Tackling Tanker Stacking and End Efficiency

Says who? That is exactly what it does -- it provides an upper bound on how fast you can solo. DPE for almost all attacks is equal, so your sustained damage output is limited by DPE times EPS.

I wouldn't cite protection paladins or protection warriors in WoW as a good example, since Blizzard has acknowledged that their mana/rage recovery mechanics are problematic (the classical example is tanking content that these specs outgear) and keeps tweaking them endlessly. Conversely, one thing that they explicitly have stated that they like are the retribution paladin mechanics, since they can perform their standard ability rotation indefinitely without running out of mana and only run into mana problems if they deviate from that or run into other problems (off-healing, spamming Consecration, mana-burning mobs, etc.).

And no, you do not "have to do that". "Everybody else does is it" is a reason for lemmings, not for humans. In order for it to be good game design, you have to provide a reason why it makes the game better.

Endurance doesn't encourage you to watch your bar or to strategize between attacks and defense. If that is its purpose, it fails. Hard. There is no point in pacing your attacks: Almost always, the most effective approach is to burn through your endurance bar as fast as possible, then recover afterwards. DPE for almost all attacks is equal, so there is little point in picking one over the other, even. CoH has way too little relevant resource-related decision making for endurance constraints to be seriously called a resource management system.

Note that I am not saying that you cannot have a resource management system. I am merely saying that CoH's is poorly designed, since it does not actually create interesting decisions about how to manage your resources. "Attack more slowly" is not an interesting decision (not to mention generally not the best choice). An interesting decision would be something like "use a slow-casting, mana-efficient heal, and risk that the target dies before it lands" or "use a fast-casting, mana-inefficient heal that is all but guaranteed to land in time but risk running out of mana" (a common trade-off for healers in fantasy MMORPGs). It's not "use a high damage attack that uses mana" vs. "use a low damage attack that recovers mana" vs. "trade health for mana, then recover health afterwards" (WoW warlocks). It's just "don't use more endurance than you have". That's a decision-making model that's perhaps interesting for a (patient) six-year old, not for a mature adult.

And creating a dependency on teams is a principle of MMORPG design that went out of fashion with EQ. There's no reason why people should be punished for soloing.

That's not the -point- of it. It's supposed to be a constantly renewing resource you balance between attack and defense, something you have to manage in order to be effective.

I wouldn't abandon them either. They work. You might not think they work, and they certainly are getting tweaked (they're using new mechanics, so that takes time to work out completely) but regardless, they do, in fact, work.

You mean, if they fail to manage their mana efficiently.

Okay.

Because giving costs and challenges make for a better skills based game. If you have everything you ever want handed to you for free and without some form of cost, it no longer becomes a strategic choice to use an ability, but merely an automatic one.

Really? I thought the most effective approach was to find the things that give you the most XP for the least endurance, put your endurance into -that- endevour, and recover less than someone who simply throws his endurance away into the toilet.

DPE for all attacks, sure. But DPE for all attacks over activation time is not, nor is it over recharge time. Some attacks are simply more or less efficient than others.

Else, why would we ever discuss Claws?

Nor have I said it was. However 'Immob or not' -is-. 'Toggle on or not' -is-. 'Stun/Hold or not' -is-. 'Parry or not' -is-. 'Whirling Axe or not' -is-.

There's a lot more to the game than 'turn toggles on, spam attack chain, watch endurance go away'.

Not at all what I am refering to. Refer above.

No, but people can't expect a game to hold their hands and kiss their booboos when they take a grouping powerset or build and try to solo with it. You can't create group dynamics and expect every character created within those dynamics to be awesome at soloing, and the game doesn't lie to you and say so either. Even the character creation screen says -that- much.

That's a noble goal that makes good ad copy, but isn't reflected in the reality of the game.

I'm not saying that costs and challenges should not exist; I am saying that the endurance implementation, as it currently exists, is a poor game mechanic. Not an indefensible one, but one that is definitely subpar.

About managing endurance:

That would be nice. Unfortunately, powers ARE balanced around endurance so that specifically DPE is constant, by and large. You can do X points of damage twice for 10.4 endurance or 2X points of damage for 10.4 endurance. It's a wash. That's actually a major part of my critique, namely that the game does not offer you much in terms of adjusting your endurance efficiency. It comes down to: Don't use toggles that you don't need and (according to common wisdom) attack more slowly. Except that you don't really want to attack more slowly, because that is less effective than burning through your attacks as fast as you can and resting up afterwards, so it's down to "don't run toggles that you don't need".

And yes, you can pick different enemies, but that does not alter DPE. That's simply a matter of picking easier enemies over harder ones.

If you are endurance-capped, activation time and recharge time are largely irrelevant for sustained DPS, nor do they factor in your endurance management. And most attacks ARE equally efficient: 1 point of damage scale per 5.2 points of endurance (adjusted for cones and area effects).

As to some attacks being more or less efficient than others, that's generally not true. There are exceptions, such as Energy Transfer, but it's not as though that even matters for, say, the first 34 levels, and after that, it's not like that's going to let you decide much: You simply fire off Energy Transfer whenever you can. Similarly, while Freezing Touch has poor DPE, that doesn't give you many options: Ice Melee doesn't have a lot of single target attacks, so you'll use it anyway when you can.

That, by the way, is all that different DPE for different attacks would do in general: Establish a static priority for attacks that can be determined beforehand. In practice, this currently only occurs for area attacks, which can get higher or lower priority depending on whether you have enough or too few targets, resulting in having one optimal attack chain for 1-2 targets, and another for 3+ targets.

If you want to introduce complexity in the attacking process, endurance management is generally not the way to go (unless you introduce a lot of additional endurance management mechanics). There are much better solutions for that (such as combo systems or procs that can alter your attack priority on the fly).

To summarize: It's not that endurance does not require ANY decisions (it obviously does). Those decisions, however, are not particularly meaningful or significantly affected by proficiency.

It's not like you can swap out your Katana for Claws attacks. Claws attacks simply get a flat endurance discount. Having better DPE across the board and thus being able to bypass the need to deal with endurance constraints is a big reason for the popularity of the powerset, and really reinforces my point.

That is correct, but we're talking about endurance here, not the other parts of the game (which, thankfully, are mostly in a much better shape).

You're misreading me. There's nothing wrong inherently with teams being more effective than solo players (by the way, that generally applies to all ATs, including good soloers such as scrappers). The problem is not when the solo play is less effective, but when it is frustrating and boring. When players switch to a different character if they can't find a team because soloing is unappealing (even though it would still be the most XP/hour for the character, compared to not playing at all), then you are looking at a customer that you may be losing down the road.

My point is that I want a better game that more players want to play and keep playing. The endurance mechanic does not make for a better game, it makes for a worse game. It causes frustration and forced periods of inactivity without creating sufficient countervailing benefits.

Obviously, I do realize that endurance is not going to go away. You simply can't upset the apple cart in such a big way in an established MMORPG. However, it would at least be possible to minimize the negative effects.

Good word by the way!



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