IanTheM1
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Posts
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Quote:Instead of screwing over everyone to counter the outliers, how about we nerf the outliers like has always been done? Keep in mind the game is explicitly supposed to be balanced around SOs, no matter how common soft-capped characters are...Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
I'm not hardlined against softcapped characters at all.
I have a softcapped DM/SR brute myself, and that DE mission was the first time in quite a while that I didn't get bored playing him because nothing was a credible threat.
Like it or not, softcapped characters are getting much more common. If you start nerfing things that are a threat to them, what are you going to be left with? Characters that people get bored with because they can hit 3-5 buttons on a keyboard and get through a mission in perfect safety while reading a book.
More assumptions, not worth addressing.Quote:I will never understand the cries that something is broken because it faceplants someone's favorite character. Maybe you should try something else if rushing in attacking the first thing you see doesn't work.
Too many people are like: "No, this is how I play my character, I refuse to deviate from what I've been doing for 30+ levels"
...Is there a term for a strawman so massive it destroys any semblance of a reasonable argument?Quote:You honestly believe that the players should be able to be literally untouchable by anything in the game? Why?
Funny, that feels like what they did by allowing basically any AT to soft cap their defense...Quote:If the devs dumb the game down into what amounts to "Push button = Gain XP", it's going to start bleeding off players as people start looking for something that doesn't put them to sleep. Suddenly running into something that flattens your normally invincible character is something to be overcome to most gamers, not a reason to complain. -
Quote:But what if my character concept is a Vanguard soldier? Even ignoring the armor, just the lack of the Redding Rail Rifle would seriously spoil my interest in playing such a character to 35, and then be forced to grind out Vanguard merits.Originally Posted by Ironik
As I said in the other thread, I'm opposed to global unlocks of anything that's story-driven. The Vanguard pieces are a good example, as are the Cimerora costume parts. That said, I am amenable to the Devs adding "lesser" or "plain" versions of such pieces like the Roman outfits available at character creation so people can make their themed characters, yet still give them some cool to work for later in the game.
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No matter what angle you approach them from, they are not soundly balanced.
Quartz exist prior to any of those powers being available (excluding PFF). If they were meant to be an Elude-killer, they should only spawn 38+. (In fact, I'm pretty sure they cap out at 40, never to be seen again. Edit: Yeah, they exist 30-40. That's pretty bad.)
Tier 9 powers like Elude are supposed to make you nigh-invincible. That is their entire purpose. Putting in a counter to a specific tier 9 as part of a basic, yet completely avoidable enemy group is nonsensical.
Even if you were going to go out of your way to spite SR for whatever reason, you're also destroying the defensive strength of every defense power in the game. That's quite a bit of collateral damage in pursuit of that goal. Stealth powers are comparatively low-key to nullifying entire protection sets.
Overall, you seem to be a bit hardlined against soft-capped characters, which is largely where the baseless assumptions come in. I do not play a soft-capped character. In fact, I am quite displeased with what IOs have done to the game. This entire time I've been speaking from the perspective of someone who only uses SOs or generic IOs.
You could cut that To-Hit buff in half and it would still ruin a majority of defense-based characters, because it's larger than the soft cap. (Not to mention, most soft-capped character don't even bother with Elude, for very obvious reasons.)
I will still maintain that Quartz can exist long enough, or in great enough numbers, to completely destroy a character. I'll also point out that you have a leg-up on the average player with your targeting bind. Honestly, if the best counter to a threat is a meta-game advantage, there's a design flaw somewhere. -
Quote:Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Yes, the huge to-hit buff from a Quartz is a problem for defense based powersets, I agree with that. My answer to that is to kill the pet that is buffing them first.
If I were to complain that the endurance drain from Sappers is a problem for non-defensive based characters, I would be told to kill the Sapper first, would I not?
Since killing the Sapper first is such a logical conclusion, why is killing the Quartz first NOT a logical conclusion? Why is "Kill the Sapper first" considered common sense, while "Kill the Quartz first" is considered unreasonable? I see absolutely no difference between the two.
You are complaining about an issue that common sense should have solved for you a long time ago.
If the issue is that you set your difficulty higher and are getting more than one at a time.....what, the game getting harder because you increased the difficulty is somehow unexpected?Also, please read what I quoted/was actually replying to.Quote:Originally Posted by IanTheM1
The loads of baseless assumptions don't help either. -
Quote:While I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case, I'm fairly certain the dev diary was saying that before they had to have separate database entries for each variant of a single enemy, which is usually done to set their difficulty on a level by level bases (ie, Council Guy (Levels 1-10), Council Guy (Levels 20-30)) whereas now they have the ability to just restrict powers by level, eliminating the need for duplicate database entries.Originally Posted by Oneirohero
Wasn't it in the recent massively dev-diary that up until recently they had to code enemies with multiple copies of the same power just to make them use it as often as intended?
