Work In Progress Making Stats Matter: Removing CR Differential

I Agree

From a DPS perspective yes. From a troller, healer, tank perspective no.

Dom, Vit, Power, Resto, colas still had beneficial stats because those stats determined certains aspects of the game for that character such as : Power pool, PoT, shield strength, Health buff or health received from stat.

Even though the SP gains were roughly only 10% or less. I wouldnt call it 25%.

However from a dps standpoint this change would fix everything including damage out and damage in for all roles.

The problem is stats increasing at an exponential rate that we are waiting on devs to comment about and how stats will be handled in the longrun.

selling total recovery kits and featpoints per replays again.

Just jumped on too see what's going on and Holy Crap am I a happy camper right now - Thank you!

The DC gods have come to their senses!

Still - It will be very hard too pull my interest away fro The Division, hope this works!


IA ARMY

I have read them and maybe I just don't understand exactly what to do. They seem vague on what I need to do to accomplish those feats. I have studied them and I still do not understand. I have been looking into styles and they all cost so much marks of victory. Styles is something I want to to accomplish as well. If you can steer me in the right direction, I will be in your debt

I would say I have to agree with Remander.

While Im happy CR will not be the king, it means very little if Skill Points and mods do not play a bigger part.
Skill Points had been great in the Weapon Mastery days.
The good part is Open World PvP sees some type of hope because the CR scaling wont destroy PvP'ers gear.
The bad part is this is a whole nother revamp. If you want stats to matter, you'll need to make Skill Points percentage based, NOT Linear. It makes absolutely no sense. Even in CR Scaling where SP are effectively percentage based, the effect was still little.
You have balancing issues to work out. You have dying roles (Tanks and Controllers) to revive.
You have PvP to continue fixing. (Im concerned about everyone's health tbh. I imagine you all are crunching...
And that's not healthy... )
Just please get this right and let it be.

Also relevancy windows need to go. Walk-ins should be considered again too.

Currently:

Power>Stats

OPPowerChosen(WithCorrectLoadout) > Skill > CR > Mods > SP

Until the powers are balanced, making “skill points matter” won’t matter. The few OP powers will rule until then.

Powers need to be fixed first giving players the option of playing the power they like with more than one viable load out per power. AM and WM. Balanced.


Giving everyone an equal opportunity to be successful at the game while playing their style will keep players in the game.

I'm going to make some assumptions based on an alt of mine that is about at the same SP total. Keep that in mind as I can't have your feat list in front of me. Also, even on my main about 7-8 months ago only had 120 SP and was also not seeing an easy path to get more. I'm now at 214. It's possible but not going to happen in a day. Also assuming you are legendary.

1. Another poster gave good suggestions. I cant recommend the LPVE feats enough. Some are easier and faster than others but all have the Team up Feats that after 8 runs give you 1.3 SP and those maps are on a fast, weekly rotation right now.

2. PVP - Gonna take a beating starting out but learn a lot about the weapon attack and counter system that can be useful in PVE too. Bunches of SP going often towards multiple feats at the same time (maps, styles, wins, etc)

3. Races - A bit tedious and one of the first ones I badge out on alts (after Booster Gold exploration) but google a map of race points and start with the easiest and work your way up. Again bunches of feats here.

4. Styles - Theres a couple SP just in styles you can complete buying for in game cash from War Room and Police station vendors.

5. Prioritize - Some 10 pt feats are harder than 50 pt feats. Got all your break health and explosion barrels? Got speed feats for T1 and T2 raids? Got all the School of Hard knocks and side mission feats? I was still working on Ace and Stryker feats at T6. The feat list looks really daunting until you narrow your focus to picking a feat and working towards it.

Look around for a league looking to help on feats. Try LFG or Shout for certain group feats. Be surprised the number of 150+ CR players that still need T3 & T4 feats. I know I still do. Good luck!!

Thanks so much

I agree to certain point, I want to say this without offending anyone. I do understand that those that put in the hard work should be rewarded, but at the same time just because someone have put in 8 hrs a day and I can ony put in 2 hrs a day doesn't mean I should be less rewarded. Everyone's time in farming for feats, gear, exobites, etc... Should be rewarded and not punished for not able to but in the x amount of time for farming feats, gear, etc.. Doing duos and alerts alone take quite some time, not including solos. As for the sp and powers goes, I think it's what power you are playing is what makes a big difference. Example: I am Cr156 213Sp Munitions and I get out dpsed by Cr156 150Sp Ice by almost 3 mil. I can get not image how much more it would've be if that player would of had 212Sp.

