The good: Removal of power points The need to only spec into one weapon, saving skill points The ability to invest skill points into other stats immediately. I think everyone was most excited about these changes. I’m curious to see how the changes to the hit counter play out. It has some applications if applied to Live now. Some critiques of the process: It was hard to judge how effective the skill points revamp would be without having a large number of skill points. It was impossible to judge changes to weapon damage because we could not do in-depth comparisons of the different weapons without skill points No power respec tokens or additional armories available to testers The concurrent testing of content difficulty and bugs with making sure that powers were working correctly. Players had to rely on their memory of how powers functioned on live in order to compare/contrast what the changes were. The most surprising things: The complete removal of AMs. All the prior development posts stated that this project would just remove AM bonus damage. Electricity had its AM completely removed. This wasn’t what I was looking for. I understand part of this project was to reclassify powers as melee and range. I saw one midrange power in Electricity (Electroburst) changed to melee, but oddly enough, Static Push was full range and went to mid-range. I don’t know how the other Ice and Mental fared, but only a few changes for Electricity? The complete change to Ice tanking, the changes to Controlling, and the changes to Electricity healing. Things that should be reconsidered: Dead time, and let me explain. Electrogenesis gives 5 ticks of equal damage. The cooldown is 12 seconds. Because all the damage is loaded into the first 5 ticks, we basically have 7 seconds of no damage. What would have been more palatable to me would be spacing the damage ticks out, so that for longer boss fights, we don’t have that dead time of the cooldown. Ionic Drain now give 5 quick ticks in a few seconds with a long cool down, but this is OK because it’s an execute. Don’t misunderstand though. I’m not happy that Tesla Ball only gives 3 ticks of damage while the animation still stays active. I don’t like that DoTs have been minimized. Because I want to be open minded, perhaps its time to explore the fractured burst as more of a DoT alternative. Now picking on Electrogenesis, it’s heal over time was also in the first 5 seconds, which isn’t very helpful given how this power works. But the power heal moves were essentially the same. I don’t feel that this is how this mechanic should work. I think power management would be much better if we had a more steady blue tick, once every two seconds over the 12 seconds. Weapon Mastery cross damage should contribute to power regeneration. While many people look at the intro of WM as primarily a bad thing, it wasn’t for healers and controllers. Back when I started play in December of 2011, heals and controllers were generally relegated to range weapons like Bow, Handblasters, and Pistols , but some people could make Martial Arts work. WM gave us the option now to explore other weapons with Brawling/MA combos favored by many. I preferred 2H/Bow combos. But believe it or not, I knew people who live who did their support role on HB without WM. We had options! With the power cost reduction removed from WM, there is no point to those support roles investing into WM. Instead, healers and controllers will likely be relegated back to the range weapons and those weapons with long range combos to maximize their power regeneration. Honestly, I don’t care about the WM crit ability damage. Most people haven’t had to worry about it in ages but the lack of power back on the WM combo damage means it hurts more to use it. It’s all about the blue ticks now because if you have no power, you have no breakout. That happened to me in the OMAC duo because my soder was on cooldown. Other people have clearly stated in other threads why removing CC from some of the Mental abilities was counter-intuitive. One person said something that needs said again: why start PoT with an ability that does not do damage or any type of Crowd Control if the primary function of Controllers should be CC and you want support roles feel like they can contribute more to damage? I feel the changes to Electricity healing are devastating. Ionic Drain was completely removed as a viable healing ability. I know some will argue that they never like it but it just needed re-worked slightly. Electrogenesis does 5 ticks of healing after cast on a 12 second cool down and without knowing where your second aura will go, there is no value in this healing power. Bio-Capacitor has an extra long cooldown and lost the interaction with Bio-Electric Surge which could double tick heals. I feel that Electroburst was a compromise to using it in PVP healing. Electroburst would still do damage in healer role, and now it doesn’t, which goes against the concept of giving healers more capability to do damage. I liked healing with Electricity, but not as it stands now. Block damage was also really high in comparison to Lunge and Block Break. It was higher than the damage I got from my powers! Moving forward: In order to sell me on some of these changes, we really need to see what this game looks like in different tiers, with running raids and alerts, not just solos and duos. We will need gear boxes to move us to the next tier and a fair amount of skill points at T3. Then maybe a weekend at T5, and then another at T7 to see how powers behave once we become stronger, and also to test the content in those levels, assuming you would also be testing the tier lower than you to see how it feels once you’ve progressed past that tier. In closing : I expected to see CR differential removed and am glad to see it gone. I was prepared to see Mental and Ice damaged nerfed, and maybe even an adjustment on Electricity to bring them closer together. I never thought AMs were a bad thing at their core. The damage got out of control and they should never have been sustainable without a Controller in the group. People really wanted the choice of not relying on an AM for damage, which you have now taken away from them on this project. Maybe I’m over-reacting and this was just one aspect of the project. Nevertheless, if feels like a 180 where now our weapons are more important than our powers. When I played my final mentor mission, I realized I barely needed my powers at all. I did CAO Dam with no powers and I did Shadowlands in healer role (the adds at the end became a bit overwhelming). Using my powers would have made it a bit quicker, but it wasn’t a deal breaker. I have a problem with that. It feels like I am playing Legends PVE on a toon I made. I have a bigger problem with that.
