FC.31.20200711.4 - Vehicle Changes

kaiserin · July 2020

Vehicle Powers
In an effort to maintain open world content balance, we are reviewing all vehicle powers. Many of these powers were not performing as intended, or had performance values much higher than intended.

Fixed a bug where vehicles would sometimes not be able to critically hit.
Addressed an issue where vehicle powers with cooldowns did not go on global cooldown if multiples were equipped.
All vehicle power damage and costs values have been redone to follow a set cost/effect formula.
All vehicle mods now display tooltips. Keep in mind that the values will display based on your current bonuses, and do not reflect the actual numbers unless you are currently in a vehicle.
The debugger has a store that contains all vehicle powers for testing.

Incendiary Rounds

Increased duration to 16 seconds.
Removed stacking.
Reduced aoe to 25ft.
Can no longer stack from multiple ranks.
Removed charge time.
Added 6 second cooldown.

Toxic Rocket

Increased dot duration to 16 seconds.
Added 6 second cooldown.

Warning Shot

Power now applies threat over time.
Now has a 6 second cooldown.
Damage debuff no longer stacks.
Increased base damage debuff amount perk rank.
Significantly reduced the size of the FX.

Flashbang

Power now applies threat over time.
Now has a 6 second cooldown.
Reduced Rank 3 threat generation.

Gravity Pulse

Increased cooldown to 10 seconds.
Damage bonus from maintaining now scales with rank.
Reduced area effect to 25ft.

Micromunitions

Cooldown increased to 10 seconds.
Corrected visuals not matching up with when the damage applied.

Quick Reload

Reduced cooldown to 30 seconds.
Now applies energy over time for 10 seconds in addition to the initial energy burst.

AA Missiles

Damage bonus no longer stacks.
Increased initial damage bonus.
Damage bonus now scales with rank.

Containment Field

Can no longer target allies.

Flamethrower

Increased bonus threat per hit.

Heavy Cannon

Reduced area effect to 25ft.

Singularity Bomb

Reduced area effect to 25ft.
Reduced knock effects.

Devices
Become Celestial/Doomlord

These devices now have a 180 second cooldown. This is being done to not trivialize investing in a team resurrection power.

Powers
Aura of Arcane Clarity

We are testing out having this passive scale off of superstats over just presence.
Additionally, we are testing out having this power no longer benefiting team members if you are in the Hybrid role.
These changes may be passed onto the other Sorcery Aura passives, but we are testing them out this this power first.

nbkxs · July 2020

Sorry, but this is absolute bullshit, and a huge **** you to all of the people that invested so much G, zen, and everything else into their vehicles. These are literally unusable now. I hope there's some compensation in order for those that did.

pantagruel01 · July 2020

Is there some reason hybrid auras shouldn't just be identical to support auras? The whole concept of hybrid auras was mostly put in for types of builds that no longer exist, like rage of primal majesty setups.

kamokami · July 2020

When there are nerfs, I generally tell people to get over it and adapt. But this seems like a bit much.

It's unclear, if even content that's meant for vehicles, like Sky Command or Lemurian Invasion will be best done with them as opposed to without them.

terminatorxii · July 2020

It's a nerf a big one, but that aside currently the test server is lacking for any decent vehicle testing to be done, so suggestions.

The following

Debugger or Vehicle Upgrades NPCs Stores

Add Vehicle Mods specifically Support and Defense Systems include rank 6.
Add whoever get the updated store to the Vehicle Training Room.
Add to highlight display the HP and Energy Amounts a Vehicle has.

Bug
Flamethrower Vehicle Weapon

Currently does nothing when slotted as in it doesn't show up in the Power's Tray.

and that's all from me for now on the topic of vehicles.

panthrax77 · July 2020

I can understand a lot of people being upset at these, but at the same time, some of these are a long time coming, especially incendiary rounds. Personally I feel like some of those weapons could've used more buffs like AA missiles and micromunitions, since those have always been terrible. Most of the nerfs don't feel that atrocious at second glance, just some cooldown changes and range nerfs for the most part. But that micromunitions nerf just feels mean, for a weapon that already sucks, lol.