And FWIW, I too was noticing an abundance of bosses and +1 enemies while solo ToTing. -
Quote:I think we're at an impasse, simply because you're either incapable of understanding or just ignoring why this makes little to no sense. The loads of baseless assumptions don't help either.Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
The to-hit was left as high as it is simply because Elude still exists. Sure, you can't make it permanent anymore, but you can still get your defense well over 100% for a couple minutes at a time. Seems like the devs left the to-hit as high as it is so SR doesn't have a way to simply ignore something that was intended to make things difficult for them (and other defense based characters). A 50% to-hit buff will still be floored by Elude, a 100% to-hit buff won't be.
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Quote:So you're outright saying that their design is based on outdated norms. Sounds like another really good reason to fix them.Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Couple points.
- DE were designed when it was possible to have perma-Elude, which was a great deal more overpowered than IOs can make SR now.
Then again, if that was their intention, then it was hideously flawed, since I'm pretty sure you needed to be level 40 to get perma-Elude rolling and Quartz appear well before that. (And well before level 38, as well.)
First off, cut the strawman. Nobody said anything about choosing not to kill the Quartz.Quote:- How exactly is their accuracy being buffed by an easily targeted and killed pet blatantly unfair? If the emanator were untargetable I would agree. But it takes no more than 3 hits to kill one, and they are easy to hit. If you choose not to kill the Quartz it's your own fault. That's like complaining about Sappers, but never killing them.
While they may be relatively easy to kill, three attacks is a long enough opening to get ganked by a Quartz-buffed boss. Plus, AFAIK, their buff has no target cap, which means that its power over a defense-based character goes up the larger the mob is. I believe they can also be buffed by Cairns as well, allowing them to stay up longer.
Additionally, you can have multiple Guardians in a group, and if I recall how their AI works correctly, they will summon a fresh Quartz as soon as the first is killed (unless under the effects of control for 100% of their lifespan). One per Guardian, always.
This wouldn't be so bad if Guardians were limited in some way, but no, they are very common lieutenants, which means this sort of thing can and will happen nearly every mob.
Quartz are extremely easy to deal with...in a complete vacuum. -
Quote:1) The game isn't balanced around IOs, and Quartz were designed far before their introduction. You've also destroyed your own point: SR gets to be invincible (with IOs), so it needs its kryptonite...which is completely avoidable. This is not sound balance. Moreover, the game should not actively encourage people to avoid entire enemy groups, and it regularly does this through blatantly unfair mechanics.Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
I think the Quartz emanators are designed to make things difficult for ANY defense based character, it just hits SR a little harder because defense is all they have.
If you have a character with extremely high defense, you are going to be practically unkillable in most normal situations. It stands to reason that the devs would want to put something in the game to ensure that those characters aren't practically unkillable in every situation.
DE are not especially common in the game and they are pretty easily avoided, so if you don't like the fact that you have a weakness to them (and one that is easily rectified at that), you don't ever have to fight them. It's not like they are CoT, Council, Arachnos, or Longbow, or any of the enemy groups that are seemingly everywhere.
2) My point is not about the method, but its strength. +100% ToHit completely nullifies defense. Not reduce, not trump, not challenge. Nullify. Completely eliminated. Do you really feel that the only way to challenge defense-based sets is to bypass them entirely? The Quartz buff could be significantly weaker and still be dangerous because ToHit is always a threat to defense. -
They forgot to make her count as a ghost for the purposes of the axe. It's really that simple.
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Quote:watOriginally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Regen has problems against large numbers of Council Marksmen.
I think we could have better balance than completely nullifying an entire form of protection, no matter how theoretically controllable it is.Quote:Every powerset in the game has it's foils.
In the case of Devouring Earth annihilating SR....that's an easy fix:
/bind <key> targetcustomnext Quartz
You will automatically target any Quartzes that may have been dropped so you can take them out before teh DE being buffed by them faceplant you.
Can't really do the same as easily with other sets' weaknesses.
Not to mention, while Invuln is weak to psychic, there are very few groups that actually do significant amounts of pure psychic damage. The only two I can think of are rare and in the endgame - Psychic Clockwork and Mother Mayhem's patients.
That's a bit different than "for the next 6 seconds, this entire mob gets to ignore your secondary completely". -
I'm not even sure if DE have a significant source of -DEF. It's all down to the ludicrous Quartz numbers.
As for Cairns, I really wish they'd tweak their spawning/targeting/hitbox behavior back to how it was in the early days. It used to be far, far easier to target them than it is now. -
Quote:It's a very safe bet.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
SG costume mode shouldn't be nearly as connection-intensive, as SG is incapable of changing any costume items on your character, and should as such take much less memory to transfer. Provided I'm an idiot and SG mode is just a different kind of costume swap, then you guys would have a point in that it's weird. However, being that I don't know and the developers blocked costume changes but not SG mode, I'll take that as a hint as SG mode swaps not being as intensive.
