Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (Full Version)

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Therril Oreb -> Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/18/2014 16:54:49)

So there have been tons of discussions about the balance. Some say it is good as it is. Others say it is not.
Some say there needs to be more diversity, others say diversity ruins balance.

There also has been some talks regarding how EP is way too important due to which EP draining skills are easily either too good or not worth looking at.
So here is a thought. To make balance more easy to work out. To put strategy and wits on the front.

How about that both HP and EP get boosted by another x10 or more?
In other words, what if fight times increase?
Here are a few things to consider:
- Fights take longer, so in 2v2, you cannot down burst the 4th player in the row.
- Balance is not as thin since 1 skill does not make the difference instantly.
- The player who goes first can perhaps make a stun or a (de)buff for an edge but not a game breaking one.
- EP is not completely drained after the first 2 rounds, so EP draining skills are advantageous but not the only thing that matters.

I could sum up a lot more. There are of course downsides. This is not a suggestion. So no need to give specific numbers unless they are for examples.
This is in no way something that staff will do, this is a thought I would like to share with you guys.
Keep it mature, no hating on those who are against it or those who are for it. Courtesy is and always will be demanded of everyone here.

So, discuss away!



GearzHeadz -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/18/2014 17:07:19)

Personally I would not like this... This would make games last waaay too long in my opinion. Although increasing HP and EP? Maybe. But not 10x. That would be crazy...



Mother1 -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/18/2014 17:11:38)

With the way balance is? that wouldn't be a good idea. Especially since this would only help those strength builds that can do high damage output as well as heal looping builds. Even with energy drains and gainers having longer cool downs this can still happen.



Therril Oreb -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/18/2014 17:18:33)

So currently, pure strength would overhit even someone going complete Tech or Dex?
Since someone has so much strength, their HP and EP can't be as high. So in the long run, wouldn't that balance it out?
HP and EP does become more worth investing of course.

@Gearzhead: That's the reason of the title.
Fights take longer, but they perhaps earn more.I would personally enjoy a fight of 10 minutes more where I can fully invest myself. Thinking each move out.



Ranloth -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/18/2014 18:02:03)

Raise HP and EP, and you're left with useless defenses from Dex and Tech. For EP, you're left with builds that can spam skills left and right and you don't really need to invest into Energy - ever. It's already bad enough now, when people barely invest into EP anyway, but raising the base even higher would just give so much potential for abuse. It wouldn't even devalue the EP draining skills. That's just avoiding the actual problem - not dealing with it. It ruins balance, in the long run.

So no, no multipliers to HP and EP will fix it. Instead of making loopholes around balance, why not deal with it as a whole? If you deal with 2 core stats, you're still left with 4 other being broken and also have temporary imbalance - because 2 stats have been taken care of, whilst the other 4 are left in their old stat.

Stun being devalued (less game breaking) by it? Absolutely not. Stuns are THAT powerful because - apparently - Support does nothing against them, and being stunned means ALL blockable attacks are unblockable. This is great for Str abuse. Stun is a broken concept that needs revision - such as being able to block + you still have a FREE turn of no damage taken - as well as appropriate penalty given for its effect, instead of random numbers. Why do I say random? Compare Plasma Bolt and Overload, and you see the pitiful difference. The two CAN be compared, because they are the same in every aspect but the stat which improves the skill.

Lastly, battles are already long enough... Even an average abuse build will take 3-5 turns, right? Some will take a bit more. Those who were around in Gamma and Delta, should clearly remember 2-3 turn builds working in PvP. We're talking the enhancements era, yes, but that doesn't change the fact that battle length has been extended significantly. Even more so for the tank builds.

Tl;dr:
Buffing HP and EP does nothing. Absolutely nothing. You end up avoiding the actual problem, which is the whole stat progression - including HP and EP. Furthermore, changing the two won't devalue/debuff other effects, because these other effects (stun, rage, blocks, etc.) need to be re-done anyway, and Rabble did say he'll try to make them less luck based.



edwardvulture -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/18/2014 18:05:27)

I would support this as an entirely different battle mode. One is the things ED has over Lol is short commitment. Right now battles last as long as they do is tanking w/o either 5 bonus or tech mage is just not an option with the limited amount of skills and cores we have. It is much more efficient to score damage w/ the 0-energy offense of 5 bonus and strength builds. Also, you also have to put into consideration of the 4 other stats because Health and Energy is only 4 of the 6 stats.
there are a lot more reasons why battles seem so short with small emphasis on strategy, I recommend my thread if you want to take an in-depths look on the evolution of the usage of skills in Omega.



