Stats Revamp 1.3 - Your Feedback!

Discussion in 'Stats Revamp Archive' started by Avair, Feb 10, 2017.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Avair Administrator

    Hello! With our last public test server update, we asked players to communicate your top concerns to us in a survey. We have received, collated, read, and debated your survey feedback, and now we're back to share with you the results and our next steps.

    First, to those of you who answered the survey with comments like “Hi Avair." This isn't exactly constructive feedback, but I do appreciate all of the greetings - and, “Hello”.

    Second, this post will address the top concerns expressed overall. There will also be several posts similar to this one - one for each powerset - that will share and address the top concerns for each powerset.

    Survey Results: Overall

    Collectively, you all mentioned these major topics most frequently:
    • You were concerned about the current and future balance between the different playstyles (Hybrid, PftT, and Weapon)
    • You were concerned about changes to the Power stat, including as related to regen and skill points
    • You were concerned the game/combat feels too different in regard to pace
    • You were concerned about the effectiveness and related changes to crowd control abilties
    Because I am the guy driving this bus, I am going to take the liberty of combining some of these into the following categories:
    • Balance Issues (Includes issues 1 and 2)
    • Combat Pacing (Includes issues 3 and 4)
    You might be wondering why this crazy bus driver decided to combine the topics into these areas, but if you stay with me for the ride it should all make sense when we get where we are going. Alright, enough with bus talk.

    Balance

    We are keeping a watchful eye on combat balance and continuing to tweak numbers all over the place. Basically we have chained Moja to his desk and forced him to output numbers. He is ok with it… more or less.

    There are a couple of things to think about regarding balance. First, everything is connected. We have to be very careful when we adjust any one thing because it impacts every other thing. We have to look at the whole picture. Second, players do not have the whole picture. This absolutely does not discount feedback, experience, or input by the players. The reason I am posting these novels is so that I can give you insight into why we do the things we do.

    Playstyle: Weapons

    Now that we are done with the disclaimers, let's talk about playstyles. Weapons are the easiest to address simply because we have not yet fully addressed them on Test. The balance pass we did thus far was done to get them in and working with the new stat calculations, NOT to make them a viable and healthy playstyle on their own. Right now their damage is too low and their options are limited. The changes that will come in the future, but have not been made yet, are:
    • Increase damage based on combo length (deeper combos grant deeper bonuses)
    • Increase damage for Weapon Mastery attacks
    • Remove crowd control from some attacks, compensating with additional damage
    Playstyle: Hybrid and PftT

    We have a change coming in the Skill Points system that will help distinguish the other playstyles from each other, give PftT more Power, and also make Skill Points make more sense.

    Last week I discussed that it was best to spend as many skill points in a single stat as you could, because of the exponential return on them. Well, it turns out that's not very intuitive and not how players have been using the system. Instead of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, we are going to shave some corners off our peg. What I mean by this is that we are going to adjust skill points in these ways:
    • Special thresholds have been inserted at various levels in each skill point stat
    • At each threshold the player will receive a percentage based stat buff that matches the stat they are purchasing, on top of the flat amount
    • This percentage buff lasts as long as you have that threshold purchased and grants a bonus to the overall total of that stat
      • As a hypothetical, if you had 999 Power total (from items, skill points, mods, etc), and you spent a skill point that put you over the threshold and also granted you an additional Power, the following would happen:
        • Your Power would increase to 1000 from the flat bonus, then it would multiply by 101% and be 1010
        • The percentage points are cumulative. The next one you get would be an additional 1% and increase the overall to 2% bonus
    • These thresholds are of greater frequency at the lower levels of skill points and end close to when the rewards for spending skill points in a stat start to pick up speed from the exponential curve.
    This change does a multitude of things. Since I like bullet points, I will bullet them:
    • It increases the importance of skill points by a lot
    • It encourages players to spend their skill points in multiple stats
      • This will shift the paradigm to PftT wanting Might and Power (still focus on Power), Hybrid to Might/ Precision, and Weapons to still just wanting Precision (sorry weapons!)
      • This is what many players already do, so we think it works out pretty well
    • It requires an across the board balance adjustment (HP, stats, Power, defense, etc) to account for the total percentage jump while not making players totally OP
      • In large part, this is why “the numbers” will be different with this update
    • It further differentiates players who decide to invest heavily in one stat over another
      • This is where it helps PftT be different than Hybrid and Hybrid different than Weapons
      • This also happens to give us another area we can latch on to in order to balance one playstyle over another, and we will continue to do so
    Combat Pace