Unsure on the full details of how block, lunge and BB precision damage scale on live versus its current numbers on test. @Devs But moving forward, either have all damage from block, lunge and BB scale the same from Precision stats, or have BB damage > lunge damage > block damage. Also, please release the formula on how it scales from our Precision stats.
It's AM distributed 3 ways as you either need Power regen, SC regen or have to go full weapons, and in the end Weapons are still more dominant because of power issues and cool downs.
I wish I could upvote opening post more but unfortunately I can just give +1 once. Beside cooldowns and random CC removal fiasco, what bothers me most is the complete removal or Electric DoTs AM and removal of WM crit window instead of just tweaking the damage and crit %. Days and weeks and months of Devs' work, testing and feedback flushed down the toilet. ""I beg You guys not to change functionality and PIs within Electric and Nature and bring back WM's crit window mechanic even with something as low as 1% crit ability damage for dps and support roles!!!""
Did you use your weapon buff and WM? If you didn't then I don't think it's fair to complain that no dedicated DPS build was needed to complete leveling content, it's supposed to be easy with any type of build. My experience was different. I didn't get to level 30 so I didn't get to test many different builds (like most people I imagine). After I unlocked Psychic Resonance (Self Power Heal) I went heavy power use with quick clipped 1h Spin Chop combos. On groups I mostly used TK Bolt clipped with Resonance, then Spin Chop clipped with TK Push, later Crykinesis and it worked out well. I think that just indicates that there were indeed different ways to build your character. I imagine that with proper stat investment my clippy playstyle could be min-maxed into a pure AM-style tray casting build, and your weapon only approach could be viable as well with a different investment. Like you said, it's hard to judge though without proper endgame equipment, modding and lots of SP to try different builds. Also leveling content isn't suited at all for testing endgame viability or role mechanics so I feel that 1) it's to early to write off the support changes as role-destroying and 2) we need another testing round with endgame environment and testing tools like respect tokens and armories.
Wired was the weapon buff and it was bugged, so I did not use it. I understand your your response Crimson but I guess I felt it was too easy. I think by that pointed most of my SP were invested in movement mode and basic weapon attacks. Not sure if WM was unlocked at that time. Honestly, a 90% weapon build should be viable. Batman doesn't spam his gadgets in succession. I just question whether a 90% power build will be viable (the other end of the spectrum) without some type of AM in place even if you could spam powers freely. Like with Electricity, if we could even turn Electrogenesis into a continuous DoT while using VB to refresh. We might not get the ability to stack 3 or 4 electrified DoTs but it would feel like an evolution of our powers. Similarly, WM should be an evolution of our weapons.
Was liking everything I was reading untill I got to the closing arguement. Don't understand why CR differential and AM should stay, that would give the players the option to use either or. You are right when you said that output damage got out of control, that I can agree on. The Dev's in my opinion dropped the ball when they couldn't figure out how to balance the powers. I think that if the Dev's would've just balanced the powers all this crazy nonsense wouldn't be happening.
I'm not saying CR differential should stay, but bland burst powers with miminal power interactions takes the thoughtful parts of builds out of the game. I fully expect them to remove the interactions you get with Gadgets, like with Gauss Grenade and Fear Gas, based on what I'm seeing. The phrase they used was "Simplify, simplify, complexify." Where is anything complex?
To add on to what Black Jaq said. Devs said they wanted to incorporate supercharges to be more effective. I feel that wasnt the case with electricity. Since shield calculation changed group transducer felt weak at best. Circuit breaker was broken on day 1 providing no bonus. And Megavolt needs its number adjust higher by alot to even make it worth while. The only supercharge worth while was invigorate and that is what people mainly use on live now. A supercharge needs to feel like its your best move, but when I was testing it felt like many of them werent super at all.
