Kitsune9tails
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Posts
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Joined
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To everyone:
You do realize you are supposed to run out of endurance, right?
Building your character to not run out of endurance is supposed to lower your performance in other ways, hence balance.
Asking the devs to put endurance discounts on everything is just removing one of the tools for balancing powers and powersets.
...just felt I had to point that out; carry on. -
We know that there is a Mission Architect Team, consisting of Dr, Aeon and Black Scorpion.
I do not know whether there is a PvP team that is constantly working on PvP, but there may or may not be. If they also consist of two guys, it makes sense that it might be a while before we see the fruits of their labors (and they are probably taking their time analyzing the fallout from Issue 13).
I don't beleive there is a dedicated Badge team, but a few developers devote part of their time to badges (and it seems that one of the priorities of each issue is a handful of new badges), but it seems evident that Badges are not a huge time sink, being primarily text, a 'beacon' (or counter embedded in a task) and a badge graphic. Definitely not something as deep and complex as all of PvP.
Ideally, as the new hires settle into their roles, there will be room for a dedicated team (with overlap, surely) for each of the major aspects of the game.
If there isn't already. -
MA > PvP > Badges
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City of Heroes® Super Booster: Pets includes all new and improved costume options, character emotes, new persistent auras, and a new power option tailored to characters with various pet themes..
- New Costume Pieces: Animal skin Loin cloths (with an off one shoulder one-piece version for the ladies), Pith helmets and Johdpurs, a 'dressed in furs' full set of outfit parts, as well as high tech armor covered with specimen jar protrusions, a chitnous/oozy set of parts covered with bulbous egglike protrusions, a set of animal tattoos on skin, and a couple of sets of clothes covered with alchemical signs and runes
- New Emotes: One that pulls an egglike spheroid from nowhere and throws it at the ground, one that spits some goo at the ground, a 'whistle for critter', a 'snap fingers summon', a 'on all fours bay at the moon' and 'crack whip'.
- New Auras: Trailing misty spirits, trailing odor/pheromones, sigils/runes floating in the air, floating glowing/blinking capsules
- New Power: Summons a creature (pet, not henchman) that attacks in melee for lethal damage plus lethal DoT: customizable to appear as a tintable bird, canine, feline, ghostly person, dinosaur, flying insect, or bladey robot.
- New Noncombat Pets: A large cat, a large dog, a bird of prey, a small dragon, a person's ghost, a small devil, a small angel, a blob, a tentacled horror, a monkey, a fan/stalker, more robots.
- New Buff Pets: A floating bird, sigil, or 'eye robot' that buffs perception (doesn't stack) and accuracy.
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I think the point is to have the choice.
Regardless of whether or not you are 'right' in preferring a certain activity, the alternative is provided for others who prefer it. -
Quote:Thanks for the clarification. This makes much more sense to me.Originally Posted by Frosticus
I can understand why you might have interpreted what I was saying as a request for longer duration SF's, but I actually wasn't. Quite the opposite actually. I want them to slice and dice the super long hero tasks like they are doing with Posi. Many of them need serious revision to bring them up to acceptable content standards. I'd also like to see 3-5 more SF's added in the 25+ game.
For clarification: I'm not saying that formation time should be factored into the dev formula for merit reward, just that end users should be aware of it when calculating things like earned merits/time spent. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Tenzhi
In these sorts of discussions, I find that 'longer than I want' may as well be 'an infinite amount of time.' In general, they're both equally out of reach.Fine, so that begs the question:Quote:Originally Posted by Tenzhi
In these sorts of discussions, I find that 'longer than I want' may as well be 'an infinite amount of time.' In general, they're both equally out of reach.
How long do you want it to take?
Starting from scratch at level 50, how long should it take to IO out?
Starting from scratch at level 1, how long should it take to IO out?
How many KHTFs should it take to get an LotG from Merits alone?
You get the idea. Feel free to assume 4 hours of play per day as a general figure, running nothing but back to back TFs, just to get a base on some numbers.
Sure, nothing may come of it (since IOs are optional content) but I'm just curious as to the thought process behind any figures that may materialize. -
This seems to suggest that TFs and the like should be engineered so as to have a minimum possible completion time (to prevent a Speed Katie situation where a shortcut leads to Merit Farming on a scale that is considered bad for the game).
Since entering TF mode already locks out other content, this seems quite doable (albeit probably not desirable). -
Quote:Yes, but you can't really account for form up times, gathering Shivans and the like in the formula. If nothing else, not all teams gather Shivans specifically for a task (may have already had them lying around) or even form up for a specific task ("Thanks for helping out on that mission, guys. Wanna do a SF?").Originally Posted by Frosticus
This is true, the only wrench in the works is that it can and often does take a bit longer to form up a villain SF. But even pretending it take the same time.
