Diellan_

I didn't agree with them not touching it then, either, but the Devs have consistently made poor decisions when it comes to Regen (both buffs and debuffs), and I don't think they quite get it.

I really love the power, but in its current incarnation it is ridiculously overpowered, and it would remain so on a Brute (even more so, because of the higher max hp there).

The other problem that Power Burst has is that kb isn't something that can be done indefinitely without good timing due to the ragdoll suppression on KB, and it being a chance for KB means you can't really do that. Power Burst is basically a poster child for bad tier 3 blasts, and I doubt ArcanaVille and I are the only Energy Blasters to skip it in favor of the just taking the tier 1 and tier 2.

*looks at the list*

Oh, right, Telekinetic Blast. *sighs* Telekinetic Blast is Power Burst that operates at 80' and animates in half the time... and has a stronger KB mag (same chance).

The woes of being an Energy Blaster.

It's a handy-dandy tool... But it doesn't work with the newest sets yet. That should change soon...

*gets back to work making sure Staff Fighting is ready*

Were you explicitly looking at just one target for Invincibility, because at the saturation point, the Scrapper would have 35.7% S/L Def, using your simple metric gives it (.22/.143)*(.84/.30)*(2400/1600)=6.46.

But neither of those are nearly as significant as the guaranteed stun that Rad provides, which was all that I meant. As ArcanaVille pointed out, Power Burst is a very minor power increase over Power Bolt and Power Blast, and those powers can be used while mezzed.

For varying levels of significant... again, Power Burst need not apply. By that I mean it has a 60% chance of mag 3.3 KB, which is a bit better than Power Blast's 30% chance of mag 1.6 KB, but isn't exactly a significant increase. Blazing Arrow is in the same category as Blaze as just having extra damage.

The Blaster one actually annoys me, in that it seems more like them trying to throw the Blaster people a bone instead of actually addressing the concerns being raised in the forums recently.

Agreed.

That makes me sad.

I fixed a lot of the bugs people have found, but I'm going to hold out a bit longer before deploying, so that 1.955 will have Staff Fighting in it.

If it's any consolation, my numbers are my own.

We used to joke that Tanks didn't grab aggro, my Blaster let them take it.

I just did an hour and 4 minutes each (due to the Blaster being stuck in a mission at the hour mark, and me going through to finish it - he was first, so it didn't mess up my results and I made sure the Stalker got the extra time) of a Beam/Energy Blaster and an Elec/Energy Stalker. Beam Rifle is something I played the hell out of in beta in order to critique it, then subsequently never rolled up because I'd decided to refuse to play Blasters until they got their issues addressed (this repeated when Dark/Dark hit beta). For the record, I did eventually roll up a Fire/Dark Blaster, but that was because I was getting pretty burnt out on how easy the game was, and decided that only a Blaster would provide me with the danger level in order to keep me interested.

Anyways, unlike the others, I went through blueside, without any vet powers or store powers. I played them both through the tutorial, and started my timers as soon as I got out. I did Matthew Habashy, Sandra Costel, Thiery, then hopped over to the Hollows and did Prescott's arc. The blaster hit the hour mark during the last mission of Prescott, finished it, and turned in the story arc, bumping him up to level 8. The stalker finished that mission three minutes earlier (also hitting level 8 from story arc xp) and so I used that time to hit the trainer and do Flux's first mission (defeat 10 outcast).

Interesting things I've noticed:

The updated Atlas Park is really good for placing things near each other in a sequential manner, so that even though I didn't have Ninja Run, I didn't spend much time running between missions. In fact, I didn't take a travel power when I could because I didn't really need it and my early power picks are both good for both ATs. That rather hurt me when I went to the Hollows and wound up with a "Defeat all Outcasts in base" that was 700 yards away - it was closer on the Stalker, which is responsible for some part of that 3 minute difference.

On the other hand, I didn't hit a trainer at all between level 2 and 6, because the missions were all right next to each other, and the only trainer was so far away. This meant that for the first 32-33 minutes of gameplay, the Blaster had 3 attack powers (plus Brawl and the Tranq Darts) while the Stalker only had 2 attack powers (plus Brawl and the Tranq Darts). Oddly enough, I didn't really notice the lack after a couple of missions, when I got into the hang of my powers... I suspect this is due to the Blaster powers having long cycle times and doing a lot more overkill damage, as the tier 2 blast would almost but not quite kill minions, leaving them still outside Brawl range, but make the tier 1 attack so useless. It helps that crits automatically mean one less attack on an enemy, while higher blaster damage plus defiance rarely changed the number of attacks.