    You might be wondering why crowd control is included into the pace of the game section. Well, there is a very clear reason. When we initially developed our guidelines for transitioning abilities into the stats revamp, we wanted to make the crowd control environment more understandable. We wanted CC to be used more judiciously and make it more powerful – we also wanted you to have to choose whether or not to use CC or something else in your loadout. There were many actionable items from this venture, but one of them resulted in much longer cool downs on about 30% of the abilities.

    Flash forward to now, and some of those changes have panned out while others have not. The changes to gameplay pace are chief among the plans that did not work out. We have clearly heard your feedback here, and as a result are changing directions. We will address improving crowd control in the future, not in the revamp, when we can devote more time and energy to fixing the problem without dramatically changing the pace of combat.

    This means that most abilities with crowd control have had their cooldowns significantly decreased, and their damage slightly decreased. We still want players to make a choice between using abilities with crowd control or not, but we don’t want to dramatically change the pace of the game to get there.

    What this change does is allow you to have access to crowd control if you desire it, but at the cost of a small damage reduction. This will allow you options in combat without dramatically slowing down the game.

    The changes that are going to test are the following:
    • All Supercharge Builders have had their cooldowns lowered to 6 seconds
    • Karmic Backlash, Condemn, Avalanche, Freeze Wave, Resonating Gale, Hogtie, Sleep, Pain Blast, Mass Terror, Levitation, Electrostatic Bomb, Ionizing Eruption, and Thermochemical Explosion have had their cooldowns lowered to 3 seconds
    • All of the previous abilities have had their damage lowered, ranging from 1% to 25% (with an average of around 5%) based on the amount of crowd control it has
    • We have also lowered the cooldowns of various other abilities, but they will be described in more depth in the powerset threads
    Survey Results: Powersets

    Speaking of which, we have also similarly assembled the top concerns per powerset, and those results and next steps are outlined in the following threads.
    Thank you for taking the time to test and relay your feedback. We will be monitoring these threads for additional feedback, as well as providing a future survey once the changes mentioned have been tested.
    • Like x 7
  2. Mepps Sr. Community Manager

    TL;DR

    You took a survey, and we spent much time digesting it! Your top concerns overall were about combat pace and balance between the playstyles.
    • To address combat pace, we are reducing ability cooldowns significantly and stepping back from some crowd control changes.
    • To address playstyle balance, we are adjusting skill point philosophy and will continue to fine tune numbers as we go.
    Plus, read the powerset specific threads for more information!
    • Like x 4
  3. Fatal Star 10000 Post Club

  4. ChillCat Loyal Player

    SUPER GREAT!!!
    • Like x 3
  5. MsTickle Fate Devoted Player

    Is there a typo (or two) in these numbers? Possibly you meant "multiply by 1%"?
  6. SuperNerdGeekOverkill Dedicated Player

    No.
    101% equals a factor of 1.01
    1000 * 1.01 = 1010

    If you multiply 1000 by 1%, you'd have 10.
    • Like x 4
  7. Tsavorentless Dedicated Player

    Great post... I have been very negative and I'm very glad you showed us wut you were intending to do thus making the whole thing nore constructive.
    • Like x 1
  8. Green Viking Level 30

    I appreciate thr change you guys and gals are trying to do but....kn my opinion Earth need to be introduced into the game its ome sided as far as soct bites...for example the pull of epicenter i thought was gone be a damage tank imstead of corny shield and pet wielding power.....reinvent earth please
  9. Mystere Well-Known Player

