GwenMay
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This week, AQ will release the earth and ice arcane cutlasses. Upon their release, we will have full elemental coverage for arcane cutlasses; many players, including myself, have already purchased multiple cutlasses from the Ultra Rare GGB shop. Staff is clearly aware of arcane cutlasses' popularity with the playerbase, because not many UR ggb items receive numerous elemental clones, much less full elemental coverage --- elemental clones are usually reserved for popular, strong items such as bloodzerkers, bloodmages, cutlasses, and elemental booster pet/guests.
I bring up these arcane cutlasses because AQ recently nerfed the cutlasses to provide a 22.5% spell boost instead of a 28.125% spell boost. I have been told by people much more knowledge about AQ balance math than me that this change brings the cutlasses in line with balance standards, and for purposes of this discussion I will assume this is correct.
In the grand scheme of things, this cutlass nerf isn't too big a deal. I am not particularly pleased with it and suspect other cutlass owners are not as well, but arcane cutlasses are still generally the best spellboosters. However, this cutlass nerf raises an important question that I believe merits community discussion: should an item's premium status impact whether or how staff chooses to balance that item?
I think the answer is yes.
Why Premium Items Deserve Special Consideration
To start with, I am aware of and sympathetic to the many reasons why balance is important even in a single player RPG. Further, I have no concerns or problems with staff ensuring that new premium items comply with balance standards; premium items should be interesting, unique, and even strong, but they don't need to be unbalanced to sell.
That said, when a premium item is unbalanced on release and remains unbalanced for months and years, players who purchase that premium item are justified in relying on the unbalanced effects of that item when making their purchasing decision. The vast majority of AQ players would not be able to recognize when any given item is unbalanced under AQ balance standards, because AQ balance standards are never explained in game, rarely explained on the forums, and are often complex and require math. AQ players can, however, determine the power level and effects of items through info subs, promotional materials, YouTube showcases, and discussions with other players and determine from that whether to purchase a premium item. Further, players are more likely to purchase unbalanced premium items because breaking balance standards can create very powerful, and thus very popular, items. To put it simply: players justifiably rely on the effects of unbalanced premium items when making purchasing decisions.
So, when players spends real, actual money on premium items that have remained unchanged for months or years and then those items are suddenly and (to them) inexplicably nerfed after their purchase, the players who purchased those items can be and often are justifiably upset. They did their research, they learned what the items did before purchase, and they got "punished" anyway after spending money. The lack of clarity for which items are strong and balanced and which items are strong and unbalanced plus the unpredictability of when, if ever, an unbalanced item will be nerfed only heightens these concerns.
AQ staff should thus consider the premium status of an item when deciding whether or how to nerf the item for two reasons: (1) to avoid misrepresentations or potential misrepresentations out of fairness to their customers and (2) to avoid angering their paying customer base for business reasons. Both reasons are compelling. Businesses should not represent that a product does "x," sell that product for months or years based on that representation, then afterwards change that product to do "y" or "x, but worse." In fact, such a setup is unimaginable for non-internet services; product sellers do not usually go to their customer years after the sale is complete and worsen their recently purchased items. Doing so would likely make a customer seriously reconsider whether to purchase from that seller ever again.
How to Balance Purchasers' Reasonable Expectations with Balance
Now, I'm not saying premium items should never be altered. Buffing out of date premium items is a great idea that harms no one and draws in more customers; AQ has done an excellent job in recent months of buffing premium packages like Airenal's Lance, Akriloth's Hatred, Sinmaw's Maul, and Lazer Blazer. And, of course, in-game items are different from real life products, and sometimes they do need to be altered for the health of the game. I simply make one suggestion: when altering premium items, staff should ensure that purchasers' reasonable expectations based on AQ's prior representations about the item's effect should be preserved.
This can often be done within balance standards. Let me use the recent arcane cutlass nerf as an example. The nerf effectively removed an MC's worth of spellboosting from the arcane cutlasses. Players have known since the first arcane cutlasses were released in 2018 (4 years ago) how much spellboosting the arcane cutlasses provided from official info-subs. Further, the clear selling point of the arcane cutlasses (and thus the reasonable expectation that purchasers relied on) was the cutlasses' powerful spellboosting effect. So, staff could have altered the cutlasses to do less weapon damage but retain the same or substantially similar spell boosting; such a change would have preserved the reasonable expectations of the last 4 years of arcane cutlass purchasers while ensuring that the item complies with balance standards.
The Airenal's Lance/Lord of the Skies ("LOTS") change is another great example of what could have been a nerf but instead was a rebalancing that preserved purchasers' reasonable expectations while complying with balance standards. The original LOTS had a powerful old lean skill with an elecomp damage boost far outside modern standards. When staff announced that LOTS would be updated, there was considerable worry that the item would become much worse or unusable, and in fact staff's first update to LOTS was much worse. However, staff redesigned the armor again to have both an ultra efficient weapon based skill and an overcharged weapon based skill and thereby ensured that LOTS remained one of the most powerful wind armors in the game, just as the pre-nerf purchasers reasonably expected. So, both balance is satisfied and the purchasers are happy.
Conclusion
Not every future update to unbalanced premium items will or can be as straightforward as the LOTS update or as the arcane cutlass update could have been (and still might be). For example, I and a lot of other players foresee that rebalancing the Doomlight sets in a way that preserves the purchasers' reasonable expectations will be very challenging, especially considering that many AQ players have spent hundreds of dollars in reliance on their current effects --- I myself have all 5 Doomlight sets and thus have spent $500. If there truly is no way to preserve balance and fully meet purchasers' reasonable expectations based on AQ's representations, then staff should prioritize balance concerns.
But staff can and should consider the reasonable expectations of their customers formed by months or years of representations by AQ about the premium item's effects before "nerfing" the item. The simple truth is, premium items ARE different than free to play ("f2p") items or even guardian items purchasable for gold (I exclude guardian items because guardianship brings numerous benefits far beyond any single item). Nobody has spent real money specifically to purchase those items, and so nobody has a reasonable expectation in the unbalanced state of f2p and guardian items. Further, except in rare cases, balancing f2p items are very unlikely to affect AQ's bottom line, while nerfing premium items without preserving players' reasonable expectations might. So, the premium status of items should be and is a valid consideration when deciding whether or how to nerf those items.
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