • kamokamikamokami Posts: 1,633 Arc User
    edited September 2017
    I recall that when the revamp happened the Cosmics were explicitly said to intentionally be very very challenging. Maybe devs minds have changed on that or maybe they have not had the time. But if neither of that is the case then I expect they'll be updated to be more difficult regardless of what else is being planned for release.

    As for Eido, the only difficult part left to overcome is organizing. Just to make sure, I tracked us having 23 wins over 14 days. All the runs were announced. We even had 2 weekends with 7 wins. This was about a month ago. Needing to organize and having people who want to do it is ultimately the biggest barrier.

    It's likely the same reason why TA, and any other instanced lair, is less popular than the 3 Cosmics.
  • kaiserin#0958 kaiserin Posts: 3,078 Cryptic Developer
    I'll pop in and verify this: Cosmics are intended to be challenging, and (barring time) will be updated and tweaked to retain that challenge. Right now we haven't had the time needed to go over them and give them the updates they need, but they haven't been forgotten.​​
  • avianosavianos Posts: 6,021 Arc User
    Here is an Idea
    How about creating NEW content instead of recycling existing one over and over again?​​
    POWERFRAME REVAMPS, NEW POWERS and BUG FIXES > Recycled Content and Events and even costumes at this point Introvert guy who use CO to make his characters playable and get experimental with Viable FF Theme builds! Running out of Unique FF builds due to the lack of updates and synergiesPlaying since 1 February 2011 98+ Characters (7 ATs, 91 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
  • kamokamikamokami Posts: 1,633 Arc User
    avianos said:

    Have you tried creating NEW Content instead of recycling existing one?​​

    Since they have not had time to go update them since revamp, I imagine that time has been taken up by the new content they've released over the past year+.
  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    edited September 2017
    avianos said:

    Here is an Idea

    How about creating NEW content instead of recycling existing one over and over again?​​

    You don't start building a new house until you made sure the one you're working on now is built right. Fact is our playerbase was so weak when Cosmics were first updated that it was very difficult to tell just what the long term "right strength" for cosmics was going to be. As time has gone on we've continually proven that cosmics were still not strong enough to face up to the community's potential. Someone once told me "As a dev you make an encounter that you're pretty sure is impossible, and then players have it on farm two weeks later". That's what's been happening here. The cosmic content may be new, but it's not finished yet and it still needs to be adjusted - they can't just keep expanding the game's content if what's here now isn't right. Just be happy we got a really long grace period where we were allowed to farm them because the devs underestimated us and were too busy to keep up with our growing potential.

    Oh and like Vixy pointed out they have been adding new content o3o
  • aesicaaesica Posts: 2,537 Arc User
    spinnytop wrote: »
    For someone who tries to act like a game design expert you sure don't understand basic stuff like interest curves.
    You know, that's kinda why I've been saying all along (not just in this topic) that things like TA need multiple difficulties. It's my hope that any future instanced content comes in multiple difficulties for this. Exact. Reason. :)
    spinnytop wrote: »
    Also saying TA is harder than cosmics... lol. TA bridges the gap between pre-endgame content and cosmics. It even has a mini version of Dino in there for people to train with. With literally a nerfed version of a cosmic in TA, I'm not sure how anyone could say TA is "the harder stuff".
    It doesn't matter how hard or easy you, being someone familiar with it, thinks or claims it is. What matters is the general perception of it seems to be "out of reach, not gonna bother." Now imagine TA with an easier version in the custom alert rotation, with its difficulty being tuned to be roughly in line with other custom alerts. People would be nudged into giving it a try when it's up as the weekly, and since custom alerts are pretty easy, they'd get familiar with it there. Then, they'd be far more inclined to try the version we have now, would they not? The perceived barrier to entry would seem a lot less intimidating, which is something I suspect is holding a lot of people back.​​
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  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    spinnytop said:

    Also saying TA is harder than cosmics... lol.

    Eh...that depends on who you are. The skill required to show up and shoot Kigatilik in the back is pretty low; Gravitar, Medusa, and Teleios all require more from the dps than that.
  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User


    Eh...that depends on who you are. The skill required to show up and shoot Kigatilik in the back is pretty low; Gravitar, Medusa, and Teleios all require more from the dps than that.