Therril Oreb -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/18/2014 18:24:59)

I get your point Trans. But in order to change the entire game experience. Or rather the fighting experience, you of course need more than 1 change. No matter what you change, the entire thing needs a complete makeover in order to be more balanced.
Yes, all stats would need a change if we want every class to be equal in strength but still stay their own.

Also, how does, in the long run, ruin longer battles the balance? I'm far from most people's experience here regarding ED, so my apologies if I'm making the wrong conclusions from my own experience.
longer battles would in my eyes help balance due to the entire concept of balance being a bit wider. Stun is powerful yes, but it still is for 1 turn.
In a fight taking 3-5 turns, 1 turn stun is devastating. A 1 turn stun happening in a (for example) 10 turn battle is less so.

The way I see it, in traditional gaming, strong STR users usually have little defenses and health making them strong to power burst people down but in the long run are easily taken out by tanky guys.
Just like you have in pokemon the water, fire grass triangle. You have the mage, rogue, warrior triangle.

Now, to make the example a bit more clear:
Mage: great power, massive damage. But usually has little defenses, in other words, if someone can outlive that mage's burst, he has a walk in the park taking the mage down.
Warrior: Good health and defenses with average defences.If prepared, the warrior can outlive above Mage's power and tear down the mage. But only in the long run, short term, the mage would win.
Rogue: The nasty character. average defenses but a high speed and nasty ways to go around defenses, this is the natural enemy of the warrior. It can survive a warrior's attack and get around the warrior's defenses.

All three can defeat the other, but some have an advantage, depending on time and such. But if everyone has low health, the mage easily wins as we can see in current balance. The rogue second place since their power is still matchable with the others. The warrior however, lost the edge he normally has in a fight.

Another thing I see longer fights have is that debuffs, buffs and other effects happening over time have a different effect in the fights when there is more time. Having a 5 turn effect no longer is a "lasts the entire fight" effect. Using it takes a bit more strategy.


I'm not saying this is THE thing. But it changes the concept of how fighting goes in ED. And in order to make truly lasting changes for the better in the balance, you need a lot to happen with classes, stats and so on. But those are already discussed elsewhere. Here I try to see what the general view is on longer fights and why it is or is not a thing to consider.



Mother1 -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/18/2014 18:53:02)

@ therril oreb

In case you haven't noticed anything that makes a class unique in some sense is or is being requested by the masses to be removed.

Take a look back in delta for example. Back then all classes has something that was unique about them in one shape or form that the others didn't.

Tech mage, Cyber hunter, and Tactical mercenary were the original energy classes of delta. However now thanks to player wanting their classes flaws removed while keeping their strengths as well as other bad balance updates, there are no more classes that aren't energy classes. All the classes are now energy classes due to players who wanted their classes to have all the strengths and none of the weaknesses or just complained about how other classes beat them without mentioning how their classes were good.

With the passive to active update a lot of the unique things the classes could do are now harder or just gone now. For example TLM was the best tank class in the game due to it's passive armor, and energy regain along with natural skill tree to make tanking easily. Blood mage even though they didn't have a way to drain or gain energy they didn't need it due to them being the best class to work without energy.

However these are now gone as well.

My point is that with the way the game has been going everything that makes a class stands out or makes the class great has been cut out, and any weaknesses another class has that can be exploited will be complained about until it is patched up.

In the end at this rate we might as well make the Vetoed custom skill trees idea reality because the masses can't handle individuality since most want everything the same.



ND Mallet -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/18/2014 20:15:41)

The problem would be keeping build diversity while still keeping balance between burst builds and sustained damage builds. Battles would need to be just long enough that burst damage won't always win, but it needs to be short enough so that the tanks don't outlast everything. And we also have to remember to avoid the dreaded heal looping(but that stems from the fact that energy, and in effect energy drain/regain, has so much strength still).

And longer fights does mean that luck has less effect on the outcome of a fight and leaves outcomes to strategy much more often. And health will be less powerful in longer battles because you'll actually have to invest in dex and res. Strength builds though will be harder to deal with because of the fact that they still have above average damage on their primary and gun attacks and don't rely on skills as much. Will a tanky build have enough defense and resistance to nullify the primary strikes of a strength build while still being able to deal enough damage that they can actually take down the strength build first?

I don't think increasing energy would be a great way to go. It just gives burst builds even more ammo. If anything, it should get reduced so you actually have to invest in it instead of just investing in pure damage. I know in the early levels you can easily invest 0 stats into energy while still being able to kill the enemy by just casting skills. That means all your stat points can go into doing even more damage instead of actually being gated by a need to actually get enough resources to do the damage in the first place.