Strangely enough, I hit level 8 significantly faster than either THB or Arcanaville did (level 2 - 8 was 64 minutes for my blaster, 85 for THB's). I'm guessing that has to do with the fact that I hit 4 different story arcs, which have hefty xp bonuses at this level.

Anyways, here's my time (note: for missions, I give the time for when I enter the door or reach the area where kill targets are... also, I have seconds in my notes, but only listing minutes here):

Beam/Energy Blaster
0:00 Level 2, out of tutorial
0:05 Level 3
0:09 Ritual of Souls (last Matthew mission)
0:12 Speak to Sandra Costel
0:13 Level 4
0:16 Confront Skull Leader
0:17 Stop Skulls attack
0:20 Put a stop to Skuls operation
0:23 Level 5
0:24 Turn in Sandra's Arc, speak to Thiery
0:25 Defeat 15 Hellions, er, Arachnos
0:29 Defeat Arachnos Commanders
0:32 Level 6
0:32 Find 3 hidden explosives
0:33 Destroy 3 pylons
0:36 Save Matthew Habashy
0:42 End of Thiery Arc
0:45 Defeat 10 Outcast (Prescott) - yes, that's 3 minutes to turn in my levels from 3 to 6, and travel to the Hollows via Sprint
0:46 Level 7
0:47 Defeat 10 Trolls
0:53 Defeat all Outcast in base (fun travel time)
0:58 Defeat all outcast in 2nd Base
1:04 Level 8 (from turning in the story arc)


Electric/Energy Stalker
0:00 Level 2, out of tutorial
0:05 Level 3
0:08 Ritual of Souls (last Matthew mission)
0:11 Speak to Sandra Costel
0:13 Level 4
0:17 Confront Skull Leader
0:18 Stop Skulls attack
0:21 Put a stop to Skuls operation
0:23 Level 5
0:24 Turn in Sandra's Arc, speak to Thiery
0:25 Defeat 15 Hellions, er, Arachnos
0:28 Defeat Arachnos Commanders
0:32 Level 6
0:32 Find 3 hidden explosives
0:33 Destroy 3 pylons
0:36 Save Matthew Habashy
0:42 End of Thiery Arc
0:44 Defeat 10 Outcast (Prescott) - yes, that's 3 minutes to turn in my levels from 3 to 6, and travel to the Hollows via Sprint
0:46 Level 7
0:46 Defeat 10 Trolls
0:49 Defeat all Outcast in base (fun travel time)
0:55 Defeat all outcast in 2nd Base
1:01 Level 8 (from turning in the story arc)
1:02 Defeat 10 outcast (Flux)

If I match them, that would mean vet powers and running redside content, yes? Otherwise, I'm introducing extra noise into the results.

No. Because I said supplanted, not generated. Alternate theories existed, but they didn't replace the Ptolemaic and other heliocentric models until people could perform accurate tests. Kepler's work, for example, wasn't generally accepted until after his death, when people were able to test his work by making a prediction (about the transit of Mercury and Venus) and then performing an experiment to test it (by watching for said transit - Horrox using a telescope to do precisely that).


That is a method. As ArcanaVille pointed out later, data is simply that: data. What you do with the data is up to you, and there is a lot of room for error. That's why it's only part of the system, along with making a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, and then responding correctly to those results. The Devs rarely bother with testing their hypothesis: they generate one, check to make sure it isn't obviously buggy (e.g. crashes the servers), then deploy it and move on.

The PPM is a perfect example of the usefulness of data: they defined a rule that determined what the balanced equivalent PPM:flat% should be. It passed whatever internal balance pass they have, then they pushed it to live. Players noticed these things were substantially more powerful than the existing procs, and some players began to perform statistical analysis to determine what the proc-rate was... we were able to uncover and confirm the dev formula without their assistance, as well as discovering the bug that they're only now fixing regarding cone powers.

My argument has never been that statistical analysis alone will fix any problem. My argument was, from the very beginning, that analysis of data is an important part of the scientific method, and that your continued insistence that experimentation and collection of data are useless smacks me far more of religion than your original statement about "curve fitting to the data". Economists, biologists, climatologists, and many, many other scientific professions (including astronomy) would take umbrage.

