All the classic staples of course, super strength, energy blasts, telepathy, telekinesis, but also power armor suit tech (like iron man) gadgets and laser weapons, and gravity, and maybe a super speed based set which revolves around moving fast to build up combat buffs.

rookslide wrote:

Power mimicry/absorption kinda Rogue like! I always liked her ability especially that it had drawbacks connected to its use like being an always on passive ability she had to guard against overusing. Perhaps a milder version... Marvel Online had this for her and it was a pretty cool power I thought...

Yeah but in order to give her that capabaility they literally ended up having toncode her with every power in the game. And every time a new hero / power was added, they had to manually add those powers to her. If they changed a power, they had to go and manually change her version to match as well. It was like doubling the workload but it was the only way to ha sleep it for them.

Tannim222 wrote:

rookslide wrote:

Power mimicry/absorption kinda Rogue like! I always liked her ability especially that it had drawbacks connected to its use like being an always on passive ability she had to guard against overusing. Perhaps a milder version... Marvel Online had this for her and it was a pretty cool power I thought...

Yeah but in order to give her that capabaility they literally ended up having toncode her with every power in the game. And every time a new hero / power was added, they had to manually add those powers to her. If they changed a power, they had to go and manually change her version to match as well. It was like doubling the workload but it was the only way to ha sleep it for them.

Wow I didn't realize it was so hard to make happen... I honestly thought it was a bit more modular lake taking an empty template and directing it to a another class that it could adapt. Doesn't seem so hard to me but I'm sure it's much more involved than I realize.

Thanks for the info Tannim!

Quote:

Amerikatt:
I would like to see a utility archetype much like the Kheldian Peacebringer. I miss not being a Jill-Of-All-Trades.

Agreed. Plus I like the shape-shifter idea.

Thematically, I really liked the elemental power sets. Storm was my favorite go to for both pure character and utility. It had a little of everything. It inspired several of my toons and their backstories. I would really like to see something like that.

While I'm thinking about it, there should be a switch so we can configure knock back to knock down on the fly though... It could be an issue in groups...

This may not be viable, and it may already have been requested, but I’d kind of like to see “mixed” powersets. By that I mean powersets with varying effects: one power could be “piercing” like lethality; one power could apply a DoT; one power could have knockback/down effects...

And so on and so forth. Maybe this is EVEN nuttier, but the ability to select the effect on a power in this powerset would be really cool.

I can imagine that this would be difficult from a game balance point. Perhaps it could be a “jack of all trades, master of none” type of set. As in it has a ton of variety, but its debuffs, DoTs, piercing, knockback effects etc could be of a lower potency from those sets that specialize in one type of mechanic.

Just a thought :)

Telekinesis, although I'm planning to use Gravity to mimic that depending on what's available at lauch.(Since I know sets are being created about more broad concepts)

Time, again thematically I might be able to use some kind of kinetics speed sset to mimic it if necessary.

Some kind of combat utility for Teleport would be nice. Teleport ally and enemy are always good. I did use Teleport itself for positioning in big fights in CoX, but it was honestly not usually any better off than walking in most cases because of the hard root and long animation. It just looked cooler....

Tannim222 wrote:

The alternate activation from knock down to knock back is handled on the same power icon.
Using a mouse For example it would be left click on the icon for the normal knock down, right click on the icon to switch to knock back.

A keyboard example would be press 1 for the power to activate normall causing knock down and shift+1 to switch to knock back.

Of course you could always create your own customized set up as well.

That is actually awesome...It's making me imagine other mechanics that could possibly benefit from an alt-fire activation...

Tannim222 wrote:

McJigg wrote:

OathboundOne wrote:

I believe Knock* effects are being handled by "alternate activations." That is to say that the powers default to knockDOWN, but there's an alternate way you can activate them (a second icon?) that bumps it up to knockBACK if you want it to. It's really up to you which effect you want when you click the button.

While they haven't said mechanically how this swap will work, I think the easiest way to achieve this is a toggle button. Knock backs are fantastic when solo, they help to kite more than just a knock down. But once you group up with melee people, that knock back can get rather annoying to them. One button to mute all your knock back effects into knock down effects sounds like a better solution than a 2nd version of every power on my bars.

The alternate activation from knock down to knock back is handled on the same power icon.
Using a mouse For example it would be left click on the icon for the normal knock down, right click on the icon to switch to knock back.

