[b]Gearing Ratios[/b]
Since City of Titans is still in its formative stages, the particular "gearing ratios" of the game have not yet been set.
City of Heroes had some "gearing ratios" that would be familiar to almost any Player:
[list][*]1 Hero = 3 Minions
[*]3 Single Origin Enhancements = +100% Enhancement[/list]
I'm wondering if duplicating these 3-to-1 "gearing ratios" in City of Titans is something that should be kept or adjusted.
My thought is ... what about making the basic "gearing ratio" for the game be 4-to-1 instead of 3-to-1?
The icky thing about 3-to-1 is that it's ... messy ... in base-10. That whole 0.333333333333333 stuff, even if you round it off can still make for some peculiar edge cases in weird places that can become annoying to verify independently.
But dealing with 4-to-1 is a lot simpler and easier to conceptualize (ie. 0.25) and more mathematically precise. Want +100% Enhancement to a Power? You'll need 4 Enhancements of that type to get there (rather than 3). Spawn groups are 4 Minions, minimum, instead of just 3 Minions.
Note that for Mastermind types, this would likely mean 4 Minions, 2 Lieutenants, 1 Boss, instead of the 3-2-1 mix we saw with City of Heroes Masterminds, giving you more "pawns" to expend.
I say this because one of the things that made City of Heroes so [b]FUN[/b] was the feeling of Mass Combat that the game brought. The PCs were ALWAYS outnumbered by their Foes. So why not "enshrine" that principle into the fundamental "gearing ratios" that the game is built upon and balance the game accordingly.
So I'm in favor of 4-to-1 ... rather than 3-to-1 ... as the underlying foundation for how City of Titans gets "built" game mechanically and balanced.
Who's with me?
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I don't rally mind if the ratio is 3:1 or 4:1, but if it makes the math of balancing the game easier, I'm all for it.
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But people hated being equal to 3minions.
You have to benchmark from somewhere.
Even if by the time you get to Level Cap you can mop the floor with the baseline ratio of Foes, it's still useful to have that baseline as a starting point from which to make assumptions and then build outwards from.
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Ratios have indeed been considered and set. We have our intial metrics for standard encounters, combat time, typical travel time between spawns, recovery time, level rate, and what the upper / lower bounds of all of that should be. This isn't just what we expect, but what the results are in simulation. The simulations support our models and pur models are adjusted to meet the expectations in simulation.
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- Combat Mechanic -
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I know, but 3 minions was something most didn't like for CoH, so I just couldn't see it being any different.
Hmm...
Some of the posts Tannim has made lately have been very specific. This is a good thing. I'm looking forward to the official updates! It sounds like more and more of the foundational mechanics are falling into place.
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Can you provide any evidence for this claim? I ask only because in the 7 years I played and in various forum discussions since the closure, this is the first time I've ever heard anyone say that, so I'd be interested to see any such discussion.
Spurn all ye kindle.
My squishies were quite content with '3 minions', at the lower levels. Then I'd visit an Analyst and crank it up a bit, when I'd gotten some good slotting going and enough powers to have a reasonable attack-chain. I think my only 'issue' was when I was ready to go Beyond +4x8 and there was no more range. +4x12, perhaps?
Be Well!
Fireheart
I would have loved 3x16 ... Just squishy enough for everything to die
Whats the Default for everyone?
+0x3? ;D
What if +1x3 actually gave you 1 Lieutenant (+0) and 2 Minions (+0) ? ;)
+2x3 gave me: 2 Lieutenants(+0), 1 Minion(+1)
etc...
Always making sure that that the Average amount of Lieutenants doesnt exceed 55% balance-wise to the number of Minions?
Lacking evidence, this is hearsay.
