Hokanu said:Sarim said:I'd prefer not to have these in the game. First, they lead to "everyone's wearing the same stuff". Second, personally I hate to finally manage to get a set together, only to find a slight upgrade piece a short time later, and then having to decide to keep my set bonus or use the slightly better item :/
This is definitely my experience with Set bonus, everyone ends up with a set of some sort and many end up with the same set. I guess the exception woul dbe ULTRA hard to get stuff. Even with that in mind I still do hope they stay away from cumulative bonus sets!
Good discussion!
I can probably name the best in slot piece in any slot for most classes from most expansions of EQ from memory, and none of them have set bonuses.
That will also be the case in Pantheon, I guarantee it. Set bonuses coincide with the meta because the meta is usually where set bonuses are exercised. Regardless of that fact, best in slot will still exist in Pantheon and two level 50 Paladins will probably be identically geared given the right knowledge and access to gear.
How are set bonuses worse than every single Cleric in the game wearing Golden Efreeti Boots?
Liav the answer to your question is that if those boots are the best for that slot on their own merit then they can be more easily situationally replaced. If they only become the best because they provide a detached set bonus then they become harder to swap out. You will counter here by saying "it's not a problem if they balance them properly", to which I can only ask: why even get into such a situation predicated on proper balancing at all?
In the end I don't really care that much, FFXI had lots of set bonuses and, because most of them were pretty bad and because you could swap gear in combat it was kind of an irrelevant consideration.
I'd like to point out that nothing Philo used to justify set bonuses actually applies uniquely to set bonuses, so that list is pretty useless for this discussion. Most of it (revitalizing old content/completionism, etc.) applies equally to arguments for town gear and making full sets of artistically cohesive armor, which is a separate argument that nobody is against.
I'm just saying, yeah maybe you can balance them (most of the time) but what do they uniquely add to a game?
Jimmayus said:
I'd like to point out that nothing Philo used to justify set bonuses actually applies uniquely to set bonuses, so that list is pretty useless for this discussion. Most of it (revitalizing old content/completionism, etc.) applies equally to arguments for town gear and making full sets of artistically cohesive armor, which is a separate argument that nobody is against.
I'm just saying, yeah maybe you can balance them (most of the time) but what do they uniquely add to a game?
Please point out why you think some of the things on the list didn't pertain to set bonuses. I do admit I didn't want to get to deep into explaining each thing listed so I gave people the benefit of the doubt that they would understand the correlation. A couple of them are about giving a player more optiions than they would have without set bonuses but most of them are specifically related to set bonuses. If you'd prefer to do it in pms i'm happy to explain it to you. I don't think it is necessary to get to long winded here. I think most people see the correlation. That is what I was trying to avoid in the first place (I tend to be long winded enough as is)
This quote "Most of it (revitalizing old content/completionism, etc.) applies equally to arguments for town gear and making full sets of artistically cohesive armor, which is a separate argument that nobody is against. " shows that you missed some of the points.
Liav said:Hokanu said:Sarim said:I'd prefer not to have these in the game. First, they lead to "everyone's wearing the same stuff". Second, personally I hate to finally manage to get a set together, only to find a slight upgrade piece a short time later, and then having to decide to keep my set bonus or use the slightly better item :/
This is definitely my experience with Set bonus, everyone ends up with a set of some sort and many end up with the same set. I guess the exception woul dbe ULTRA hard to get stuff. Even with that in mind I still do hope they stay away from cumulative bonus sets!
Good discussion!
I can probably name the best in slot piece in any slot for most classes from most expansions of EQ from memory, and none of them have set bonuses.
That will also be the case in Pantheon, I guarantee it. Set bonuses coincide with the meta because the meta is usually where set bonuses are exercised. Regardless of that fact, best in slot will still exist in Pantheon and two level 50 Paladins will probably be identically geared given the right knowledge and access to gear.
How are set bonuses worse than every single Cleric in the game wearing Golden Efreeti Boots?
True, that is a solid point, i guess my true peeve with set bonus I have encountered in some games is that they were stupidly easy to get and that made them too common, so your really right Liav, its one thing or the other. As far as Balancing Kilsin mentioned i would imagine this could be very problomatic... I would imagine you would have to make individual pieces of Armour sets pretty crappy on their own to compensate for the bonus of a complete set.
I think the best thing to do is ensure that all high quality pieces of armour are rare enough and fairly hard to get so that we dont have this everyone is the same thing going on.