    TA requires less organization, less specialization, and any "emergency situations" are going to be much more forgiving than at a cosmic. For example in TA if the tank dies, recovering isn't a big deal. At Kiga when the tank dies, mass death, full wipe likely.
  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    edited September 2017
    aesica said:


    You know, that's kinda why I've been saying all along (not just in this topic) that things like TA need multiple difficulties. It's my hope that any future instanced content comes in multiple difficulties for this. Exact. Reason. :)
    ​​

    TA is already easy enough. If what you want is higher difficulty levels that make it harder than it is now, sure let's talk about that.
    aesica said:

    It doesn't matter how hard or easy you, being someone familiar with it, thinks or claims it is.

    "People who have a lot of experience with something don't know a lot about it and can't make accurate observations." Solid logic.

    The perceived barrier to entry is just that, perceived and not real. But don't worry me and many others are actually in game breaking down those false perceptions. It's amazing how many people are unimpressed with TA's huge difficulty once they've actually run it. :D
  • aesicaaesica Posts: 2,537 Arc User
    spinnytop wrote: »
    If that's the reason then why does your plan have nothing to do with it?
    If you can't see how it relates, then I'm not sure what else can be done to help you out. Sorry. :(
    spinnytop wrote: »
    "People who have a lot of experience with something don't know a lot about it and can't make accurate observations." Solid logic.

    The perceived barrier to entry is just that, perceived and not real. But don't worry me and many others are actually in game breaking down those false perceptions. It's amazing how many people are unimpressed with TA's huge difficulty once they've actually run it. :D
    Completely missed the point. Oh well, I tried.​​
    (Hopefully) Useful CO Resources: HeroCreator (character planner), Cosmic Timers/Alert Checklist, Blood Moon Map, Anniversary Cat Map, and more (eventually, anyway).
  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    aesica said:


    If you can't see how it relates, then I'm not sure what else can be done to help you out. Sorry. :(
    ​​

    Think of a solution that actually relates. Making it so people will just always farm the place on the lowest difficulty doesn't solve the interest curve issue. Sorry. :(
    aesica said:


    Completely missed the point. Oh well, I tried.​​

    You missed the point. Not surprising since you don't actually appear to play any of the content you want to discuss.
  • lezard21lezard21 Posts: 1,510 Arc User
    edited September 2017
    Ok, attempt numero dos since my first reply got deleted o3o Let's try to make this reply meet the Minimum Standard for Political Correctness and Topic Contribution.

    @Foxiandfriends's OP
    While I'm all in favor of more mechanics for Cosmics to make them less monotonous and more challenging, no matter what mechanic is proposed it will not appease Hybrid players' complains, while in turn end up pissing off the rest of the community who thinks the game has become too tryhard.

    The reason why I say this is because I haven't seen a single Hybrid player complaining that Hybrids don't have anything to do in Cosmic fights, but rather, the complain is that they cannot do the current things specialized roles like Tanks or DPS can do as well as they can. The multiple complains in the Players Wanting New Content thread have players complaining that people would rather have a Tank Role character doing the tanking instead of a Hybrid in defensive Passive, or a DPS role with a DPS passive for checks in Dino than a Hybrid with a DPS passive. It is not a problem with how the fights unveil, but rather a problem with what the players themselves want out of their Hybrid character.

    Adding adds to the fight will not resolve this. Eventually the preffered method will boil down to an actual dedicated offtank pulling said add away while a group of DPS/Hybrids take it down.

    And because of that, no matter what new mechanic or aspect you introduce to a fight, the complain will remain because what this people want is to be able to tank as well as a dedicated Tank while dealing more damage than a dedicated DPS while in Hybrid role, and that is not going to happen because it's a logical failure.
  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    edited September 2017
    Well no cause there will be significant portions of the fight with no adds to tank, and during those times the hybrid can contribute more dps than a dedicated tank would ~3~
    lezard21 said:

    And because of that, no matter what new mechanic or aspect you introduce to a fight, the complain will remain because what this people want is to be able to tank as well as a dedicated Tank while dealing more damage than a dedicated DPS while in Hybrid role, and that is not going to happen because it's a logical failure.