I don't know how I feel about the aura changes. Sounds like it could help hybrids if the hybrid scaling is increased. I know hybrid AoRP is a big problem in group events with bugs. And, as seems to be the case with some of the newer reworks, this would allow non-presence primary healer builds to use auras as well. However, it does feel like it will hit a niche group of builds that enjoy being slightly supporty while not being fully healers. Personally, I'd be in favor of keeping the hybrid allied aura effects, or maybe finding alternatives for small support auras on offensive passives or something.

thewinxfairy · July 2020

I’m now questioning why I keep spending real money to get the stuff I impulsively want at times, only to feel stupid and regret my purchases with these nerfs.

echokoumori · July 2020

Incendiary Rounds

Toxic Rocket

Micromunitions

these 3 mods for Vehicles are laughably low in any form of damage

Toxic and incend rounds only doabout 135 damage over time

and micro munition barely did any at all

Tested these weapons at Rank 3 mind you the damage should be bumped up a little more for these ones

solhuset · July 2020

You know it's bad when Repeating Pulse Laser, a basic auto power, does about 4 times the damage of incendiary round mark 3.

https://i.gyazo.com/f60d3f8b5256f82b4cd640843925fe8b.mp4
https://i.gyazo.com/f0aa8d035c1d59b96db2b597c981d2c8.mp4

He died with like 1 sec left on the incend dot. A level 14 mob.

aesica · July 2020

So I played around with my fairly decent vehicle in PTS to see if people were just knee-jerking, or if these complaints are legit. Holy crap, this is a massive overnerf and is really bad.

Okay, I'll agree that a few of the vehicle powers were a bit over the top, but now they're all terrible. As in, unusable in any content that isn't 20 levels below you. Legit question: What is the point of vehicle weapons now? What content are they supposed to be used in? Franklin Stone's event alert? Good luck killing the adds that heal him before they heal a significant chunk of his health. Going forward, this alert is going to be a "fly or die" encounter, and I don't have flying so I guess I'm not allowed in anymore.

I really don't know what to say about this. You guys are basically removing options for playing the game by making this particular option completely ineffective. If anything, the underperforming vehicle powers should've been given a boost along with a few bugfixes or minor adjustments to the overperformers. Instead, they've all been castrated. When the vehicle's default weapon does more damage than its powers, something's seriously wrong.

If my character hops on a rank 2 vehicle with similar mod levels as what's in her gear, I should be able to about the same damage I'd do on that character. I invested in the mods in my character's gear just like I invested in the mods installed in my vehicle. On top of that, I invested in the weapons and upgrade kit as well as in the vehicle itself. If I want to play open world content in my well-equipped vehicle instead of on my character, why shouldn't I be able to?

Finally, a fair amount of folks have spent good money to fully kit out their vehicles. Will they get refunds or do they just have to eat this?

This change really sucks and seriously needs to be reconsidered. Do not let this go live in its current state. Please.

- - -

And now, about AoAC: I totally agree that shifting auras to superstas instead of having part of their bonuses chained to presence. Unfortunately, unless somebody just typed in the numbers wrong, this is a trojan horse for a rather sizable nerf. Observe:

The numbers on live, including those that scale with presence, are better than the numbers on PTS where everything scales with superstats. This is significant because the character these screenshots were taken from has 10 presence. With everything scaling from superstats now, I should be seeing better team member bonuses on PTS than live and yet its the other way around? Why? I bet this looks absolutely terrifying on a character with high presence...

- - -

So in all, this patch sucks. Return to sender!

h3r0o0o0 · July 2020

this is not a nerf, this is basicly removing the option to use vehicle from any where in the game. when incendairy rounds r3 is dealing 160 damage per sec and the vehicle weapon is doing 600 damage then something is wrong.
keep in mind that people spent Gs, Questionite and zen to get rank 2 and 3 weapons especially incendaiy rounds rank 3 and rank 9 mods will have nothing to do with it except discarding it they are better off using their energy builder and dealing way more damage than 160 per second. therefore if this happens we will need a refund on the mods, weapons and the vehicles itself

yannbios · July 2020

Sc and LI still viable

just use your toon instead and have a aoe.

theravenforce · July 2020

RE: AOAC

Just looking at what Aesica has posted for comparison purposes...it looks like part of AoAC has been ripped out as well. Please don't tell me its been moved to an advantage or something silly like that!

If the Hybrid portion of the power is to no longer affect team mates, I'm all for that, great! But I'm thinking that maybe just clone the power and have two different versions? One for Support and one for Balanced/Offense?

The Support Version would be current AoAC, would still scale primarily with Presence instead of all super stats.

The Balanced/Offense version would scale with all super stats and have additional effects suitable for occupying those roles, maybe enhanced magic resistance and magic damage?

In its current form this seems like a horrible nerf rather than something to look forward to. It seems as if when there's a positive change that people may have been asking for (stop Hybrid versions of auras from affecting others)...it seems to be accompanied by a drawback of some sort.

IMO, a better solution would be to keep AoAC as is maybe, and just remove the "affect other" portion when in Hybrid Role (maybe buff the Hybrid role versions a bit for loss of minor supporting power)? Copy paste that to the other auras and you remove any sort of problem.

Or maybe, edit this to:

kaiserin#0958 wrote: »

Powers
Aura of Arcane Clarity
We are testing out having this passive scale off of superstats over just presence.