If it takes you 10 min to form up a team and run run RSF and complete it in the 1 merit/3 min time of 75 min so the task took 85 min.
= 1 merit for 3.4 min
10 min to form up a team and run STF and complete it in the 1 merit/3 min time of 111 min so the task took 121 min.
= 1 merit for 3.27 min
It seems small, but the longer TF's usually have more corners you can cut, but team formation time is always a sunk cost. One that is often higher villain side, but not always.
The result is that the higher merit total of many hero tasks can be leveraged to earn more merits/min. Of course this disappears if your team stays together and runs multiple merit rewarding content, but that is usually the exception rather than the rule.
The difference is seemingly small, but over enough time and enough people it can really add up.
It would be tantamount to accounting for joking around, bathroom breaks, market runs, and training stops in the formula.
Similarly, it is difficult to account for 'challenge' because of the differences in builds and team composition and the like.
Besides, be careful: although everyone wants there to be more SFs, do you really want a Quaterfield redside to 'even out' task lengths? It would be one way to handle the problem without recalculating the formula and taking into account various controversial/subjective factors (like how much pre-I13 data should 'count'). -
I just get irritable when people say 'can't be done' when they mean 'will take longer than I want it to'.
In this case it's a little important, because I'm not sure the Devs and Players agree on how long it 'should' take to outfit a character with IOs.
I'm guessing, but I feel confident the Dev design is "it doesn't matter how long it takes, because they are optional".
Thus, WAI. And in my personal case, acceptable, although YMMV. -
Quote:The fact that you take longer than the median time does not equate to the fact that you are doing anything wrong or that the people with times less than the median are aberrant.Originally Posted by Days_
That tells us that the median time for Virgil Tarikoss is 39 minutes. My usual time for completing that SF is c.90 minutes and has been as much as 136 minutes.
It certainly doesn't equate to 1 merit per 3 minutes going by MY measure of play. So either I am doing something seriously wrong or circumstances are such that the data is squeued by aberrant behaviour (as was the case for Katie Hannon and the Eden Trial). This was exacerbated red-side due to the comparative lack of SF's meaning that there were less options so the data became further squeued.
Had the Hero TF's been as 'well designed' as the villain SF's then I am sure the hero rewards would have been significantly less but it remains that a non-speed team is 'penalised'* more red-side than blue.
Not sure I quite managed to get my point across clearly there... oh well...
*not my word
Some teams, builds, and playstyles are better for some tasks than others. Some people run more TFs than others.
- If a team of people who play together all the time instead of pugging decide to do a particular TF that they can do quickly once a day, is that aberrant?
- Does it become aberrant if they all decide to play Defenders (or powersets resistant to the foes, or that the foes don't resist) and steamroll the content?
- Does it become aberrant once they decide to skip the optional encounters?
- Is it wrong to take longer on a TF because you are joking around and having fun, or visiting the tailor, or respeccing, or farming for Shivans?
I'm not saying the data isn't skewed, I'm saying that regardless of the calculation, playstyle and other factors are going to make a difference in the amount of time it takes to get those merits.
It's like building a character for performance or for RP fun. If the RP build is sub optimal, that doesn't make it wrong or bad, but isn't the lowered performance part of the choice to build and play that character? -
If you use Merits, you will guaranteed get what you want eventually.
If you use the market, you may not ever see what you want to bid on at any price.
Merits provide a direct relationship between time spent playing and benefit received.
The market is a gamble; you could get what you want now or never, for 5 inf or a billion.
I don't think Merits significantly reduce the supply to the market; there is no guarantee the drops that would have fallen instead of would not have simply been deleted for room (and I beleive that one of the complaints that led to the markets was due to certain drops being common as dirt and clogging inventory).
I beleive Reward Merits are WAI: they allow you to know exactly what is going to 'drop' at the end of a given arc.
Lets say you specifically want a LotG. I know I can get one by running 10 hours of TFs. In that time, if you got a random drop at the end of a TF instead, how likely is it that one would be an LotG? -
But it's not fewer Merits: it's the same number of Merits, just fewer SFs to get them with.
Less variety, perhaps, fewer options, but still 1 Merit per 3 minutes. -
Quote:This doesn't appear to make sense. The time to Merit ratio in either case is 1 Merit per 3 minutes.Originally Posted by Steele_Magnolia
This is another reason I don't play villainside much, hardly at all in fact. The only SFs I've done have all been "speed" because the merits were so small. Heroside people are usually at least willing to fight on the way and sometimes even defeat all because the merits (except for Katie and Eden) aren't anemic.