A keyboard example would be press 1 for the power to activate normall causing knock down and shift+1 to switch to knock back.

Of course you could always create your own customized set up as well.

Nicely varied. I wonder, would the customizer be able to set up a click/hold option for keyboard (click to knockback/hold to knockdown)? I tend to use multiple trays, and usually use shift+ options for the second tray.

Please dont give us too many buttons to bind (FFXIV has this problem) 25 at max level total is plenty.

.Foresight wrote:

That is actually awesome...It's making me imagine other mechanics that could possibly benefit from an alt-fire activation...

[b]Affect Other vs Affect Self.[/b]
In City of Heroes you needed to have [i]different powers[/i] in the Medicine Pool for Aid Other and Aid Self. You couldn't have a single power that did both.
With an alt-fire activation, you can do both functions (others OR self) in the same power.
Note that this can apply equally well to buffs and debuffs as it can to heals.
So now instead of needing two powers ... Speed Boost (others) and Siphon Speed (self) ... now you only need one power with an alt-fire activation option on it.
Just make sure that ANY alt-fire feature on a power can only modify ONE aspect of how that power works or get used. That means that KockDOWN vs KnockBACK "counts" for filling that alt-fire slot, meaning you can't use the alt-fire for anything else with that power.

[b]Target AoE vs PBAoE.[/b]
Power activation (main type) is Target AoE and requires a target (friend or foe, depending on power type) in order to activate around that target's location.
Power activation (alt type) is PBAoE and [i]does NOT[/i] require a target (friend or foe) in order to activate around your PC's location.
Basically, you're using the alt-fire keybind to "zero the range" on the Target AoE effect.

.Foresight wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:

You mwah want to check this old post referencing our [url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/updated-classification-and-specification-chart]Archetypes and Specifcations chart[/url].

So it looks like no Fighting Prowess/Ranged combo AT.

Do you mean a melee/ranged class? Something like that might sound powerful in theory but in practice it would be horribly broken and hard to play with.

First off without any kind of damage prevention (defense powers) or mitigation (healing, regeneration, mezzes, etc.) a character like that would be constantly face-planting if you tried to run it solo. It might be awesome in a team as long as other players were willing to permanently tank for you or spam-heal you constantly.

Also having access to that many offensive powers you probably couldn't get any serious attack chains going due to lack of power/resources. If all you had was like 15-20 attack powers and nothing else how could you effectively use them all without probably outright ignoring several of them due to having too many to deal with in the first place.

Basically any "100% offensive power build" is going to suffer from problems like this.

.Foresight wrote:

Lothic wrote:

Do you mean a melee/ranged class? Something like that might sound powerful in theory but in practice it would be horribly broken and hard to play with.

First off without any kind of damage prevention (defense powers) or mitigation (healing, regeneration, mezzes, etc.) a character like that would be constantly face-planting if you tried to run it solo. It might be awesome in a team as long as other players were willing to permanently tank for you or spam-heal you constantly.

Also having access to that many offensive powers you probably couldn't get any serious attack chains going due to lack of power/resources. If all you had was like 15-20 attack powers and nothing else how could you effectively use them all without probably outright ignoring several of them due to having too many to deal with in the first place.

Basically any "100% offensive power build" is going to suffer from problems like this.

I considered that. Looking back at CoT that was kinda the concept for the Blasters anyway. I suppose that may be more in line with what I'm looking for and they do have an AT planned along those lines. The Blaster secondary set did utilize melee, and both primary and secondary had built in utility and cc to help with survival. I didn't intend for it to come across as 100% dps.

Edit: In the update that never launched in CoH, Blasters were supposed to get Martial Arts, along with Dominators. I would've loved something like what they planned.
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Martial_Combat

Yep Blasters were surviable because they weren't 100% offensive. With their "Off/Mit Maipulation" secondaries they had enough "damage mitigation" to be workable. Heck there were some Blaster builds (like Ele/Ele/Ele) that were practically closer to being Controllers than Blasters in the way you played them.

I think in general the CoT Devs are going to avoid letting any build be 100% anything (100% offense, 100% defense, etc.).

Tannim222 wrote:

With regards to Blaster sustainability, it was terrible. They had the highest rate of defeat of any AT.