Back from the ban for speaking the truth. Like it or not sometimes the truth hurts. I agree 100% so far ................ I tested the 3 powers and most of the weapons over the weekend. One weekend is not long enough to test anything much less 3 different powers and 11 weapons. What was done here is a major let down and TBH if major changes are not made this so called stat revamp is going to go over like a lead balloon. Think about the players that have started this game since CR differential started. This will more than likely run most of them off like GU 47 ran off more than half of the player base prior to this. ALL PLAYERS WANTED was for weapons, movement powers, iconic powers and basically every power in the trees to be on par with AM's. The deal with the SP is a joke and its going to divide what is left of the community further than it already is. There will not be many players left after this hits live. I give this game six months to a year after this update and it's done. There are too many changes. These changes would be better suited for a DCUO 2 not the existing game.
The main problem with what they devs have shown? At this point in the game's life (6 years in), you're just not going to bring in a lot of new players; the devs need to hold on to every existing gamer they can. This goal seems to escape them. A fundamental massive overhaul of the game playing system is not going to encourage the majority of players to keep playing and spending money. The majority of the player base are not obsessed and won't take the time to re-learn everything they know. New players won't know the difference, but those new players aren't coming in any significant number. Look at XBox. The XBox forum just went 18 (eighteen) hours with one new post. ONE. And it was a reply. The devs could change the stats; I think most would accept that. But completely changing how powers work? Extending cool downs? Most people who have been playing for awhile aren't going to be interested in trying to relearn all of that stuff. The majority don't come to these forums; they don't study guides; they just want to punch Gorilla Grodd until he don't move no more. The devs just don't seem to understand what they have or the situation they are in.
You should start to speak for yourself and stop speaking for others. While i think that this Alpha-test still has some flaws, the concept behind it of making the player more responsible or managing his own resources its great. You and many others just can´t take away those nostalgia glasses and test the changes as it should, with a fresh perspective to see what works and what isn´t within these new mechanics.
You must only play this game. Every other MMO, like WoW for example experiment major changes every large Update or Expansion. A game becomes stale when you don´t shake things up to try to improve the game itself.
I agree with you on a lot, and disagree on a lot: I don't think AM and WM ever had a place in this game. They didn't simplify or complexify Dps, they over-rewarded a play style that is repetitive and easy. I also disagree that we should be presented with viable options for a completely Weapon based playstyle, and like-wise a completely Power based playstyle. The best should always be defined by creativity and execution - mixing and matching. Once, this game's top tier Dps' knew that fast clipping, jump cancelling, using both powers and weapons at the same time while taking dovetails into account, was the most challenging and most rewarding way to Dps. I really don't think we should reward players focusing on just their Weapon, or just their Powers. My opinion is: 1. Remove AM/WM. 2. Balance Weapon Damage & Dovetails (Atleast one viable Ranged combo & one viable Melee combo for each Weapon) 3. Remove Power Back Mechanics and Effects (I haven't seen a raid that needs more than 1 Controller in years..) 4. Introduce a DoT and Burst build for each Powerset (Balance them out!!!), viability will change based on the instance and mechanics of said instance. 5. Emphasize balance between Might and Prec based powersets (Taking Weapon Damage into account when addressing Prec based powersets). 6. Standardize CC immunity between Healer Powersets and the rest of them. (People have been complaining about this since DNG, why can't a Healer Powerset have a CC immunity/Breakout power while in Dps form? Oh right because Nature can become a cute puppy.. ) 7. Rewarding SP is fine, progress made should be rewarded. However, creating unmanageable gaps will effectively dwindle your population, and discourage new players, or existing players who still rather focus on PvP (A "majestic" breed that is currently on the brink of extinction.) I'm sure I'll think of more as time goes by, but this is it for now. I'm happy seeing the Devs taking a "revert" approach for the first time ever, but I'm unhappy it's not actually a revert to this game's prime time (imo). Sometimes I wonder if there's a way we could get a playable version of this game prior to GU13, Just so the Devs and a few Testers could revisit the older PvE and PvP content, and get a sense for what kept some people playing this game for 6 years now.
The people I speak for do not or cannot get on the forums. I don't have nostalgia glasses on. I am talking about reality. This game will not make it past to this update if this keeps going in this direction. There will be a mass exodus of players and the majority of them will be the players that started after GU 47. Like it or not that is the reality of the situation. I liked the game before GU 47 & I liked the game after GU 47. What DCUO continues to do is address the real issues behind CUSTOMER / player retention. None of it has to do with what they are trying address with this update.
