Reintroduce soft caps to re-balance all content?

arcofortep12 · February 2016

Eventually the game became very unfriendly and unbalanced to newbies and undergeared toons. After the removal of soft-caps PVP became completely unplayable for much people. Also some overgeared players make, maybe accidentally, the content too much easy in PVE. So you see one DPS dealing 30 millions and another dealing 5 millions. The 5 millions one will feel useless.
Would you like the reintroduction of them at least on the five major stats (Power, Critical Strike, Armor Penetration, Defense, Tenacity)?

Explanation: Soft cap = You can increase that specific stat, but with a diminishing rate.
Example: 10000 = 10%, 20000 = 15%.

thefabricant · February 2016

Yes, I want soft caps back (if you would like them on different stats post your will)

Agreed, removing them was stupid.

rayrdan · February 2016

No, I don't want soft caps back

Soft Caps bring us back to rework curves and raising the level cap.
Stats are not the problem, unjustified power creep is.
Like 4k mounts, 16k stats boons, BONDINGS, multi scaling of GWF-GF getting everything investing in a couple of stats and effectively multiplying their return on investiment, getting 15% more weapon damage every mod with no added difficulty.
And of course content, levelling dungeons are going to help.

Unknown · February 2016

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urabask · February 2016

No, I don't want soft caps back

Not sure why MMO players are such masochists. Cryptic should be able to find their way towards balancing things for PvE without hitting all our characters with a nerf bat. Sure, if they were like say Blizzard is with Hearthstone where they offer dust refunds when they nerf something, I'd be fine with it. But PWE will never do that so I'd rather see them introduce difficulty in ways that don't arbitrarily create the need to re-gear.

rayrdan · February 2016

No, I don't want soft caps back

arcofortep12 said:

rayrdan said:
Soft Caps bring us back to rework curves and raising the level cap.
Stats are not the problem, unjustified power creep is.
Like 4k mounts, 16k stats boons, BONDINGS, multi scaling of GWF-GF getting everything investing in a couple of stats and effectively multiplying their return on investiment, getting 15% more weapon damage every mod with no added difficulty.
And of course content, levelling dungeons are going to help.
Sure, there is a problem with boons and companions too, buffs, etc. But the stats on the loose provide even more imbalance. PVP it's ever more broken. It was better in Mod 5, let's admit it. I don't remember things like one Striker doing 5 and the other one 30. There is no need for that, top should be happy to just double that one.

absolutely not, the problem in pvp is about mechanics not stats.
like i said multiscaling for example: a gwf building around armor pen and defense gets too much power for free. Or path balance: that same gwf as destroyer gets a 300% damage bonus where a hunter ranger can hope for a 40% at best.
multiscaling again: a gf building defense gets a 80%+ damage bonus on top of power and high base damage where that same HR/CW again a 40% at best.
Stats conception: a support class has already everything to fullfit its role at lv 70 in green gear.... so then again what an oppressor cw is supposed to build? its role is controlling and no stats will help him do it better.
Totally f-ed class like paladin: do you think they will ever care about diminuishing return? they care about tenacity just for sport
Allowing class to build totally around a play style with no limitation is not bad, everyone is free to do it. Right now class balance as a whole is screwed and content is at a fixed difficulty without any kind of change mod by mod.

The way of thinking needs to change, linear curves are ok... maybe the slope its too high but still the idea is good

Unknown · February 2016

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urabask · February 2016

No, I don't want soft caps back

arcofortep12 said:
There is no need to re-gear, we are talking about reducing the difference between geared players and not-geared ones. Is it possible that people always complain about things broken/easy content, etc. and when there are patches 'nope because then I'll shine less over others'?
It's about 'alive' or 'dead', if new players bore and abort the game (because they will feel useless, underpowered, etc. both in PVE and especially in PVP), your game will shut down too. No fresh blood no money, no money no game.

I just played a game with a 30k toon that dealt 11x mine DPS. The run was obvious useless, so fast to be unfulfilling. In PVP that one would be untouchable, that's not a game. It's good that I abandoned PVP and play just support toons but new players seeing that will just spread the p2w nickname on the web and this game will lose further people until it will shut down for good (bad?). I care less, I already abandoned PVP and reverted to support and am enjoying it anyway but new breed?

You don't need to reduce the difference between geared and undergeared players in PvE. That difference is the whole point in playing PvE.

They're never going to fix PvP so the least they can do is keep any "fixes" from affecting PvE.

Also any F2P MMO that successfully gets its playerbase to think that it isn't P2W doesn't have a game that isn't P2W. They're just really good at brainwashing their playerbase.

Unknown · February 2016

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grabmoore · February 2016

No, I don't want soft caps back

Players would be hardcapped on said stats the day the introduce em. Yes, those players might deal less damage then before, but it's not like that would change anything regarding the current state of the game.