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Hamidon wrestling?
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Quote:It is likely that your teams' playstyles, composition, and builds are more suited to one task than the other.Originally Posted by Eiko-chan
Not my assumption at all. I think Task Forces have approximately the right Merit rewards - including the co-op task forces. My group runs on the ITF tend to be around two hours* - slower than the median, but not grossly outside the curve.
On the other hand, our runs on the BSF and LRSF both tend towards three+ hours of time, with the same players and more-or-less the same characters as the ITF runs. If the SFs are simply "better designed", rather than poorly measured, why such a difference in performance for what, according to Merit formulas, should all be approximately equal tasks?
* Assuming we win; the Nictus Romulus fight has mechanics that make things tougher if you have MMs on the team, which we, as villain players, tend to like playing.
I guess that you would agree that your times to complete either would improve if you chose to use tactics, builds and and teams more specifically designed to those specific tasks. -
She was just taking a walk...
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Quote:In a phrase: "Speed Katies"Originally Posted by Eiko-chan
Why?
This game isn't a competition. Why do the devs have to account for the fact that some people play the game faster than others? For some reason this is always taken as a given in game design, and yet I've never understood why. Why does it matter than someone else can get twice as much stuff as I can? Why do I have to get half as much to compensate for them doing so?
The Katie Hannon TF was designed with a certain reward level for time to completion ratio. People found ways to complete the missions in roughly a quarter to a tenth of the time. It became far more reward efficient than intended, and the fast way became the standard way of doing it.
Remember: there is always a speed of reward/progress that breaks the game because the game wasn't designed for it. Also, people will burn out and stop playing when they delude themselves that they have to adopt methods they don't enjoy in order to get rewards 'fast enough': you may not do it, but many players gauge their success by their peers. Apparently, a financially significant number of players.
The Devs changed the TF to curb this, but also conceived of handling things the other way: adjust the rewards rather than the mission.
Katie Hannon is just an example, but the idea is clear: A Merit is worth 3 minutes of your time spent on a TF. However, we can't just measure how long each person spends doing it, that would lead to abuse. So, we can base it on the slowest people (leads to the fastest people getting rewards that are too high), the fastest people (most people's rewards are too slow, or we are forcing them to adopt the faster methods) or the median.
They chose the median. -
Because of the wide disparity of possible teams and builds in this game, there is no real way to gauge 'difficulty', only 'tasks completed' and 'time'.
Everyone who has ever created a Mission Architect arc realizes this. On the exact same mission, you will get feedback from players saying, "It's impossible to complete! You should warn people how deadly it is!" and "It's far too easy. No challenge whatsoever."
Besides, you can't just decide a given arc is worth 10 merits and be done.
When you discover that players are farming that arc for 60 Merits per hour (while others are taking 2 hours to complete it), you have to do something. -
Quote:It's a Catch-22: since Merits are based on the median time to complete content, they reward speed runs. If you penalize speed runs, then you are actually basing Merits on the actual time to complete content: you are now rewarding people not for completing more of the content, but for taking longer to complete the same content.Originally Posted by Clouded
But why should a team that skips content get the same merit reward for a team that does not?
Remember Merits are the reward for median time is takes to complete a TF/SF. So if someone is skipping the content to get a faster merit/hour ratio why should people who don't skip the content be subject to the same merit reward because they choose to actually experience the full TF/SF?
Basically, what I'm seeing is that speed runs (stealth + TP) are the norm (especially on the ITF) and normal runs are what seem out of place. If anything, people running normal TFs/SFs should be a bonus merit(s) for not skipping content.
In short, merits stay the same, but completing certain % of content rewards additional merits. That way speed runners aren't being penalized and normal TFs get their just merit rewards.
To base Merits on the amount of content completed, there would have to be a seperate Merit reward for each piece of content, thus meaning that all goals in a mission just became mandatory...
...unless partial completion of more missions in the same amount of time is better rewarded than full completion of fewer missions in that time. If that happens you are right back to where we are now.
Also important is the fact that the Devs are currently moving toward more of an arc being optional rather than mandatory as story branch tech enters the game.
Basically, you have to decide: is a Merit reward a reward for acheiving Mission Complete at all, or should certain goals within a mission have their own Merit rewards? -
Regardless of what the Devs intended when designing PvP zones, I think we can all agree that the intent is not being acheived.
Thus a redesign is in order. -
It all depends on what the Merit Reward is conceptually.
I have no problems with the Stealther getting less Merits if there is a seperate Merit reward for each sub-goal in the mission, and they are choosing to skip past those with that foreknown.