Additionally, we are testing out having this power no longer benefiting team members if you are in the Hybrid role.

These changes may be passed onto the other Sorcery Aura passives, but we are testing them out this this power first.

kaiserin#0958 wrote: »

Devices
Become Celestial/Doomlord
These devices now have a 180 second cooldown. This is being done to not trivialize investing in a team resurrection power.

Seems a bit excessive? In situations where no one on the team has a team rez but they do have this device, it is pretty handy. I haven't seen a mass preference towards using this instead of a team rez power. Maybe instead of this...make resurrection powers easier to use?

- Faster cast time
- Can be cast whilst taking minor damage
- Innately able to res multiple people in an AoE

Things like that could help this, if it was a problem.

pantagruel01 · July 2020

If I were able to go back in time and say "Vehicles have always been glorified travel powers", I would totally do it; this is a game about superheroes, not a game about vehicles. However, that horse has left the barn, and going back and changing them into that now is unfair, particularly because there is content (most notably Franklin Stone and Sky Command) that is built around vehicle capabilities and is impractical for most PC builds. I would start any rework with a mission statement of "This is what we expect vehicles to be useful for", and making sure that final stats are consistent with that mission statement.

On the particular powers: My suspicion is that vehicle numbers were originally created by the standard Gentleman Crush method of "make stuff up with no formula", and the new vehicle numbers come from taking the vehicle powers and plugging them in to the standard spreadsheet that is used for player powers. This results in low numbers because:

Vehicle powers are low energy cost, and thus low base numbers (increasing their energy cost isn't a good option, because vehicle energy management is also poor)
Vehicles do not have the damage bonuses that are accessible to PCs.

I would probably fix this by adding a 'vehicle fudge factor' to the master spreadsheet, though adjusting vehicle stats is also a possibility.

aesica · July 2020

theravenforce wrote: »

The Support Version would be current AoAC, would still scale primarily with Presence instead of all super stats.

I actually think the support version scaling with superstats is a good move, as is making it self-only in hybrid role. The real problem is that the scaling-with-superstats bit appears to have been completely decapitated. A friend showed me their support character's AoAC on live vs pts and the PTS version's numbers took an absolutely monstrous dive. Like, I almost think this has to be a bug and not the intended values.

jaazaniah1 wrote: »

Just glad I haven't spent much real money on vehicles.

Not to be all doom-and-gloom, but I suspect this'll make people think twice about spending real money on anything that isn't a costume unlock. Anyone who spent anything on vehicles basically just got their purchases thrown in the trash, so I hope this is seriously reconsidered.

For example, let's look at Incendiary Rounds. Yes, it was OP but mainly due to a bug with rank stacking. So just remove rank stacking! There were a lot of vehicle powers that were grossly underwhelming, and could've used a to make them effective alternatives to IR. The main thing is that vehicles already couldn't be used in any content that actually mattered--bosses, instances, etc. So things like a huge area of effect radius weren't trivializing any of the game's main content. They were, however, fun to use in the open world when you wanted something besides your same-old powerset, but now that option gone.

Morale is not good regarding this patch, and while its unfortunate, it should make clear that this is a move in the wrong direction.

terminatorxii · July 2020

kaiserin#0958 wrote: »

Powers
Aura of Arcane Clarity
We are testing out having this passive scale off of superstats over just presence.

Additionally, we are testing out having this power no longer benefiting team members if you are in the Hybrid role.

These changes may be passed onto the other Sorcery Aura passives, but we are testing them out this this power first.

AoAC_Live_compaired_to_PTS_currently_on_11.08.2020.PNG

Is this bugged currently on PTS? As the amounts it seem to be granting for healer's role ally boost seems to be closer to that of live's hybrid rather than that of healer's role amount.

jaazaniah1 · July 2020

Hmm, I have to say that I can't ever recall using a vehicle for either FS or SC. I just use one of the hover disks. I always much prefer playing a hero over a vehicle. Only place that I really have a need for a vehicle is when farming the QWZ with a squishier build. Otherwise I just use them as travel powers, and I believe I have a separate vehicle for each of my 60+ characters, almost all of them from event currency or the free vehicle give a ways.

pantagruel01 wrote: »

If I were able to go back in time and say "Vehicles have always been glorified travel powers", I would totally do it; this is a game about superheroes, not a game about vehicles. However, that horse has left the barn, and going back and changing them into that now is unfair, particularly because there is content (most notably Franklin Stone and Sky Command) that is built around vehicle capabilities and is impractical for most PC builds. I would start any rework with a mission statement of "This is what we expect vehicles to be useful for", and making sure that final stats are consistent with that mission statement.

colonelwing · July 2020

Rule of thumb: Don't abuse bugs. Vehicle weapons being stackable was never intended.

