Just take it

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The berserker killer -> Just take it (4/23/2014 1:59:33)
Dear ED Staff, Personally you guys have been doing an amazing job in managing to keep everyone at least satisfied however I am not sure that you understand that, as players, we are not looking for a perfect game. We expect mistakes to be made and for those mistakes to be corrected, as you have been doing, but we need you to make a few more mistakes. What I mean, by that, is to just take suggestions that have been highly supported and implement them into the game. Take a chance and be more lenient with which suggestions go into the game because the worst case scenario is that more players come online, the balance gets messed up a bit more, and a few glitches happen here and there. Worst case scenario: The suggestion turns out not to be a good idea. At that point you just simply remove it from the game. I know that you are short on staff but just let us help you as players by testing your ideas out on us. There is nothing wrong with that. With that being said, great job with the game and keep up the hard work. - - Now Dear EpicDuel Players, I understand that you guys are probably highly upset with the balance but please, lets face it, no matter how bad the balance is this game will still be fun if we can just get a whole bunch of ideas into the game. Ideas such as allied 2v2s or tag team 3v3s or Placing Bounties on each others heads. I know you guys are disappointed with the balance but you cant tell me that you truly and honestly believe that Balance is the most important feature to focus on right now in Epicduel. What do you guys say about just putting balance aside for now and just supporting the staff to bring in more features and more suggestions. I firmly believe that no matter how bad balance is, fun features will still make this game enjoyable. --Ghost God--

Seteriel -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 5:19:46)
quote: Dear ED Staff, Personally you guys have been doing an amazing job in managing to keep everyone at least satisfied however I am not sure that you understand that, as players, we are not looking for a perfect game. We expect mistakes to be made and for those mistakes to be corrected, as you have been doing, but we need you to make a few more mistakes. What I mean, by that, is to just take suggestions that have been highly supported and implement them into the game. quote: Dear EpicDuel Players, I understand that you guys are probably highly upset with the balance but please, lets face it, no matter how bad the balance is this game will still be fun if we can just get a whole bunch of ideas into the game. I firmly believe that no matter how bad balance is, fun features will still make this game enjoyable. Well said [:)]

Ranloth -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 5:34:43)
That's no excuse to not try and fix the balance. It's bad because it's not being fixed where it should be. The MAIN reason why I play AQ is the perfect balance, which makes the game much more interesting to play. It's not an exaggeration - AQ has truly perfect balance, when it comes to pretty much everything. Without content, players quit. With poor balance, players can't play through the content, or the game. Without players, there's no game. Positive feedback is not what the Devs want, or rather sugarcoat words to soften the blow. They are aware their game isn't doing well, but they move on. They don't care about people saying how bad it is, and that was said on the livestream. Constructive feedback is positive and negative. Encouragement is one, but saying the game is good and some features can be ignored for a while, is two.

DarkDevil -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 5:42:30)
quote: AQ has truly perfect balance, when it comes to pretty much everything. one of the main reasons for such a good balance is communication between players and staff. which is why i have a lot of times called for ED staff to post here so good solutions could be found. Edit: a tip for The berserker killer is to separate the essay into paragraphs and make an empty line separating them so it will be easier to read.

Ranloth -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 6:01:16)
^ Not always perfect communication. Standards are almost set in stone, so actual balance issues get through whilst "issues" which aren't really issues, get locked due to either: 1) lack of knowledge (being in the wrong), or 2) outright terrible idea (such as a low level Shield being useful at level cap; old Eye of Naab). Single player or not, Staff has the most say. Players raise issues, but there's numbers behind them to back it up. There's no "I think this is too OP/UP" because balance issues involve numbers, not your personal judgement on what's good or bad. AQ's Sweep is ongoing for 6 years now, and no one has an issue. It'll likely take another 2-4, but no one minds that. Yes, single player, but it's still a massive project - balancing every single item, every single monster, and everything in the whole game. Everything, literally.

Xendran -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 6:19:45)
Trans is entirely right, and not only has ED refused to sweep their game, but they arent even taking hints from the way AQ is balanced. Perhaps they should ask the AQ developers why they use percentages for damage reduction instead of flat numbers, if they for some reason think that me being a "player" (who has spent the past 5 years analyzing and breaking down the mechanical aspects of games and currently has a job as a game designer..) makes my claims about flat vs percent reduction invalid.

comicalbike -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 8:19:35)
well when the game started titan and nightwraith made the game fast and fun and even on a bad day we started with over 700 players now we have a game thats not fun hardly any players and what they think is balance so whats left with that gone, i keep telling other players the game will get better and the fun will come back but i am starting to think i am wrong another thing when i play i play the same players after a long wait to get a fight sometimes 6 times each thats not fun its just boreing, so what next we are at the bottom and can only go up we live and hope and when the players go back to school we see whats left

zion -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 9:46:50)
AQ has balance but that is a much more controlled environment (only PvE). You guys must admit it is much harder to balance a PvP game. To remedy the problem PvP games usually have small changes very often - depending on which builds are currently the strongest.... don't they? Xendran - how could we go about a "sweep" calculation of the relative value of the stats and skills and determine what is OP/UP and what needs changing? Is there well established game/mathematical theory to base this on or can the ED style of compiling data and buffing/nerfing stuff work also if done more often?