If on the other hand, the Merit reward is a reward for acheiving Mission Complete by any means possible, then it should be equal so long as they get Mission Complete: that's what they signed up for.
However, if you are going to penalize people actively for stealthing through a mission, then what is stealth even for in PvE? As it is, it is only of use in skipping fights. They would have to rework the mechanics so that it would actually give better benefits to combat in order for it to be worth it otherwise (unless you think the arguably tiny Defense bonus it gives is the point).
You don't hire Nightcrawler to steal the Hope Diamond and then pay him less because he didn't disable every guard in the building. If you want the job done that way, you hire The Hulk instead. -
Quote:If Stealthing a mission is not consciously being penalized, the stealthers should definitely not receive LESS.Originally Posted by Clouded
I thought we were talking about merits. Let me rephrase then.
Should a team that can stealth and TP most missions get the same MERIT REWARD as a team that steam rolls the same content and does not skip any?
Stealthing a mission penalizes itself; the 'problem', if there is one, is Buffer Overrun type groups that:
- Defeat all the mobs and click all the glowies
- Do so in 25% of the median time
- Do so multiple times per day, several times per week
- Do so with resources other team don't have or don't want to get (they are friends who always play together, have minmaxed characters, are IO'ed out, have spent a lot of time focusing on doing stuff like this, are using characters handpicked to handle that specific critter group, etc)
These are the guys who bring the median time of a particular arc down to 40 minutes when the average PuG can't do it in under an hour. -
I am in favor of a system that hands out labeled Merits for sub-objectives at the end of a mission, like Rescued Han: 2 Merits. Rescued Leia: 4 Merits. Defeated Jabba and his minions: 1 Merit. Defeated Boba Fett: 1 Merit. Destroyed Sand Skiff: 1 Merit, etc.
However, we also don't want to "force" people to roll all-Defender teams so they can steamroll critters (and click all glowies) in 5 minutes either.
No matter what the Mission Complete rewards are, if they are significant, they will encourage speed runs, simply because then you can run another mission and get the bonus again that much sooner.
But I think we are losing sight of the goal here.
Let's say we have an arc that has a median completion time of 30 minutes.
In that arc, we have 40 groups of critters, an AV (that scales down), and 3 glowies.
Team 'minMAX' can steamroll the arc in 5 minutes, defeating every critter and clicking every glowie, set at max difficulty.
Team 'eekaPuG' will take 1 hour to do this arc, and will only find 90% of the critters, at minumum difficulty (plus will rack up debt due to 3 teamwipes).
Team 'NinjaU' can stealth the arc in 5 minutes, but will defeat almost none of the mobs.
Team 'casualpals' will take an hour to do the arc, mostly due to RPing, bio breaks, joking around, and frequent visits to the tailor.
Team 'luck' just happens to have the right mix of powersets, so despite fairly casual playing, will complete the arc in 10 minutes.
So I ask you:
- How many Merits is the mission worth?
- Should all of these teams get the same number of Merits?
- Do we want to reward or penalize any of these styles of play?
- Is the amount of standard rewards (xp, inf) the mission is worth a factor? -
The current Merit rewards are already based on 'expected time to finish', it's just that it is expected that 'your' time to complete will be sufficiently close to the Median time.
Not always the case, and requires frequent recalculation, but I'm not sure I've seen a better idea.
In a game this flexible, where your powersets can just be way suboptimal for a given task (squishies versus armored mezzers, fire damage versus fire resistant foes, etc) any task you set up will have some team that is just the best at it. That team will complete the task quickly, and everyone else will lag.
If you base rewards on the people that are best at it, then everyone else changes to do things like the fast people (or doesn't and grouses about it), and that becomes the new 'standard'.
If you base rewards on the people that are worst at it, then the people who are best get over rewarded, everyone emulates them anyway, everyone gets over rewarded, and nerfs result (see Speed Katies).
What I mean by over rewarded should be obvious, but here's an explanation anyway. If the Devs design a TF to give out, say 10 Merits and be 30 minutes of play, then they are probably okay if everyone actually does it in 15 and gets 40 Merits/hour instead of 20. But if someone figures out how to do it in 5 (120 merits/hour) that's not going to be acceptable.
At that point you either need to nerf the mission (the old solution) or adjust the reward (the new solution).
There are other solutions, but most of the seem to boil down to 'put time sinks in missions so they can't be speeded too fast'.
Tyranno and Tokyo: I don't think your suggestion is workable, but at least it's a suggestion; thanks. If you want me to elaborate, I will, but this post is long enough already.