Just going point-by-point:
1)extend the lifespan of gear (even through multiple expansions)
Not unique to set bonuses, this describes literally any gear that people might find attractive. Perhaps you mean "extends life of content because these pieces of gear are still useful 4 years later"? That is not unique to set bonuses and applies to literally thousands of pieces of equipment throughout the years.
2)give players a reason to attain gear that would have otherwise not been good enough for a player to equip on a piece by piece basis.
I mean, maybe? I don't see how having to balance a bunch of weaker gear is not better solved by just buffing the gear straight up. Using set bonuses in this way also has the unfortunate side effect of diminishing the feeling of receiving a stronger drop. I suppose this is a unique "feature" of set bonuses but it certainly isn't a wholly positive one.
3)give players a reason to replay old content
See point 1, this is just that same argument from the content angle instead of the gear angle.
4)add more variety of gear options for the player. Maybe they want to wear only a few pieces of the set and gain a lesser set bonus as opposed to the whole set etc. Mix and match options.
Mixing and matching gear is not a unique feature of set bonuses. If anything set bonuses also at the saem time actively detract from mixing and matching because people are loath to break set bonuses that are perceived as too powerful. Only fools retort that "you just have to balance properly!", so please don't patronize us with such idealism.
5)add a greater variety of linear gear progression options which helps to limit stat creep in the long run.
Not unique to set bonuses, and is already something that the Pantheon devs are accomplishing through their "climate" system, not to mention the typically accoutrement of special effects on equipment that were prevalent in pre-wow mmos.
6)satisfy players with a "completist" mentality. Some players will want to complete the set and get the set bonus even if the bonus doesn't add anything super.
This argument presumes that the set bonus is not inherently useful, that it is the armor itself the player is looking to acquire. Why do you need the set bonus at all then? I argue that this is an example of over-focusing on the bonus and not the set part. The 'Left and Right eyes of Rhazik', a set of rings, can be worth collecting for any number of reasons.
In the end none of what you're saying is inherently wrong, it's just superfluous to other systems present in games. I would prefer that the devs have more flexibility in adding gear, because nothing feels worse than having to pass on a piece of gear because the set bonus props up these dogshit leggings and boots to competitive levels and breaking the set would mean that I'd have better boots but be stuck with terrible leg gear. I just believe that they are the type of mechanic that relies too much on being balance vis-a-vis the greater metagame, and as such should not be utilized in favor of more flexible gearing vectors.
See I didn't want to make this about you quoting me and me quoting you and making a giant long winded post that is difficult to read and decipher.
I'll respond to the first quote here since I'm already typing..and the rest I will take to pm's.
Philo said:
1)extend the lifespan of gear (even through multiple expansions)
Jimmayus said:
Not unique to set bonuses, this describes literally any gear that people might find attractive. Perhaps you mean "extends life of content because these pieces of gear are still useful 4 years later"? That is not unique to set bonuses and applies to literally thousands of pieces of equipment throughout the years.
It can extend the life span of gear by providing pieces of armor from the same set in multiple expansions. This definitely does not "this describes literally any gear that people might find attractive." That is where you are misunderstanding.
I'll give an example.
In expansion A I loot some sleeves whose stats eventually become outdated and are upgraded with different sleeves. Then expansion B comes out and I loot leggings that are part of a set with the outdated sleeves. The set bonus by wearing the leggings and the outdated sleeves is better than my previous upgrade. In this case the set bonus increases the wearable life span of those sleeves that used to be outdated. (whether the player gets an upgrade in between really doesn't make a difference, it also doesn't matter it is an expansion later or not...the point is they were outdated and easily replaced until the set bonus was available).
I'm unsure if I explained that well? I hope that makes sense. Do you see how the set bonus increases the time those sleeves are useful for? Increasing their lifespan?
I'll send you a pm on the rest shortly.
Jimmayus said:Liav the answer to your question is that if those boots are the best for that slot on their own merit then they can be more easily situationally replaced. If they only become the best because they provide a detached set bonus then they become harder to swap out. You will counter here by saying "it's not a problem if they balance them properly", to which I can only ask: why even get into such a situation predicated on proper balancing at all?
Right, I will counter by saying "it's not a problem if they balance them properly".
If you read my posts, I'm neither advocating for or against set bonuses. I quite frankly don't care if they're included or not. I am simply speaking out against weak arguments used to justify either-or, particularly arguments that like to (incorrectly, mind you) appeal to set bonuses as intrinsically containing a balancing hurdle.