Ranloth -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 9:56:46)
There is a way to balance PvP, yes. It's the same principle as in AQ, but the different in a PvP game is the players' knowledge which can change everything. This is something that can't be controlled, and that's good - because the actual balance is there, and it's all about your skills/knowledge. What Xendran is getting at, if the Devs did attempt it, that would be more than enough. We're talking about ongoing project that takes years, yes. But it's something that can be accomplished regardless. The Sweep also took ages, in AQ, and if AQ players do remember the Spells Sweep, that one was done all at once - not in parts. Sure, it took a while, but it was done - almost for good (due to some Stats% changes afterwards). Balance does translate to fun. It allows a lot more things to be done, with effects and strategy alike. Average remains the same, whilst an effect may be useful in different scenarios - such as Poison is now; ineffective on high HP, and effective on low. Some effects may be all-round; Stun. And so on. The game can be kept simple for players, and more advanced behind the scenes. AQ does that. You don't need to know all the formulae to play the game. It's optional. If the Devs were working on their version of Sweep, they could still release patches to temporarily fix it. Not effective, but it could last until they put out the permanent fix. Not relying on temporary ones forever. I do take into account the small Team, but AQ was small and still is, when it comes to the KoO (guys who balance the game + some code at the same time).

Xendran -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 10:48:22)
The base of game balance is that everything needs a standard. There has to be a standard for the value of each stat point (excluding synergies which are meant to augment the value of stats beyond their initial capability when used intelligently). This includes Health and Energy, which honestly should not be their own stat. There has to be a standard for mana costs of skills. There has to be a standard for what the value of a turn is in order to impement no-cost skills (which in reality do have a cost: 1 turn.) Everything must be standardized. The reason flat reduction is the most inherently gamebreaking aspect is because not only are the stats incomparable, but each point is more valuable than the last. Currently the only thing preventing it from making the game utterly unplayable is the fact that there is a minimum damage, otherwise you could simply make a build that takes literally zero damage. Going from 10 damage to 5 damage currently is seen as the same as going from 100 damage to 95. The first is a 50% damage reduction, the latter is 5%, but with flat numbers that's what happens. An example of what a system like this would look like: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqMprO-AJJ6jdGhOMUd6ek1neE1ybzVEaFh2aEFXRmc&usp=sharing Please note that this was created years ago and also was intended to go along with a complete and total recreation of every skill in the game. It is extremely likely that there are imbalanced aspects, however it is MUCH more balanced than the current system. The document is free to edit, and changing the stats will update values so people can compare. Do not vandalize this document. The most important aspect is having the person designing your balance be somebody who actually spends a lot of time playing both their game and other games, MUCH more than the average player, and often nearly as much as extreme players. In a PvE game you can do this in test environments, but in a PvP game you MUST do this on live servers to actually understand the inner workings and unforseen mechanical synergies of the game. You must analyze and break down every balance aspect of a large number of games to really understand what "Balance" is, which is why its hard to describe what true balance is. Things can be numerically imbalanced, but balanced out by other mechanical aspects of the game. An example of this would be having such a massive number of builds that a build with numerical imbalances still has so many various counters that the imbalance is not noticable, and not powerful enough to warrant a mass switch of everybody of that class to the same build. Having developers that don't know the meta of their own game, and don't have the time to actually spend analyzing other games is what causes games to descend into the state of balance we see with EpicDuel. This is why you need somebody who is dedicated to just balance (or multiple people), because there is simply nowhere near enough time in a programmer's schedule to become proficient at balance in an online game. This is also the reason that the developers should be able to have any and all balance decisions completely vetoed by balance staff, as the developers do not have the required gameplay experience to accurately judge whether or not something is balanced. Nor should they be expected to. Titan and Rabble are here for programming, not balance. They are highly skilled programmers so that is what they should be focusing on. Not only will it speed up the creation of balance changes, it will also speed up the implementation of them because Titan and Rabblefroth do not have to spend a massive amount of time in unfamiliar territory. Balance directly relates to fun in a PVP game because it increases the number of different things you can do without feeling like you are intentionally having an inferior game experience by not using a Flavor of the Month build, or something equally as broken. Things like strength mages have only one consistently achievable counter and only one class can take advantage of it: Hybrid Armor Mercenaries. Builds that would be seen as "Balanced" are made utterly obsolete because they have no way of even attempting to counter the overpowered builds regardless of what combination of skills you are using outside of Hybrid Armor without destroying your win rate against other classes and builds. A lot of people say that you should just use "Creative" builds if you want to have fun, and that it is possible. The fact that you have to use "Possible" to describe that is telling of the situation, and it is an issue of "Possible" versus "Reasonable". Lots of things are possible, but it doesnt mean you would ever feel good about the result of them. If the fact that "Creative" builds are "Possible" was a good enough deterrence from using Flavor of the Month builds, we wouldn't see the absurd ratio of FOTM to other builds that we currently have. Even other games with FOTM builds are still built in a way that there are counters to it if you play properly, and those counters do not destroy the gameplay experience when you aren't fighting said FOTM build.

