Development Update: The Stats Revamp

This is a bitter sweet update to me. A long time ago we were told that the midrange and advanced mechanics were created to balance out the powers. Now here we are over a year later being told that those updates are being undone and it's justified using the same explanation given before.

This update sounds nice, but I have literally no reason to believe that it will help in anyway. For all I know, a couple years later you guys could be erasing these changes as well justifying it by saying that you guys are pushing for balance. You guys better work like heck to make sure everything is smooth.

I'm happy to see CR differential go away 100%!

AM/WM is going to be a big adjustment since we've been on that system for the longest time. A large portion of the community likely came in during the AM era too. When I think back to when the game was most fun, I feel this is better in the long run. I liked the game best after weapon mastery and the max power mod, but before the first 1-2-3-4 AM. At that point (~AF1), we pretty much had the loadout we wanted... one that can match our character concepts and all moves had equal damage modifier. Before AMs, every power used a good combination of weapons and tray ability. Players paid more attention to which NPC to target, where to stand, where to initiate the attack, enemy formation, etc. I've gotten used to most of the AMs myself, but look forward to dropping them and going back to hybrid and even "RP" loadouts. The powers were way closer to balanced pre-AM. I don't fully agree with removing WM bonuses if this update is in the direction of promoting skill. Players should be rewarded for timing the move + power. Maybe the bonus should be reduced, but not removed.

The change to powers is an excellent move, again for accurate character building. I'll wait for more details on this one. As of now, I feel it can be a little tricky dealing with this across the various powers. Theoretically, if all powers were available to assign to 6 loadouts, most are able to take advantage of just 6. However, celestial would have 12 and light would have almost all. Maybe to keep things in check, consider keeping a point number, but no tree... in other words, we wouldn't be buying one power to get to another, but still can't grab all to keep celestial & light balanced.

I like the sound of this overall and look forward to seeing it on test where we can get a better feel.

Will af3 arrive before it?

Wow 2+ years of changing everything without understanding the consequences just to look like they were being active. All they had to do in the first place was balance might vs precision scaling. I wonder where this game would be today if all this fat had been trimmed.

There will always be optimal loadouts, of course. I think we'll be going back to relying on Power Interactions. If your son picks 6 random powers he will not be doing the same damage as someone who knows and understands how PIs work and which powers work best with them. But since AMs are leaving, which were the ONLY way to get the big damage, that means the disparity between people playing "correctly" and those who are not won't be as humongous as people who were using the AM and those who were not.

When is this livestream?????

11 pst.

Thank you for the reply. Somewhat relieved to know that "smashing buttons" won't be same as playing it "perfectly". Looking forward for this update to hit Test server asap. Cheers

I just don't know how to think about this.

Past experiences can predict the future. Like others said, there were reasons why we got WM and AM, mainly because devs couldn't balance powers the way they were. Now, the plan is to unlock ALL the powers for everyone to compile a unique loadout....how the h*** can that be balanced?!? Plus with clipping added to the equation again....boy does this sound like another two years of DPS balance.

Despite that, I am glad to see AM go away just for the fact that everyone has the same loadout currently....but unlocking an entire power set sounds like way more work for the team than they had to begin with before WM, AM and Cr differential.

My biggest question, how will all this effect our progression going forward.....will this impact the relevancy setup?

THANK YOU!!!!

Yup exactly what I wanted to hear. The smile on my face just went from 10% to 90%. It will be 100% after testing it on test server

How does the no power points thing work, if you are prior to level 30?

Is it gonna just be like post level 30?

Am i right to assume the tanking combo for Atomic is going to stay the same? I'm really struggling to see how atomic is doing any dmg after this since the whole power set was based on AM and it was bad with WM and soon we will have none of that either. But if you take away the combo mechanic tanking wise and Atomic is useless

Since Mods are Super Important; IS THIS THE DEATH of ALTS?

I dont think that damage modifiers should be removed BUT Max Damage Mod probably has to go..

Starting with GU36, there was too much standardization done to the game.

no.

Combos are not being removed, says that in the OP. You just won't be getting the HUGE damage from the combos, the damage will be standardized like the rest of the powers.