Have a great day.

theravenforce · July 2020

So I decided to follow the cool kids and try a comparison for myself:

Total value of all super stats for this character amount to: 824

LIVE

PTS

It's almost like this was gutted and a rank was removed lol

oxidization · July 2020

Nerfing is bad design. Instead of changing how the auras work (imo they are fine), look at other things and buff those instead. It doesn't force people to abruptly change their build and gives players space to look at alternatives.

For instance, have the auras scale off PRE AND/OR any other superstat, depending on which is highest. This doesn't punish people for having presence, while still allowing others (for instance int-based sorcery builds) to join in on the fun.
-- By that same logic, removing scaling altogether would severely hurt a lot of builds that are based on the aura. The least you can then do, is give all characters running one such build a free retcon, although it will still frustrate most people running such builds.

If you think auras are too strong, buff the passives of other powersets.. Then buff enemy max HP as well, to counteract the powercreep in passives.
If you think support in general is too strong, buff the damage (and again, the HP) of mobs. Not saying increase the amount of one-shot mechanics, I'm saying, increase the damage of their "auto-attack"
-- Neither of these break any of the current systems and elevate the rest of the game to that level.

A change in the game should be beneficial of the enjoyment of the game, should it not? Don't we all like an increase in our numbers? Perhaps instead of a decrease in some of the characters that were "better off"?

thenightrunner8 · July 2020

I invested a great deal of time, money, and effort into my character’s vehicle, weapons, and mods. This is a unbelievably huge nerf that really takes a lot of value out of the game for me and many others. Can we expect any sort of refund for what we've put into this game mechanic?

If stacking the R2 incen and the R3 was a problem, then fine, remove that.

If having players power their low level, undergeared alts through higher tier content by leaning on their upgraded and well modded vehicles, just make every single vehicle bind to character.

There's no sense in nerfing these things so hard into the ground that they'll never seriously be considered ever again by any player who's committed to fully playing the game.

This will just make farming worse. I can understand nerfing something hard if it's unfair in PvP, but that's not the case with vehicle weapons.

Everyone keeps saying "it's a superhero game, not a vehicle game" but that was one thing this game had/has(?) over DCUO or CoH.

morigosa · July 2020

So just did a bit of testing myself, using my good-but-not-super-optimized mark II bike with r6 mods.

Railgun Mk 3: Actually buffed from its state on live, but still pretty bad. Might be okayish if it didn't split damage between targets? Or if it did about double the damage it does on PTR? Or, honestly, both. Both would be fine.

Micromunitions Mk 2: Deals somewhere between a third and a quarter as much damage as it did on live. Unsurprisingly, it remains a trash-tier weapon. Hey devs: This thing needed a buff, not a nerf.

Incendiary Rounds Mk 2: Nerfed down to match the new micromunitions, demoting this weapon from one of the best, to the same trash tier.

Gravity Pulse Mk 3: Damage reduced somewhat from live, and the 10s cooldown and increased energy cost are kindof annoying, but at least this gun will actually still kill things faster than a tank AT who went afk with their energy builder toggled on.

Overall, I'm not in favor of these changes going live. (I mean, sure, fix the bugs; I'm not pleased with seeing people insta-casting Heavy Cannon at cosmics. But don't just nerf everything because a few people were exploiting bugs.)

rinzler156 · July 2020

I rarely post anything on the forums and this caught my attention. I thought that zone chat was being all too harsh about the new update that's coming to PTS, so I decided to give it a look. Never in my life have I thought I'd make a post in response to an update before since I'm too lazy for that crap, I have better things to do. This has to be one of the worst nerfs I have ever encountered in CO, and I hope to god it doesn't go live, at least not without some balancing.

First of all, Incendiary Weapons did need a nerf, but not this big of a nerf at all. Even when I had incendiary rounds, I would still need to utilize other weapons in order to be inflicting a great deal of damage. Now this nerf forces me to change my rotation, and almost get rid of incendiary rounds because I deal more damage using anything -but- incendiary rounds.

Secondly, some of these weapons were crappy before their unwarranted nerf, why would you nerf weapons that are useless already into something more useless. I guess I have to be drunk or insane to use my vehicles now, especially after I wasted money investing into one of my better vehicles as well (Yes, I did that, but this was years ago before I became more incompetent, ha).

Thirdly, this change towards auras is very confusing, I too tested this out and the values I received in PTS was even lower than any of my support characters in live. I even tested it out using as many mods as I can to buff stats to at least buff my aura, and even then, the value of buffing other teammates is far less, if not a third, of what I got in live right now, and I hope this change doesn't happen. While I do think that cutting out the support value for hybrid roles is a good idea, since you can be a support roled hybrid who still buffs their allies while being part of the DPS, I think you need to buff the support value -above- the self buff.