The berserker killer -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 12:30:17)
@Trans I am not saying that it is an excuse not to fix the balance. What I am saying is that we should just accept it for now and let them take their time changing it because first of all, they are being rushed which is why balance can't get fixed the way you guys wants. And secondly, purely balancing classes isn't going to bring a lot more players online unless they include more classes, more skills, or a way for us to create more builds. What brings more players online is content. You have got to understand that as an EpicDuel player. I am not sugarcoating anything, I am giving constructive criticism. - - @Xendran I totally love your thread on a total revamp of the classes in the game, along with your wide variety of skill cores but that sort of thing may take 6 months to a year to completely make. Then about a month to test, and ED does not have that much time. So, honestly, if you decided to become a moderator I would completely support you because I know you can speed up that process just by yourself. However in the meantime, I say we just accept balance the way it is for now and just "shroud" however bad you guys think it is with ideas! And I mean so many ideas that EpicDuel, and yourself, will be able to work on balance in peace without anyone complaining. These ideas can include 100 missions released at a single time like AQW, unlocked bosses, new leaderboards. Once again, if you sign up to be a Moderator (or however it is done) me and other players will support you because we know how much work you have put into this game and we know how much more work you are willing to do. - - @DarkDevil Thank you for the tip! And I know what you mean. The only ED staff I see posting here is MechaMario. I feel as if ED staff only see our ideas if we tweet it to them. It would be really awesome if they can just come on forums every once in a while and just give their opinion on a couple things just to let us know that they are hearing our ideas. Afterall "seeing is better than believing". - - @Comicalbike I feel bad for saying this but I truly believe that ED won't get more fun but that is only because of the amount of Balance Complaints. ---- Guys i'm just asking you to put aside balance for now and lets just get more players online. Please. One way to fix balance is by adding a larger pool of players, however we can shroud it for now and buy ED Staff more time by just letting it go and encouraging them for more fun releases. It's what we need. No matter how bad balance may seem, everyone will still have fun because of new features.

edwardvulture -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 17:50:51)
AQ and ED is not a fair balance comparison. Players and their drive to win are just as much as the root of balance problems as "broken mechanics" are. Why are things repeatedly nerfed over and over again? Players... Passives to Actives? Players... Why are balance updates not so effective? Lack of testing(fault of staff) and bad suggestions from players who cannot find a means of competing on their own that lack creativity. quote: No matter how bad balance may seem, everyone will still have fun because of new features New features cause players to log on, the quality of battles retain players.

The berserker killer -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 19:38:04)
I truly believe that fun retains players. Sure its a pvp but you guys have chill spots, or used to have chill spots like OZ. This game a PVP but a community also

Mondez -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 20:50:59)
This is how I see it: The problem with fun for a pvp competitive game is that there is really no fun unless there is some form of balance. Problem is that with ED the balance part of the game which threw me off since Gamma. Sure back then the Gamma phase was fun if you were what you call a varium player because everything you bought with varium was stupidly OP, but at the same time it was not fun for those that were not Varium players because the win/loss ration was high. At this stage, balance is still not near satisfactory because the bandaid fixes are not fixing what should have been fixed which it has a cycle with the skill tree. It's not fun to play against 90% of the playerbase that have the exact same OP build and play for wins. Sure, if balance was fixed correctly then we would see some improvements towards an enjoyable experience, but as seeing wars implementing a bomb feature causing players to buy as many bombs as they can get their hands on to win the war instead of enjoying a war/mission aspect of the game then no one at that point can have fun. A good example is the latest war. Sure they revamped things that needed some tweaking, but the fun breaker came when you could buy bombs for points to win the war and when it comes down to that then we cannot have fun towards that retrospect.

