Development Update: The Stats Revamp

Discussion in 'Stats Revamp Archive' started by Avair, Sep 21, 2016.

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  1. Harlequin Devoted Player

    That would be true if encounters continue to be designed that way. However, there is one fight I can think of that favors melee and punishes players for remaining at range - the Raven bounty in GW. Players should not automatically be at a numerical disadvantage simply because their character concept favors ranged combat. Having some powers (not abilities, powers like Ice, Gadgets, etc) favor ranged over melee and vice versa provides a healthy diversity and encourages groups to not stack one power over others. Again, content would need to be designed in such a way that each type of damages has their chance to shine.

    Many other MMOs manage to do this yet it would be impossible in DCUO. Interesting.
  2. Marek Committed Player


    I was actually thinking along the same line. We dont know yet know what the numbers will be or how much the dps role will be nerfed to actually say much about how close the other roles will be to dps in damage.

    I think we might start seeing 3-3-1-1 setups or 3-2-2-1 but not in the same way were all use to. Again we dont know enough about it yet, but thats just my opinion that were gonna start seeing the only role that was never excluded from anything become not needed or not wanted. Time will tell
  3. PSYL0CKE X8 Well-Known Player

    OMG posting the forums comment, What a revaluation :rolleyes:

    synthetics!!?? Really??!! :rolleyes: Lets just do away with the whole R&D system while we are at it.(sarcasm)

    The thing with synthetics is people will and do use and rely on them instead of making a mod on the R&D system . They have stopped using the exo plans that drop and trying to take the quick and easy road and buying fake mods them instead of making them. If they did bring them back they should have less stat bonus then the real ones since they are fake anyway.

    Rome wasn't built in a day. it takes time to increase your level and stats.

    Synthetics lead to some of we got going on now. People want to rush to the top instead of taking your time and working your way up
  4. Remander Steadfast Player

    Definitely not impossible, but impractical. They'd have to go back through every fight in the game and alter mechanics (wouldn't be sufficient to just work forward). Not only that. They'd have to balance said mechanics to make all powersets and weapons equally viable. That's far too complex. It's infinitely easier to just balance all attacks for melee and range throughout.
    • Like x 1
  5. Plastic.dcuo New Player

    REMOVING POWER POINTS

    We are removing the existing power points system from the game. We want players to make meaningful choices when building characters and we want to encourage diverse characters. We feel these choices are most meaningful at the load out level, and that power points themselves only provide the illusion of choice and limitations. Going forward, all existing abilities will be granted automatically as you level. As a side benefit, this opens up new avenues and ways for us to extend the ability system in the future.

    Hello,

    I just reviewed your video, explaining how you planned on removing power points, and making it a leveling system instead. You have said that you are doing this to "encourage diverse characters," and, while I approve of this decision, I think you are going about it the wrong way. I agree that the trees for powers like Ignition & Immolation should merge. It made no sense separating them. However, I do not believe the elimination of power points is the way to go, nor am I a fan of the leveling system, as there are powers in the sets I do not want.

    If you truly want to "encourage diverse characters," you should consider the Amalgam Character. In comics, there are several heroes and villains capable of using several power types at once, such as how we are able to use several weapons. Characters who use both Fire and Ice powers or manipulate Earth and Plants is not uncommon. In "Young Justice," Aqualad is able to manipulate Water and Electricity-two separate power sets. Martian Manhunter uses a combination of Mental and Nature (shape-shifting). Guy Gardner uses Light and Rage and Kyle Rayner uses Light and Hope (?). Do I even have to mention Amazo?

    My point is that instead of eliminating power points and making players waste skill points on iconic powers, expand the power tree as you did with the weapon trees, with players starting with a chosen power, and expanding into other powers as they progress past level 30.

    You could argue that this will only cause players to make over-powered characters, but this is not the case.
    1. Players are still limited to using six powers on the power bar.
    2. The more powerful abilities, such as Gieger Beam, will burn up a lot of power, and force serious players to limit their usage.
    3. Players would still need power points to purchase each power, and to descend each power tree to access the more powerful abilities. If a player only received one power point for every 10 skill points after level 30 (a total of 45 power points at 300 sp), it balances out nicely, as each power set has an average of 24 powers each.
    4. Limit the players to their original roles, preventing Healers from taking a Tanking or Troller role, and so on, even if they could purchase powers from those roles.
    5. Finally, true players will pick powers that suit their character's concept, not make Monster toons to overwhelm the opposition. ((Yes. I'm talking about you PvP gamers.))

    I hope you consider this as you continue to make changes to DCUO, a game I've loved for over 5 years. I also beg that you expand and do not eliminate iconic powers. I would still like to see Shrinking and Growth as toggled iconic powers in the game, and that you'll add Hope/Star Sapphire as a Healing power in the future. Considering Tanks received Rage and Trollers got Light, it would only be fair.
  6. BumblingB I got better.