    In many of the powersets feedback players expressed an issue and your response was because content can be completed there are no changes. Thus in many instances feedback was not taken. When this goes live, don't say we didn't warn you that it was not going to be received well.
    • Like x 1
  10. Elusian Crowd Control

    And again the whole Healer Shield issue sweeped under the rug. I guess its a lost cause and we have to live with less gameplay depth on that front =/
    • Like x 2
  11. Jacob Dragonhunter Steadfast Player

    fixed. #StillendingtheSupergreatera



    The changes actually sound pretty good, and it looks promising thus far from what I've experienced with Gadgets and Electricity.

    However it is pretty concerning that issues like the ones Elusian mentioned haven't been addressed.
  12. ChillCat Loyal Player


    [IMG]
    • Like x 1
  13. Derio 15000 Post Club

    Healer shields, will they be addressed. Other than that everything else sounds great.
  14. IamINC Dedicated Player

    Only thing I can say I am concerned with is that the healing has been said to be too weak and that isn't being addressed properly , instead your using the fact people are completing content on test as a go to retort for both power sets , not great.

    Healers know their power sets , if they are saying the healing side is weak please adjust it , I know that as a tank , I don't want weak healers on live when this happens , pretty sure nobody else does either.
    • Like x 1
  15. BestPlayerAfrica Well-Known Player

    do we have a free power respec token if we are not happy with whatever change to the current power we are currently using after this come live ?
    • Like x 1
  16. BumblingB I got better.

    • PFTT feels more viable now, for Gadgets at least. Power return seems a lot better. Cooldowns make for more fluid rotations.
    • Weapon Only isn't very viable right now due to damage of weapons.
    • I have yet to try a full hybrid, especially now that you adjusted skill points a bit.

    Can you revisit movement powers? Also, is it possible to move the breakout ones up, so if you don't want to buy a movement power, you don't have to buy it to get to the lower ones. That or pretty please, just auto add them into your power list and make movement strictly the speed/rocket/supersonic and breakout purchases? This would free up more skill points and follow the changes that power points got.

    Found a few bugs with the UI.
    • When allocating stat points, I hold down space bar. Well, if you run out of points, you can keep holding space until you realize you are done. It will keep trying to put one in even if you don't have any.
    • I mentioned the tooltip if you scroll down with the powers, well, you can't reorganize your hot bar at all now. If you try to move it over, they don't swap and the one you are going to gets removed. To organize, you have to move a power up to the new spot from the lower selection window.
    • Generator Mods, if you replace one stat with another, you get both stats listed in the tooltip. I don't think you get benefits of both, but just wanted to mention that. (Found it out from swapping might with precision. Got both showing. I was like, wait, is that right?)
    • Like x 1
  17. KellyCares New Player


    I to was so disappointed they didn't make shields better for healers, it was one of my 3 topics i wrote to them about.. #hearmyvoice
  18. Rokyn Dedicated Player

    Feedback:

    I absolutely do not like the changes to Sidekick. The notes state that he heals based on health percentage but the heals are weaker than before. The heals before were like soder colas or supply drops heals and he was able to keep you up as long as he was out.

    It was balanced with the long trinket cooldown and was useful to tanks and players who had no healers or if the healer went down. It was well worth to have one in those key situations. I feel like this update made the sidekick insignificant and I think he should work like he did before.
    • Like x 2
  19. hotsizz1e03 Committed Player

    I think the survey comes out too quick.. allow people to actually play first, then unlock the survery. People are just going to give first impression reactions. Allow people to sit on their thoughts after like 3-4 days of gameplay. The mind is a funny thing. At first, we might not like something but over time it can grow on us, and our initial reaction might have changed.
  20. Mepps Sr. Community Manager

    It was not a top mentioned concern in the survey. Once these other concerns are addressed, it may rise to the top for more people.
    • Like x 1
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.