Ultimately I think they add an extra incentive to collect multiple pieces of a set, and I like to collect things, so maybe I err on the side of inclusion. I'm just here to point out that the balancing argument exists independently of set bonuses so it isn't really valid.
I think the inclusion or exclusion of them is predicated on much more superficial things than that. For instance, the aforementioned collector aspect.
Arguing that set bonuses present a balancing hurdle is not a weak argument, what does that even mean? Literally every mechanic, stat curve, and gear piece presents a balancing hurdle that requires a justification of its implementation. You can't hand waive that because other mechanics have that problem. In fact, I would proffer that a collector's interest is best satisfied using things that do not inherently affect combat balance. Pretty much every game ever agrees with that general argument, which is why cosmetics and glamour rewards litter every game like glitter. Why does something need a set bonus to be worth collecting? If it doesn't need a set bonus to be worth collecting, then you need to ask what problems a set bonus adds over other, more cosmetic reasons to collect something. That answer is invariably: decreasing the flexibility of individual gear slots and making the concept of sidegrades (a staple of pre-WoW) even less attractive (hence why WoW uses sets as part of the reason to compel people to run the next tier of content), which are both balance issues exacerbated by set bonuses.
There's no reason it has to be so dire, but I would prefer they be conservative on the front of any mechanic which might disincentivize people to run participate in a variety of endgame content.
I know Philo is making some argument where in a later expansion in a different raid some new piece of gear will retroactively make some older pieces bis, thus apparently solving the above problem, but I would argue that you could just slap the bonus stats on the old item if it was really in such bad shape. At least in my alternative you don't have two equipment slots that now function essentially as one equipment slot for no reason but to arbitrarily make them even stronger than other sidegrades.
philo said:Kilsin said:
Set piece bonuses are pretty game breaking balance wise
That statement is only true if set bonuses are implemented poorly. There is no reason for set bonuses to be "game breaking". If that is the way it is, someone screwed up. Theoretically, set bonuses shouldn't be any harder to balance than any other gear bonus/stat.
Kilsin said:
they either make old content trivial
Any gear upgrades can make old content trivial. Blaming armor set bonuses seems a bit misplaced.
Kilsin said:
or require the team to forcefully avoid certain things in new content to avoid it being abused/exploited,
What "things" do armor set bonuses force the team "to avoid...so it isn't..."being abused/exploited"?
Again, we have to assume a well balanced implementation for discussions sake. Abuse and exploits seems like a pretty extreme view point.
Kilsin said:
it really is not something that I want to see in Pantheon, especially after what it did to VG.
You must have had a pretty bad experience. That is not what set bonuses have to be. Set bonuses can have some pretty positive benefits (I mention a couple in my post above). Do you have any experiences with set bonuses in other games? It sounds like that one experience is tainting your view.
My opinion may be tainted as it is based off a few bad experiences, the main one being in VG but most set piece bonuses are a nightmare for developers to work with, the players may not see a reason to exclude them but on our side of the fence, it is a different story and I am unable to give specific examples without giving out information prematurely, so I apologise, we will be able to discuss it in more detail further down the path.
Yes, any new gear can make things trivial but more so set piece bonuses as they usually calculate from the characters base stats and developers have to take into account buffs, potions, gear stats, set piece bonuses, area affects and in our case, climate, auras and anything else that affects the algorithm/outcome of the set piece bonus, at later stages of the games life, it becomes almost impossible to keep track of without implementing game breaking items that are overpowered and result in sometimes, entire content zones and becoming trivial.
You can implement basic set piece bonuses that are lackluster and don't calculate off base stats but then you open up other issues with having to monitor stats that affect it and run into the itemization problem of people disregarding many items in multiple character slots to receive a set piece bonus instead, which in most cases is more powerful than mixed items, rendering hundreds and sometimes thousands of items unwanted and useless.
Knowing both sides of the equation, I still stand by my preference to not want to see them in Pantheon as I know how much of a nightmare it will be later on down the track for the team, the game and the complaints I will have to handle from you folks when everything goes wrong and people abuse new items and set piece bonuses to bypass content, raid mobs solo, entire dungeons solo and farm top tier gear in small groups among other issues, it is just not worth the trouble in my opinion, we can put so much more work and detail into single pieces and remove future headaches and problems if we leave set pieces out.
