Work In Progress Making Stats Matter: Removing CR Differential

This will not change the want to replay because the highest gear will have the best stats. Just like getting an OP drop, it's not the CR because you want it, it's the stats. A big majority will replay to just get that OP drop.

what about just leaving cr based dammage as it is now, because changing this back again would cost a lot of effort.
if the cr would enhance SP gained stats a percentage for every cr, mods raise the cr and leaving the rest as it is,
problem solved?

>>>KIra<<<..............

I would not sweat the SP. If players are going to discriminate against you because your SP is around 100 then they have no real idea of the how much stats you can get fro other items. SP are not and never should be the BE ALL END ALL. The stats from at max SP are at most 25-30% of stats that you can get from other things. This thing is not about SP it is about stats and other things that are not working.

Why stats won't matter with this change.

You basically get the majority of your stats from your gear. Your gear determines your CR and your gear determines your stats. Mods and skill point are still being left as meaningless. We don't get to strategically place our stats, you are still left with the same static stats that the gear give you. This is the same thing as CR differential. The small difference in stats that you get from skill points and mods isn't changing.

CR differential only effects damage in and damage out. It doesn't effect your healing or trolling or tanking abilities. Defense is capped so the only real difference is damage out. Unless they make the little differences in stats mean more then this is exactly the same system we have now.

Everyone can agree the extra stats that skill point give is meaningless. The little extra that the increase is meant to give you doesn't amount to anything. They don't plan on increasing these number at all. Everything will be the same as it is now. This is even stated on page 11 by mepps that you should not notice any difference between now and when they make the change.

This is basically just changing the name of CR differential

Imo it could have been the right move to just soften the effects of CR-scaling within a Tier or even relevancy. Instead of having each CR being 10% dmg/mitigation vs a higher CR target (simplyfied) that value (or higher ofc) could have been applied throughout a whole tier.

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm excited to have my 200+SP and stats actually make a difference again. But because of the way CR was the sole thing you needed for progression I was able to consistently play 7 toons (modding with just Beta's) given that there is new gear every month and Exceptional recovery kits just simple DON"T drop in new content, keeping 7 toons modded and competitive in each role just seems very unlikely. (unless of course I spend a crap ton of money on Total Kits, or bite the bullet and spend the money/time farming to keep the toons modded). Will probably just drop down to 3 toons with this.

This change should mainly effect the lower CR players trying to run higher CR content. For instance....A 149 Dps with 12500 might because they have 250 SP can do the same damage as a 156 Dps with the same might because they only have a 120 SP against a 156 NPC. I think this is a great change an will encourage me to make new characters because now I can take a lower CR DPS that just has a bad luck drop rate for gear an be effective with 248 SP an mods

If CR Differential was properly implemented, it wouldn't seem "arbitrary," as you say. The fact is that as you gear up, your CR increases, as do your stats. This is the case in both systems. Yes, you can increase stats with mods and SP, but as I said, the effect was less in the old system and will be less in this proposed new system. If they would simply take the time to iron out the current system, so it isn't as messy, it would feel better in content. Then, there's the added benefit of being able to keep the stat inflation down. Adjust the SP and mod boosts to be percentage-based. I still don't understand why they're flat boosts. That's never made sense to me. Pretty much every other game I've ever played has percentage boosts, because they grow along with your character. Flat boosts will have diminishing returns, regardless of whether the stat growth is linear or not.

It would be nice to hear why the Devs would rather go back to the old system rather than throw all the time they are planning on spending reverting things to how they were into fixing what we have now.

It does look like there are some plans to revamp skill points based on the above quotes. At the moment there is essentially no difference between 77sp and 250sp. I would really like it if skill points gave us more than this (given that they are much more difficult and time consuming to get than gear / mods). I would be quite happy with percentage based innates instead of fixed stat amounts. (the 7 might from those weapon trees really is meaning less and less as our stats get higher and higher).

@Mepps, Care to comment on any plans to make skill points relavant again? to give us a reason "to want and need skill points" as stated above?

Regards,

To add to this, and I know we actually discussed that at some point long ago, I think the diminishing returns on SP are there so that we are forced to get more SP to keep the innate to gear ratio constant, similar to how we need more Defense at higher CR to get the same mitigation. It's not really an elegant system imo, and surely not one that feels rewarding though.

Remander........ I think we have a winner







You are right on target with percentage boosts.
DCUO did the same with the Omega buffs. Why not SP???
After a players reaches a certain point in game.
The SP chase is a mute point and any SP gain has zero gains.

The thing is that the current system needs more than a mere "ironing", it is not just the bad implementation it is also the lack of foresight that makes things tricky.

