Stateman posts — repeatedly — on the subject of Enhancement Diversity (ED):
Some reasons:
3.1) Players focused on just a few types of Enhancements alone; the usefulness of secondary effects was overlooked.
3.2) We wanted to be able to vary the % of Enhancements moving into the future. With ED, we now can have a single Enhancement that boosts Damage by 50%. Players can’t horde many, many copies of said Enhancement, because there is still an ultimate cap.
3.3) We wanted to curtail the constant [internal] powers analysis more; we wanted to set a balance standard and move towards it.
On the announcement itself:
As I’ve already said, there’s little use calculating ED into ANYTHING until it goes to the Training Room. It could have easily ended up on the scrap heap (see Skills). Until something is on the Training Room, I don’t like avoiding it (Skills being the classic example).
… and …
I apologize if people thought I was misleading them by saying “no more big power changes.” In my mind, powers and Enhancements are two different systems (they really are in terms of data). It certainly wasn’t my intent.
Secondly, we didn’t put out info about Enhancement Diversification out earlier because 1) we hadn’t nailed down the exact system and 2) we didn’t want to announce changes until they were on the Training Room. Until something can be tested, it isn’t “real” yet – I’d hate to say something is coming when it isn’t. Skills is a good example of this; we designed it. It seemed ready, but it ended up not being ready.
Thirdly, I CAN say unequivocally that we have NO other major changes planned. A few posts have asked that specifically.
… and …
As I said, we did do internal testing with simulated ED results – but we didn’t have the UI and final numbers. I learned after Skills never, never, never mention a system until it’s really “in” the pipeline. We hope to get ED up on Training Room later this week.
And to those who think I’m couching my apologies a little too much – I’ll be straightforward. I’m sorry. I should have tried to understand how things would be perceived. That’s an oversight/error on my part. I thought Enhancements and Powers were two different things, but many players don’t see it as such. While I may have been *technically* correct, clearly players thought I was expressing a different spirit: no more nerfs. I should have known that.
In other news, SR scrappers will get a “Defiance”-like DR boost as they drop in HP.