Kilsin said:
Yes, any new gear can make things trivial but more so set piece bonuses as they usually calculate from the characters base stats and developers have to take into account buffs, potions, gear stats, set piece bonuses, area affects and in our case, climate, auras and anything else that affects the algorithm/outcome of the set piece bonus, at later stages of the games life, it becomes almost impossible to keep track of without implementing game breaking items that are overpowered and result in sometimes, entire content zones and becoming trivial.
This entire paragraph has nothing to do with set bonuses. Set bonuses do not "usually" calculate from base stats. I very plainly remember several set bonuses on PotA gear that were flat values of HP and such that were calculated no differently than the actual HP stat on the armor itself.
Example:
Head Set Piece: 150 HP [2 Set Piece Bonus: +50 Additional HP]
Chest Set Piece: 150 HP [2 Set Piece Bonus: +50 Additional HP]
Outcome: 400 HP
OR
Head Piece: 200 HP
Chest Piece: 200 HP
Outcome: 400 HP
This is obviously simplified to a comical extent. It only serves to illustrate that you're just mistaken in your assertion that set bonuses require some gamebreaking math to work.
Set bonuses are simply an avenue to add additional stats to a specific combination of gear. For instance, if a class gets two epic weapons (take Ranger for instance, Earthcaller/Swiftwind), that'd be a perfect opportunity to add a 2 piece set bonus. Maybe a DPS oriented set bonus where it would make sense to swap another weapon out if you needed a more defensive option.
Example:
Earthcaller: [2 Piece Set Bonus: +100 ATK, 15% Critical Hit Chance, 10% Accuracy, Chance to proc 500 damage Lightning DD]
Swiftwind: [2 Piece Set Bonus: +100 ATK, 15% Critical Hit Chance, 10% Accuracy, Chance to proc 500 damage Lightning DD]
OR
Wurmslayer: 25 AC, 250 HP, 15% Incoming Melee Damage Reduction, 10% To All Resists, Chance to proc massive +Threat
Swiftwind: [2 Piece Set Bonus: +100 ATK, 15% Critical Hit Chance, 10% Accuracy, Chance to proc 500 damage Lightning DD]
Set bonuses do not have to be a bad thing.
Liav both of your examples scale off of both base and other stats. I know you're just using those as examples but the problem is you basically have to avoid using percentages at all at the very least. I mean 15% melee damage reduction, really? Assuming armor exists at all this by definition scales.
Jimmayus said:Liav both of your examples scale off of both base and other stats. I know you're just using those as examples but the problem is you basically have to avoid using percentages at all at the very least. I mean 15% melee damage reduction, really? Assuming armor exists at all this by definition scales.
If you look at the example, the 15% melee damage reduction is on a non-set item. It serves as an example that scaling is not intrinsic to set bonuses and can exist independently of them.
Accuracy and Critical Hit Chance don't really scale in any meaningful sense.
Scaling implies that the input varies leading to proportionately different output. For instance, 1000 damage reduced by 15% is significantly more reduced damage than 100 reduced by 15%. However, 15% critical hit chance will always cause 15% of outgoing attacks to be critical hits. That's assuming that the base is 0 and the math is additive. If the base is, say, 5% and the math is multiplicative, then you get 5.75%. Regardless, it's not really an example of scaling.
Liav said:Kilsin said:
Yes, any new gear can make things trivial but more so set piece bonuses as they usually calculate from the characters base stats and developers have to take into account buffs, potions, gear stats, set piece bonuses, area affects and in our case, climate, auras and anything else that affects the algorithm/outcome of the set piece bonus, at later stages of the games life, it becomes almost impossible to keep track of without implementing game breaking items that are overpowered and result in sometimes, entire content zones and becoming trivial.This entire paragraph has nothing to do with set bonuses. Set bonuses do not "usually" calculate from base stats. I very plainly remember several set bonuses on PotA gear that were flat values of HP and such that were calculated no differently than the actual HP stat on the armor itself.
Example:
Head Set Piece: 150 HP [2 Set Piece Bonus: +50 Additional HP]
Chest Set Piece: 150 HP [2 Set Piece Bonus: +50 Additional HP]
Outcome: 400 HP
OR
Head Piece: 200 HP
Chest Piece: 200 HP
Outcome: 400 HP
This is obviously simplified to a comical extent. It only serves to illustrate that you're just mistaken in your assertion that set bonuses require some gamebreaking math to work.
Set bonuses are simply an avenue to add additional stats to a specific combination of gear. For instance, if a class gets two epic weapons (take Ranger for instance, Earthcaller/Swiftwind), that'd be a perfect opportunity to add a 2 piece set bonus. Maybe a DPS oriented set bonus where it would make sense to swap another weapon out if you needed a more defensive option.
