Why Couldn't It Be More Simple? (No AM's)

Why couldn't all powers have just had their "Mana" use reduced?

Why couldn't there just be tiers to each power tree.
1. Low damage/Range
2. Mid damage
3. High damage/Melee

Toss in some DoT's and PI's here n there. Add hidden clips that are not displayed anywhere. Make it so people have to figure it out on their own, or be told by an in game colleague.

Then balance out Weapon the same way.

Make Weapon damage slightly less than Powers (since Powers use Mana).

Of course, any Powers that deal Precision damage would have to be converted over to Might. That was a huge mistake to begin with.


If everything was simplified down this way, we could play ANY power set and all have the same opportunity to deal damage.

We've wasted years messing around with Powers, and will never get anywhere.

AM's just made everything even worse. Now we either use the exact same, preplanned, five tray powers, or we're going to srverky under perform. What a complete waste of all those other powers.

Can't we just go back and make everything simple?

You gotta be kidding me

Or just make more powers part of the AM. Gadgets and Munitions are great in this regard. If they gave the other powers similar options, we might have a compromise?

If they limit AM to just a handful of powers..... it makes it easier for them to balance the game/missions since most people will use pretty much the same handfull of powers in their loadout.

Sadly.... it limits our options.... unless you decided to ignore all that and use some of the powers that are seen as weak powers..... like most Iconic Powers for example.

sounds good to me. why have all the different powers to pick from, and then be told you can ONLY use a few for the AM??? stupid!!! ppl used to mix and match powers and find what worked for them. now...its ALL the same. stupid!!!

If Weapon do less DPS then Powers how is that gonna make it that we can do equal damage?



We did have the chance way back then to Do Equal dps. PRE-GU 36 every powerset was pretty much on par expect HL and Rage.


The problem was that Players wanted to Make Everything Dumbed-down because they complained about people not being able to DPS.

The Irony behind that statement, is now we have AM's and there's still bad dps out there. I've seen Quantum users out-perform ice players when it shouldn't happen considering the current state of Quantum.
WM was supposed to fix that problem.. > WM becomes better then clipping.

AM was supposed to fix WM being an only option> AM destroys WM in the process.

it's not the fact that we can't balance powers, it's the fact that the Developers haven't made any alternatives. If we had Alternatives like they claim they were gonna give us, we wouldn't be so cookie cutter.

Each role has specific powers to optimally perform their role.
Using certain abilities significantly affects a player's potential for completing content in a role.

Controllers have 1 Instant Burst Power ability. They only have a choice between 2 Power Over Time abilities (except Light).
Healers have exactly 1 Priority Heal and 1 normal Group Shield. They have specific powers needed to optimize group healing.
Tanks have 2 Group Breakout powers with long cooldowns. They have specific powers needed for self preservation.

Some damage Advanced Mechanics have more flexibility than non-damage roles.

Removing damage Advanced Mechanics would require all content to be rebalanced and all powers to be retested.
Removing Advanced Mechanics would also remove the power regeneration in damage role.
Do you really want to go back to having to rely on a Controller to provide power? Or to build your own power with Combos?

Too much time has already been spent on Damage Role mechanics. Time should be spent on other roles instead.

a little to late for this, we are about done with Mid_range, as much as i would love to i rather not because we would have to go through a lot of testing.....

Yeah, delete a year and a half of balance, to balance everything again, change how ALL powers works, balance all instances again, and start the "Tunso" test from 0 to check all powersets damage.
Then, after 1 year...
Come back to the forums and say: "Powers are unbalanced, AM was a lot better than this, let's change it back to AM before the game dies".
People complained about jump clip, they complained about WM, they are complaining about AM, and they will complain about any way of DPSING till DCUO goes for another 4 years balance process. And during that balance, they will complain X power is underpowered, and it was better during the AM days.
"but bro, the 123456 is boring", just like WM was boring for some, just like jump climp was hard for others, just like AM is.
I don't like AM, BUT, it's just stupid to complain about everything while running a endless cycle of power balance.
If they ever restart the power balance to change it again, and delay a new powerset because of that balance, the same guys asking for a change in AMs, will complain we aren't getting a new power for a long time.
They won't ever be able to please everyone, it would be cool to just have ALL power habilities dealing the same damage, in a way we can just build any loadout, but it's not technically possible in no where, because or it ends in a new balance process that is endless, or it starts to become boring because you can just throw a power here and there.

