EvilGeko

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team buffs have a mechanics problem. Teams vary in size from 1-8 so a buff that applies to everyone on the team is multiplied in effectiveness from 1x to 8x. Either a buff is useless for small teams or godmode for large teams - or both.

What if team buffs had diminishing returns? Say 150% effectiveness for teams of 1-2, 125% for 3-4, 100% for 5-6, and 75% for 7-8 (numbers given are just an idea, the real numbers would need to be better balanced and more complex like (Y-1) X (12.5% + R/2.3).

That way buffs would be more useful on smaller teams and less powerful on bigger teams than they are now. A team buff should still give a bigger total boost on a large team but not 4x on an 8 person team what it does on a 2 person team.

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Yes, they should. In fact, adding diminishing returns to buffs and debuffs of all sorts would allow us to alter many, many problematic powers. In all likelyhood, though, it will not happen. The change would simply be too fundmental and require a great deal of work on our part.

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Lord help us, they'd do it if they could!

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Sure! Then Weave could give 15% Defense, and Combat Jumping could give 25% Defense (or whatever) and combined, they'd give 30% instead of 40%. When the local FF Defender buffed the character, instead of the normal 25% for the FF, it'd be 5% for 35% defense.*

Basically, additional buffs would always be helpful, but the base level abilities could be made better and more useful across the board.

* Disclaimer: All numbers used illustratively and do not indicate any relation to what said values or formulae would actually be if we were ever to implement a system such as this, which I doubt.

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The downside being you'd have to learn Calculus to know your actual defense.

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Not really. EQ2 has this and the game's UI does it for you.

Everything you do to add to your defense (called avoidance there) updates your Avoidance score in real time. And even without that, you never have the problem of too much defense anymore.

All additional defense/resistance is worthwhile.

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Most honest post in this thread.

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Hey, wait, I also extolled the virtues of of broken mechanics!

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That I am, in fact, a troll ...

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Most honest quote in thread -1!

But, seriously, addressing the stacking buffs issues, such as they are, is a mountain of work that would touch nearly every aspect of gameplay, up to and including basic mission design. And I'm not sure the ROI would be enough to justify the time and money to do it. The perfect time to have done it would have been I5, concurrent with the GDR and before the subsequent change to def scaling.

But that's a long time ago.

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It's interesting, but this all started when they put I5/GDN on test. All these arguments have been putting around for two years. They were right then and the devs still did it and ED. Sigh...

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2. They can't make well-balanced high-end teamed content, that doesn't involve totally negating highly stacked protections, because highly stacked protections are extreme enough to trivialize high end content.

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But I *want* to be able to go crazy, get 8 buffers and/or debuffers, and trivialize all content, when possible. One of the biggest joys I get from the game is happening to get on a team that can streamroll anything because of insane stacking.

Will the changes take away my overkill? Dont take away my overkill. Mikey likes it.

Lewis

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Most honest post in this thread.

But see, these overkill teams are the one and only thing that goes away. And a WHOLE LOT of new fun gets created at the same time.

Remember this:

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8. They consider debuffing sets potentially dangerous to game balance to implement.

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I said as much in beta, but every makes me out to be a troll or something. That I am, in fact, a troll doesn't mean I'm not right! Debuffs suffer for their power to stack. Not because they are so powerful individually.

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2) How many fun additions to the game would be pushed back, yet again to tweak the mathmatical model?
We've allready spent 2+ issues making significant changes to the system that have helped contribute to pushing back fun things like new powersets or ATs, do we really need the Devs to spend more time nit-picking the system?


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To be honest, we've seen the last of new ATs I'll bet. New ATs really are an anomaly for these types of games. Some games NEVER add a new class or AT.

As for powersets, we would be better allowing sets to cross ATs. It's quicker and more likely to happen.

But this change wouldn't be seen as anything but a buff to most people. It's not like ED. In fact, if you did this ED could and probably eventually would go away.