Well to be fair I think a large portion of Blaster players tended to "overplay" their characters without the proper sense to realize they weren't as "bulletproof" as the average Tanker or Scrapper was. ;)

For what it's worth if the CoT version of "a Blaster" is made to be slightly less fragile than its CoH counterpart that would probably be fine. I'm just saying that maybe 95% of the blame for having the "highest rate of defeat of any AT" in CoH was due more to "pilot error" than "archetype weakness". In a nutshell people just didn't know how to play Blasters as intended and kept trying to pound that proverbial square peg into a round hole.

desviper wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:

I play tested Martial Combat. Ki Push was bugged and sent enemies flying in the air with a long hang time. The rag doll physics make formsome hilarious Ki Pushes.

With regards to Blaster sustainability, it was terrible. They had the highest rate of defeat of any AT.

Only several combos worked well “enough” but sill could lag behind other ATs over all.

With our Tettiary sets being open to all ATs, those players feeling that their primary / secondary combo makes them a bit too squishy can grab some protection powers at earlier levels.

Didn't CoH havethe same thing with Fighting?

Yeah CoH had the [url=https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Fighting]Fighting Power Pool[/url] which had a couple of defensive powers but I honestly don't know how many people ever used them. I know I never used the Fighting Pool for any of my characters.

If the CoT version of this pool is tweek'd up to be more effective then maybe it'll serve the purpose Tannim is suggesting in CoT.

Lothic wrote:

desviper wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:

I play tested Martial Combat. Ki Push was bugged and sent enemies flying in the air with a long hang time. The rag doll physics make formsome hilarious Ki Pushes.

With regards to Blaster sustainability, it was terrible. They had the highest rate of defeat of any AT.

Only several combos worked well “enough” but sill could lag behind other ATs over all.

With our Tettiary sets being open to all ATs, those players feeling that their primary / secondary combo makes them a bit too squishy can grab some protection powers at earlier levels.

Didn't CoH havethe same thing with Fighting?

Yeah CoH had the [url=https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Fighting]Fighting Power Pool[/url] which had a couple of defensive powers but I honestly don't know how many people ever used them. I know I never used the Fighting Pool for any of my characters.

If the CoT version of this pool is tweek'd up to be more effective then maybe it'll serve the purpose Tannim is suggesting in CoT.

We don’t have a version of that pool. If you want some extra protection powers, take a Protection Tertiary. If you want some extra Melee powers, grab a Melee Tertiary. Remember, if a set is a Secondary in this game. It will most likely wind up as a Tertiary Set.

We will have a few unique Tertiary Sets which are not based off a Secodary Set as well. But they will provide unique mechanics not typically found in other Tertiary Sets.

Just noticed that CoH was going to release more pools, they look pretty cool. Hope CoT can do one better ;)

Will we be able to make combos like Protection Primary, Assault (or some kind of damage oriented set) Secondary, and Control or Support tertiary?

Everyone else went in for the Fighting Pool to get Tough and Weave ... so naturally I rejected that conventional wisdom and reached for the Leadership Pool instead, so as to get Maneuvers, Assault and Tactics.

The way I figured it, Weave (and Tough, for that matter) were essentially SELFISH power choices ... because they were Self Only.
Maneuvers might only offer half the Defense buff you could get from Weave, but as soon as you grouped with a second PC with Maneuvers, not only did both of you match what you'd each be getting out of Weave, [i]but so did everyone else on your Team![/i]
The "ultimate" expression of this was if a Team-8 all had Maneuvers, they'd all have 4x the Defense of a Team-8 that all had Weave.

So the only time when Weave from the Fighting Pool was better than Maneuvers from the Leadership Pool was when you were soloing (so Team-1) or when no one else on your Team(s) invested in Maneuvers or the Leadership Pool.

After realizing that Maneuvers was superior in EVERY case of "Myself +1 More" it was kind of a no brainer for me to reach for Maneuvers instead of Weave on every character that I could. I pretty much tried to shoehorn in the Leadership Pool "trio" of Maneuvers, Assault and Tactics into every build I could, and was often times successful at doing so (except on my tri-form Kheldians, I think).

Tannim222 wrote:

This doesn’t change the fact that when you look at the meta-data for the Blaster AT throughout all levels of play in the game as a whole, there was a discrepancy in how many defeats the AT experienced compared to others.

Lothic pointed out that in part (and perhaps a large part) user error was the issue. That is a distinct possibility, but perhaps it becuase why as Lothic pointed out, that people didn’t play them right.

