Plz Help me Understand: Future Stat Clamping Old Content

Ok, so there are a couple of instances that do have minimums in terms of percentage damage mechanics that can't be survived (even by blocking) without leveled Episode Augments. Other than the CR for admission, the only other minimums are functional. I'll always let someone try, and skill goes a very long way. However, no amount of skill will give you enough DPS to pass Elite burn checks, without commensurate SP and gear, including Artifacts. The same is true for Healing or functional/effective Health checks for other roles. If you don't have the Resto, you just can't put out the numbers, even through perfect play. And so on.

But anyway...

I'm maintaining faith in the new world of Ep.41, because of a few reasons:

#1 with a bullet! No company wants to turn off its most dedicated and invested customer base. Dimensional Ink's Devs aren't looking to twist the game into something where end game players are no longer invested in progression, they don't want to kill your fun. Even if you think the devs do want to ruin your vibe, consider that they at least don't want to kill their income. They want you to feel like you want SP, gear, Artifacts, and (soon) Allies. There's no good reason that they would want to hurt that aspect of the game.

#2 we've already done this for years. Think about the difference between your fresh level 30 in a seasonal instance, versus your endgame toon. I'm not going to insult anyone's intelligence by suggesting the whole thing will be just like fighting Larfleeze. What I mean is that we can observe multiple things that devs know and use in clamping to extrapolate some possible avenues that the clamping can take -- beyond mere stat-caps.

For examples, open-world Seasonal Ads only take 1 damage from most attacks. Capped Damage is a possibility, and capped damage that become progressively less-capped by a percentage in relation to your CR or stats is an easy possibility. Think about Felix Faust's damage check phases during Shattered Gotham, especially on Elite, and you can get a good idea of how they have tinkered with enemy damage mitigation before. There's a lot of really fun ways this might play out, without trivializing your work.

You can also see the differences in higher SP players and people with higher Artifacts that are Clamped Upward in Event content. Which leads me to...

#3 we have so many more tools now! 600+ SP! Artifacts! Meta-factors like Eye of Gemini spam, the Phase Shift option, Augment bonuses et. al.

All of these things are going to change the game from what it was like playing content at CR. If you have had trouble finding open bounty groups, welcome to the Phase Switch era, thanks devs! Had some trouble tanking the raid in the past? Well now you have maxed Health AND Dom and your Manacles of Force etc.

Now, it is entirely possible that you will want a different build for clamped content then you do at endgame. For example, if certain stats are fully capped, you may want more 'lateral' progression such as getting your 10% bonuses in Resto, Dom, Health and maxed crits as a tank. But that doesn't trivialize progression, it just changes how you allocate your resources. You might not want to stack 300 here and 200 there, but rather 100 everywhere, but you'll want SP!

Orbital Strikes will do lower damage, but they'll still do more with Dead King's Scepter. Your Solar Amplifier will still explode and spread PI and give you a channeling mod, even if your damage is capped. That's still a worthwhile improvement over regular Heat Vision. Even if it does less damage, your Strategist Card will still produce higher damage than someone without that Artifact, and it will still proc more often with your Transformation Card. Grim, Quislet, Soul Cloak, Eye, Shard... they're all still going to work. Artifacts and their progression will still make an enormous difference.

The only progress that may be totally trivial within clamped content would your 4 baseline augments, which will still be giving stats in endgame content, and frankly contribute minimally to your overall functionality.

#4 shiny buttons! This might sound ridiculous, but holy molars people love buttons! The new UI is really cool (what we've seen so far) and simply putting a bunch of pre-set content together in a queue with a button that says QUICKPLAY, and people are gonna press that button.

We've heard more about quickplay than we have about Omnibus, but from my understanding it's going to make endgame content much easier to queue for as well, putting everything together for you in one place. With a button. People are gonna press that button, too.

TLDR: The devs don't want to trivialize your progress or reduce your continued investment. There's a boatload of ways beyond "reduce and cap stats" that this can work. And the devs have shown us examples that we have enjoyed. The game is different and we have a lot of things that will make us feel more powerful than we did at relevant CR. And lastly, people are going to want to check out the new stuff, and the game has added a lot of recent QoL updates.

(PS the idea of the One Troll Army sucking... legit almost had an asthma attack. I didn't find the comment itself funny. But the blatant falsehood? It could have killed me.)

I'm going to have to agree to disagree here. I've been in groups where no one is over geared and still blew through it.

Perhaps, you don't know how paragraphs work. A new paragraph means a new topic. Slow internet and a disability are in separate paragraphs, thereby denoting that they are separate topics. Slow internet is one reason and a disability is another reason. How you managed to combine them into one thing is quite a mystery to me.

Perhaps, you don't know how paragraphs work. A new paragraph means a new topic. Slow internet and a disability are in separate paragraphs, thereby denoting that they are separate topics. Slow internet is one reason and a disability is another reason. How you managed to combine them into one thing is quite a mystery to me.

I've never been a huge fan of the Event/normal/Elite set-up for the reasons you stated. It should allow you to start with the easy, learn what to do, move on to the normal, learn what to do, and then move on to the Elite. That's really not what happens though. Easy actually teaches people that they can ignore mechanics. When they move on to Normal, they just get mad at the healer for not keeping them alive. Elite will be forever out of reach.

This.