Example:
Earthcaller: [2 Piece Set Bonus: +100 ATK, 15% Critical Hit Chance, 10% Accuracy, Chance to proc 500 damage Lightning DD]
Swiftwind: [2 Piece Set Bonus: +100 ATK, 15% Critical Hit Chance, 10% Accuracy, Chance to proc 500 damage Lightning DD]
OR
Wurmslayer: 25 AC, 250 HP, 15% Incoming Melee Damage Reduction, 10% To All Resists, Chance to proc massive +Threat
Swiftwind: [2 Piece Set Bonus: +100 ATK, 15% Critical Hit Chance, 10% Accuracy, Chance to proc 500 damage Lightning DD]
Set bonuses do not have to be a bad thing.
You actually just proved my point without realising it man, +50 HP is calculated from the character's base HP stat, so it would seem easy enough to assume that it would now result in the player having 400 HP from those two items but if I then grabbed a +15% HP civic buff and then had a class give me another +25% HP buff you now have a completely inflated number and that is not including other variables like potions, stacking different class buffs, passives, racials, runes, crafted bonuses, jewelry bonuses etc. all of these things can turn a simple +50 HP set piece bonus into something much more blown out and OP allowing casters to tank raid mobs (as an extreme example) and all of these things have to now be taken into consideration for every single item, piece of gear, weapon, buff, potion, ability, mob abilities, new content that is developed or added to the game and as you can probably imagine, as the game gets on in years and more and more things are added the intricate web of linked values that are calculated becomes pretty much impossible to track and manage, having a big impact on the overall game.
You would have been familiar with buff stacking in VG as with the damage exploits, bug stacking RoRRs etc. and players using level 30-40 orange gear with bonuses on max level raiding characters for their set bonuses over the top end equivalent pieces, if so you should know what I am talking about and that is just one example of how it can go wrong.
I have nothing against items having a % value increase/bonus on single pieces of gear but when combined with set bonuses it really starts to throw a spanner in the works and sets the game up to have complicated problems down the track, affecting the game's overall longevity and success.
Kilsin said:You actually just proved my point without realising it man, +50 HP is calculated from the character's base HP stat, so it would seem easy enough to assume that it would now result in the player having 400 HP from those two items but if I then grabbed a +15% HP civic buff and then had a class give me another +25% HP buff you now have a completely inflated number and that is not including other variables like potions, stacking different class buffs, passives, racials, runes, crafted bonuses, jewelry bonuses etc. all of these things can turn a simple +50 HP set piece bonus into something much more blown out and OP allowing casters to tank raid mobs (as an extreme example) and all of these things have to now be taken into consideration for every single item, piece of gear, weapon, buff, potion, ability, mob abilities, new content that is developed or added to the game and as you can probably imagine, as the game gets on in years and more and more things are added the intricate web of linked values that are calculated becomes pretty much impossible to track and manage, having a big impact on the overall game.
You would have been familiar with buff stacking in VG as with the damage exploits, bug stacking RoRRs etc. and players using level 30-40 orange gear with bonuses on max level raiding characters for their set bonuses over the top end equivalent pieces, if so you should know what I am talking about and that is just one example of how it can go wrong.I have nothing against items having a % value increase/bonus on single pieces of gear but when combined with set bonuses it really starts to throw a spanner in the works and sets the game up to have complicated problems down the track, affecting the game's overall longevity and success.
Let me try another approach to explain this.
Let's say a level 50 naked Paladin has 1000 hit points. He equips a helmet with 50 HP. His total HP is now 1050. His base HP is still 1000.
The interpretation of the word "base" seems to be the issue here. My interpretation of base is before any stat bonuses from equipment, buffs, and whatever else. If a % based health buff is taking HP after gear into consideration, then that is an issue with the coding of the buff.
My memory is fuzzy, but if Vanguard's % HP diplos were taking HP after equipment into consideration, then definitionally it was not only based on base HP.
Edit: I just realized that items in Vanguard used Vitality instead of raw HP as a stat on items to modify HP, and that flat HP was only present in set bonuses. Maybe it'd be best if we just didn't appeal to Vanguard anymore (on this topic) as the way stats were set up there was honestly pretty half-assed.
Alright I admit I overlooked that that wasn't a set bonus, but your examples are still not helping your cause. The Lightning damage proc by definition scales with attack speed, unless you're normalizing procs but you didn't specify. Critical hit rate and damage reduction scale in the exact same way: inversely.
