GU50, Tunso Testing, and Player Testing

Brit just posted one today, funny you should ask.

Thanks for the heads up, I normally don't follow any of the DCUO vidmakers. I looked it up. By no means it's melee friendly. At ~48s she almost died, at 1:01 she almost died, 2:25 almost died, 2:50 - dead (boss jumped on the group). Also she used melee throughout the entire raid and still fell back to one dps' that had little to no risk involved. Whilst still being one CR above him/her. Taking into account that she is in a good group and is confident about her moves and has a CR high enough to not fall back with the scaling an average joe with rage will die numerous times taking more risk to the group.
And that still goes back to what I earlier posted, most content can't be melee from point blank but can be from 12,5m. Rage still lacks in survivability and in older content (if it's relevent to your CR) you can't melee in raids and a few alerts.

The initiative here is in 3 steps.

• STEP 1: Baseline balancing melee and range
• STEP 2: Address scaling imbalance
• STEP 3: Make a decision about midrange

You're discussing a topic that will be addressed with STEP 3. It is a well understood concern at this point. I appreciate the feedback but hope you realize we are still in STEP 1 right now. Our focus at the moment is on pet classes and shortly after you can expect a couple other powersets to be tweaked.

I think most people get this but the problem is we are still in phase 1. It has been a month now and other than a slight buff to mental and a buff to pets this isn't going anywhere. I know you have a NDA but they need to let you keep this thread updated with every new development. Not all of us who are actively following this thread are a part of the CRT or the devs special test group so we need updates to see progress or it will appear like the this feedback and testing was pointless like the GU 50 testing. This testing really needs to start into stage 2.

Well, the deal is we have no transparency on what the development team is doing. We only know what's done after it goes on test. Maybe they're working on a grand "fix it all" update or maybe they're just slacking. We don't know.

I think what's missing here is a bit of perspective, patience, and perception. Since this thread went live 1 month ago (4 weeks ago), we've seen the following occur based off the testing done in this initiative.

• Baselines collected for all powersets
• Rage Buff
• Weapon Buff 1 ( Dual Flurry, Flip Slash, Handspring Kick, Downward Smash, Smoke Bomb)
• Mental Buff
• Earth Buff
• Sorcery Buff
• Weapon Buff 2 (Full Auto, Scissor Kick, Mortar, Two Footed Slam and Shield Uppercut)

If it helps, you're not going to see all the powersets rebalanced at baseline in a single week. I mentioned that in an earlier post of this thread and repeated it often enough. This initiative isn't the kind of thing you're going to get instant gratification on. It will take time. A single stage will take multiple weeks, not just multiple days. The whole initiative may take multiple months, not just multiple weeks. You're in a rush to get to stage 2 but stage 1 is demonstrably not done yet.



So for next steps we need to re-test Earth and Sorcery now. There's also other powersets that need to be adjusted. Before we move on to scaling, you can expect the following will likely see a buff....

• Quantum Melee (78%)
• Celestial Melee (83%)
• Munitions Melee (90%)
• Gadgets Melee (92%)
• Quantum Range (93%)

I'm not keen on powersets sitting at -5% personally, so I'll probably push for...

• Munitions Range (95%)

And sure, the devs aren't saying what power they're addressing next or what specific abilities they are tweaking to achieve baseline balance. But they are collecting our test results and using them in conjunction with their own efforts to identify what to address next. And they're honestly addressing them quickly compared to any other time in the history of this game. All this is going on while they're also working on Atomic, Titles, and who knows whatever else. Aside from what's being said here, there's not really much more to be said aside from maybe a green name coming in here once a week and quoting one of my posts and saying "what he said".

I'm starting to feel like I need to just get this thread closed and re-open a new one with a better reset of context. There's a lot covered in the last 35 pages that aren't well represented in just the 1st post. People don't seem to be following along.

Sore, hate to sound like a broken record but Dev input IS important here. You're doing a bang up job, but assurances by proxy falls short in giving the players some confidence that the Devs are really taking this testing work in as a top priority effort. Again, it would be highly beneficial for the Devs to start a WIP thread to provide summary updates on this overall effort. When I mean summary updates, I mean a summary like the excerpt you've provided below and not presented as a likely expectation but a statement of fact. I'm not stating this in any way to mean a criticism but a suggestion that Dev communication needs to be improved just as much as the balancing effort. Just another $.02

Hear what you are saying but some of us (including you) have been waiting for 6 months for our powers to be buffed and while a buff happened it was not comparable to the other power buffs that had occurred in the same window. Especially now that there is an enrage timer in the elite alert they have really pushed their own timetable. I do not know about you, but I do not plan on healing every time I go into that alert because I can not beat the enrage timer with my powerset.

You of all people know there are developers who work strictly on powersets. Atomic and Water are on the Horizon, but hopefully there is some type of "balance" before either of those powers are released.

I guess the question now is how do we as players help speed up this process? Are the devs willing to put in a temporary band aid fix such as buffing a ranged weapon attack to do melee damage when used at 12.5m (something with the damage of haymaker)? With another rendition of SM and an enrage timer on the way this thread and powers should be at the fore front.

I apologize that these questions have to be directed towards you and I have no idea how you take them. I am in no way trying to be combative, but after the disappointment experienced with GU 50 a lot of us want to make sure this is being taken seriously and not ignored like the GU 50 feedback.

Thanks for your response. Quite often a simple response like this can go along way.

Communication! It's a beautiful thing. Thank you. PLEASE keep it up.

Responses in CYAN. Man these kinds of chains get confusing.

Haha, Mepps comes in and literally says what Sore's been copying and pasting and now everyone is ok? They obviously don't think much of your word Sore.

It's not about Sore. Everyone knows who knows what they're talking about and who doesn't on forums. Developer interaction is key in community relations.

I appreciate what Sore is doing, but unless he has the authority to evaluate feedback and make the necessary changes his word is no better than me coming in saying the exact same thing.

Mepps coming in and saying the exact same things validates what Sore has been saying and also reinforces that this testing is being evaluated and more changes are on the way.

Tsk, tsk....for shame. It's exactly the opposite. At this point, I put magnitudes more faith in Sore's posts and information than anyone else on this topic. If only because Sore has demonstrated exactly how you need to address a complicated issue like "balance" with clarity, precision and frequent communication.

No one will argue that Sore isn't great. But until he gets hired it doesn't matter, and they don't have the money to hire people right now.

Okay. It's time for me to come out with it. I've been holding it in too long. The suspense was killing me. I was going to wait a bit longer to make it a really big surprise. Here it is. I'm John Smedley. I get paid pretty well for all this. I just never wanted the green name so I could stay anonymous. I'm already public enough with my involvement with PS2 and H1Z1. I thought I'd stay more low-key for DCUO. Cat's out of the bag now, I guess.

EDIT: Sorry, that's not true. I had a bit of an identity crisis for a moment there. The nice thing about games are that they have amazing communities. There's no shortage of players willing to basically contribute to the game for free just because they love it. Some test. Some write guides. Some put together pretty charts. Some build fansites. And when we work together with a constructive effort, sometimes we get direct results for our efforts. We're not entitled to that but it is cool when it happens. Now is a magical time in that regard.

Ahaha, well there's no way someone... let's say competent as you could be Smed! I don't think gaming CEOs/bosses actually play their games on a level enough to understand past basic mechanics.