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Balance changes we get VERSUS Balance changes we want.

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2/2/2015 2:47:15   
Remorse
Member

Before I start I wanna say that this is not intended to be a discussion of the balance of the game rather a discussion of the direction of the game because of the different types of balance changes, so please don't confuse this thread as a discussion of the games balance.



Firstly I want to clarify the changes we have been getting recently,
The changes we have seen recently are either two things:
1. Either they make classes more similar by giving them similar capabilities, examples being removal of passives and giving each class energy drain and regains.
2. The other type is small skill number changes directly impacting their power rather then effect.

What does this mean?

It means that the game has become significantly more monotonous and you can argue easier to have conceptual balance. However while sacrificing variety the game has become a lot less creative, and build creation capabilities and viable variety has dramatically reduced, game-play is also much more predictable as popular energy manipulation skills are close to being the skills you must spam whenever off cool down.

It also means RNG (luck) has a MUCH larger impact even though the number may not of changed much,
Let me explain this in a hypothetical situation.

Let's say for the sake of explaining, that the game had only one class, and this one class had only one viable build usable or you will never win, naturally almost all players will use this build. Now let's also say that they build was extremely easy to use and predicting your opponents moves was extremely easy as they basically have no choice it to use the certain skills in the specific order. In this scenario the factor that determines who wins would be almost luck entirely as the RNG factors such as starting blocks and crits etc. will be the only thing swinging the outcome of the match. There is also one other thing impacting the winner is this scenario and that is the pre-battle advantage such as level and stat bonuses caused by legendary ranks.

Now this hypothetical scenario sounds horrible, at least to me anyway, the problem is the game has never been as similar to this scenario then it is now thanks to multiple changes that have reduced variety.

Obviously the game is way off to being as bad as the specific scenario above however their problems are visible in the current version game to lesser degrees, proof being the ever rising complaints about RNG despite little changes to it's numbers.



Now comes to the balance changes we want!

What we need is balance changes that don't necessarily make skills equal in power, what we need are different skills to begin with.

All classes should have obvious strengths and weaknesses, as well as skill that match a specific personality style

We also want variety that allows for high creativity, a big problem with cores is that their potential to add variety is high but it is limited by poor class and build variety making their specific attributes less useful for niche builds, because the niche builds don't even work for one.






Thanks for taking the time to read my post and I would be interested in hearing any reason for disagreement.
-Remorse.

Moved from ED GD. ~Battle Elf







< Message edited by Battle Elf -- 2/2/2015 9:40:50 >
Epic  Post #: 1
2/2/2015 3:21:55   
Mother1
Member

Here is the major problem I see.

For the longest the game has been in this cycle

1) A powerful build or builds come along that is made by someone
2) Said build becomes popular and a lot of people use it
3) Players who don't want to use said build but lose to it almost every fight due it being their bane build complain
4) The staff after hearing the complaints nerf said build
5) A build kept in place by said build grows powerful due to the former build not being as effective anymore
6) Repeat steps 1-5

Be it a balance change, new addition to the game whatever, the game balance has yet to break this chain. Until the staff can finally break this cycle I mentioned the game will never become balance or imbalanced perfectly.
Epic  Post #: 2
2/2/2015 3:32:49   
Remorse
Member

^
This will always be the case Mother,

However one version of the game has viable variety and therefore much likely to support viable counter builds causing an ever changing meta game.


Low variety means changes between preferred builds are much more likely to cause frustrating un-counterable gameplay.


I remember a time when I would specifically tweaked my build to be able to beat an exact version of another AND have it work most of the time without relying on luck.

However by making these changes to my build I left myself more open to versing different builds.

This is what build making should be about!

This is how build variety should work, then you will find, the problem you have with balance despite not being fixed, isn't much of a problem.
Which can also be reduced by small and never ending power balance changes.






We should NOT be aiming for perfect balance,
To achieve this will mean the game is exactly like my hypothetical scenario.
Please understand that constantly changing "OP Builds" is not an issue that needs fixing (because it's not possible without destroying the game), the issue that needs fixing is consonantly not being able to verse these builds with counters.



< Message edited by Remorse -- 2/2/2015 3:40:43 >
Epic  Post #: 3
2/2/2015 4:01:05   
Drianx
Member

The problem is, you cannot really estimate balance while legendary ranks are still in the game, because even if you have the weakest class but you are rank 40+ you will crush anyone below rank 10 who uses the strongest class.