Just about the only point in your favor on this is that a great many players dialed up the difficulty levels when they could. At endgame, +3x8 was almost the "standard" for mission contacts (but not for ITFs, notably, or indeed most TFs and SFs). Bear in mind, that by the time you'd reach Level Cap at 50 and gotten your Incarnate Enhancements slotted, +0x3 made for hardly any challenge. [i]But that's not what I was talking about.[/i]
Actually, Izzy, the formula was that 1 Lieutenant = 2 Minions. All you have to do is compare the HP totals (at Level 50) like so:
[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Underling]Underling[/url]: 160 (37% of a Minion)
[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Minion]Minion[/url]: 430 (1 Minion, duh)
[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lieutenant]Lieutenant[/url]: 857 (2 Minions)
[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Boss]Boss[/url]: 2570 (6 Minions)
[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Elite_Boss]Elite Boss[/url]: 5354 (12.5 Minions) (x2 Boss)
[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Archvillain]Archvillain[/url] / [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Hero_%28Enemy%29]Hero[/url]: 28271 (65-66 Minions) (x11 Boss)
So obviously, in a 1 PC = 3 Minions scenario, you'd either encounter 3 Minions or 1 Minion + 1 Lieutenant, because that's all the "budget" of opposition can afford.
However, if you added a Teammate, you'd be looking at 2 PCs, and the "minion budget" on spawn groups would increase, allowing for more varied combinations, using the above formula.
Note that this is why a spawn group that would normally have 3 Rikti Minions could instead be 8 Rikti Monkeys (ie. Underlings). The HP totals of the two groups were roughly equivalent.
However ... if you adjust the "gearing ratio" from being 3:1 to instead be 4:1 as a baseline assumption, by default you'd get the following combinations:
[list][*]4 Minions
[*]2 Minions + 1 Lieutenant
[*]2 Lieutenants[/list]
Set the Balance Point for the PCs to be able to handle that much opposition routinely and you're off to the races.
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Wait seriously? None remember Jack saying one hero should only be able to take on just 3 minions at once, at the forums not liking that idea?
And yes *eyeroll* I kept the coh forums alive all through it's exisitence.
In later levels (20+ maybe), I would like to see a Test done with a enemy faction that only employs Lieutenants that have Higher Damage output, but not as good Damage Resistance/Defense, with pretty much No Minions. At least for a final boss fight Map.
And perhaps have 80% of the Leuts Melee based? :)
Game forums are a VERY poor population metric to guage by. Just because people talk a lot does not mean they have anything meaningful or accurate to say.
In any case - the 3 per 1 ratio worked fine for most ATs in my experience. The ATs expressly designed to dish out damage and take a bit of a beating in the process, like scrappers and brutes, could handle more, true, but then you could also increase the difficulty of the mishes to your personal taste.
Having a baseline that even non-DPS AT's can handle is a good idea, and with the ability to ramp up the mobs for the DPS'ers that should keep them challenged as well.
And, for those who are unfamiliar with it, the difficulty slider's numbers were based on 'one Player Character'. So, the default would be +0(levels)x1(PC). We could reduce the level of threat by setting it to -1x1, which would produce your basic '3 minions = 1 PC', but reduce the level of the minions by one. I usually played at +1x2, which meant that I considered myself able to handle twice as much trouble as a generic hero one level higher than me. That means that the max level of difficulty had a player equal to 8 times the trouble and 4 levels higher, so a level 50 hero would be facing 24 level 54 minions per spawn.
An 'issue' is that fully Incarnate PCs could laugh in the face of that many generic enemies, so the Devs had to make the enemies more dangerous by 'cheating'. A tough balancing act, to make the 'ultimate danger' still feel 'ultimate' after years of development and power-inflation.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I remember Jack always liked to tell us that CoH was fundamentally balanced on the "one hero equals three minions" paradigm.
Now I'm not going to debate whether or not that concept was good/reasonable. But I am willing to suspect that if you were one of those vocal "Jack-haters" out there that you were willing to hate the "one player equals three minions" mindset just because Jack said it as much as any quantifiably deterministic reason. In other words, "Jack said it so it must be bad somehow!"
I never really saw the "3 versus 1" thing as a strict metric used in the game anyway. I had high level characters who could routinely handle 10+ critters solo and I had low level squishies who seemed to have trouble handling 1 baddie on their own. The magical number "three" never really seemed like a fixed-in-stone value to me in practice regardless of what Jack said.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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It was a benchmark used for generic tuning. It wasn't a "Law" that never got broken (see: Fire Tanker Dumpster Diving). It was just an assumption to use as a starting point and Go From There.
