GU50, Tunso Testing, and Player Testing

Another suggestion. Can we please set testing parameters around vendor gear, not drop gear?

That logic doesn't work because before AM and WM, there was clipping and non-clipping styles of play. Of course clipping was superior, but that was never endorsed fully by the development team as the intended way to max out effectiveness. In fact HL was so superior for clipping that finding balance with it was next to impossible unless it meant completely mandating that every who were to play HL would have to play with extremely clip heavy style.

If you add clipping back in as a viable play style, then that becomes a third balancing act per power set. Fwiw, I always enjoyed the clipping style of play most, so I don't disagree with you sentiment, just pointing what appear to be logical shortfalls.

I can get that. I have to be frank at times too. I just view the people volunteering their time to help with this testing effort as a great team coming together to make a meaningful impact on the game. I'm a little guarded against them feeling what they're working towards is a wasted effort. I want to keep the momentum we have built here. We still need to keep up on the Tunso Testing. To help with the scaling concerns, we've been conducting Live Tests too. Once the devs are ready to focus on scaling, we should have s good head start of data for them.

I understand that and I do appreciate what you guys do. I was just looking for an answer that I wasn't getting. I know it's not pay off the tests at hand but I was still curious as to the test results. I know what I saw on my own but being I don't meet excepted criteria my findings are meaningless

The issues with scaling are going to make lots of changes seem really strange. Its probably even going to make certain other powers OP for a short time.

Getting the powersets right from a base foundation will make scaling issue much more pronounced, and much easier to pinpoint. Its not just an issue of CR, somethings going on within the core mechanics of powers that make them sprout off in different directions. Some are obvious like Pets, but some like Quantum and Mental should scale exactly the same as they work so incredibly similar, but they just don't.

Those pets are a pain..

I agree that scaling issues are very complex. As far as underperforming when not using all mods and buffs, isn't that kinda the point? That provides the incentive to work toward getting the best mods so that you are on par with all the other powers. If the baseline is unmodded, then two people of equal skill and equal mods at endgame will not do equal damage due to differences in power interactions. Thus, FotM powers will still exist. I don't think its possible to scale things equally from Tunso test to "Live" with might-based powers versus precision-based powers or various power interactions/pets.

Underperforming relative to other powersets is not balance. The goal is to balance the base and have that translate to balance with full mods and buffs. Balance across the board.

Edit: Trying to accomplish that the other way around would be much messier.

Ideally, I agree with balancing the base. I just think that it is a tremendously challenging task to go from there to also having balanced scaling for 13 power sets (with more on the way). Hopefully the devs are up to the task. If all the power sets worked in a similar manner, it would be much easier, but that would make for boring game play.

I really don't mean to be negative, but this looks like a really long process.

Didn't we already go through them scaling powers all the same almost two years ago? They made all the powers hit the same, slowed down gameplay, and made all powers split the same. This balancing act is a giant circle

It's actually closer now than it's ever been.

T1-t4 and the beginning of t6 was more balanced. Changing mechanics so players couldn't melee unbalanced the game

Don't know what T6 you were playing, and T4 wasn't balanced.

In t4 any player could play any power and top the scorecard. The first dlc in t6 was balanced because it was an alert, and all the powers were hitting for the same numbers except ice rg, which was glitched. In t4 i never lost to any hl player, the unbalance came about when dcuo changed the mechanics in t5

Fireburst made Fire a better Ice in every way.
HL, if you were actually good with it, was insane for the amount of damage it did.
Sorcery Clownbox
Mental, Gadgets DoT stacking

The list goes on and on.

The only reason people look on T4 as more balanced is because we're looking at a scoreboard that isn't super inflated with Health. A difference of 200k back then is still an extreme amount based on how much damage we did at the time.

An ice player meleeing with staff or 1h was alot stronger than fire, and sorcery using cb was fluff for the score card. On my ice, gad, earth, and sorcery toons i never lost to hl, sorcery using cb, and definitely not fire with fireburst spam.

Please let's get back to the testing..

Please move on to other roles...there has been way too much time being spent on a role (dps) that has only increased the percentage of players playing it. Balance the roles amongst each other instead of worrying about one power being above another. Sure, I would love balance but we all know the powers will never be balanced. There will always be some powers that do more than others, unless they are made too similar and then that ruins the point of having different powers to begin with.

Make it so the other roles are not considered inferior to the dps role. When people stack dps its because they are the stronger roles. When people can go without support roles it is because dps is the strongest role by a huge margin.

Do something to make it so it is extremely detrimental to have a disproportionate amount of one role.

Why people would over the fact that now they have to play in 7m? During the last few weeks I've seen countless 'Ice-Fire-gadgets...' fotm scoreboard chasers dying every 10 seconds, causing entire group to fail boss fight during the engame content. Sure, they want to burn stuff faster and I get it, thats the Idea of dpsing but not everything can be 'meleed' or should i say 'midranged'. Before devs introduced any AM ppl were using Range only (rifle/hb/clipping) and I don't recall that many crying threads as we have now.

So if thats a problem, remove 'range' then. Make all 'midrange' abilities a 7m melee and buff range so it'll hit like actual 'midrange'.
But for me it's crazy cuz the numbers are insane right now so more 'buffing' seems ridiculous.

BTW it's really great that we got a dialog and co-op with devs about powers balance.

I wonder if some of the scaling variance-- especially in the various Nature builds-- couldn't be minimized by Modding differently. Say for precision instead of might, or with a balance. I'm guessing that some of those builds rely more on weapon damage than others.