The berserker killer -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 21:12:26)
I see where you are coming from. I guess I overestimated the amount of players who began playing this game mainly for fun, because I was that player. I had a blast just doing the missions, trying to find a build to conquer a boss or buying cool weapons like Vendzooka. I had a blast. You guys make it sound like without a balance better than this one that people would still not come online though. I disagree man. If there were 500 new missions by june, with 30 new bosses and cheevos with a new Allied 2v2 battle mode you can not tell me that 4 servers wont be online. I refuse to believe that because that's how this game used to be.

Mondez -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 21:22:45)
@The berserker Sure more content can possibly bring in more players, but as seeing the steady streamline of releases and both servers still retaining the minuscule amount of players then we are not going towards where ED is needed to be. I am taking into account that the majority of the players wherever they may be are possibly either busy or in school. In the long run if there is a balance between balance fixing and content releases could the ED community have a better experience. With that said to draw in new players, ED would have to have a grand release in which they are preparing for which may potentially boost the current active players by a good amount. The question is this, would the content keep the playerbase satisfied to stay or will the issues of balance draw players away? Remember games with good balance and a good amount of content keep their playerbase for a good amount of time.

The berserker killer -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 21:50:03)
I am sorry but I just don't understand what you guys expect. In my opinion balance is reasonably fine and based on my EpicDuel facebook account, which I have a vast majority of EpicDuel Players, they don't care about the balance right now. They just want more content and, no offense to any of you, the reason why they refuse to make a Forums account is because Forums aren't what they used to be. Every good suggestion that is suggested gets turned into a balance debate and a "Who knows more abut EpicDuel" fight. We're kids, we seek fun. PVP is just an option, just like it's an option in AQW. I just can't begin to explain how much it hurts to see the things I see on here now. I'm really passionate about this game, I am really passionate about forums especially now that a few forum mates have talked me into it but there won't be any new faces if most of you guys can't keep the "Balance fights" in the Balance Discussion Thread. I am not saying that you are wrong for commenting on this thread about Balance, I am merely stating that a vast majority of EpicDuel either don't care about fixing balance or are satisfied with it and just want more things to do. That's all I really have to say =(

Dual Thrusters -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 22:04:26)
quote: PVP is just an option, just like it's an option in AQW. PvP makes up a large part of the game. Pretty much everything in Epicduel revolves around PvP. AQW is a different story, because every class only has 4 active skills which can be easily balanced if necessary. And that game revolves more around monster farming and quest progression.

Mondez -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 22:14:22)
Dual Thrusters makes a valid point and because this is a pvp game then balance is just as important of drawing and keeping players in just as much as content does. A good amount of us are stating that in order for players to have actual fun then balance has to be taken into consideration because like it or not a good amount of players would like to see balance changes as well as additional content added to ED. We have players constantly complaining about balance and that does not inhibit a fun gameplay experience so changes must be made. If a game centered around competition and strategic gameplay is not even on ends then it's not fun, plain and simple. What deterred me from ED was the horrid balance issues which made the game not fun in my case. Sure I loved the content releases and I may have bought at least two to three Varium packages back in my first paycheck days, but now it is not fun when as I stated before that I challenge 90% of the playerbase who one after another have the exact same build. That's my final take on the issue. I say balance and content are equally important to the fun aspects of this game.

Xendran -> RE: Just take it (4/23/2014 22:19:28)
@The berserker killer quote: However in the meantime, I say we just accept balance the way it is for now and just "shroud" however bad you guys think it is with ideas! Unfortunately, the class revamp IS a shroud to cover poor balance. The real fix takes much much longer. quote: and we know how much more work you are willing to do. Not anymore. I have my own projects I'm working on and the amount of time required for an epicduel revamp is time i can spend on my own game.

kosmo -> RE: Just take it (4/24/2014 5:20:14)
ED staff actually listened players suggestions way too much, implementing some bad changes just because players asked for it.So devs must be very careful at listening suggestions and have a sure direction to keep, not just do a mess of evrything.I agree when you say fun is way more important than balance, this must be their goal.