    while I'm sure that's what some people want, I doubt it's what all hybrids want. what I think many of them want is for their hybrid nature to be recognized as useful, rather than just a worse version of a more specialized role. that's sure what I would like.

    while a tank could fill the role, I'd like there to be situations where we would rather have a hybrid fill it.
  • aesicaaesica Posts: 2,537 Arc User
    spinnytop wrote: »
    Think of a solution that actually relates. Making it so people will just always farm the place on the lowest difficulty doesn't solve the interest curve issue.
    Multiple difficulties seems to work fine for STO. Some people do normal, especially at first. Then most people move to advanced as they get more comfortable with the content, and some of them move to elite to maximize the challenge. The harder the difficulty, the more rewards so it's obviously best to farm the most difficult one you can reasonably do. Most people in STO farm advanced due to better rewards than normal. So much for your theory of everyone just farming the lowest difficulty, I'd say. ;)

    CO would be great with just 2 different difficulties for content like TA. Really not sure why you're so set against something like that. Maybe you just don't understand something about it, or how it would work?​​
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  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    edited September 2017
    aesica said:


    Multiple difficulties seems to work fine for STO. Some people do normal, especially at first. Then most people move to advanced as they get more comfortable with the content, and some of them move to elite to maximize the challenge. The harder the difficulty, the more rewards so it's obviously best to farm the most difficult one you can reasonably do. Most people in STO farm advanced due to better rewards than normal. So much for your theory of everyone just farming the lowest difficulty, I'd say. ;)



    CO would be great with just 2 different difficulties for content like TA. Really not sure why you're so set against something like that. Maybe you just don't understand something about it, or how it would work?​​

    Well as long as what you're advocating is higher difficulties that make the lair more difficult than it is now, I'm on board. All those people you're talking about who're scared to even step foot in the place on the current difficulty will probably complain tho.
  • aesicaaesica Posts: 2,537 Arc User
    spinnytop wrote: »
    Well as long as what you're advocating is higher difficulties that make the lair more difficult than it is now, I'm on board. All those people you're talking about who're scared to even step foot in the place on the current difficulty will probably complain tho.
    Yup. When you have multiple difficulties, not only does it offer a training wheels difficulty for people to get familiar with the content, it also lets the developers go all-out with tough stuff for the hardest setting. The multiple difficulties also comes with another bonus--people who aren't just aren't cut out for anything else will likely stay there, thus reducing the number of leechers and/or players who might muck up the run for everyone else.

    Assuming the rewards for the easy setting aren't completely garbage, that is. Nobody wants to run content that isn't at least somewhat worth their time.​​
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  • roughbearmattachroughbearmattach Posts: 4,784 Arc User
    TA is actually a great place for hybrids. Some of the early runs I was on would have two hybrids, who could switch between healing and DPS, or healing and off-tanking.

    Sooooo--the next lair (assuming we get another lair pass) could be a challenge where hybrids can shine.
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  • omnilord#8416 omnilord Posts: 348 Arc User
    Cosmics. Don't. Need. To. Be. Changed. Again.
  • championshewolfchampionshewolf Posts: 4,375 Arc User
    Despite certain variants of speculations and a little bit of misinformation, part of the problem with the current end game content has nothing to do with construction of the fights or punishing attacks. If you feel its punishing then that signifies a problem on your end as a result of just not being as good as you think you are.

    The real problem stems that the game, as a whole, needs a head to toe make over. A new tutorial, a new starter experience, one that is more engaging, more emphasis on team play through the leveling process, more dungeons to encourage said teaming, better loot protocols, a more involved gearing system besides mod swapping, and a stat system that is easy to understand. The game itself doesn't prepare people for the end game, even the alerts are too damn easy to get through for a soloist, and only the greenest of the green (aka to MMOs in general) would think alerts are hard or even offer decent challenge.

    To anyone who has had raid experience before this game, from WOW or other games, the cosmic battles are fairly standard, and follow the most simple form. It's a good introduction in a game that has practically no dungeon and group experience, with Shadow Destroyer offering a nice upgrade in said challenge and difficulty with the standard raid tropes of DPS and heal checks. But that's the problem, it's an experience that comes at the end of the game that up until that point the rest of the game has not taught anyone.