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I was never the Jack hater. Really, I never saw the reason for hating Jack. That looked to be more of the devs left behind and some other players with the "He left CoH! Screw him!" mentality. Just like I didn't hate NCSoft for dropping CoH (wish they hadn't tho) and actually remember it was NCSoft who helped it continue on longer than it did.
I just remember the forums getting very vocal over not liking the idea that one hero should equal 3 minions as it made one feel more awesome when taking down the big game boss with the team.
Um ... Team of 8 = 24 Minion budget at a 1:3 ratio ... meaning spawn groups could get ... large ... with Teams ... with multiple Bosses and Lieutenants per spawn group (even Elites Bosses, if the content allowed it, such as ITFs, for example).
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The only thing that I remember about Jack was, that at least to my way of thinking, the game got way better after Jack left.
I reserve the right to have an opinion. You reserve the right to not agree.
Jack was one of those "polarizing" figures that perhaps ended up with a worse reputation than he ultimately deserved as far as the CoH playerbase goes.
Yes he was the guy behind many annoying ideas/changes to the game and it's very reasonable to say things overall arguably got better after he left. But from what I could tell he was one of the driving forces in getting CoH made in the first place so as unpopular as he might have been towards the end he wasn't 100% bad for CoH. Sometimes good things can happen despite all the negativity that surrounds a person - I think that's what happened with Jack's involvement with CoH.
Besides it's not like I knew him personally anyway so I bear him no ill-will in the long run. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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One thing I will say in Jack Emmert's defense, I LOVED CoH when it first came out, despite all of the "bad" stuff people eventually made them change. It was a revolutionary game, and innovative, and fun to play. People get a taste of something they like and start wanting more of it for less work on their part, that's human nature. I respect Emmert's stand that he didn't want to cave to player demands to make certain things any easier or any less team PVE oriented, as team-based PVE was his vision for the game. People like PVP and people like solo play, and the game eventually tried to give us more of both, which isn't a bad thing, but even something as seemingly cruel as making you wait until level 14 to get a travel power, and having to unlock it by having a different power first was actually pretty smart. It made the travel powers seem more attractive, despite the fact that they weren't going to make you any better in combat. I think it could be argued that they should have put Hasten AFTER Super Speed and Combat Jumping after Super Jump, since people seemed to genuinely want those powers by themselves, but getting Fly on my first toon was a huge event for me the first time. IT mad it feel more special to have to wait and to have to unlock it. That feeling wore off by year 2 of the game, but at roll-out it was an awesome feeling to finally get Fly, Super Speed, etc.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Some of those annoying initial restrictions (like having to wait until level 14 for a travel power or having to wait until level 20 for a cape) actually had more to do with load balancing on the early server farms than it did with just arbitrarily pissing players off by making them wait.
People sometimes forget that animation effects like those associated with capes or extreme travel power movements put a certain amount of extra load on the servers. Sure there's not much trouble with one player in one spot. But when you have dozens of characters all in the same place all running with power effects and cape/aura animations all of that adds up to lagging everyone out. By making those things relatively limited (by forcing players to have higher level characters to unlock them) it eased the overall strain on the system.
Over time the CoH Dev/GMs were able to upgrade the server situation eventually making those initial restrictions less necessary. So you can't always blame the Devs (Jack?) directly for things like that - sometimes they are just doing the best they can with the hardware at hand.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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I think most of the real hatred for Jack comes from the Global Defense Nerf and Enhancement Diversification. That REALLY ticked a lot of people off and Jack was the one that was behind that. I understand why it was done and I will say that I was actually rather glad it did happen. At the time I was playing a lowly Emp/Elec Defender and couldn't get a team for the life of me, because it was the time of the Fire Tank/Fire Blaster Dumpster Diving Teams. Once GDN and ED hit, suddenly I was in very high demand! I also didn't start playing Tanks and Scrappers until much later in the issues once GDN and ED had had it's effect and then they started introducing IO's. So it really didn't affect me as much as it did everybody else.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I think what we ultimately learned from CoH was that the Global Defense Nerf and Enhancement Diversification were things that the game, in a perfect world, should have started with on Day One. Had those things been in effect from the very beginning no one would have remembered the "good ole times" when you could be grossly overpowered. Most of the angst of GDN and ED came from people who had the perception that something was being taken away from them - had those "things" not existed in the first place there wouldn't have been anything to "lose".