Anyway this argument is just based on a huge tangent, because you haven't demonstrated why it's necessary to have a set bonus there. Arbitrarily adding stats to the set bonus and not the underlying equipment is not an argument for set bonuses, just an argument for a variety of stats. All you're demonstrating here is that the second choice is arbitrarily less appealing unless you also have a swap out for the second weapon (I'm assuming its two weapons). Why not just distribute those set bonus stats evenly across the two dps weapons, perhaps diversifying their blunt/piercing/slashing and/or elemental properties to make them desirable based on the situation? I see no reason a set bonus is helpful here.
edit: taking your examples, why not instead have:
Earthcaller: [Slashing/Wind] +80 ATK, 15% Critical Hit Chance, Chance to proc 500 damage Earth [Blunt]
Swiftwind: [Piercing / Light] +75 ATK, 10% Accuracy, Chance to proc second auto attack as 250 Lightning [Piercing]
OR
Wurmslayer: 25 AC, 250 HP, 15% Incoming Melee Damage Reduction, 10% To All Resists, Chance to proc massive +Threat
Swiftwind: [Piercing / Light] +75 ATK, 10% Accuracy, Chance to proc second auto attack as 250 Lightning [Piercing]
There, I just distributed the stats in a reasonable fashion and suddenly you don't have an issue of rigidly requiring a 4th weapon. I think this is a much more elegant process than having sets.
Once again, as I've stated previously in this thread, I'm not advocating for or against set bonuses, or their necessity.
My goal here is to show that set bonuses do not necessitate wildly different considerations than normal stats on gear. Delving into things like normalizing proc rates are really just turning this into a semantics discussion which I really don't feel like engaging in.
I feel that I have sufficiently discussed what I wanted to discuss (see above) and that anything else is just fluff.
Liav said:
This entire paragraph has nothing to do with set bonuses. Set bonuses do not "usually" calculate from base stats. I very plainly remember several set bonuses on PotA gear that were flat values of HP and such that were calculated no differently than the actual HP stat on the armor itself.
Example:
Head Set Piece: 150 HP [2 Set Piece Bonus: +50 Additional HP]
Chest Set Piece: 150 HP [2 Set Piece Bonus: +50 Additional HP]
Outcome: 400 HP
OR
Head Piece: 200 HP
Chest Piece: 200 HP
Outcome: 400 HP
This is obviously simplified to a comical extent. It only serves to illustrate that you're just mistaken in your assertion that set bonuses require some gamebreaking math to work.
Set bonuses do not have to be a bad thing.
Another issue is that in order to replace one of those pieces after you have them, the next piece would have to have 251 hp min to be an upgrade (150 hp on piece 1 and 100 hp for loss of set bonus). That is a large increase in power. Place that on raid gear and the the effort required by devs to get people to want to replace gear would be massive.
Gragorie said:Another issue is that in order to replace one of those pieces after you have them, the next piece would have to have 251 hp min to be an upgrade (150 hp on piece 1 and 100 hp for loss of set bonus). That is a large increase in power. Place that on raid gear and the the effort required by devs to get people to want to replace gear would be massive.
Fortunately they're just examples.
:)
Kilsin said:
You would have been familiar with buff stacking in VG as with the damage exploits, bug stacking RoRRs etc. and players using level 30-40 orange gear with bonuses on max level raiding characters for their set bonuses over the top end equivalent pieces, if so you should know what I am talking about and that is just one example of how it can go wrong.
Alot of that orange gear came from when F2P went live and they put in all those equipped effects with massive amount of energy and hp regen. The 15 energy regen a second effect was the equiv of 30 mana regen augs, which were best in game at the time. Those completely changed the way people played there classes, especially healers and bards.
Liav said:
The interpretation of the word "base" seems to be the issue here. My interpretation of base is before any stat bonuses from equipment, buffs, and whatever else. If a % based health buff is taking HP after gear into consideration, then that is an issue with the coding of the buff.
Maybe you are right and this is part of the issue? If that is the way it is being calculated it might be simply an example of overcomplicating things which leads to poor implementation/balance.
. The thing is, how the stats are calculated wasn't part of the what was being discussed. Sure there are 1000 different factors that need to be taken into account as far as balance is concerned, I think that is a given. Whether or not a player adds +10 stats on 1 piece of gear or +10 stats from two pieces of gear due to a set bonus really makes such a minimal amount of difference as far as over all game balance goes that it isn't even a valid concern. I know I'm stating the obvious.