On the other hand, each further gear progression woulnd't be unnecessary for them (like now, noone needs 3k+IL), it would be useless! Gaining 0,1% increased critchance from rank 8 to 12 isn't motivating.

I hope, you get my point of view. Sorry for my english.

Unknown · February 2016

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karakla1 · February 2016

No, I don't want soft caps back

No.
It is very easy to gear you character up to a certain level that makes the content entertaining. The problem is that people still playing limbo with the entrance level and try to enter dungeons with the worst possible build in gear and skills (since the costs of equipment got really cheap i saw player entering elol with level 68 items and useless artifacts (aurora) or none artifacts at all, while there are also very cheap event artifacts to acquire). At higher item levels content gets a lot easier and also faster which basically means you get more often good stuff because you can run stuff like elol in 5-10 minutes instead of 30-45 minutes.

urabask · February 2016

No, I don't want soft caps back

magenubbie said:
It's in the nature of PvP games that people who spend more money are more powerful. But this is not a PvP game. This is a PvE game with PvP aspects. Trying to make money from the willingness of PvPers to spend money at the cost of the balance in the rest of the game is nothing but short-sighted and should be stopped.

It's the other way around.

PvP games are generally balanced such that gear isn't as big a factor because when you have actual people playing against each other you need at least a minimal level of competitiveness or people just quit. Because this is a PvE game with PvP they can get away with this because people will just play PvE instead. That's not a good thing for PvP but an actual PvP game would have to decrease the gap caused by gear or it would die outright.

Unknown · February 2016

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urabask · February 2016

No, I don't want soft caps back

magenubbie said:

urabask said:
Because this is a PvE game with PvP they can get away with this because people will just play PvE instead.
If only they thought that way and actually brought back some end-game dungeoneering to do.. But they don't do that either.

I think we all wish they would do that.

That's why I think it's kind of crazy to ask for softcaps on stats again. It would just give them more excuses to release less new/challenging content.

Unknown · February 2016

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feanor70118 · February 2016

No, I don't want soft caps back

I don't want soft caps back because they added confusion to the game. Cryptic is already terrible about telling us how items, abilities and boons work (or don't). Soft caps made that issue astronomically worse. The difference between having a good build and a terrible one was often whether you'd spent hours reading the forums and sorting out the posts on any issue rather than whether you relied on the information presented to you in-game and made what you though were informed decisions. Soft caps were terrible.

putzboy78 · February 2016

Yes, I want soft caps back (if you would like them on different stats post your will)

Agreed but leave it until the next level cap raise. We've been at this meta for to long a change of this type would create havoc on the existing player base as Azures become dirt cheap and radiants would again become BIS (just like in Mod 5 which I already had to take the huge loss for to sell them).

Unknown · February 2016

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balorin · February 2016

Of course, bring more soft cap it will change the whole game !

After that run again again and again the old dungeons for another year.

1/Do you understand that we didn't have a new dungeon in this game since the launch of module 4. 8-2014. (mod 4)

2/Do you understand that we didn't have a new difficulty (above epic) for old dungeons since the begining of the game to adjust with the insane powercreep thay are selling or create to us.

3/Do you understand that we have a recycle PVE content since mod 5 with a big bunch of useless HE HE HE or raid HE.

4/Do you understand that they create or change/add more and more powerfull Lockbox items with no real content to match with.

Just take a look at the module 6, they already did that in the past, they changed the curves to make weaker the players and then 3 modules after we faced the same problem.

So man it's not the player fault's if they have a bazooka bigger and bigger to kill a (old content) worm again and again.

Your soft cap method is just anotehr cheap way they already used in the past with the biggest failure in this game history aka mod 6.

Meantime still not a new dungeon.
Recycle engine.

Unknown · February 2016

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Unknown · February 2016

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adinosii · February 2016

No, I don't want soft caps back

I really don't see the need to rework the curves, but the real problem for me is that the developers give us a large number of ways to improve our characters (top gear, elemental infusion, boons, enchants and so on.....) but there is no content in the game that really requires all that power - no PvE content, that is.

Yes, some absurdly overgeared players do enjoy PvP - either in a fair fight against other equally overgeared players or (and perhaps more likely) beating the **** out of players with "normal" gear.

I'm not a PvP player, so this does not concern me - but I would really like some PvE content that is a bit more challenging than what we have now.

kemi1984 · February 2016

Yes, I want soft caps back (if you would like them on different stats post your will)

The problem aren't developers, the problem are the players. Developers give you what you ask for, that same thing break the game, and then all moan on the forum 'why it's easy', 'pvp unplayable',

This one...this one is going to my sig !

kemi1984 · February 2016

Yes, I want soft caps back (if you would like them on different stats post your will)

arcofortep12 said:
It's exactly the same situation as with the Lostmauth set poll. The problem aren't developers, the problem are the players. Developers give you what you ask for, that same thing break the game, and then all moan on the forum 'why it's easy', 'pvp unplayable', 'T3 content for my cannon'. This game is in this state because of its playerbase. Period. There is no discipiline, everyone running ahead because they know that in 4 hits mobs are plain dead, so they play alone. There is no more party play, there is no PVP except for overgeared players, there is no more communities but little parties looking after their own little garden.
Have fun with it, until it last.