We can only hope that CoT has learned from this and will have a system that incorporates the equivalents of GDN and ED from the very beginning before anyone has a chance to know anything different.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Agreed. When the GDN and ED happened, I didn't care for them either, but I just reslotted and moved on, sadly others just quit :(
Though I was always under the impression they planned that so they could bring in IOs (which was just a better system) but needed to reduce things to make IOs work. Of course, if that was the case, they could have probably kept GDN/ED and the arrival of IOs closer together.
Speaking as a MA/SR Scrapper ... Redlynne was playable before the Double Whammy of getting hit with the Global Defense Nerf [b]AND[/b] Enhancement Dysfunction ... but once that Iron Cored Nerf Bat™ got through with pulverizing my main character (saying that her functionality, potential and VALUE got DESTROYED is [b]not an exaggeration[/b]!), let's just say I had a very good time playing World of Warcraft for the next 2 years after playing City of Heroes, my first MMORPG, for less than 1 year.
It wasn't until Inventions came along in Issue 9 to [i]undo the excessive damage to my build[/i] that I even entertained the possibility of returning to City of Heroes.
It is hard to overstate the amount of RAGEQUIT and hatred engendered by the combination of the Global Defense Nerf and Enhancement Dysfunction. There is a reason why when Enhancement Dysfunction showed up on the Test Server [b]the City of Heroes Forums got CRUSHED[/b] under the overwhelming tsunami tide of negative response. The "deal breaker" was that all of that feedback was IGNORED.
I mean, when you have SO MUCH FEEDBACK coming in that your forum software crashes ... outright crashes(!) ... and it takes you THREE DAYS to recover from the screaming mobs coming after you with torches and pitchforks ... and then you (as a company) proceed as if nothing is wrong ... let's just say that the "Faith In The Devs" shares take something of a beating on the stock market and dives deep into bankruptcy territory. It was as flagrant a case of [b]NOT LISTENING[/b] as could have ever been provided. Even all this time later (almost 10 years now), the lingering anger and hatred that I hold against the decision makers of that debacle still burns and rankles, because it was just that BAD.
Needless to say, Cryptic EARNED their reputation at that point, and it has kind of stayed with them ever since. It was, in effect, a BETRAYAL of the Players and their Trust, and once you lose that it is almost impossible to get it back. Cryptic lost my trust at that point, and my stance became "prove it" if they ever wanted me to come back to City of Heroes. It took moving the IP over to Paragon Studios and putting Positron in charge and demonstrating "an apology" via Inventions before I'd even consider thinking about coming back to City of Heroes.
Now NC$oft has, in effect, betrayed my trust in them to an equivalent extent (by killing off Paragon Studios the way they did), and they are now Banned From My Wallet for the rest of MY lifetime.
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If the overall effects of GDN/ED were expected to work hand-in-hand with some kind of IO system it certainly didn't help that it took another 2 or 3 years for IOs to finally arrive. No argument there.
It was like the Devs were working on a two-part fix and only left us with the first half of the fix for years. I still think that the need for GDN/ED was great enough that even without IOs it was worth doing, but clearly things would have been much, much better had IOs arrived "soon" after instead of "years" after.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I agree - I played a lot of Defenders, and Controllers - after GDN-ED I found it MUCH easier to get a team (especially without the "R U HEALZOR" crap I used to get in the beginning).
I hold no ill will to Jack - he was the driving force behind one of my favourite games of all time. Those nerfs and changes were NEEDED - it's just too bad it took a while (and possibly his departure) to get the other half of the necessary changes into the game (IO's, AT buffs like Vigilance, Bruising, etc.)