This is a non-starter in rational argumentation, it has no meaning: ArcanaVille and I could easily make the same claim in your direction. Part of the reason this response is coming so late (beyond the fact that I have been away from my home for several days in the past week, due to vacation, home remodeling, and Passover), is that it smacks of an intellectual arrogance bordering on rudeness ("I haven't been able to convince you, so obviously you can't be convinced") and I was quite sure that I didn't want to continue the discussion. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, here I am.

To answer your question with honesty, I'm not sure you can: you are the one making the more extraordinary claim - that observation, experimentation, and numerical analysis are unscientific. But I would love to be convinced! If you somehow manage to demonstrate that it is possible to create a perfect model without testing it, where human behavior is concerned, then I will do everything in my power to see your work published and congratulate on the biggest advance in Economics in the history of the Nobel Prize.

I'm not really sure there's much point to continuing this discussion here, where it is going up against the meaning and purpose of the thread. As such...

*changing gears*

I think I'll try out this Blaster vs Stalker test. Should I try one without vet powers?

When they were adding fifth powers to the epic pools, I really wanted Lightning Rod to be the one added to the Electric pool.

Lightning Rod... Shield Charge... Spring Attack... That whole line really bums me out. Judgment powers just rub it in.

Here's where the AoE Fear power that Assassin Strike has makes sense...

And even still, Beam Rifle quite possible beats out Fire for single target damage, given -Resistance debuff (and that's not counting the -Regen).

Yeah, I regularly did the Explosive Blast + Energy Torrent combo, and that pretty reliably knocked the entire spawn back, leaving them still clumped together. Then I would follow that up with Static Discharge (with Boost Range), resulting in dead minions. It was a great combo, and surprised a lot of people with how much AoE carnage I could cause as an En/En blaster.

My DM/SD Brute regular one-shots minions with Midnight Grasp... The exact same setup mentioned above of "high fury + AAO + Soul Drain" (and unlike Build Up, Soul Drain can be up all the time). AAO really busts my chops: why in the world is a Defense set providing better offense buffing than anything Blasters get access to? See also: why don't Blasters get Fiery Embrace in /Fire? Etc. etc.

I dunno, AR/Energy has pretty good synergy, with the cones and Boost Range, plus EM adding the good ST damage that AR is missing.

And that was their design decision and, quite possibly, their mistake. That wasn't the fault of statistics. This is the fault of the Devs constructing their Theory of TF Merit Rewards, then using it without performing any of the iterative processes we've discussed. In general, the Devs are very reluctant to do any kind of iterative tweaking, as they like to "get it right the first time" (even if there's no way to know for sure) then only return to it a few years later.

As ArcanaVille said above, one of the primary skills behind statistical analysis is knowing how to read it properly, and knowing what it does and doesn't tell you. It could tell the Devs that the Rewards are imbalanced between two TFs, but it doesn't necessarily tell the Devs how to fix it: it can help, by giving clues as to why something is faster or slower, but it doesn't tell the Devs "construct a formula and use that, don't tweak the content of the TFs".

That's why we use the player churn itself as data we need to read. Why do people stop playing Blasters? At what point do they stop playing Blasters (these two questions are related)?

Nobody is saying not to construct models. Models are very helpful tools, but they are just one of many tools, and it is silly to limit ourselves to just one.

My favorite part!

I'm not certain what nit you're trying to pick with "When you say people used it to predict things you mean they used it to predict things incorrectly". Making incorrect predictions happens all the time (and should happen): the thing that makes something scientific or not is how you go about testing these predictions and what your response to a failed test is.

Kepler's Laws of Motions were created in response to Tycho Brahe's observations, which were in direct contradiction to the predictions made by the Ptolemaic system (e.g. that all stars would be close enough to have an observable parallax effect). Making predictions, finding those predictions to be incorrect, then correcting your model (going from geocentric to heliocentric) is exactly the way the scientific process works.

It's asking people to "logically explore" something that they could neither empirically test nor observe in any other natural behavior - it required a rule specifically for light, and that immediately goes up against Okkam's Razor. Back when Ether was being proposed, it was a simpler solution than any alternatives, and logically followed from what was then known about the universe... and it was only seriously dropped when the special theory of relativity was created that produced the same results with fewer contortions (the contortions being added to the Ether theory throughout the late 19th century and early 20th as more and more experiments relating to light and electromagnetism were performed) - thus causing Ether itself to be dropped due to Okkam's Razor.