These changes are are really, really bad... this has to be fixed. Seriously. Don't go live with this, it's a big middle finger to those who invested their time and resources into these vehicles.

blockwave · July 2020

I'mma just pop in here real quick, I haven't played the game actively for a while now, about a year ? give or take, I just checkd ou the patch notes. From the pattern I'm seeing, the problem with all those changes that happened in the last year can be summed up to this :
The ultimate goal of buffing and nerfing is not to balance but to make the game more fun.
Basically, over-nerfing is when you forget the end goal and persue the means to the goal.

Hence, this question, fun being the end-goal, how is this change making the game more fun in anyway ? Or any of the nerfs ? Aight, that was my little pop in.

doggepope · July 2020

This is an interesting direction from the charge weapon patch. It's an ambitious change, if about eight years late to the party. I think it would help some of those who aren't glued to one Discord channel to come to terms with their feelings on these changes if some kind of roadmap were given for what happens after them.

Will this be followed by relaxed restrictions on vehicles, such as enabling them in closed maps or removing Gravity from high-level enemies? Reduced costs in Zen and currency shops? Are their numbers final and closed from further input? Will there be recompense for those players who bought - some of them dearly - into Gentleman Crush's brain child as it had been presented?

In that same vein, would it be reasonable to assume that the lower overall effectiveness of Aura of Arcane Clarity is not a bug or a mistake, and will find its way to the remaining Sorcery auras, if not all aura-like passives? Though this may be off-topic for this thread, I'd actually also be genuinely interested to learn about longer-term plans with regards to the performance of support builds in general, particularly Archetypes without the ability to pick and choose their slotted passive.
(Similar to Pantagruel, I'm having trouble understanding why the auras differ between roles anyway. . .)

[e: clarity]
[e2: Personally, the toggle devices would still have some situational use if their revives at least gave dead players priority over other targets.

magpieuk2014 · July 2020

This is a horrid and unjustifiable nerf to Vehicles. These items will no longer what they were promised to be when they were sold, and balancing isn't an excuse - it just looks as if Cryptic have been happy to continue to sell things they knew were broken. And that's legally very questionable.

In any case, a better balancing solution is to make the weapons more difficult to use (a slower reload, heavier energy management requirements) rather than completely nerfing the heck out of their utility. That way a player could build a character reliant on vehicles and still have a worthwhile experience, rather than just being told to do one by the devs Because The Spreadsheet Says So.

aesica · July 2020

blockwave wrote: »

I'mma just pop in here real quick, I haven't played the game actively for a while now, about a year ? give or take, I just checkd ou the patch notes. From the pattern I'm seeing, the problem with all those changes that happened in the last year can be summed up to this :
The ultimate goal of buffing and nerfing is not to balance but to make the game more fun.
Basically, over-nerfing is when you forget the end goal and persue the means to the goal.

Hence, this question, fun being the end-goal, how is this change making the game more fun in anyway ? Or any of the nerfs ? Aight, that was my little pop in.

That sums things up nicely, actually. The primary goal of any game developer/studio is of course to make cash money, and you make cash money by providing fun content the players get excited about and want to engage in. I mean sure, balance is important, but when it's done without any regards to the fun factor, it's worth taking a second look at it. Let's go down this checklist--does nerfing vehicles into uselessness (and that's what it is, there's no getting around this fact)...

Does leaving them strong and competitive with player powers actively interfere with progression through endgame content?
No, every open world cosmic has block-or-die mechanics, and vehicles can't block. Many open world event bosses and encounters even have hard counters specifically related to vehicles, such as gravity and that nasty dot during blood moon. Finally, vehicles can't be used in most instanced content, and one where they *are* usable was designed around doing so.

Are vehicles and vehicle powers basically freebies that people are using to bypass gearing?
Generally no. While it's possible to pass a souped-up account-bound vehicle around across your account, it still requires an investment to gear up. It's also no substitute for actually gearing up if you have any interest in any of the meaningful, endgame content as mentioned in the previous question.

Does nerfing vehicles into the ground, to the point they're ineffective at anything beyond transportation make the game more fun?
I'm going to have to say no here. Sure, there's some insecure, envious folks who see some guy in a souped-up vehicle kicking ****, and since they don't have a vehicle like that, they complain about it. This has been a thing in pretty much every mmo I've ever played. "So and so has X and I don't! Unfair!" It's a really bad idea to cater to that particular crowd. For those who do have strong vehicles, this is basically removing a mode of play, and that's almost never fun.

Is it actually making vehicle weapons useless?
Unless there's some gloriously-strong, untouched power I'm unaware of, yes it does. Incendiary Round R3 ticks for under 200 damage every second over 16 seconds and can no longer be stacked. Let's assume it deals around 160 damage per tick, give or take a few due to mod levels: That's 2560 damage if it's allowed to run the entire duration. Know what does heaps more than that in a matter of seconds? Any T3 power. 2560 damage is insignificant, especially over a whopping 16 seconds. No one in their right mind is going to use something like this.