I agree it makes little sense but from what I understood so far they are not interested in a holistic approach. Big and proven mistake as the same tactic was employed with the GU 47 which they are now trying to reverse. GU 36 / WM which they reversed with the coming of AMs and so on...

As long as they are not willing to approach this from every angle at once and perfect a system whether it is a new one or a revamp of the current one, I only see trouble along the way.
Honestly I don't see how any system can work if it is not made to include Mods and SP from the get go. Switching from CR to inflated Stats is a bad paint-job in my opinion. Hardly a fix.


To Mepps:
Mepps, I am sorry but as long as you are not prepared to make SP and mods relevant to this discussion the whole plan is destined to fail.. regardless of teams intentions.

My God, YES! Thank you devs! This change was needed for sure. Tired of seeing scrubs with 60 SP and no mods in stuff like BN and BD. This will make people work towards having a more powerful character and not just get carried and power leveled all the time. I understand some people don't have enough time to grind out feats so I am just gonna point out that there are so many quick and easy feats out there to get especially since its so easy to reach T7 nowadays and you can easily do all of those said feats with a T7 character. You can easily reach 120 SP if you dedicate a bit of time to work on feats so it is definitely not all that time consuming or hard to do. And 120 SP is not a bad number at all, its pretty decent actually and I am sure you can have a pretty powerful character with something like 120 SP and not cry about how the devs made the game garbage. Really that is how it's supposed to work in every massive multiplayer game. The more time you invest in playing and completing the game (in this case feats) the more powerful your character becomes. It's a slap to the face to veterans and dedicated players to play a T7 raid and get outperformed by somebody that didn't grind a day in his life and mostly gotten carried to that level. So yeah, this would be great for the game I am sure and I can't wait!

This is a really good thread and topic, I believe this will help out a lot because we have high cr's with no mods or sp getting in high content making it harder for veterans who grind to get were they are and it just makes the whole content suffer when someone is not moded or their sp is really low.

Its more than just board chasing and getting a high cr because whether your in an alert or a raid you have to make sure your toon is capable of doing its role and strong enough to help your team get thru it.

I would really like to see a sp requirement for content which will help push certain players to make their toon the best that it can be.
What yall think?

Can't they keep stat flattening and remove CR differential? I thought when GU 47 that is what they originally did, and everyone was getting wrecked by T3 and T4 raids. I believe the problem with GU 47 on test was that some of the stats were not scaling correctly, like additional defense was being ignored and people were taking mega damage in T4 because of that. I can't remember for sure, but thought it was something like that.

I agree 100% that SP allocations should be % based not flat stats. If 7 mods are the last ones, they should also be % based.

I feel like removing CR differential will be better than trying to fix it because of all the scaling issues and bugs (remember CR 136?). I'm hoping they can keep stats somewhat flat, and figure out a formula for % increases going forward. 25% increase per tier? 10% per 3 month episode? They said you should be able to "solo" raids at the end of 2 tiers above. So maybe a 80% stat boost would allow that?

I Agree

Questions here.....


The OP is stating
Making stats matter again

and yet players keep going back to the 25% + or - gains in stats that SP gives players.


What is the deal with the other 75% stats that are not working???

Why are players so worried about SP when there is a bigger problem than SP???

Do players really have no clue that SP is only part of their total stats???

Are there so many players that had no idea that their trinkets, cola buffs and gear mods are all fluff and did not work???

Do these players not realize that the R&D system as a whole is useless???

There were a few things that still work in R&D but anything that buffs stats is a sham.

I still think CR differential base implementation was very bad. To the point where the damage you take and damage you do were based off CR, and not your stats.

Now stats were there to complement your CR but that is not how it was taken, nor how it was implemented. To the point where 1000 difference in stats meant almost nothing compared to 1 difference in CR which essentially made mods and SP obselete.

The reason Mods cannot be percentage based is due to their increase per tier. To eventually they would be capped at a certain percentage. Not saying that is a bad thing, however it would stop the devs need to create new tier mods once they get to that point and thus creating a false sense of progression via R&D.( People would feel R&D progression would stop).

I think Stat values need to be normalized( ie. nerfed) down to a set value. Ideally to half of what everyone is at right now.

Ex. Average health is 20k+. normalized health is 10k. Essentially to the point where 8 tiers from now we would see stat values that we see today.

If you were to leave all mods and SP stat boosts exactly the same while normalizing the general stats it would be like looking at a T4 player back in the day with 200SP and T7 mods which in those days were a reasonable bonus to stats. Then once in the later tiers devs can add in SP % bonuses towards the bottom of trees instead of changing all bonuses to a flat percentage.

However ultimately the problem is the large stat increases we saw in gear that made mods and SP useless. Which even if this change happens SP and Mods will still be less significant. But more significant than they are right now.