    If the alert system was dumped or modified that it wasn't the bulk of XP but gave an XP boost only for normal leveling and the leveling experience was improved with adequate challenges leading up to the end game, things would be improved. A dungeon per neighborhood would go a long way with a loot system that gave proper gear instead of GCR/SCR. That is the draw of dungeons is the quest for loot in other games and since costumes are account wide, the costume hunt on repeat has to be painfully thin otherwise costumes, to be of value and rewarding have to be made per character, and let's face it, most people in this game are too self entitled to let that happened. I mean even back when they might have been considered challenging, CO had a painful thin number of actual dungeons for grouping purposes (Doctor Destroyer's Robot Factory, Necrull's Lair, Doctor Mureau's Lab, VIPER Nest, Mandragalore and Andrithal with NemCon and Therakiel's Temple having been added later but in dire need of renovation at this point). The ironic part is there is a lot more places that could have been dungeons and offered more challenges for groups as well as loot (Purple Gang Hideout, ARGENT HQ or PSI HQ, Stronghold Prison, Eclipse's Lair, and many others). Just a lot of missed opportunities there.

    And again, the stat system is a convoluted mess. Even to a veteran player it still possesses a lot of obtuseness it doesn't need. A lot of stats are superfluous or outright useless, having no reason to have been made core stats to begin with (endurance and recovery) with others barely serving a function. Honestly,t his whole system needs a do over in this case, but I would outline that in another post than here.

    Of course, at this point if a ground up rebuild is required you might as well just put resources towards creating Champions Online 2 or at least a brand new Champions game.
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  • avianosavianos Posts: 6,021 Arc User
    edited September 2017
    The only reason I can see Cosmics getting STRONKER is because the revamping of more and more powerframes opened the gates for more DPS builds and as part of the balance cosmics will change to reflect that
    The cosmic fights didn't become easier but the players became more experienced and strategic

    but i STILL find it lazy design constantly recycling 3-4 cosmics over and over and over again

    You know what's better than Hybrids?
    Dual Passives character who can switch from DPS to TANK when needed
    Those are the True MVPs

    oh and you have too much hope that hybrids want to help, i see most people joining cosmics just to get carried by others without trying to improve and contribute

    also summoning more entities in Dino fight will cause the old invisible dino bug to happen again

    Dear Lord, Alert update and the constant easy difficulty made everyone so soft
    but again this is design flaw, the game isn't preparing you for the difficulty swift of endgame
    and the thing I keep hearing people say since i joined is that "The game is too easy"
    spinnytop wrote: »
    Oh and like Vixy pointed out they have been adding new content o3o
    tumblr_oji598zNrc1r1ult6o1_500.gif
    Endless lockboxes and Event spam with no substance to the game's plot & lore​​
    POWERFRAME REVAMPS, NEW POWERS and BUG FIXES > Recycled Content and Events and even costumes at this point Introvert guy who use CO to make his characters playable and get experimental with Viable FF Theme builds! Running out of Unique FF builds due to the lack of updates and synergiesPlaying since 1 February 2011 98+ Characters (7 ATs, 91 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
  • spinnytop said:


    Should hybrids/tuff dps have more of a role at cosmics?

    Yes, duh?. A game should design content on existing character classes/types/roles.
    It doesn't go over well in when class is never picked cause of , and I don't think I've seen any where class X is excluded.
    Champions is 8 years old, and well .. IMO has to live it the mess it made and design accordingly. Not just most of the time, but all content, even Eldy.

    Plus champions is a free form game, trinity play is going to be an issue, it's not like people didn't point that out.

    That said like @championshewolf said it's not as bad as players think. Extra tanks have found a side place at Kiga, and Q, Dps is usually not an issue until no one can reach the tomb. But ...

    Eldy seems to be under tanked (1 mega-uber tank) with the current dps requirement, there seems to be a large problem here with any extra non-dps player. Challenge seems to have over taken design.

    Dino also seems to be a big issue, tanks get cheated out of rewards, people complain about average dps (parser output) and ignore blast power (spike dps). Something if hybrids (and even extra tanks) aren't capable of it should be made available. Side note: Honestly I find the lack of good powers in Vixy's thread is just depressing.