    There is nothing wrong with the old school clipping, but the way they are describing it, I feel that will be the only viable method.
    Spin Chop... Also, there will be massive outliers again. Pre36, Rage as an example was a heck of a lot better than most old methods of gameplay. I feel that celestial and rage were kind of the reason why we got AMs post 36. Wasn't so much "advanced mechanics" existed, but they had a clear advantage after the animation changes over other tray powersets. They had to create a combo power efficient method for non combo powers.

    In any case, I'm digressing. The main point I'm trying to say is that they are undoing the last two years to allow for more "options", but until we know otherwise, I feel we will still only have one viable option.
    • Like x 1
  7. BumblingB I got better.

    I think you both are missing the design of most of the things in this game. Yes, there are powers that are better at range, but most things in the combat system of the game is melee. Weapons, powers, etc. So they designed the content around the majority instead of a general sense.

    This is the whole reason that we ended up with the "midrange" concept. As suddenly, the devs were given players views and realized that 7 meters vs 14 meters made little sense to us if we are using Outrage or Chainsaw. They came up with the stepping system, but continued to build content around the closer you are, the more risk you would be taking. That is why I think Avair is going back to the two "melee" and "range" concept. As that simplified it and makes it easier to work on content mechanics. Ones that aren't strictly burn. (I hope...)
  8. Remander Steadfast Player

    Yep, I remember that well. The Devs saw ranged as being used at melee distance with AoE splash damage beyond. We saw it simply as ranged damage. Based on what they've said, I think the plan going forward will reflect our understanding. We'll see.
  9. Dead Reckon Well-Known Player



    That is good to hear. Because as a Ice Tank, neither of my SC are any good to me. If my SC where of any use to me I might worry about getting a head mod. Currently don't have a head mod because they don't benefit me as a tank. I like hearing that SC are going to be looked at too.
  10. Proxystar #Perception


    You can't expect them to be as good when you aren't prepared to put in the effort.
    • Like x 2
  11. Proxystar #Perception


    Although I sympathize with that position, it's impractical because it would create an imbalance within things like survival mode where at times everyone is required to range and this will make certain powers preferable and therefore members of the community will either pay to switch or discriminate against power classes.
  12. Aokiji Active Player

    So with this update will be able to use any of our powers and still to decent damge?
  13. TheLQ-DCUO Loyal Player

    Very excited about this! :)

    Can't really say too much until its on test, but seems promising and many steps in the right direction.

    Wonder how this will affect Munitions and Atomic, as these powers were added to the game after Weapon Mastery and Advanced Mechanics.

    I hope this doesn't impact on Quantum DPS negatively, as before AM Quantum was one of the weakest DPS powers and Time Bomb was bugged/unusable until AM.

    I may miss power trees however, and for some powers trees are fairly necessary. It might make combo powers harder to master for players new to those powers - again this is pure speculation so.......

    Looking forward to hearing when its on test. If only I had a PC and not/as well as a Mac and I'd test it myself.
  14. Harlequin Devoted Player

    That exemplifies what I have stated regarding how encounter design could create conditions that favor melee over range and vice versa. There is nothing written anywhere that states all bosses should have PBAOE death strikes that make melee completely impossible. If SM boss encounters displayed a mix of mechanics that favored both melee and ranged at different times, groups would need to be comprised of both types of damagers to have the best chance of success.
    • Like x 1
  15. iClip Committed Player

    Lets attack this from a cynic's point of view. You people do this every year. And the things you said in the OP were said with GU36, WM (That wasn't balanced), AMs, (That wasn't/isn't balanced), said it with GU 41 (that was a colossal mistake), it was said with GU 47 (That didn't work and in spite of what that veterans told you, it was done anyways). You people do this EVERY SINGLE YEAR, you make a change that fundamentally changes the combat of the game in the name of "balance", but NOTHING is EVER balanced. you've tried to do it for the past 3-4 years...what makes you think you can do it now and it will magically work?

    I find it super strange that when the devs announced a few years back that they wanted to make everything do around the same damage players railed against it saying things like "what makes my power unique then?", "Where is the skill?" etc, BUT NOW those same people are praising this idea as being the best.

    This is too much to do in 1 release....Reasons:

    1. EVERY SINGLE TIME that they make a big release like this their are a ton of bugs
    2. Things take way too long to get fixed or not get fixed at all and more important things are neglected
    3. You can't even release a update without bugging something out...examples: unable to reset unless your not in a group/instance, no more exceptional recovery kits, constant crashing, lag, UI bugs, randomly giving everyone a few billions marks, breaking instances (Dox/Prime)
    I could keep the list going, but I can't type non stop for a few days lol.