If my memory is still working ... Cryptic, and then later Paragon Studios ... tried REPEATEDLY to get to an Invention System that *worked* and they kept running into trouble. My understanding is that they had to go through multiple iterations and attempts before finally settling on what we eventually got in Issue 9, which started healing the damage that had been (up until that time) unnecessarily caused and allowed to fester. Apparently, it was Positron who "cracked the nut" that made the Invention System we got hold together as well as it did, even though something like 90% of the builds in existence that used Invention Sets all used pretty much the same Sets almost every time. There were basically the "good" Sets and then there were the piles of rubbish that no one bothered with.
But still, the development of Inventions took way to damn long, no matter how much you want to paper over the issues. I will say that what the Devs were trying to do wasn't in and of itself a Bad Idea™ ... but the programming and (re)balancing of the problem they had created for themselves was just way more complicated than they could ever own up to in real-time.
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And hopefully we don't have problems with worthless sets in CoT, while having more options for building.
Brand X, this is why I advocate more in favor of using Common Only Enhancements and shifting the Set Bonus features away from "build this specific set" towards a different choice ... Global Enhancement Slots. That way, you get to "pick your own Set Bonus" but you have a limited number of "globals" forcing you to Choose Wisely for the intent and purposes of your overall build. It keeps things simple on the design and programming side of things, but creates a huge amount of space for Player Choices and variations to exist.
So instead of there being a "Best Set" that everyone uses all the time, different builds have different needs and different pressures and different deficiencies to shore up using Global Slots. Just another way of taking something that is simple to grasp and making it complex to master.
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The invention system frontage old game was actually revamped from an attempt to create a skills system for the game, not reworked multiple times just to get inventions to work in the first place.
ED was first proposed by a player and the math used for the system nearly mirrored what that player laid out. The problem was the skills (later inventions) was delivered too long after ED. Back when ED was brought about it was actually stated that the problem was without it they had too little room to built out wards. ED made the invention system's set bonuses possible and they knew it was unpopular decison but gsmbled on it paying off but then they ran into the problems with the system they wanted to make.
Since we have hindsight and know that we want to make it possible to built out with our own version of inventions we have designed accordingly.
Any set bonuses we design aren't going to be like the ones from the old game. The bonuses will apply to that particular power. We are really limiting the while "global effects" stuff including only allowing for special global Augments to be socketed into Tertiary Power Set Sockets . This in turn necessitates using power slots to pick Tertiary Sets and power picks away from the more effective Primary / Secondary powers, and creates a limit to how many total global augments can be socketed since there are a limited total number of possible Tertiary sets that can be picked up.
And our sets bonuses aren't limited to Augments but Refinements as well, there is a lot we can do to provide players with plenty of options for how to buld there characters down the road after release.
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I suspect that part of the 'issue' with GDN and ED was the lack of communication. Cryptic did not tell us about the 'real problem', they just dumped the nerf on us and went into hiding. Paragon was much better at staying connected to the players.
I think another issue is in the very strange way that Defense worked. Players used massive over-enhancement in order to get more security in their Defense and the combination of ED and GDN doubly damaged it. It might have been better if Cryptic had staged those modifications better and had the Solution ready to go alongside of the nerf.
Be Well!
Fireheart
....regarding the original post...
I like the idea of making the initial ration 4:1...seems it would make all the math behind the curtain a lot easier across the board.
[img]http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/whiteperegrine/84183/69278/69278_original.gif[/img]
ED also had the problem that the diminishing returns didn't so much diminish as outright vanish. There was a huge dropoff after the 3rd enhancement, rather than a gradual decrease which would have allowed for a greater variety of choice.
Remember when I started [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/redlynne-goes-crazy-proposes-underlying-game-structure]this thread[/url] back in 2013?
Remember how what I was proposing didn't have the kind of "cut off" of suddenly bending the curve so as to "tell you" (ie. force you) when to stop adding more Enhancements?
Lin Chiao Feng made a nice handy graph to show the shape of the curves (in Post 41 on the first page):
[img]http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/6775/nor6.png[/img]
Quick recap for anyone who has forgotten, the [color=red]RED[/color] line was my original proposal, while the BLACK line was City of Heroes under ED.