That tells me you know nothing about TDD.

Sure it did. People used it to predict things like when and where Venus would appear in the sky. That's why it wasn't until telescopes came around - thus increasing the amount of data available and allowing for early scientists to compare it to the predictions of the Ptolemaic - that alternative theories supplanted it.

This is basically how things like Test Driven Development work; and they do work. You take an iterative process of examining your data, altering the model to fit, then examining new data, rinse and repeat - periodically taking the time to refine the model, applying rules like Okkam's Razor. That is how science works, too, because there's no way for people to magically know the correctness of their model; all we can do is create more predictions, perform more tests, then alter the existing model. Most things work this way, and very rarely does it require you to come up with a completely new model from scratch.

So the data states that it regularly goes bad, the user performs a specific interaction, then it gets better, loop. That's your data, and you can construct a model. Then you test the model by making your main prediction: if the user does nothing, the television will remain with poor reception. You perform the test, you discover that it recovers on its own, so you have to change your model to fit this new data point. Likewise, you can do the opposite and require the user to try multiple things all the time, and record the results. The user would be pretty quickly eliminated from the model.

"peg their rewards according to that number" is the problem here. Statistical analysis did not tell the Devs what to set their TF rewards to; statistical analysis simply told them that a large number of people were receiving far more rewards/time running these TFs than doing other content. The "solution" they chose was based on their own evaluations and a Systems Designer's decision for how to formulate balance.

I'm really not sure what you mean by this. Do you expect scientists to regularly throw everything out and magically invent more accurate models? Working with the existing system is how everything in science starts. Ether wasn't "thrown out there", either: it came from a lot of different places, but mostly from (a) the idea that waves required a medium to pass through, and it had been shown that light was a wave (wave-particle duality wasn't conceived of yet), and (b) the fact that Maxwell's Equations implied that light traveled at c in a vacuum, but the only way that would make sense in Newtonian Mechanics was if it was in relation to some specific reference frame (e.g. Ether). Again, it wasn't until later that the idea that the speed of light was the same in relation to all reference frames was introduced (again, due to testing and making predictions based upon the evidence).

And all of this is outside the realm of statistical analysis. Analysis of the datasets will tell us what people do and don't do, and what results they get based upon those decisions. In fact, it could tell us very interesting things like "how well do people who don't take snipes fare versus people who do" or "of the people who have snipes, does a correlation exist between how often they use it and their performance". That might help us determine if the snipes are actually detrimental to the player. How to fix it, though, is the step after this. That's where you could come up with a hypothesis, like "making snipes better will bring blaster performance up to par", which you could test and see how it results.

I don't think "will accidentally buff Defenders, Corruptors, Dominators, Stalkers, and Scrappers" is as big a concern as you make it. For one, they could only apply the changes to Blasters (after all, Dominators got their snipes revamped into higher damaging powers and nobody else saw it) - though I don't like this, because Blast Sets are pretty poor for everybody, and its only because Corrs and Defs have such awesome Support Sets that they get by. For two, the idea would not be to buff snipes in isolation, but in conjunction with other things that would result in an offensive synergy, making the changes more valuable to Blasters than to others.

We didn't say anything about theories. You have to be careful when conflating scientific theories and the scientific method with statistical analysis and data gathering. The big reason why the things you list above are bunk is not because they were created by modeling what people observed - that's exactly the way science works. The crazy circle-inside-circles system that Ptolemy built for describing the observable universe was, likewise, wrong, but it was still a good model that served its purpose for a long time. Likewise, Galileo and Copernicus' observations led to them to make even better models. Rinse and repeat. Making models based upon your observations is the way things should go.

The problem with things like Astrology is that you can't test them. The model itself isn't making verifiable predictions that you can test. When I say that Religion is when you alter the Data to fit the Model, that's exactly what I mean: when you perform a test, you then attack the test if it doesn't fit the Model, then tweak and throw out the results until it does fit the Model.

Luminiferous ether, by the way, is a poor example. It was an inaccurate model (as we now know), but it was a scientifically valid one. It was verifiable, people were able to draw conclusions and make predictions based upon it, and the Michelson-Morley experiment (among others) tested it and found it wanting.