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Keep in mind that it's not just +res and +def. Heals would have to be treated in the same fashion, for this to be fair. Heals would always heal x% of the damage you've taken, otherwise you will have a problem.

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That's not exactly how it would play out. Healing would have to be brought in line though that's true. But then, wouldn't the anti-healor forces love that?

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I question whether Heals would be brought in line. Even if they were, would the playerbase understand what that meant? I think one of the main consequences of a change like this is everyone would stock up on self-buff Power Pools and eschew any Defender but a Heal0r.

The more I look at Arcanville's arguments, the more I am convinced that it is a good idea, but I fear what the players would do with this kind of system.

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I said brought in line because depending on how the numbers worked out, heals could be too powerful or not powerful enough. Given the general difficulty level, I would guess heals would be pretty much OK and only need to be tweaked.

But healing is a strange form of mitigation. As a reactive, it has a lot of liabilities compared to resistance/defense. But it can make you immortal if you have enough of it.

So really, I don't know how healing would have to work with this system.

Ah well. I'm happy to know that the devs understand what we've been saying and would do it if it was possible. It validates my opinion that Castle really knows what he's doing.

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Keep in mind that it's not just +res and +def. Heals would have to be treated in the same fashion, for this to be fair. Heals would always heal x% of the damage you've taken, otherwise you will have a problem.

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That's not exactly how it would play out. To have the server do that would be scary hard.

Healing would have to be brought in line though, that's true. I'm not exactly sure how that would work out. It might require heals be stronger, but I wouldn't want that because then we really would be like all MMOs and I don't think healing should actually have primacy.

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Arcana's right; Defender FF is absurd. For a set ones of people play, it casts a disproportionately massive shadow over all of CoH.

And this is coming from someone whose first posts were along the lines of, "OK ... so my bubbler is hitting her 20s. I don't get what I'm supposed to do with FF's next three powers." 2.5 years later, my bubbler's stuck at 37. Largely because the performance delta between having 22 defense and 45 is too large.

And, of course, EvilGeko's a troll.

I'm just sayin'

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You're a doodie head.

But my FF controller is one of the main reasons I'm for this. Multiplicative stacking could do NOTHING but help the vast majority of buff/debuffers.

And I'm not singling out buff/debuff ALLY sets. I think the same thing should happen to Scrappers/Tankers/Brute and Stalker defense sets. In this way you could encourage more diversity among builds.

For example. When the game launched some Invul players used to take only the passives because they were good. But since buffs are additive, stacking them with TI and Unyielding was overpowered. But if you had multiplicative stacking, passives could be good, still less than toggles, but reasonable and people could explore different ways of getting the character they want.

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And they still aren't necessary, they're just much more usefu thanl in the past. -Regen debuffs are currently required for AV battles in many cases, but thats a result of boring, unimaginative AV design that seems to be summed up by Challenge=Giant Sack of HP.

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Agreed. And the change on test helps that a lot. Interestingly enough a buff to most debuffers. Making buffs/debuffs fair would entail a lot of buffing (FF and Sonic could be MUCH better), but it would nerf one particular playstyle.

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There are no arguments here being put forth by anyone opposed to making buffs fair. There are just a lot of people who play buff/debuff sets who don't think what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

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Whereas you, of course, deeply care about what's "fair", and aren't out to punish buff/debuff sets becuase you think "what's good for the goose is good for the gander".

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Not at all. I'm out to see just what Castle said would happen. Weave wouldn't have to be 5% defense, SR could finally get a fair amount of mitigation and defenders could use their buffs on themselves.

But hey, easier to question my motives than put forth an argument.

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Basically, additional buffs would always be helpful, but the base level abilities could be made better and more useful across the board.


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I wish you could do this. I wish it so much. I hope, for your sake and the sake of its players, that you're doing it for MUO. Sadly, I'd rather not play in the Marvel Universe, and I'd rather not leave this game.

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I'll bet you money that they won't make the same mistakes with MUO that they did here.