Again, I agree that adjusting for balance is important, but when doing so isn't going to actually affect any of the meaningful content, when it's going to limit gameplay options, when it renders some people's purchases invalid, and when most people seem to be more demoralized about it instead of excited, then...maybe, just maybe it needs to be reevaluated.

If it were me, I'd remove the ability to stack IR ranks (obviously a bug) but after that, I'd spend my time lifting up the other vehicle powers so they were all good rather than knocking down the good ones until they're all bad.

pantagruel01 · July 2020

What vehicles were primarily used for is:

Fast leveling, without actually playing your build at all.
Farming on builds that have trouble doing the same things with their powers (most notably low dps builds such as healers and heavy tanks; sure, they can take stuff out with their powers, but it takes forever and a half).
Certain content that's designed around vehicles.

Of those things, I'd call (1) undesirable but can be cleanly fixed fixed by changing the level scaling on vehicles, I don't have a real problem with the others though though a few weapons do clearly overperform on live.

doggepope · July 2020

Leaving aside the matter of what vehicles should have been, players were willing to pay the cost, which could be a great one that included real money, of wielding vehicles as they are.
Tune-up kits, upgrade catalysts, rare vehicles and weapon systems; this was a steep and specialised cost which can never be used on anything but a vehicle. And sure, it was overkill that it was against everything in multiple 75ft spheres of influence, but before weapon charging was changed, even at their peak potential I would not have conceived of a way for a vehicle to achieve more damage against a single target than a decent Archetype except double IR. Which, whatever, vehicles being able to install two ranks of the same power doesn't abide by the rules established by the game world. Prevent that. But this?

This is the best gravbike rotation I could build, using one of the batteries at Terminus Base: layering both DoTs, then running Plasma Beam over the default pulse repeater. Parses for the other combinations I tested don't matter; if weapon systems follow the same formula of cost and output, then Plasma Beam is optimal just for being able to run on top of another weapon. But vehicles don't have the energy to run a second weapon at positive DPS, so I used the onboard laser.

It doesn't work in the QWZ, I daresay for Nightmare Invasion as well, and definitely not in Forum Malvanum. As soon as a high amount of damage resistance is introduced like from Defiance or AoRP, ticks of damage like these don't matter. This is what my healer does to the same target without the benefit of two Enemy Hull Scanners - with Compassion in support role, never mind hybrid (heaven forbid they're using their alternate offense passive and toggle form):

R6-R7 mods were used for both. I would try different mixes of vehicle mods out of curiosity, but the Debugger wasn't selling them (nor upgrade/Harmon catalysts, ?!?!?) and manually fusing up Rank 3s stresses my hand.

Would someone invest in weeks to months' worth of their Questionite and thousands of Zen to outfit a vehicle, knowing this will be the result?

[e: clarity]

colonelwing · July 2020

kaiserin#0958 wrote: »

Devices
Become Celestial/Doomlord
These devices now have a 180 second cooldown. This is being done to not trivialize investing in a team resurrection power.

Can you make the Doomlord damage resistance debuff necrotic web have no effect on players? People are abusing it in order to deal more damage than intended with actual character powers. It doesn't work on bosses either, so making it not work against players should be easily doable.

Thanks in advance.

jaazaniah1 · July 2020

I'm not clear on what trivialize means. Practically every healer worth their salt has a team and personal rez. Are you trying to coerce dps and tanks into having rez powers now?

kaiserin#0958 wrote: »

Devices
Become Celestial/Doomlord
These devices now have a 180 second cooldown. This is being done to not trivialize investing in a team resurrection power.

nomorereason · July 2020

If you're going to nerf vehicles to the point that they're aesthetic, can you at least give us the option to customize them?

Unknown · July 2020

This content has been removed.

saruro1994 · July 2020

Where to start that has not been say so far, will focus on the massive vehicle nerf for this post.
Some tone down here and there would have being debatable but not terrible but after testing the changes with a good modded vehicle and weapons (that by the way cost drifter keys and ingame currency to get) this is moronic at best and plain sad at worst i do know the co was a blender of different developers during its life and the clash of different visions for sure show.

But this is not to blame on the players so when things like this (In an effort to maintain open world content balance, we are reviewing all vehicle powers. Many of these powers were not performing as intended, or had performance values much higher than intended.) come out is not just misleading but a plain old lie, wen created on the champions reloaded update and the later down the line fixes their performance was the intended by that time, so the wording would be more on the side of “we don’t think the way vehicles are performing on our new vision is fitting for the the evolution of co from power fantasy to. . .”