This is exactly how it will turn out. Brit's comments are not unique and mirror what the avg player feels and will feel once this goes live.

I'm not usually one to reply in situations like this, but I find myself wanting to respond one... time

You call me out on not knowing how paragraphs work and how slow internet and a disability should be two separate topics. Ordinarily, I'd agree.

However, I disagree with this particular argument. And now, I will explain why. The OP made reference to slow internet being a disability, I was responding in kind. I will now elaborate.

Slow internet can cause a great many things. Slow download times, frustration, and even anger are a few of those things.

A disability is a mental or physical issue that causes some effect on the quality of life of the person that is afflicted. Mental disorders can be considered a disability depending on the severity. Being blind is a disability, being deaf..you guessed it, a disability.

Now that I've gotten explanations out of the way, allow me to focus more on why I included them in the same paragraph. As I previously mentioned, the OP initially called slow internet a disability. I was simply stating that having slow internet is NOT a disability. Slow internet is a DISADVANTAGE at best.

I hope I've explained myself to your satisfaction. I'll even go so far as to apologize for the frustration I must have caused you.

Because youve spoken to every player, right?

No. That's not what the TheDrone wrote. They said there were many reasons and then gave two.

Now, it's true that "two" is a bit short of "many," but the meaning here is perfectly clear: there are many reasons and here are two. Two separate reasons, separated by (short) paragraphing.

No, they didn't. That's a pure misreading on your part. For whatever reason. Your entire argument is with something nobody said.

It's definitely the reigning sentiment I'm hearing in game.

That is a fair point, looking back..I can see what you're saying. I can also admit when I'm wrong and this was clearly a misunderstanding on my part. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. When I first read it, it came across as comparison between slow internet and a disability. Although, one thing I will point out is that SOME can still get it done with a disability (as mentioned regarding parkinson's). Again, I thank you.

No need to. I'm omniscient.

But seriously, putting aside, the snark and passive aggressive strawman; no need to because it doesn't have to be "everyone" (only a majority) and because the majority are sharing their feelings openly. We just have to pay attention to and listen to them, to know what the majority of players feel about these changes. If 7/10 people on the forums, Twitter, Youtube and in your Leagues are unhappy with the changes that's a pretty good indicator of what's coming. Majority of players just don't have relationships they try to "maintain" with the Devs on the forums and don't have test server access. So, they have to wait till this all goes live to complain about it until it's reversed wasting months of development time and resources. But it all could have been avoided if the "3 people" on the forums were ignored to begin with.

In the real world, some people have a better grasp on what others want and need than others do. It's a life skill that develops from communication skills, empathy, not being self involved and so on. Those are the people who will provide the most constructive feedback in a situation like this. It won't come from players who are self involved or otherwise focused on their own play experiences instead of a community's. All a dev team has to do is look for that.

I did....in a way. While I didn't speak to every player in game....every player I've spoken to(outside these forums) is not excited about the change. I'd put it at over 100 in the last few weeks...again, not counting people here. That's 100% of 100 people. If this were Family Feud...

"We surveyed 100 random people, how many said they were super exited about old content getting clamped"....


I'll skip the Richard Dawson kiss on the lips though..... yeesh...

Dont worry theyll adapt, they don't like change. But theyll come to accept it. And if they wanna quit, they can choose any other game out there that likely does Stat Clamping or Skill Based Matchmaking. You think these people care about the general health of the game? No they wanna steamroll content and talk ****.

Ah yes... the ever popular 'Grow your player base by telling players to quit"....paradox. An oldie but a goodie.

Followed by the "Assume anyone who doesn't agree with you is a jerk"...argument. 'Debate gold' all around! All boxes ticked indeed.

I also was unaware that the changes coming will apply to chat and limit the ability for people to talk....trash. That will be nice, thanks for the update. Finally, change I can believe in.

Also wheres Noxious?

Guess thats part of the reason it isnt optional huh?

So acknowledging that making it option would also make it unused, you contend that MOST of the community will benefit from this change?

I get that some users feel the loss of the old content 'at level' is an issue, but you are all but admitting that no one wants this clamp.

Glad to see we finally swayed you to our side of the fence.

Sorry man, these are some of my responses to the stat clamp thread 7 years back (i posted Apollonia's quote to show you why i feel justified in the way i do). Anybody could've seen the need for this years ago

And? Not sure if you drive anywhere repeatedly 2 times a day like a job or school...but I know when I drive to work I have a few paths I could take there (45 mile drive). I can take the highway which goes faster and gets me there sooner, or I can go surface streets through nice neighborhoods with beautiful houses (in some of them) and kids selling lemonade for .25 cents a cup and takes 2x as long. I might choose to do that route 1 or 2 times a year, but 99% of the time I go the highway. Who are you to tell anyone that's wrong? Do you advocate shutting down the highway as the other route is 'better'? Maybe you would choose to always take the slower route...enjoy the drive. I'm happy for you, and fully support you doing so. More room for me in the fast lane.

I'm pretty well done with the discussion really. I expect 41 to launch this week...we are running out of August. Nothing to do but sit back and watch the carnage...or cheers. Unlike some, I can admit that there are 2 sides to the argument...neither of which is 'wrong'...one of which is all for removing options though....

Then I quit, again

Or you can play the game unsubbed and see for yourself if it's as bad as you're making it out to be. You have choices.