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You know, I always look at the really bad ideas in the suggestions forum and I'm NEVER one of those people that comes on and bashes the person for his bad idea. If anything, I try to offer alternatives to make it a better idea. Honestly, this is worse idea I have ever seen, and only because its so planned out....like some kind of evil plot to take over the world.

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That's a wonderful argument for why this is a bad idea...oh wait..it's not.

There are no arguments here being put forth by anyone opposed to making buffs fair. There are just a lot of people who play buff/debuff sets who don't think what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

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I say we nerf everyone to the same damage and only use brawl. Then this game would really be fun.

Cheers!

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Love the strawman.

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I love it when this topic comes up...

Back before Issue 5, buffs were secondary, practically unnecessary. Tanks were king. The Devs make some changes that actually make buffs useful, and people cry foul, especially those who played Tanks.

This topic comes up at least once every few months, always by someone who played an AT that didn't need support back before the GDN and ED. And considering the OP started a thread in the AT General section about Tanks' usefulness in the post-GDN/ED world... color me not surprised.

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Sir, it is improper to build oneself up by standing on the backs of those who were cut down.

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QFT. But the lie is that buffs weren't useful. They just weren't necessary.

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Sure! Then Weave could give 15% Defense, and Combat Jumping could give 25% Defense (or whatever) and combined, they'd give 30% instead of 40%. When the local FF Defender buffed the character, instead of the normal 25% for the FF, it'd be 5% for 35% defense.*

Basically, additional buffs would always be helpful, but the base level abilities could be made better and more useful across the board.

* Disclaimer: All numbers used illustratively and do not indicate any relation to what said values or formulae would actually be if we were ever to implement a system such as this, which I doubt.

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This would of course make for the fun situation of said local FF Defender being regularly turned down for the team because "we already have defense buffs, we need resists/heals/debuffs*"

*delete as appropriate, but you know it's gonna be heals

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If you believe the defender forum this happens all the time anyway.

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team buffs have a mechanics problem. Teams vary in size from 1-8 so a buff that applies to everyone on the team is multiplied in effectiveness from 1x to 8x. Either a buff is useless for small teams or godmode for large teams - or both.

What if team buffs had diminishing returns? Say 150% effectiveness for teams of 1-2, 125% for 3-4, 100% for 5-6, and 75% for 7-8 (numbers given are just an idea, the real numbers would need to be better balanced and more complex like (Y-1) X (12.5% + R/2.3).

That way buffs would be more useful on smaller teams and less powerful on bigger teams than they are now. A team buff should still give a bigger total boost on a large team but not 4x on an 8 person team what it does on a 2 person team.

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Yes, they should. In fact, adding diminishing returns to buffs and debuffs of all sorts would allow us to alter many, many problematic powers. In all likelyhood, though, it will not happen. The change would simply be too fundmental and require a great deal of work on our part.

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Lord help us, they'd do it if they could!

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Sure! Then Weave could give 15% Defense, and Combat Jumping could give 25% Defense (or whatever) and combined, they'd give 30% instead of 40%. When the local FF Defender buffed the character, instead of the normal 25% for the FF, it'd be 5% for 35% defense.*

Basically, additional buffs would always be helpful, but the base level abilities could be made better and more useful across the board.

* Disclaimer: All numbers used illustratively and do not indicate any relation to what said values or formulae would actually be if we were ever to implement a system such as this, which I doubt.

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Err, wouldn't such a system essentially be going back to the Pre-ED "no one really needs buffs" situation that ED and the GDN were partially intended to fix?

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GDN and ED were intended to make buffs USEFUL, not necessary. And they would remain so.

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I like being quoted by Rednames, but not like this...

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You do of course realize, if anything ever happens to buffs you will be blamed.



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You could always blame me instead: I've bugged Castle about this for so long, at this point I just cut and paste my suggestion into a PM, he cuts and pastes his PM that says its too much work, and that basically covers it for another couple of months.