So anyways my condense feelings about this change is that vehicles will now be some sort of vanity item no more no less. That it just cares nothing about player investment on those items keeping in mind how taxing can be to get a well moded vehicle at the moment.

And the fact that co is just a constant stream of nerfs after nerfs without little to no reason for them when the game for the most part have been the same for years outside of the newly added TT content wise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGdjKEHU9D8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkN3e9O2W7Q

Not nerfed into the ground ... yeah sure

squirrelloid · July 2020

The damage nerfing is well-covered above. But the AoE nerf also concerns me - Vehicles are generally intended for content with a ton of enemies that are really spread out. Their large AoEs were *definitely intentional*. SC swarms you with a ton of small enemies. If it's just 25' AoE, you might as well use character AoE powers.

I mostly just use vehicles as travel devices, but i have i think 3 fairly tricked out vehicles, and none of them would be playable for any purpose besides glorified travel power with the proposed changes.

The massive AoAC nerf concerns me more, however. Why is support benefit for teammates getting cut to ~1/3 of current values, without even a statement that such a nerf is intended. If you're going to nerf something into the ground, at least say you're doing it.

leuchadegoutiere · July 2020

saruro1994 wrote: »

saruro1994's message

To be honest, I thought the first vid was from the live. It doesn't look that terrible.

ouryoba · July 2020

That start preaty good:

Many of these powers were not performing as intended

Awesome! But then:

Micromunitions
Cooldown increased to 10 seconds.

Why?! It should get a buff, not a nerf!

vonqball · July 2020

So, I actually like the direction you are going with the auras. Hybrid being totally selfish solves some problems, and stacking off SSs intead of Pre brings auras in line with the other passives and opens up more build options for aura toons. Buuut, it appears you nerfed aura scaling by a huge amount, which would likely have a big impact on the game. Dino (for one example) might just not ever get done, or would become a really toxic enviroment where anyone with lower dps is bullied out of zone... by necessity.

The vehicle changes are poorly thought out. Yes some vehicle powers are over performing and could use some nerfing. But these nerfs are far too heavy-handed.

As stated above, vehicle weapons can't just be slapped into your (silly) damage-per-energy formula. We don't have the kind of control over vehicle energy that we do as characters. Also, PA should have made you realize that damage per energy is a poor way to balance set damage in general.

Overall some good... the rest truly terrible. Having this go live as-is would be a mistake. Take a step back and another look please.

metalheart · July 2020

Rip grimoire. Just remove hybrid role. I see no point to there existance with aura nerfs

jaazaniah1 · July 2020

For some reason, I have the feeling that some of the devs think that if they make end game more and more difficult it will some how force weaker players or players with weaker builds to get better. I've no metrics to know if this has actually happened or to what extent. One problem is that some combinations of powers, stats and specs are much more optimal than others, so possibly builds would end up being more cookie-cutter. Probably if all the trash powers were fixed to make them on par with the better powers this wouldn't be a problem (i.e. power revamps), but wasting time on things like vehicle revamps will slow this down even further.

vonqball wrote: »

So, I actually like the direction you are going with the auras. Hybrid being totally selfish solves some problems, and stacking off SSs intead of Pre brings auras in line with the other passives and opens up more build options for aura toons. Buuut, it appears you nerfed aura scaling by a huge amount, which would likely have a big impact on the game. Dino (for one example) might just not ever get done, or would become a really toxic enviroment where anyone with lower dps is bullied out of zone... by necessity.

miorum · July 2020

If the set-up from the start was "Vehicles were not supposed to replace player characters (...) " - then LI, SC and Stone's requiring them is a very odd design choice. (I do not know if the Hover Disk in either of these is a more recent addition)

If this is a more recent design-philosophy change, then that shouldn't be addressed with - what I read as - a kneejerk reaction. Especially since, again, there are three encounters where vehicles are supposed to be the better choice.

Now we have a mess on our hands that does not tackle the problem, but instead hopes to fix the symptom and placate those affected.

I'm hoping for a more in-depth dev-side explanation in the near future, and for feedback being taken into account on both sides. One can hope.

itsbrou · July 2020

Lots of vehicle changes, but one one of them makes vehicles more comfortable to control.

jaazaniah1 · July 2020

IIRC, the hover disks were added after these went live because many players did not want to have to play as vehicles, but rather as superheroes (unsurprisingly). The ham-fisted creation of content that initially required vehicles was done to drive sales of vehicles.

miorum wrote: »

If the set-up from the start was "Vehicles were not supposed to replace player characters (...) " - then LI, SC and Stone's requiring them is a very odd design choice. (I do not know if the Hover Disk in either of these is a more recent addition)

brainiac4000 · July 2020

Is it possible to balance auras based on the number of people they affect?