Lycus -> RE: Just take it (4/24/2014 5:49:59)
I'm going to lock this up for a few reasons, though as well as explaining those reasons, I will also try to answer your post here! First off, this is turning into a discussion on suggestions and balance, topics that have their own forums to discuss such matters in. Not only this, but more than anything this is a direct appeal to staff members, which would be better directed in an email or PM rather than a public statement on the forums! These reasons mean that I am going to lock this up, though any discussions regarding balance and/or other other matters, you can feel free to continue within the appropriate forum or via PM's. As for your points, I would like to comment on a few, but before that, I would like to thank you for taking the time to write this out! With suggestions we try to take as many player ideas as possible and implement them into the game. The majority of the continual changes of the war system up to now has been based on player suggestions, changes in the NPC system have came from player suggestions and the tutorial system introduced had been partly based on continual player suggestions. That's just to name a few, if I continued further, looking into the past big systems such as class changing and even bots were all player suggestions of some shape or form. A lot of releases, both balance and new features are influenced by player suggestions (if not directly pulled from the suggestion forums, based on general points and discussion within the design notes topics and other topics). Many people see it as 'my idea has not been implemented, therefore no ones ideas are being implemented, or at least barely any are', which is certainly not the case, if your ideas have not been implemented then I apologise, however this may be down to one of multiple reasons. When running through suggestions multiple processes are happening in our heads to decide which ones to harness and use and which ones not to. For example, we will think about the suggestions impact on the game (whether it would be a big change or a small change, whether that is the direction we want the game to go), the time it would take to create such a feature or incorporate such a change, as well as the main list of 'Reasons suggestions do not get implemented into the game' here (At the bottom of the FSI list). Another thing to take into consideration is that most ideas and suggestions are not used straight away. We have a document full of suggestions and ideas we would love to use at some point, but finding the time and the right release to include them in is always a trouble. If you have made multiple suggestions and they have not been implemented then the reason will be because they coincide with the 'Reasons suggestions do not get implemented in to the game', or because they've been stored for possible use later, because they are not priority. For this reason also, many features that go into the game may not be recognised as player suggestions even when they are, just they were suggested a while back and stored for future use! Just to comment on the other point made, testing on the players is sometimes necessary, but is not always the best option. When people pay to play the game and so on, we do not like to put in a feature or system and then pull it out later down the line or completely overhaul it, unless we absolutely have to. Though you may personally not mind the idea of testing out features and so on, a lot of players hate it when things are taken out the game or dramatically changed. Even if something like fame was removed, I am sure they would be a group of people unhappy about it, even if it is not a massively influential part of the game. As a general rule of thumb, we try to only implement things if we feel they can stay (unless it is an event or something of such). Not only this, but any time taken on a feature or change that does not work out, may not be wasted time exactly, but it is time that could be used on a bigger change that we know will work and that we know the a lot of players want. Now that's not to say that we will not try new suggestions out because of that, as the above paragraph explains, we have implemented a lot of player suggestions so far and try to do so whenever and wherever possible. However we also need to try and minimise the risk of it going wrong by doing a mini sort of cost-benefit analysis to weigh up the pros and cons. At the end of the day, we will and do try to use as many player suggestions as possible, but that does not mean all or even most the suggestions made will be implemented. If you look in the suggestions forum, everyday there is usually at least three to five new suggestions, making it 21-35 or so a week. We will read each and everyone and consider it, however there is no way all of them will be implementable, and those that we do like, there is not enough time in the week to implement them all straight away, especially since we have a backlog of suggestions we go through and use frequently. Supported suggestions are great and we certainly pay attention to that, however if the suggestion clashes with our basic reasons not to implement a suggestion into the game, then no amount of support can change that sadly. If the time is not available to implement the suggestion that week, then once again, no amount of support can make time sadly. Support certainly helps us see what players want the most and it may lead to prioritisation of some features over others, however there is another issue with support that needs to be thought about first. People simply posting 'supported' is not helpful for one thing, because we are more interested in the reasons behind them supporting it, if people say 'I support this because...' and explain it, then it helps a lot more! Reasons for support certainly do matter, there have been posts in the past saying 'I think any member from any phase before and including Gamma should get 5000 Varium each free and multiple items.' now, once again this received a lot of posts saying 'Supported' and so on, but no reasoning given. The reason being that many knew that if they put the true reason of 'I support this because it means I get free Varium and items' sounds greedy and unfair, yet if they put 'support', it simply makes it look like a generally great idea. However then you also have other posts that have people saying 'support' because it is their friends suggestion. Multiple reasons can be behind 'supporting' a suggestion, but they are not always the right reasons and can be ill-motivated. This is why any posts saying 'supported' alone are either deleted or ignored and those with reasons are the ones read and acknowledged. Again though, supporting cannot make an idea that is not possible to implement suddenly something we can consider, the ideas still need to fit within what we can do. I hope this answers your post (or at least the top half), if not, feel free to PM me and I'll reply as soon as I can!

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