A lot of people seem to be talking around the subject. Even Kils, who like you mentioned Liav, brought up a lot of factors that don't pertain to set bonuses.
Kilsin said:
You can implement basic set piece bonuses that are lackluster and don't calculate off base stats but then you open up other issues with having to monitor stats that affect it and run into the itemization problem
I think referring to set bonuses that (as you are defining it) don't calculate off base stats, as lackluster is using poor terminology. I don't find them lackluster at all...granted, that isn't what was being discussed so it really doesn't make a difference I guess. It is about the ending bonus. There are always a variety of ways this could be calculated behind the scenes. It wasn't a conversation about what the best way to properly balance set bonuses, or stats, or potions, or buffs etc is. We are not questioning how you get to that point...only that we assume by the time we are at that point it is balanced. In other words:
Please make sure we are all under the assumption of balance when discussing this...and actually, when discussing anything else in an mmo. Unless we are discussing balance specifically.
It is a cop out arguement to make up a specific scenario where something might be unbalanced. It is only that way through poor implementation. We can't even have a basic conversation about a topic if we aren't all in agreement of the definition of terms being discussed. I think this happens much more often than it should here.
philo said:We can't even have a basic conversation about a topic if we aren't all in agreement of the definition of terms being discussed. I think this happens much more often than it should here.
I teared up a little when I read this. It happens everywhere, honestly, way more often than it should. People talk past eachother more often than not because of such superficial misunderstandings and varying assumptions.
Liav said:Kilsin said:You actually just proved my point without realising it man, +50 HP is calculated from the character's base HP stat, so it would seem easy enough to assume that it would now result in the player having 400 HP from those two items but if I then grabbed a +15% HP civic buff and then had a class give me another +25% HP buff you now have a completely inflated number and that is not including other variables like potions, stacking different class buffs, passives, racials, runes, crafted bonuses, jewelry bonuses etc. all of these things can turn a simple +50 HP set piece bonus into something much more blown out and OP allowing casters to tank raid mobs (as an extreme example) and all of these things have to now be taken into consideration for every single item, piece of gear, weapon, buff, potion, ability, mob abilities, new content that is developed or added to the game and as you can probably imagine, as the game gets on in years and more and more things are added the intricate web of linked values that are calculated becomes pretty much impossible to track and manage, having a big impact on the overall game.
You would have been familiar with buff stacking in VG as with the damage exploits, bug stacking RoRRs etc. and players using level 30-40 orange gear with bonuses on max level raiding characters for their set bonuses over the top end equivalent pieces, if so you should know what I am talking about and that is just one example of how it can go wrong.I have nothing against items having a % value increase/bonus on single pieces of gear but when combined with set bonuses it really starts to throw a spanner in the works and sets the game up to have complicated problems down the track, affecting the game's overall longevity and success.
Let me try another approach to explain this.
Let's say a level 50 naked Paladin has 1000 hit points. He equips a helmet with 50 HP. His total HP is now 1050. His base HP is still 1000.
The interpretation of the word "base" seems to be the issue here. My interpretation of base is before any stat bonuses from equipment, buffs, and whatever else. If a % based health buff is taking HP after gear into consideration, then that is an issue with the coding of the buff.
My memory is fuzzy, but if Vanguard's % HP diplos were taking HP after equipment into consideration, then definitionally it was not only based on base HP.
Edit: I just realized that items in Vanguard used Vitality instead of raw HP as a stat on items to modify HP, and that flat HP was only present in set bonuses. Maybe it'd be best if we just didn't appeal to Vanguard anymore (on this topic) as the way stats were set up there was honestly pretty half-assed.
That is semi correct but the base item stat and the base character attribute stat are both base stats and can be multiplied by buffs and other things plus it is still an issue within itself, and it means the set piece bonus still renders many other items useless, so basically we would just have to create a large amount of sets with bonuses for people to farm and choose between instead of focussing on single items with nice stats and that just forces people to hunt down set pieces ignoring all of the other drops, and every time we add a new item we would have to make it more powerful than an equivalent item might be within a set piece bonus or people just won't use it, then the next set piece would need to be more powerful again and so the never-ending snowball of itemisation power begins. This is a big issue at end game and increases with every expansion, it would basically limit what we could do with adding new items and gear plus make us think twice before we created new content, it would always be in our mind and ends up becoming unmanageable at some point.