There's no way that updated color definitions, which at worst have to refresh some textures (and that may not even be the case, I'm still unsure how colored costume parts actually work myself), are anywhere near as intensive as forcing the client to completely (re)draw new parts, especially already server-intensive things like capes. -
Quote:Apples and oranges. Positional and typed defense are not that easily comparable due to uneven distribution of typed attacks compared to the near-universal application of positional attributes.Originally Posted by Leo_G
Increasing the sets defense to smashing/lethal isn't something you can just add unless you can prove the set should have it. Honestly, that it has decent defense just below the equivalent SR justifies it's huge benefits to endurance management. Although I can get behind boosting its -def resists, which seem pretty low. Around 75% would be great (I think it currently bobs around 55% but not positive).
There's also something to be said for the fact that EA is effectively obligated to take and use Energy Cloak to help shore up its defenses. (I'm fully expecting someone to come in and claim their EA works fine sans Energy Cloak, but I counter that anecdote with my own.) Point is, not everyone wants stealth on their Brute or Tank. Transferring Energy Cloak's defense bonus over to the main toggles and perhaps replacing it with something else would be a decent idea.
A big flaw is that EA is supposed to be really good against elemental attacks (judging from how it's set up), but the overwhelming majority of -Def comes from lethal damage.
Also, due to their low numbers, the autos don't seem to really add enough to balance out the lower S/L defense values, whereas a set like Invuln can very easily capitalize on both resistance and defense.
You keep bringing up endurance management as though it was particularly relevant. Even ignoring that I personally think balancing mitigation against endurance management is nonsensical to begin with, I19 is going to seriously reduce the value of such tools regardless.Quote:However, just adding and adding debuff resists 'just because' isn't fair. SR has its -def resist and -rech resists...that's it. But you want the set to have -END, -rech, -def resists while having nearly the same level of defense as SR AND big endurance management tools?
That said, the fact that an energy-based defensive set doesn't get endurance drain resistance is criminal. -
And on top of it, Kinetic Conduit would be very overpowered. Especially because it unfairly benefits builds with lots of extra recharge buffs and fast animating attacks, things that already tend to give a big advantage.
I've always favored the idea of bumping up the heal numbers on Energy Drain (it feels like it's balanced around its saturation point, rather than the realistic usage scenario of 3-5 targets) and turning Conserve Power into Focus Energy, which would be part endurance discount, part temporary resistance buff. -
Enhancements are meant to be semi-permanent, and respecs are not meant for stripping characters.
The devs have said previously that this isn't likely to change any time soon. -
Quote:It would also probably increase the loading times to start the game, so I'm not a fan of the idea.Originally Posted by SenseiBlur
Interesting concept but I can see it getting extremely cluttered if someone has more than 10 characters on a server.
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Quote:Huh? I wouldn't really call Repulsion Field area denial.Originally Posted by Vanden
That's the point. FF already has a perfectly good area denial power in Repulsion Field. It doesn't need 2.
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Quote:I'm pretty sure only player melee powers have 7 foot range. Enemies stick to the old 5 foot range.Originally Posted by SenseiBlur
Think about that for a second. Many melee powers have a range of 7 feet. If the range of force bubble is a mere 15 feet, it will be mostly useless aside from your proposed 25% damage debuff which is quite massive in itself...
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Quote:There have been a few, like the witch hat and the plain epaulets. Not that I support the idea.Originally Posted by Lothic
But I don't exactly like the idea of restricting costume items to any particular alignment (even if it's just a restriction on how you can buy them). So far in this game there's absolutely no restriction on any AT, alignment or origin as far as costume items go. I don't really see any advantage for them to start doing that now.
Though, I'd totally be on board with Techbot's idea since it would mean I would never have to deal with Vanguard Merits ever again. -
I'm on board with a new animation for Repulsion Bomb, but not re-using Hand Clap's. Seems like it would just look too janky like that.
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Quote:This particularly wouldn't fly. The badge collectors would riot.Originally Posted by TheHangedMan
The players would get a special "Living History" badge.
As for the rest, I don't see the point in making newspaper missions more interesting. They're not meant to be - they're meant to be pure filler. If you're looking for roleplay, that's what tip missions are for. -
Quote:This. For some reason folks get all fidgety when it comes to having to actually make a build decision.Originally Posted by EvilGeko
But not being able to take all your epic powers presents an interesting choice sometimes.
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Quote:And to a lesser extent, Fire Control.Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
(And if any set would fall under "gamebreaking with full command," it would be Illusion. Blame that.)
I'm not really sure of what the benefit of even basic pet controls would be, but I've personally never had any real problems with them. -
Quote:In one of the big Syndicate missions, not only does it spawn completely silent ambushes, but it spawns them right on your back.Originally Posted by NightshadeLegree
I honestly can't think of any that are silent.
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It's been a while since I've examined every single item in the options menu, but can't you disable chat bubbles entirely?