To get to a conclusion though, just bumping up health wouldn't be enough to completely balance out the game. It'd be a start, but the problem still remains that Caster builds can invest in dex, tech, or both and get good defenses as well as damage. Defensive stats would need to stay on skills that are defensive in nature and not on offensive skills. And offensive stats would need stay away from shields and the like. Increasing base health would help out a lot, but we'd need to revise the stats and skills to get down to the base of the problem.



Goony -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/18/2014 20:23:56)

Hmm, I'd have to agree with Trans on the idea that increasing battle length would not create better balance. Rabble has already extended the battle duration so that battles have reasonable length. The object feature of the game is to win as many battles as you can in the shortest possible time. That's what the war and achievements are about. Even if the rewards were increased tenfold to match the duration it's still not going to suit the demands of the player base!

And, there is also the issue of server and connection stability! I can already hear the screams from players who get disconnected when they have played for 10 minutes only to lose due to their computer doing an update or something happens to their connection.

2-3 minute, 5-10 turn, battles would be optimal in my opinion and that's pretty much what we have now in 1v1.

Quality would be a good tournament feature or perhaps something that may work to help juggernaut battles.

To put it simply, balance will never suit everyone. In my opinion the 3 major areas that need looking at, to start with, are luck, support and rage calculations. These are all basically tied together since they are dependant statistically on each other.

Because of the fact that there are so many cores and skills that ignore stats the players can abuse HP and strength and why wouldn't they ;) If you need to see a build that can dominate using this principle look at the Massacre CH builds!

Edit: Just wanted to correct a statement I made earlier about stun chance. A positive support differential can reduce the chance to be stunned (excluding cores) but it can't increase the stun chance above the base skill chance. I had it the wrong way around :/



RageSoul -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/18/2014 20:38:00)

The concept of Passive to Active is good as it gave more opportunities for builds , but that left the previous builds ( before the update ) vulnerable as they have nothing to defend against to the overused builds ( STR , 5 Focus , high HP ) thanks to both the current Stat Progressions and offense > defense play .



Pemberton -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/18/2014 23:16:50)

Str 5 focus and hp is overused??? If anything, dex TM is most overused lol...



RageSoul -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/18/2014 23:46:01)

@Permberton
I'm talking about the classes in general , not just Tech Mage.



Mother1 -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/18/2014 23:49:28)

@ ragsoul

that is at the high levels. At the lower levels other builds are used besides focus 5 and dex mage



Xendran -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/19/2014 8:21:22)

There are nowhere near enough skills to make long battles interesting.
By turn based standards, even having every skill from a class available at high efectiveness would result in battles that are not varied.
Also, the length increase would be so massively variable that tank builds would end up taking an absolutely ridiculous amount of time to kill.

People don't seem to take me seriously when i say that the game is impossible to balance without remaking it, despite clearly displaying my knowledge on the subject multiple times.
The player numbers say it all, though.



zion -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/19/2014 19:43:54)

Agree with Xendran... of course. I say the game needs to be a bit faster and there should be some more classes (10 total), all with double the amount of skills. Each class should really have 30+ skills with tons of diversity and there should be a separate passive skill tree that automatically gets stronger as you level up... my 2 cents.



Exploding Penguin -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/19/2014 19:59:23)

This would be a good idea to extend battle lengths. However, with ED's current balance if you're gonna lose then you're just going to lose. There's almost no way of actually "coming back" like there is in many other games. So until there can be shifts of battle flow which can change the winner through strategy and skill, this idea wouldn't work and would just turn painful losing fights into even more painful ones by making them much longer.

I'm totally down for 15-20 turn fights on average though. It's just this isn't the way to do it atm, and the current balance really makes it hard for this to work.



Silver Sky Magician -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/20/2014 0:57:49)

@Therril

Yes, it'll be awesome to have nice, long battles now and then. But can you imagine how horrifying it would be to farm/level up under your system?



Thylek Shran -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/20/2014 14:39:20)

quote:

Agree with Xendran... of course. I say the game needs to be a bit faster

I really disagree with you zion, as the number of rounds (lenght of duels) seems to be
perfect now. The question is why you want faster duels... is it because you think that
the rewards are to low atm ? Shorter duels mean less tactics but maybe more strategy
= build making.



Xendran -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/20/2014 14:40:01)

Also for people who may think that having way more skills available would be overly complicated: Play another turn based RPG and look at the number of things you can do.
Heck, go play a final fantasy game. Epicduel really has a pittance of skills considering the genre.
A turn based game i play that is currently in beta is actually getting negative feedback regarding the number of things available. For example, people are not happy that mages have only 40 spells available throughout all of the beta currently.