Assuming all auras will be reduced to similar numbers as AOAC screenshot above they will still be somewhat useful for cosmics since they affect many players.
However I can totally see them falling out of favour in TT and TA, with healers opting for med nanites/ seraphim, hearth/ or a tank passive with a hybrid role healer.

rinzler156 · July 2020

metalheart#4270 wrote: »

Rip grimoire. Just remove hybrid role. I see no point to there existance with aura nerfs

Following what he said, that does raise questions about what's going to happen to the hybrid archetypes that have the option or use hybrid auras. This should be brought up into question for one main reason, Grimoire is an archetype that silvers can start off with, so is the aura going to be changed into some thing else meaning Grimoire will have another passive? What about The Void, the Void has an optional passive of "Aura of Ebon Destruction", which may not be a bad hybrid aura at all considering it buffs damage and adds an effect to critical strikes.

With that in mind, The Void and The Grimoire might have to change, with the Grimoire being the most likely to have a change, since The Void can benefit from both the aura or the other passive. That being said, I too have tested AoAC in it's current state and it seems underwhelming, I would not feel confident as a support all too much with it's values but it's better than nothing I guess.

aesica · July 2020

leuchadegoutiere wrote: »

saruro1994 wrote: »

saruro1994's message

To be honest, I thought the first vid was from the live. It doesn't look that terrible.

I'm going to guess you don't have a lot of experience with vehicles then. A whole minute to clear out a basic trash pack (not even a nightmare demolisher in it) is way too long. Just like a well-equipped character, a well-equipped vehicle mows them down quickly on live. The second video was anything but quick and he almost died to boot.

metalheart#4270 wrote: »

Rip grimoire. Just remove hybrid role. I see no point to there existance with aura nerfs

Hybrid role auras being self-only is arguably one of the only good changes coming out of this mess of a patch since now, you're not screwing over the team with a bad buff. I just wish the change didn't come along with all this other unwanted crap.

servantrules · July 2020

Vehicles already have a disadvantage in combat with its inability to BLOCK (one of the major meta factors in CO combat). I'm all for balancing them, but not making them practically just a glorified Flight replacement (even though most already consider them as such). This is a case of leave it well enough alone as it is.

If you want to make changes, make higher end vehicles more attractive (farmed and store bought) by boosting them rather than nerfing them. I mean, that's what I'd logically do to attract players into getting them through effort or wallets.

jaazaniah1 · July 2020

Hmm, I wonder how much revenue they will lose from this move?

servantrules wrote: »

If you want to make changes, make higher end vehicles more attractive (farmed and store bought) by boosting them rather than nerfing them. I mean, that's what I'd logically do to attract players into getting them through effort or wallets.

phasestar · July 2020

Yes, some vehicle weapons were out of balance, but a balance pass needed to bring the low end or "average" weapon up much higher to keep vehicles fun and useful in combat.

In the existing live versions, the overly powerful weapons are what made vehicles in combat worthwhile and fun, as the other options were way too weak to be worth considering compared to normal character powers. The high end weapons were too powerful, but they should still be powerful enough to be worthwhile, ideally with a wider selection of re-balanced worthwhile weapons and options rather than just a few. I'm not saying make everything as powerful as a pre-balance Gravity Pulse Rank 3, but all vehicle weapons should be balanced to a more powerful level than this first pass.

Edit: After some additional thought and testing, I have a suggestion. Why not allow vehicle weapons to use less energy as they rank up? Once of the least fun parts is not being able to use all the weapons you put on a vehicle because you have to use the vehicle's energy builder-equivalent or some other method to pause for recharge. Even with good mods, you can still burn through your vehicle's energy quickly. At L40 for characters, you can set yourself up pretty well to not need your energy builder. Would be nice to see that be possible for vehicles too, which would also open up more weapon combinations as viable energy-wise. Perhaps this should be done through other mods rather than weapon energy costs, but there's my suggestion.

One more suggestion: What about adding some energy and health recovery to the vehicle based on the character's crafting skill?

phasestar · July 2020

Regarding the auras, I like the idea of hybrid losing the team effects, but the self-affecting part will likely need a buff them to put it on par with other self-only passive options.

panthrax77 · July 2020

Testing out the new AoAC on the PTS, I think there's some mistake. The numbers are absurdly lower than they should be. Scaling of superstats seems to work, but to a much lower extent than it is compared to live. Can we get some clarification if these calculations are still a WIP?

If this change is intentional, this is by and large the biggest nerf I've seen in the game's history and will drastically affect balance in endgame. It would make taking an aura enormously disadvantaging opposed to something like Seraphim, Hearth or Harbinger, and would limit peoples' options for making builds for healers. If this is intentional, please reconsider. If not, please clarify.

FC.31.20200711.4 - Vehicle Changes

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