    (Side Rant) Added to that, Dino fails to obey the set in game rules. Bubbles/Boom/Foom/WireFrames should mean Block or Flee. Period. End of story. (Also warnings need to be over indicated in size not undersized). Not Block .. except this one time just at Dino when it Booms but *doesn't* do that thing .. and oh baby's bubbles should be ignored just in that specific time .. except when they don't cause they were technically earlier then that other thing.
    spinnytop said:


    On the other hand, sometimes we're struggling to find a tank, any tank at all, just to get the cosmic started so making a fight require even more tanks could slow things down. However, if it was known that there was more tanky stuff to do then people might be more willing to show up as their tanky characters. Lots of maybes.

    I'll say it, I'd make a tank (or tuff hybrid-with-tank-passive), and have tanked here and in other games. Big problem is, cosmic tanking sucks for me here. I"m getting on in years and reflex/rhythm games are a no go, and with all the blocking the system is just not engaging for me. The option of creating an in-game bind that hits then blocks for me just feels like cheating, as does just blocking.

    So until we get passed the one-shot every hit style boss you have one less tank.

    FWIF Tanking the current Destroids where I could take a hit was much more engaging. I'll admit it too easy when everything things is perfect, but the balance between 'real tough tank' vs 'ok tank with ok healer' vs "?tank? with godly healer" was much better, and also a lot more balanced between being dps vs tank skillwize
    spinnytop said:


    My obvious idea is: adds.

    I like adds too we even do have adds, I even liked your 'swarm of argent' cosmic in the other thread.
    Balance (we just kill the adds) and not lagging everyone could be an issue, also not swarms of adds at every cosmic. Be nice to somehow deal with add goes straight to the squishiest healer issue.

    .. Kiga has nice alternative adds in the form of Tombs! Also the Dogs, which have/had 2 ways to deal with
    .. Q had nice adds in the form of hearts. But CC was forced here. There were spawn points for adds though for a long time, and nearly in a good position. So potential, except everyone hated on the worm adds.
    .. Teli if the baby spawned better the burst check could be changed to baby spawns (or big lizard). Need to decide weather the adds get killed so they don't over whelm you, or if you can tank them all. Big lizard would be tuff dps / hybrid style accessible (i.e. very very very easy by tank standards)

    1 ramble down
  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User


    Eldy seems to be under tanked (1 mega-uber tank) with the current dps requirement, there seems to be a large problem here with any extra non-dps player. Challenge seems to have over taken design.

    Eido has damage splitting, but it's got two problems. One is that modern tanks don't terribly need it. The other is that the geysers mechanic means having a soak tank is actively detrimental, because it doubles the geyser spawns on the tank side.

    Dino also seems to be a big issue, tanks get cheated out of rewards, people complain about average dps (parser output) and ignore blast power (spike dps).

    For characters I've looked at, spike dps is strongly correlated with sustained dps, and sustained dps is easier to measure.

  • aesicaaesica Posts: 2,537 Arc User
    And again, the stat system is a convoluted mess. Even to a veteran player it still possesses a lot of obtuseness it doesn't need. A lot of stats are superfluous or outright useless, having no reason to have been made core stats to begin with (endurance and recovery) with others barely serving a function. Honestly,t his whole system needs a do over in this case, but I would outline that in another post than here.
    How amusing. While I agree with most of this, I'm willing to be that, had it been me who posted this, you would've tried to mansplain how and why I was wrong/misinformed/etc.​​
    (Hopefully) Useful CO Resources: HeroCreator (character planner), Cosmic Timers/Alert Checklist, Blood Moon Map, Anniversary Cat Map, and more (eventually, anyway).
  • championshewolfchampionshewolf Posts: 4,375 Arc User
    edited September 2017
    aesica said:


    How amusing. While I agree with most of this, I'm willing to be that, had it been me who posted this, you would've tried to mansplain how and why I was wrong/misinformed/etc.​​

    I do enjoy how you continue to prove your ignorance not to mention sexist remarks. Mansplain, really? And you wonder why I don't take you seriously. But then again only you would make this about gender politics instead of, you know, learning the real issue, never mind you are assuming I am a man to begin with.
    Post edited by championshewolf on
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