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lol. I've had those cut and paste exchanges with Castle!

But good job anyway Arcana. It's a good idea and maybe someday we'll see it.

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1 Blaster + 1 Blaster doesn't increase either Blaster's damage beyond their solo ability absent powers like Assault, which is a buff.

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I think they do. An energy blaster's knockback will make all the blasters safer. A safe blaster is doing more damage and running less. 2 Energy blasters would be more than twice as effective as just one. That's really the only blaster I know anything about.

So you'll have to nerf stacked knockback too.

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I didn't say they didn't make each other safer, I said they didn't increase each other's damage. They make each other safer via controls, not damage.

The person I was responding too, was posting the tired, BS about damage stacking. Which it does not.

And BTW KB doesn't stack either unless you can get them to hit at the exact same time.

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team buffs have a mechanics problem. Teams vary in size from 1-8 so a buff that applies to everyone on the team is multiplied in effectiveness from 1x to 8x. Either a buff is useless for small teams or godmode for large teams - or both.

What if team buffs had diminishing returns? Say 150% effectiveness for teams of 1-2, 125% for 3-4, 100% for 5-6, and 75% for 7-8 (numbers given are just an idea, the real numbers would need to be better balanced and more complex like (Y-1) X (12.5% + R/2.3).

That way buffs would be more useful on smaller teams and less powerful on bigger teams than they are now. A team buff should still give a bigger total boost on a large team but not 4x on an 8 person team what it does on a 2 person team.

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Yes, they should. In fact, adding diminishing returns to buffs and debuffs of all sorts would allow us to alter many, many problematic powers. In all likelyhood, though, it will not happen. The change would simply be too fundmental and require a great deal of work on our part.

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Lord help us, they'd do it if they could!

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Sure! Then Weave could give 15% Defense, and Combat Jumping could give 25% Defense (or whatever) and combined, they'd give 30% instead of 40%. When the local FF Defender buffed the character, instead of the normal 25% for the FF, it'd be 5% for 35% defense.*

Basically, additional buffs would always be helpful, but the base level abilities could be made better and more useful across the board.

* Disclaimer: All numbers used illustratively and do not indicate any relation to what said values or formulae would actually be if we were ever to implement a system such as this, which I doubt.

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Thanks for verifying what we've been saying forever Castle.

Everyone keeps saying this is nerf-herding. It's not. It's a way to correct the current problems around stacking buffs/debuffs.

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<QR>

<sarcasm>

Why not, hey, next lets make damage diminish returns too. After the 2nd blaster, each additional blaster's damage should be cut in half.

3rd does 1/2 damage
4th does 1/4 damage
5th does 1/8 damage

Oh! Oh! Then we should make mezz effects diminish too. After the 2nd controller, each additional hold should drop in magnitude by 1. So the 5th and subsequent hold attack has no effect except to generate aggro.

Brilliant!

</sarcasm>

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If damage reinforced other damage I would actually agree with that. But that's not how damage works, but it is how buffs/debuffs work.

It's not even a reasonable or responsible argument that damage is in the same boat. If it were, 8 Blasters would be as powerful as 8 Rads.

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Seems to me Hamster and his all blaster TF's are doing the job as easily as any all defender or controller team I have ever been apart of. *shrug*

Top Doc's all Kehldian team seems to be doing just as well.

Flukes I suppose.

Cheers!

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I doubt that. It's not really possible with teams of equal skill.

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<QR>

<sarcasm>

Why not, hey, next lets make damage diminish returns too. After the 2nd blaster, each additional blaster's damage should be cut in half.

3rd does 1/2 damage
4th does 1/4 damage
5th does 1/8 damage

Oh! Oh! Then we should make mezz effects diminish too. After the 2nd controller, each additional hold should drop in magnitude by 1. So the 5th and subsequent hold attack has no effect except to generate aggro.

Brilliant!