Instead the prevailing theory was that there skill floor necessary to remain comparatively effective as other ATs (and not be defeated as often) was too high compared to other ATs. Any experienced, decent Blaster player would attest that the effort required as much greater. The short version could be: it was harder to play to be as effective.

This is why the AT had its inherent power reworked and adjusted several times after, in an effort to lower the skill necessary to be as effective.

And if you look at some of our Mastery Powers for Rangers you can see how we had this thought in mind for those Primary / Secondary combos that may be a bit more difficult.

I don't think the problem was that CoH Blasters required a bit more skill to play "properly". In fact I liked the "challenge" of having to be a bit more tactically-minded to survive. I think the ACTUAL problem was that the game simply never really warned players that some ATs were frankly easier to play out of the box than others. All things being equal you could "button mash" your way through the low levels of being a Tank or Scrapper whereas you had to be somewhat "more mindful" in order to handle say a Blaster or Controller.

Instead of trying to make sure that all the classes of CoT are "equally trivial" to play I'd rather that the game simply warn us that "class X is easier for newer players whereas class Y is intended for more advanced play". I don't need CoT "Blasters" to be "re-geared" to as easy as CoT "Scrappers" or "Tanks" - the game just needs to let players know that they are fundamentally different and need to be handled differently.

Bottomline it's OK for the game to have classes that are harder to play than others - you just need to warn players of that fact.

Tannim222 wrote:

I never said it was bad tonhave different ATs withndifferent skill ceilings and floors.

But because of the huge range of possible combinations of primary, secondary, tettiary(ies), and Masteries, there really isn’t a way to provide information that accurately describes which combo would be harder or easier.

I never said it was bad that there may be more difficult options, only that understanding a previous problem from the old game and also what was attempted to address it. Our efforts were then to provide Masteries which could help avoid certain performance issues.

To be clear I think your general idea to use Tertiaries and Masteries as a means to allow players to "smooth out" the rough spots of various Primary/Secondary combos that might be more challenging to play than others is a decent way to handle the situation.

But I still think that in general some ATs are always going to be geared (no matter what powersets/masteries you use) to be "easier" to play than others. A character built with say a Melee/Defense scheme is probably always going to be easier to play (on average from Day One) than say a Control/Support build. On a fundamental level some ATs are always going to be "Apples and Oranges" to each other and it's THAT information that could be provided to players with simple textual blurbs during character creation for instance.

rookslide wrote:

Big picture I really don’t think they were terribly OP but each AT was easier at different stages of the game so opinions may vary... I had more level 50 blasters than anything else and I think I soloed the game maybe 65-75% of the time [color=red]but I was also very patient when playing solo...[/color]

This is the key point - some ATs simply require different TACTICS depending on the situation (i.e. solo vs. teamed). Some ATs are going to be easier to play at lower levels whereas some become easier at higher levels. Every AT is unique and it would be nice if the game could summarize that during character creation so that some poor smuck doesn't think a Blaster type character is going to be as "bulletproof" as a Tank without learning the "hard" way.

Tiger wrote:

My general rule of video games is to never underestimate the genius of players to break your game in ways you've never imagined.

The best games also have developers who know when to embrace that as a feature. (and when not to). Chasing balance obsessively at the expense of fun angers and drives away players. A perfect balance in a game which gives any freedom is impossible.

Tannim222 wrote:

ZeeHero wrote:

Tiger wrote:

My general rule of video games is to never underestimate the genius of players to break your game in ways you've never imagined.

The best games also have developers who know when to embrace that as a feature. (and when not to). Chasing balance obsessively at the expense of fun angers and drives away players. A perfect balance in a game which gives any freedom is impossible.

There is no such thing as perfect balance in many video games. Especially as one as complex as the one we are making. Most of the times when a dev discusses balance what they actually mean is “within bounds of performance”.

While we have our expectations we aren’t foolish in that players will find ways to smash those expectations. We have our starting basic metrics, which will continue to adjust through testing. Even as we go live, through the life of the game buffs and nerfs will undoubtedly happen.

As I'm sure they will, just be careful not to do like Cryptic Studios under the evil overlords of PWE and nerf with a Nuclear weapon instead of a Scalpel.

Redlynne wrote:

ZeeHero wrote:

As I'm sure they will, just be careful not to do like Cryptic Studios under the evil overlords of PWE and nerf with a Nuclear weapon instead of a Scalpel.