Regarding your VG edit, VG is still a very relevant game to compare this too, Constitution was the attribute that raised base HP, Vitality increased the base mana regen and Wisdom increased the base mana pool (plus all of the other attributes that don't apply here), all of these could be buffed or added too by using gear/pots/buffs/set piece bonuses etc. and players were respeccing their attribute points for different raid targets to exploit every last set piece increase from their base stats, the same thing could end up happening in Pantheon if we let set pieces be the dominant items in game, if we don;t allow them to be the most sort after,t hen why have them at all, as most players will always choose the best in slot no matter what it is called or what it looks like or whether ti is part of a set or a single item.
This is a very complicated topic and one I am by no means an expert on, my comments are just to open people eyes to the fact they are a big pain to manage from a development standpoint and there are issues associated with them, some of which are beyond anyones control.
I still hunted down the best set pieces in VG and didn;t complain, I hunt for the best gear in any game I play, like you and many others would too but this can have a big impact on the longevity of Pantheon if we let set pieces run wild as they will eventually force a rethink of the itemization or the content we release.
Gragorie said:
Kilsin said:
You would have been familiar with buff stacking in VG as with the damage exploits, bug stacking RoRRs etc. and players using level 30-40 orange gear with bonuses on max level raiding characters for their set bonuses over the top end equivalent pieces, if so you should know what I am talking about and that is just one example of how it can go wrong.
Alot of that orange gear came from when F2P went live and they put in all those equipped effects with massive amount of energy and hp regen. The 15 energy regen a second effect was the equiv of 30 mana regen augs, which were best in game at the time. Those completely changed the way people played there classes, especially healers and bards.
Yes, exactly, they were added later but that was my example of how items that are added later on can impact the overall itemization and how it can be abused without the dev team realising, it is always a constant struggle to manage these things.
You're right Kilsin, it was Constitution, not Vitality. Whoops.
Even so, I still believe that you're misusing the term "base stat". You can't have two bases for one stat, it's an oxymoron, as in fundamentally violates the definition of "base" in this context. Let's talk about Shrek. HP is like onions, which are like Ogres. The innermost part of HP that every other source of HP is layered on top of would be base HP. Your 100% naked, unbuffed, unaffected by AAs, etc. HP is your base. The most fundamental, lowest level of HP a character of X class/level can possibly have.
If your base HP (HP before gear or anything else) is what % based HP buffs are designed to affect, then adding hit points to gear will not have the effect that you're implying. If % based HP buffs affect HP after HP from gear is added, then that is a design flaw in the buff itself that would indeed lend to creating the problem you describe. Simultaneously, if HP from gear is not modified by % based HP buffs, then the power of the buffs will actually diminish over time because base HP, by definition, can not scale.
The logical conclusion is to avoid % based modifications to hit points altogether to avoid issues without scaling throughout the game.
Lastly but more importantly, this has nothing to do with set bonuses. We're so far off the rails that I think we're in outer space.
philo said:A lot of people seem to be talking around the subject. Even Kils, who like you mentioned Liav, brought up a lot of factors that don't pertain to set bonuses.
Kilsin said:
You can implement basic set piece bonuses that are lackluster and don't calculate off base stats but then you open up other issues with having to monitor stats that affect it and run into the itemization problem
I think referring to set bonuses that (as you are defining it) don't calculate off base stats, as lackluster is using poor terminology. I don't find them lackluster at all...granted, that isn't what was being discussed so it really doesn't make a difference I guess. It is about the ending bonus. There are always a variety of ways this could be calculated behind the scenes. It wasn't a conversation about what the best way to properly balance set bonuses, or stats, or potions, or buffs etc is. We are not questioning how you get to that point...only that we assume by the time we are at that point it is balanced. In other words:
Please make sure we are all under the assumption of balance when discussing this...and actually, when discussing anything else in an mmo. Unless we are discussing balance specifically.
It is a cop out arguement to make up a specific scenario where something might be unbalanced. It is only that way through poor implementation. We can't even have a basic conversation about a topic if we aren't all in agreement of the definition of terms being discussed. I think this happens much more often than it should here.
Unless you are a developer that has had to manage set piece bonuses in a game like Pantheon, you can only speculate. I am not here to argue with you guys, I will leave you with those thoughts, hopefully, you can think about them and discuss them in a mature manner with an open mind instead of being focussed purely on the positives of set pieces, because there are many cons that are associated with them for developers that players wouldn't need to necessarily care about.