P.S.: Reintroduction of soft caps affects directly boons; 80% of those boons, be they Campaign or SH boons, are made of those same stats. You can softcap Tenacity, Defense too, etc. content balanced means 'party play'. Hiding behind 'it's all about buffs' is just hilarious. Roll a toon and play at 69 and you will see what those buffs do. Also companions can't buff more than 20%, here we are talking about 5x, 11x more damage. If you make linear a difference from 9k to 30k it becomes just p2w. p2w = dead. The rumor get spread and players don't join the game.

While it's hard to argue that the power creep is...creepy nowdays, I do not feel that it's players fault that we have the game as it is now - this is just no true. If someone wants to run ahead and kill stuff by himself, why this is my fault huh? lol weird logic.

We didn't asked about more power with next level of artifacts nor the enchants to trans r12. Dev's gave them so we can use them and to spend more money on their game. Remember? it's their game not ours, hellllllloooooooo !!

I don't care if I see somebody run ahead of the group, why should I? I just calmly run as the last one in the group (yeah I'm a GF) and join the fun once I'm there. If someone doesn't want to wait, than yeah, cool!

What was refreshing is, that when I pugged KR just for the heck of it, all players calmly waited for me to make the pull, a real shocker if you ask me

.

Power creep, trivial PVE is the dev's fault plain and simple.

I can't understand what's hard about making few T2 revamped dungeons like SP or DV. At this stage, even lazy things like more mob HP, more arpen and such would be welcome. But nope! it's time consuming so we can run PK to fill our XP overflow ??

Unknown · February 2016

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klangeddin · February 2016

No, I don't want soft caps back

The curves are fine, class balance (and certain set bonus) is not and the problem lies there. Stuff like Divine Protector turns the game into a joke, the curves or item level don't matter if you have de-facto a 100% uptime immortality. And it's not the only maneuver that's over the top (though it's probably the most eclatant). You'll just make it even worse for "have nots" without really increasing the difficulty for the "haves" at all.

Another big issue is that with soft caps you're HAMSTER around with people's itemization choices, those who invested in rank 12s of one particular stat would be literally scammed by this change, as they'd have to reinvest on other rank 12s (and not necessarly they all go for the same price, not to mention that this chance would probably make them fluctuate even further). Not just enchants, but kits, artifacts, gear sets, ecc... all would be affected.

silverkelt · February 2016

Issue A.. by allowing non linear progression, massive stats and builds can be built.
Issue B.. they already sold it.. they will lose some players if they move from it.
Issue C.. They give WAY too much stat jumps , IE look at mounts, legendaries shouldve been 1k stats, epics 500. Not 4k and 2k. Seriously.. just TOO much.
Issue D.. WHO cares. I have run everything in game .. with multiple toons/styles , builds and progression. I dont care about making older content harder.

I WANT NEW CONTENT! THAT IS HARD.. not OLD content that is a little harder.

zebular · February 2016

No, I don't want soft caps back

Nah, no need for them to come back and if they were too, there'd be far too many people affected and the vast majority would feel it as a negative impact and not a positive change. Instead, balancing all around (not just classes) needs to happen, ushering in the return of epic or even mythic difficulty content for group play. As well, perhaps even "epic" type content for solo play at end-game.

flyingleon · February 2016

Don't know / Don't care

I don't know. The new stat curves do cause some problem but not the major once in my opinion. Let's consider each stat:

Power: no soft cap before and no soft cap now.
Armor penetration: there is a hard cap before and also a hard cap now.
Recovery: Even with soft cap, the cw, hr and dc could use their encounters as often as they want. GWF will use atwills anyway.
Critical strike: Yes, we don't have soft cap for this, hence people could reach 100% critical strike chance. I still think we should fix lostmauth set before we touch crit stats. Introduce soft cap for this and leave lostmauth set as it is? This is not the correct order for me.

Defense: GF could make best use of this stat and give party a huge boost. If a player could reach 80% damage resistance from defense alone, I think this is a problem.
Regeneration: we could skip this stat.
Life steal: without the new broken companion, most people are struggle to reach 15% life steal chance. I am not aware any problem.
Deflection: I am not aware any problem here too.

Overall, some small tweak could improve the game experience but not the most urgent issue.

xgrandz02 · February 2016

No, I don't want soft caps back

No needed.

Reintroduce soft caps to re-balance all content?

Reintroduce soft caps to re-balance all content? 78 votes

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