Whether it's simple or difficult, Devs should be addressing the underlying elephant in the room, flat boosts. They would either need to change the damage formula(highly unlikely) or go to percentage boosts and adjust NPC stats accordingly. The premise of this idea is good, but it won't be very impactful if stat values from SP and Mods remain the same. There should be an increasing benefit from these areas as you progress through endgame, giving further incentive to mod/get sp.

To put it simply, if I have a $100 and you give me $3 or 3% of my total the increase is the same and I benefit either way. If I have a million dollars and you give me $3 it makes no difference whereas that percentage boost gives me a good return.

And as far as balancing NPC health/damage with SP of the players, for pre t-6 80% of the sp threshold for the what's available to them sounds right. Endgame should be that Regular instances are balanced around SP=Max CR and elite should be balanced around something close to the max SP.

Will T7 gear and T7 mods be updated with higher stats? The stat gain from T6 to T7 is very low. Trinket stat buffs have not been increased since T6.

Will balance be offered to the Prec based powers? Most of the gear now is extremely might heavy putting Celestial, Rage, and Light at a disadvantage stat wise.

Will pets take into account level of stats? Sorc and Earth depend on per damage and it took a long time to get their pets to work properly.

Are mods going to affect CR calculations again?

This is exactly it

What some people are missing here and you should read Mepps quote above properly, when you're asking for "skill points to be immediately improved"

is that you need the horse before the cart.

Once the stat driven system is in place, it will be more effective and easier to then begin a process of improving upon the foundation of the existing skill point system.

This also goes for modding, generator mods, elite generator mods and skill points - effectively any area you draw stats from other than gear.

The stat driven system will be better in the long run than the CR differential, ignore the odd person in here scare mongering, anyone with low sp, no generator mods, now is a good time to prepare for the change so you're not actually caught napping later on.

For the record, I think you're taking the correct approach. The CR scaling system caused several problems with how much anything besides CR mattered. I still think adjustments need to be made in regards to modding and skill points (which I think you guys are making a major mistake by not tackling at the same time as this) but this is a positive step. The way the system works now, we're too easily able to "overgear" content as recent as a month old, whereas this will (hopefully) allow us to progress more linearly. It's incredibly frustrating being in a group where you're 1 CR below the enemy and the people you're playing with are above the CR of the enemy. Major difference when it shouldn't be.

No, in the original implementation, they only had the scaling going one direction--on the way up to matching the NPC CR. Once you matched their CR, your effectiveness changed solely with your stats. Because of that, overgearing content left you still feeling weak. We pressed hard to have them change the scaling to go both ways. You can't remove CR Differential and keep the stats flat without eliminating the feeling of getting stronger with progression.

Well now, this is an interesting and positive change. Especially since I have not read this yesterday, been taking some time to relax from the game.

I read in the first post and I don't see a response to this, but my question lays in the stat flattening adjustments that were spoken of.

Stat flattening brought up the lower tiers and the cr differential helped alievate the health changes and what not. How will this affect solo play or lower content work? Before CRD, we had stats that can just overwhelm the lower tier, like say khan, but it still was a struggle at times especially the closer in gear you had. After CRD, we now slaughter anything that is 2 tiers below us, because of the boosted damage increase. Obviously there would need to be some adjustments to NPCs to fix the reverting process. (It was mentioned.) But what kind are you looking at doing?

Since tiers 1-4 are the most changed, they would be the most noticeable difference post CRD revert.

Overall I do like this change and I read that it isn't the leveling change that was promised in the Greggy thread. So looking forward to the future.

Thanks!

Just to be clear: This plan is set in stone and will be followed through no matter what? Just for better imagination of how we will progress: Will we be able to solo content at the same rate of progression (tier wise) as right now?

That's the thing I was getting at, though. With CR scaling and stat flattening, the CR difference basically incorporates what used to be large increases in stats. The proposed change effectively takes us back to that. CR won't matter, but stats will inflate tremendously to create that feeling of getting stronger, as we gear up. We'll still be increasing in CR and stats with better gear, it's just that the stats will be much, much bigger to account for the loss of CR differential. Like I said, it's just a math trick. And believe me, SP and mods will mean less with that system, unless they change them, which is a completely separate endeavor.

In addition to making SP boosts percentage-based, they should simplify R&D to make mods percentage-based. Eliminate all the levels of mods, all the different plans. You have say 3 levels of mods that give different percentages of boosts and have a static exobyte cost. We're already getting into exobyte inflation issues, just as we did with stats.