</sarcasm>

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If damage reinforced other damage I would actually agree with that. But that's not how damage works, but it is how buffs/debuffs work.

It's not even a reasonable or responsible argument that damage is in the same boat. If it were, 8 Blasters would be as powerful as 8 Rads.

For everyone else, it works out like this:

1 Blaster + 1 Blaster doesn't increase either Blaster's damage beyond their solo ability absent powers like Assault, which is a buff.

1 Rad Defender + 1 Kin Defender will give each other more damage thant they would have had separately.

That's why saying silly things like stop damage from stacking is just a distraction. Damage already doesn't stack. That's the point.

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Can you explain why this is an issue? I see what you are trying to do here but I don't understand why.

My first question is why would you want buffs to be less effective on the hardest missions? It makes no sense.

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This is just my opinion, but the reason you want to reign in overwhelming stacking of debuffs and some buffs is the same reason for GDN/ED, to ensure that everyone is still needed.

Statesman said point blank that a major reason for GDN was to ensure that buffs were still useful. Prior to that point, pretty much everyone was pretty good on their own. Blasters were probably the weakest, but they could melt down mobs in one-two shots. Tankers and Scrappers basically needed no one. Some controllers basically became godmode after getting their pets. Defenders were very good or completely sucked solo.

Those that sucked needed teams because their primary depends on teams. For example, Empathy only has three powers that the empath can use on himself.

Well, if no one needed Defenders then defenders basically had a hard time going it alone. Repeat Offenders and other Defender focused groups grew out of this. The great HEALOR controversy grew out of this.

So we get GDN and soon after ED. Now, buffs/debuffs are very useful. Only problem is that they are so useful that you really don't need any other AT. All defender/controller teams do just fine on their own. Much, much better than all Scrapper, Blaster or Tanker teams.

Is this a problem? Maybe. The fact is Scrappers/Blasters/Tankers can level and play just fine by themselves. But the problem comes that on group content, it's easy to feel almost superfluous in just the same way that defenders did before.

So what to do?

What I would do is, and this will get me in trouble, is change Defender primaries wholesale. I would get away from this idea that buffs/debuffs should be team only. Casters would be able to cast them on themselves, but stacking would be strictly controlled. Force multipliers would be moderated. Everyone would get a base damage boost, but the DPS ATs would get a bigger one. Everyone would get a survivability boost, but the Tankers would get a bigger one.

End result. Defenders would be able to solo just fine and contribute to a group very well. Tankers would be needed to tank. The DPS ATs would be actually needed to achieve startling DPS and kill speed.

Holy trinity? Maybe. But there's nothing wrong with that so long as everyone can solo well, because that makes all group decent, it just makes the trinity that much better. The problem with the trinity was that not everyone belonged to one of the prongs. So long as everyone is a member, it's fine.

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If your going to nail stacked debuffs you need to do it across the board and nail stacked damage auras, aoes, slows, etc.



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I don't have a problem necessarily with stacking, it's ultimate numbers. But in any event, damage does not 'stack'. Damage is an instant resolution event. Stacking isn't really applicable.

I don't disagree that controls have the same problem as debuffs. Hence the hated purple triangles.

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This would be an extreme solution so something that isn't really a problem.

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See: Travel power suppression

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Darn you Click. Please don't get me started.



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SUPPRESSION!

SUPPRESSION!

HA!

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Away devil. I'm through with you!

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This would be an extreme solution so something that isn't really a problem.

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See: Travel power suppression

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Darn you Click. Please don't get me started.

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all-defender teams are at one of two extremes. They either do exceptionally well, or crash and burn faster than you can blink.

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That is for sure. Funny how Repeat Offenders always gets hauled out as an example by people that don't play with us. Believe me, there are plenty of wipes, and no, not all of them are my fault.

Cheers!

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I agree that wipes are very easy with some all defender teams. But would you also acknowledge Hobo, that a well constructed Defender team that uses their buffs (they don't have to be skilled just use their powers) can be invincible?