Now think about "only" being put with a number like 40 for just spells, then consider how long epicduel has been in development. Now think about how many skills epicduel has, and then remember that some of them are even overlaps.
Now consider how many amazing skills have been suggested in things like the Skill Core thread and my Class Revamps thread.
The ED devs had a chance at taking advice from one of the best mechanical designers they could ever ask for in their lifetime. They didn't. Everybody can clearly see the results.
It's not even about specific suggestions, but even general concepts of how to make a balanced turn based game that are consistently broken by EpicDuel.

The game would do well with longer duels if there were enough skills available that each build had a variety of skills.
Even my tech mage build that uses every single thing on the tree except for supercharge, plasma rain and plasma bolt feels like it is bland because every battle is still the same.
If there was a massively increased number of skills and cores, long battles wouldn't be seen as a negative thing because you wouldn't feel like you are slogging through the same process over and over for each battle.

This is why games like the Souls series have such successfull PvP. Sure, it's pretty much the same thing (Roll or guard away from attacks, attack the enemy), but the variety is so huge that you always encounter something different (Unless its a giantdad) and makes it interesting.
There are also really esoteric builds that are very effective, and things exist like cosplay builds where you can use the same skills and equipment as an NPC. This makes PVP actually interesting.

EDIT:

I'm going to go back to the point about listening to me in regards to mechanical design. I understand that developers cannot assume that players are going to be capable of making properly balanced suggestions, to the point of vetoing developer decisions.
However, this does not apply when you have watched said person post excessively high quality suggetions and constantly break the balance of the game while proving just how impossible to balance it is with mathematical proofs and hard logic for four years.
Even things like my revamp to the legendary system which has 100% support on the forum were not even addressed, let alone considered. This is not about me, either, this is about the players. These are suggestions that are meant to be beneficial to the playerbase, not some sort of glory-grab or attention seeking.



Thylek Shran -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/20/2014 14:43:44)

quote:

The ED devs had a chance at taking advice from one of the best mechanical designers they could ever ask for in their lifetime. They didn't. Everybody can clearly see the results.

Everyone sure does agree with you. [8D]



Exploding Penguin -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/20/2014 16:13:21)

@Xendran:

The reason they didn't make new classes, which would undoubtedly result in new skills, or expand the skill tree was because "It would be too hard to balance" when they're already not doing so well balancing the current classes.

The problem is the ED playerbase as of now is way too small to actually make accurate judgements on what's actually balanced and not. I'm on a 14 win streak with a BM build right now, and I don't doubt it has the possibility of reaching a 25 streak, yet many people say BM is one of the weakest classes atm. Creating legendary ranks definitely didn't help matchmaking seem more fair, which also ends up skewing people's views on balance. So essentially because there aren't enough players and testers to provide good data on what's actually broken and what isn't, it's almost impossible for the developers to actually "balance" the game given the current mechanics without upsetting a large portion of the playerbase.

I would say just make a large number of skills, for example, extend each skill tree by another tier or two with brand new skills for each. Don't make overlapping skills because while that may seem easier to balance it just screwed up balance changes even further because you can't change one skill without messing with another class. Once making a huge number of new skills on each class, then the meta will be consistently different and battles will be far more varied and interesting.



Xendran -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/20/2014 16:22:37)

There is a reason i say that a dedicated balancer is needed, and it's becuase the amount of time it takes to become a good balancer is very long even when you spend most of your free time analyzing games, and the amount of time it takes to rebalance an existing system is even longer.
Trying to do balance without one while also having a two-man programming team coding in ActionScript3 just flat out will not work.



edwardvulture -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/20/2014 19:39:47)

quote:

The reason they didn't make new classes, which would undoubtedly result in new skills, or expand the skill tree was because "It would be too hard to balance" when they're already not doing so well balancing the current classes.

Part of the reason why 5 bonus and strHP build is so popular is because the tank builds cannot dish out damage unless you are a techmage or 5 bonus. There aren't much support builds because rage is broken. And also, if there were more offensive skills with support, you would see more support builds. Right now, the only directly offensive skill that scales on support is artillary strike. That is part of the reason why there are virtually no support builds being used. So because of the low amount of skills, it is leading to less build diversity. We NEED MORE SKILLS IN GAME because a perfectly balanced (online)game with no diversity is much much less popular than an unbalanced game with diversity.



Pemberton -> RE: Quality for quantity. A fair trade? (4/21/2014 1:53:17)

We need new skills new classes and new cores
Won't be balanced but with diversity there will be more counters to the Clear OP builds



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