Because when having at least +30 damage to every weapon and +30 def and res, you actually have the same advantage a varium player had over a non-varium before omega.

Another problem is that they kept releasing more and more powerful cores, which made the old ones obsolete - which is what they were doing before omega, when they kept releasing varium-only weapons that were constantly better than older ones. Compare for example the omega weapons cores to the blood hawk or frozen fury weapons cores. This means people are forced to stick to weapons equipped with strongest cores, because older ones are not an option = variety dies.

My opinion basically is that they should make other major changes to gameplay (like removing legendary ranks, or nullifying them in 1v1 pvp when rank difference is higher than 10, and readjusting all existing cores in order to even the advantages they provide) and then consider strictly class balance as top priority.



< Message edited by Drianx -- 2/2/2015 4:02:16 >
AQW Epic  Post #: 4
2/2/2015 4:04:43   
Remorse
Member

^ I agree, they need to fix these issues as well.


Though when you put them as side, (Such as play the game pre legendary ranks)

You will see the major issues low class variety has caused.


Strict class balance is not what we need,

Major class differences is what we need first!

Epic  Post #: 5
2/2/2015 4:21:50   
Xendran
Member

They had the option to take help from many people who now have, including me, gone off to create their own games with much larger scopes than EpicDuel.
Sure, players often don't know what they want, but it was far too late when they started actually considering the idea that they might want to pay attention to certain people that have shown that they care much more than just "OMG DO THIS BECAUSE [no logical reason given, straight buff to person's build/nerf to their counterbuild]", and actually have the creativity, intuition and balance awareness to back it up.

Now, the vast majority of people who both know the history and current state of the game well enough to fix it is very near zero. The number of people who have both that knowledge (because sure you could bring in some new guy, but you run the risk of turning ED into something that is very much not ED) AND are willing to help/deal with the devs, AND has enough influence to allow the devs to give them the power to veto any and all developer balance decisions (because this would be a requirement. The balancer is the balancer for a reason. What they say goes.)? Zero.

They could have had these people, but they drove them all away long ago.
I mean after this many years of being told "hey this game has massive power creep" and they still have continued on with their philosophy of continual power creep? Of course you're going to drive away the people that are truly passionate and experienced in game balance.
Another issue is that now, most of us that would have been willing and able to bring the game back into an interesting state are at a point where we wouldn't even consider working on the ED team for free.

The developers are not stupid, they are not incompetent at their jobs, the problem is that they are trying to do a job that is not theirs while also doing the one that is. It's too much strain, so something has to be sacrificed in order for them to not be working absolutely insane hours, and that something was balance and diversity. I also get the sense that they have had the feeling that giving up the entirety of the game's balance to another person, especially a non-founding member, would turn the game into something that wasnt their game. This is a natural feeling, but in order to ensure your game can be the best it can be, you have to loosen up a bit. Schematics and Thematics are the answer here, to keep things in line with what EpicDuel is without causing... well.. what we have today. Or have had for a long time.

Now to preface what I'm about to post, I want you guys to completely ignore a few things here:
1. The number values. Those were majority placeholder, just to give people a vague idea of relative power. At the time they were meant to be more specific, but now they are absolutely meaningless in terms of absolutes.
2. The specifics. It's not about my suggestion, or trying to promote my ideas, or any of that.

Read (Don't bump though, i believe posting in old suggestions is against the rules) this thread: Class Revamps (Please do not Bump - Against rules i believe)
Yeah, remember that one? This is how you create imperfect balance. Again ignore the numbers, and even the specific ideas, just the style that the ideas are in. There is so much diversity and classes are so drastically different from each other in their functionality that imbalance goes unnoticed and not cared about because the chance of fighting the same build constantly is lowered, and even the same builds can be played differently. The skills are designed in ways to have various synergies and counters that put strategy in the forefront, and actually allow clever thinking to overcome an overpowered opponent if they do not play as well as you do.

It's just something to think about. Again, I'm not trying to promote my ideas or these specific ideas, just a style of thinking when it comes to building diversity in a turn based game.
Also, passives are important. Like REALLY important. They are build defining and allow identical skill setups to be played in completely different ways. Removing them was a massive mistake. They should have been revamped, increased in number, and given their own skill trees.