The obvious answer is yes lol. We complain about too many people not knowing how to play their roles and controllers feeling useless because really you don't need them if all use ams. Anything of how the old days was I would gladly support going back to that. Dont make it seem like a bad thing

But i do agree. We have spent too much time on dpsing, we tried to stop them before it was too late.................. we are overdue late now

they CAN but never will balance powers. simple as that. and imho having so many powers to chose from and being told you MUST use only a few to get the am is just dumb!!! they CAN balance the powers. they just wont. they CAN make all powers = in there own way, they just wont. power change tokens is the reason.

Who ever said Weapons and Powers should do equal damage? That doesn't make sense. They should be close, but only for the purpose if giving players more options. But since it takes "Mana" to perform our Powers, it makes sense for them to deal more damage. It used to take skill to balance when you used Powers and when to use Weapons. I used to be prowed of my high damage numbers with the corresponding low "Mana" usage.

I said all this, many times, many years ago, to no avail. We are now worse of than ever, and the hole just keeps being dug deeper.

We are seeing them go back on "poor" decisions all over the place now. Why not this? Why not go back and simplify the core gameplay aspects?

Just thinking out loud here.

If all power sets were fundamentally the same, it would not take much to have actual balance.

That, and there's nothing to "fix" for support stance. I don't here any complaining from Support players other than they wanna be DPS which is a whole other discussion

How is that simpler than just having a set of attacks for damage?, if anything that would complicate things more as you would see everyone being at 0m, making it harder for the Tank, healer and troll.

#RolesMatter first please. After that balance your dps all you want.

When exactly has that NOT been an issue?

A better solution would be to eliminate all of the fluff powers from the power trees and only have the 5 or 6 powers as sanctified by the Min/Max gods available to the players. More than 2/3 of the powers on the power trees go unused by the elite players so there is no need for them as anyone choosing them will instantly be identified as a sub-optimal player and be kicked from high level power groups.

/sarcasm off

An actual solution would be to go through the ALL of the powers (including Iconic) and make changes that make it impossible for DCUO Blog or any other players figure out a single optimal selection of only 5 powers for either DPS or specific Roles. Since the Dev team went through all of the trouble to design all of the powers on the trees and include animations for said powers, there should be reasons why players would want to select those powers at any level of the game.

Otherwise, we end up with cookie-cutter templates eliminating any reason for having power choices if one wants to be optimal or not kicked out of groups when one doesn't have the proper power set.

Ideally, the powers would be so well balanced that out of the 15 power choices available, a player could have a effective loadouts for both DPS and specific role without having to use any Armories...but be so tempted by the possible different combinations that having Armories becomes desirable because of different possible combinations of powers that a player would want to have different selections available.

What do roles need? I've only seen people ask for more damage, which is ridiculous. Switch to DPS stance. You are not supposed to play in Support stance for Solo content, and there's zero need for Support to do damage in ANY other content.

That's pretty much where I'm going with this.

Having only three needed Powers - Close, Mid Range, Full Range. That's it. BUT... for each, there's several different powers to choose from. Only difference is animations and cast times. That leaves it up to the player to decided what to use.

This leaves open slots for pets, Supercharges, etc.


Yeah, it's simple. But what's going on now is just not fun and impossible to balance.

It really hasn't, the only powers that need 0m are Light and Rage, but it's only because devs don't want people using precision powers so they make it harder on us, but all others can do 3-6-13m damage and not suffer at all.