Only major difference was that I was setting up my system to be 4 slots = 100% instead of 3 slots = 100% ... which as you'll note is that 4:1 vs 3:1 difference in basic assumptions again.
So needless to say, some people got upset that the Diminishing Returns formula I was proposing didn't have an [i]obvious[/i] point of "You're doing it wrong! Whacky stick! [b]Whacky stick![/b]" and it made brains overheat in confusion. To which my response was (essentially) ... I don't need the Training Wheels in order to ride a bicycle, thank you very much, and I should hope that no one else does either.
I can only hope that some of my long ago efforts at exploring the possibilities of using a Curve instead of a CLIFF will find their way into how City of Titans gets built, and have the Diminishing Returns preferably be based on a simple to notate formula, rather than an arbitrary decision like Enhancement Dysfunction turned out to be in City of Heroes.
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I do remember this graph. Curves > Cliffs.
Well, for gearing ratios, I like to make sure I run with a 5-speed having a suitable granny gear....
Oh, you mean for the game....
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I actually didn't mind GDN or ED that much...just made me learn to play a lil differently. did it annoy me? sure, but it didn't drive me bonkers.
looking at the graph though, makes me wonder what the cap will be in CoT for powers...150/175/200%...
[img]http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/whiteperegrine/84183/69278/69278_original.gif[/img]
In the system I was proposing, the "cap" was wherever the limit on how many Slots you could add to a Power was.
1 slot = +50%
4 slots = +100%
9 slots = +150%
16 slots = +200%
That's because each Enhancement was valued at +0.25 and you'd add up all the Enhancement [i]values[/i] and then take the square root of that to determine the +% for that amount of slotting.
4 * (0.25) = 1
Square root of 1 = 1
1 = +100% Enhancement
9 * (0.25) = 2.25
Square root of 2.25 = 1.5
1.5 = +150% Enhancement
There were other "trim tabs" on the system I'd devised, such as Multipliers to the value of the Enhancement types built into the Powers themselves, which would allow curves to be "flattened" in such a way as to permit a behavior I called Hold The Maximum While Raising The Minimum and other such balancing features, which would (I still believe) be superior to the system that City of Heroes used, where they "fudged" this sort of thing by making Powers only partially enhanceable, and so on.
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The Greater the number of Minions the Weaker they Are? :P
I wasn't angling for a [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConservationOfNinjutsu]Conservation of Ninjitsu[/url]. Instead, it was a question of how "Target Rich" we want our environment to be by default. There is essentially a consensus that a lot of other games make the basic encounter either a 1-on-1 or a 2-on-1 affair, with 3-on-1 being a pressure situation. City of Heroes angled for [i]Mass Combat[/i] as its default mode of operation (and expectation). So I'm suggesting that City of Titans should consider embracing that and building such an assumption in at a very fundamental level, and the balancing accordingly upwards and outwards from there.
As I said, I prefer 4:1 rather than 3:1 when I have to work in base-10 for a variety of reasons (including easier math under the hood). It just simplifies a whole lot of things on down the line ... because [i]"It's All Connected"[/i] ...
/emote serious look of meaningful significance
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
agreed. we are superheroes, not your everday schmoes. we should be able to take on 3 to 4 minions at once and expect to win. CoH was wonderful in that regard...that even as lowbies you actually kinda felt powerful given you could take on multiple bad guys and pretty much know you'll win. as most folks leveled, I would guess, that they upped their difficulty, as I did, which eventually meant x8 baddies....good times indeed!
I can only hope and pray that our lovely devs go along this route route versus the 1:1 ratio...that would make me sad and feel more like an average agent versus an actual superhero.
[img]http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/whiteperegrine/84183/69278/69278_original.gif[/img]
I know this is way off-topic, but I am inclined to agree. I used to be an NC Soft fanboy. Now I am an NC Soft hater. They have repeatedly gone directly against the best interests of their playerbase (and their own profitability, which is just plain stupid). They will never get another penny of my money.
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