If people want to consider me arrogant for making this post, then so be it. Just one game developer trying to help out another that I've seen struggling over the years. I really do think they are putting too much work on themselves though, and that is really shown by how heavily the updates slow down whenever balance changes are in the works.

< Message edited by Xendran -- 2/2/2015 5:05:40 >
AQ DF Epic  Post #: 6
2/2/2015 7:31:39   
Remorse
Member

@ Xendran,


I agree with the what needs to become of ED in order for it to become entertaining again:

quote:

There is so much diversity and classes are so drastically different from each other in their functionality that imbalance goes unnoticed and not cared about because the chance of fighting the same build constantly is lowered, and even the same builds can be played differently. The skills are designed in ways to have various synergies and counters that put strategy in the forefront, and actually allow clever thinking to overcome an overpowered opponent if they do not play as well as you do.



This maybe achievable through some of your class change ideas, though at the same time I think your changes lack more variance in energy manipulation among different classes, I personalty liked it better when for example Mercs and Bhs couldn't regain energy.

And I also agree with you on passives, perhaps if you're interested you could have a look at my spin off, of a separate passive skill tree: http://forums2.battleon.com/f/tm.asp?m=21799153&mpage=1&key=� but keep in mind it is unfinished.





< Message edited by Remorse -- 2/2/2015 7:32:49 >
Epic  Post #: 7
2/2/2015 8:07:47   
Lord Machaar
Member

@Xendran
Totally agree, listening now in Omega to kids won't help the game, it will just make it go worse and worse.
Titan & Nightwraith thought they are the supreme leaders of the game, their ideas are the ones that are right while all others ideas are false.
This led to the end of epicduel.
Trying to correct this with listening to the new generation of epicduelers (kids) will lead to more and more complications. Back then, in Beta, I personally played with legends, mature players who think for the game. Not a bunch of kids who posts here once in a while criticizing a "Build/Class/Skill" for being too OP, on the other hand if that "Build/Class/Skill" was theirs, they wouldn't complain. This is the difference.

Many of the suggestions that have been suggested and implemented now, were suggested long time ago in beta, but titan and nw chose to implement their ideas as they thought implementing players' ideas is wrong. Well you see the result now.

quote:

Read (Don't bump though, i believe posting in old suggestions is against the rules) this thread: Class Revamps (Please do not Bump - Against rules i believe)
Yeah, remember that one? This is how you create imperfect balance. Again ignore the numbers, and even the specific ideas, just the style that the ideas are in. There is so much diversity and classes are so drastically different from each other in their functionality that imbalance goes unnoticed and not cared about because the chance of fighting the same build constantly is lowered, and even the same builds can be played differently. The skills are designed in ways to have various synergies and counters that put strategy in the forefront, and actually allow clever thinking to overcome an overpowered opponent if they do not play as well as you do.


Exactly.
Balance problems show up when you face the same OP build many times, that you even forget about other builds/classes. As you already know the result of the fight.
Poison, Strike, Strike, Strike, Poison, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike, heal, Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,....
Mark of blood, Parasite, Strike, Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,Strike, Strike,...

< Message edited by Lord Machaar -- 2/2/2015 8:39:19 >
MQ Epic  Post #: 8
2/4/2015 7:28:14   
Squrwogrona
Member

@ Machaar

Ugh my eyes hurt, though you are right. Strike spam is there since beginning of ti... Omega and legendary ranks only underlined its OPness. Numerous people went into details why in quite a few posts over the last two years, so I won't do it here. Devs claim to have balance tool in place yet one of cornerstones of boredom in Omega is still around. IDK why and by now I don't think we'll ever get an official statement regarding this.
Epic  Post #: 9
2/19/2015 17:36:36   
Xendran
Member

If a build is so powerful that it can win by strike spamming, it should have nowhere near the amount of access to maximum energy as a build that relies on skills.
One of the problems is that base energy is far too high (a strength spam build that only strikes shouldn't have enough max energy to even be able to use a level 8 or 10 skill on you at all unless points are put into energy), and energy control is a universal thing.

< Message edited by Xendran -- 2/19/2015 17:37:09 >
AQ DF Epic  Post #: 10
2/19/2015 17:56:21   
  Battle Elf
has ten 1v1 wins


 Please don’t post in dead threads (2 weeks of inactivity).

Locked.

Thanks,
Battle Elf
ED GD Archknight
AQW Epic  Post #: 11
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