Ah yes, the "we can't be bothered to do iterative testing to find out what a suitable performance profile ought to be" attitude that simply results in NERF IT IN HALF!! because analysis is for suckers on the forums (that the developers aren't listening to anyway).

For CO it actually seems the ONLY people they listen to is a select group of elitist min maxing players on the forums with a strong "stop having fun and do it my way" attitude.

rookslide wrote:

Interesting... I played blasters a lot. Yeah they were squishy but most players (at the time) thought they were OP. So far as the ability to do massive damage perhaps they were OP but only when compared to other ATs when it comes to defense they were by far the weakest of ATs. If you soloed (and I soloed a lot...) you had to use different tactics than when teaming and frankly they were harder only because doing mass damage it was easy to forget how squishy you were especially after a good team up where you were really well supported. Frankly I don’t think they were any more difficult than any other AT but you had to keep perspective on what each AT’s strengths were or it was easy to say any AT was too powerful in some way at some stage of the game from 1 to 50... it was easier to get Blasters up to level 25 or so when soloing than other ATs but the 30s were a pretty slow stage every time. And when you had to start teaming more you had to be ready to play differently. And remember COH didn’t have multiple builds for several years so your solo build was your teaming build as well.

Big picture I really don’t think they were terribly OP but each AT was easier at different stages of the game so opinions may vary... I had more level 50 blasters than anything else and I think I soloed the game maybe 65-75% of the time but I was also very patient when playing solo...

To me, blasters motto (among many of their mottos, most of them about dat XP debt cap life...) is the best defense is a strong offense. Honestly, I think if they had increased the scaling of the original Inherent version of Defiance so that it was even higher with reduced HP, say at least 50% damage boost at 50% health and it increased non-linearly with HP loss, blasters wouldn't have had a more challenging time of leveling, which I'm not denying.

And I also agree with your above point about tactics being different solo vs. teamed vs. AT. I think that's what great about AT diversity is that sometimes you can't just go in guns-ablazin' but actually give the content thought and due consideration. Then again... I do love going in guns blazing.

Tiger, to me, building my scrapper up and going after the AV solo was the most fun. Finally being able to solo the ITF was AWESOME!

Not something I'd recommend to others, as it took a 30min or less group effort and turned it into a 3 hour+ event, but it's what made me feel like my character was a super :)

ZeeHero wrote:

Brand X wrote:

Tiger, to me, building my scrapper up and going after the AV solo was the most fun. Finally being able to solo the ITF was AWESOME!

Not something I'd recommend to others, as it took a 30min or less group effort and turned it into a 3 hour+ event, but it's what made me feel like my character was a super :)

Yeah nerfing the ability to do those kinds of things would take away the super hero feel of the game. Our heroes should be able to feel like top class A list heroes by the time they're max level and have had some progression. and that means soloing big villains and non cosmic threats, alebit with possibly some difficulty.

Well, I'm not sure it should be something done just because you hit max level. For sure something to be able to build towards after hitting max level.

Tiger wrote:

My general rule of video games is to never underestimate the genius of players to break your game in ways you've never imagined.

That just means you do not have a good (or extensive) QA group in place.

Lothic wrote:

But I still think that in general, some ATs are always going to be geared (no matter what powersets/masteries you use) to be "easier" to play than others.

I don't think you're wrong about this, but I'd add that difficulty depends on the Player, as well. I heard people complain that Controllers were hard to play, but I found them relaxing and 'easy'. I don't doubt that 'Play-style' also figures into it.

Be Well!
Fireheart

My Blaster was a bit ore defensive than most but that was just inherent in going Ice/ice. I got more joy out of the slows and the crowd control than I got out of the damage. That's not to say he didn't die a lot, Ice did SOME cold damage but was predominately crushing which meant I was NOT very good at taking out robots such as the Malta Mechs. I did however, absolutely love throwing out a CC on a ranged guy, then jump behind a corner so the melee guys would chase. As they rounded the corner I'd use Ice Patch and begin blapping with both my ranged and melee powers to take down a key target or two. Then I would swap to rooting/sleeping (ice had some holds that broke on damage and counted as sleep) the remaining melee enemies to focus down the ranged.

It would change group to group, but I was always thinking. If I got tired I would join and group and just throw ice from afar or get on my tanker who's all encompassing tactic was to just jump in there.

My other mainstays were my Robots/Poison Mastermind and Human form focused Warshade. I was JUST getting used to and comfortable to dominators when the game left us. It was satisfying enough that Operator remains the class I plan to make first.