    I was fine with revamping stats, removing power points, ending mid range.....but...but this other stuff is too dam much to be done.
    • Like x 1
  16. Harlequin Devoted Player

    Redesigning the entire combat system again is impractical but they are doing it anyway. I am suggesting they take it one step further and provide even more chances for players to make tactical decisions regarding group composition via DPS specialization.
    Not really. Anything that isn't current progression or SM would be basically irrelevant to those who would min/max their group composition to take advantage of DPS specialization. It would be just fine to implement the system only on new content going forward.
    What would have to be balanced would be the maximum potential of the ranged attacks of a ranged specialist versus the melee potential of a melee specialist. Think balancing Rogue DPS versus a Mage in WoW. The design goal is that both have similar maximum potential but some encounters favor one class over the other.

    What will really continue to create balancing issues going forward is the fact that SP totals will continue to grow, creating a variable power creep that never ends. I still believe they should cap SP, removing the feat = stats system in the game entirely, use that set amount of SP to unlock weapon, movement and Iconic abilities and use gear as the carrot to chase for min-maxxing your stats via drops.

    After further thought, I'm not even sure why I'm bothering to post about this. It is highly unlikely I will ever return to the game simply because of the cash grabs. I will return to lurking and hoping, somehow, that this game somehow finds a soul and stops trying to squeeze subscribers dry.
  17. Lt Skymaster Dedicated Player

    There was only 1 good AM loadout anyway for each power. And if you think there will not be a huge difference between good dps and people that only presses powers or hit with weapons attacks you're mistaken my friend
    • Like x 1
  18. Lt Skymaster Dedicated Player

    Since my thread got moved overhere and it got lost into the 60 pages of this document I'm reposting it here, because I would love some answers about this:


    First off all I would like to start by saying I'm glad that they're doing the stat revamp.
    (Oh and warning for the long post.)
    I was oposed to combat differential since it was announced and the whole process when it happened in GU47.

    However with this changes I'm a bit concerned in some aspects that the devs are supposedly tackling with this update.

    In the stream they mentioned how AM was never really explained which is why some of the players didn't used.
    Then later on when they explained how new dpsing would be they said that if someone is getting beat by another player in damage he could always ask why/how is he beating him. (Something that to my opinion is kinda silly because people did this/could do this AM too).

    So how I see how DPS will be after the update is going to be how we dps for LPvE, or PvP now. Clipping weapon attacks with powers, having certain dots and burst powers in order to maintain the DPS. The SuperCharges and 35% Finishers will be definitely part of the New DPS in my opinion.

    However what will this mean? To me what it means and what I can see in instances like LPVE, is that people that have no clue how to clip weapon attacks will stay behind in the board (by a lot) just like they did when AM was around.

    Why is this? In my opinion is that there will always be people that are more "ignorant" (Without offending anyone) to the game mechanics. Or simply people that doesn't care about that. What they just want to do is to push buttons to try to kill things.

    Why I'm sad about the AM removal to some extent? The AM's Provided an unique way to play powers ( ok they were very similar in some instances like Gadgets/Mental, Earth/Sorc) But they still remained different to some extent plus in my opinion some of them still feel different, like Ice never felt like Fire even if they had same type of AM. I don't think we'll be able to use AM rotations in the future and have good enough damage. Plus being honest they were easy rotations that anyone could use, did it make it easier for non skilled people yes, sadly but the skilled ones always knew how to make more out of their power, which is why they're skilled.

    Do I believe the difference between skilled and non skilled people will be more noticable yes it will definitely which is something I'm grateful for.

    Does the AM removal provides different loadout possibilites? Yes of course, but if you want to have the best damage there will always be a certain combination. Why? because some powers will always be more powerful than others, that has been the rule since the start of this game.

    Why balancing will be hard like it always has been? Balance is naturally hard, but back with AM's there was usually a set rotation with a maximum set of powers to be spend. Now to balance there should be taken into account that we will have the choice of all the avaiable powers for each powerset. Not only that but the way some powers work in some powersets are very different from one another. Channeled powers vs non channeled powers.
    Powers that combo vs powers that doesn't. Different supercharges, pets, non pets, dots, etc.

    I really hope some of this will be cleared when we got to test the changes but in the meantime those remain some of my concerns.

    TL;DR

    There are things that makes me think that there will still be some big unbalance, however skilled people will benefit from this changes. Anyhow we will only see what happens when we get to test the changes on PC TEST.
  19. TrueArchon Dedicated Player

    Are the Oracle Databases going to be updated, and will the threads that are no longer accurate/applicable be removed so that navigating the powerset threads will be easier?
  20. SuperNerdGeekOverkill Dedicated Player

    I didn't say the difference will not be huge. I said it will not be as huge as it is right now.
    Of course, with the new SP system, differences might become even bigger, but that'll be just due to number of SP, not due to having different loadouts.
    Anyway, only time will tell.
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