As to what things I would like to see? Farther down the line, some sort of shape shifter, but I honestly have no idea how to make it work is aesthetic decoupling.

For now I'll be excited for Power Control/Vampiric Emination. The idea of just nullifying an enemy's powers sounds pretty fun, and slapping the Supremacy mastery on there causes dark corners of my mind to giggle.

Tiger wrote:

I currently play World of Warcraft. A triple "A" game from a billion dollar company, and even after 14 years of WoW development experience, and the best QA in the industry, players still break their game on a regular basis.

I say this as someone who's been accused of white knighting for Blizzard, but even I think their QA has gone downhill this expansion. Game dev is hard, things happen, code is not simple. A while back (since BFA launched) they made changes to lessen healer's mana regen by a certain amount in PVP, I think it was -33%. Except by mistake their mana regen became -33% and they had negative mana regen in PVP. Literally spawned with a full bar and it would drain.

To QA that would literally just require flagging a healer into PVP mode. Perhaps I'm wrong in that it could be that easy. game dev is hard, things happen, code is not simple.

Except it just happened AGAIN to shamans within the last week with the enhancement nerfs!

McJigg wrote:

Tiger wrote:

I currently play World of Warcraft. A triple "A" game from a billion dollar company, and even after 14 years of WoW development experience, and the best QA in the industry, players still break their game on a regular basis.

I say this as someone who's been accused of white knighting for Blizzard, but even I think their QA has gone downhill this expansion. Game dev is hard, things happen, code is not simple. A while back (since BFA launched) they made changes to lessen healer's mana regen by a certain amount in PVP, I think it was -33%. Except by mistake their mana regen became -33% and they had negative mana regen in PVP. Literally spawned with a full bar and it would drain.

To QA that would literally just require flagging a healer into PVP mode. Perhaps I'm wrong in that it could be that easy. game dev is hard, things happen, code is not simple.

Except it just happened AGAIN to shamans within the last week with the enhancement nerfs!

I know the pain of playing a Shaman. My main in Legion was an Enhancement Shaman my alt was Shadow Priest. For BFA I had to beak out my Warlock to get into mythic dungeons and raids.

Planet10 wrote:

Tiger wrote:

Planet10 wrote:

Tiger wrote:

My general rule of video games is to never underestimate the genius of players to break your game in ways you've never imagined.

That just means you do not have a good (or extensive) QA group in place.

I currently play World of Warcraft. A triple "A" game from a billion dollar company, and even after 14 years of WoW development experience, and the best QA in the industry, players still break their game on a regular basis.

I do not know how Blizzard manages their Q&A department. I would hope that QA is integrated into the development process given how beastly and long lived WoW has become. Unfortunately, for the most part, development studios treat QA like mushrooms (keep them in the dark and feed them crap, so to speak). QA can be viewed as a luxury (aka, if there are problems, the enthusiastic players will report and we can just patch it). And or it isn't a problem if no one ever encounters it. There are also differences in philosophy in how to utilize QA when confronted by budgets or when cuts need to be made to get the project released in time (to make money, meet a schedule, or whatever).

If you integrate QA into the development process, they can identify issues much earlier in the coding process. Plus, in some cases, if you have access to the specs (design document, hard numbers, or whatever insider details), you can identify corner cases and exploit opportunities much more readily.

I am going to take a guess and say Blizzard deploys their QA to make sure that the code functions to spec (i.e. new stuff works, old stuff isn't broken, core functionalities do not cause crashes). Then they have limited play testing to gauge difficulty levels. Then they have Beta testers to pre-calibrate difficulties and identify how the choreography does/does not match the intent of their design.

A great game QA team (even with unlimited budget and resources) might be able to catch most basic software bugs and even, if they are lucky, find a few game exploits (not technically bugs but methods to "game" the system) before a game is set to launch. But by the time thousands of gamers set off to either actively discover (or accidentally stumble into) all sort of scenarios at would be effectively impossible to test for then even the efforts of the best QA on the planet can only account for so much.

QA is a necessary step that sadly doesn't get all the attention it needs in most software development efforts. But again even the best QA team will never be able to anticipate or mitigate all of the "collective cleverness" of an active playerbase. That's why virtually all active games are constantly publishing patches and hot fixes - the work of QA doesn't end when the game launches and having absolute faith in such a process is foolhardy at best.