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The Epic Solution to Epicduel Balance
By: SUP

Introduction

Hey all, it’s me again. You know, *that* guy. I think it’s time for me to finally take all the evidence together, and put it into 1 simple, yet comprehensive post.

I am doing this because I am simply tired of this: Tired of the oppression. Tired of these mundane and useless arguments. Tired of these balance fueds which are designed to get nowhere. Tired of sub-human treatment of the financially un-able. Tired of these sour attitudes and elitist ideologies. Tired of the Classist Ideology. Tired of broken promises. Tired of the guilt. Tired of being the victim. Tired of this cultural and ideological lock which forces us to suffer dreadfully. And tired of the ones who seek to continue this cycle of suffering, and therefore cause more un-necessary suffering.

It is time to rise. Time to know the truth. Time to be enlightened. This un-necessary cycle of suffering and financial unsustainability has got to GO. It is no longer welcome under the roof of Artix’s House, nor in his company of which it wrecks havoc from. It has overstayed it’s welcome. And now…

It must go, and never return

My name is PD. My goal is all but a simple and humble request – It is the destroy the enemy. Our enemy is and has always been the artificially created balance problems and the branches that came from it. For more than 2 years now, this problem has usurped the balance of battles, created a circumnavigation of the real problems, and worst of all – It is the reason why we all are growing dis-satisfied with Epicduel. We need to Balance Epicduel – Here and now. Failure to do so will cause Epicduel to die. Not because it will not have enough money to support itself, but by being crushed under it’s own faults.

I don’t think Balancing Epicduel is as hard as navigating through the Dole Pineapple Maze, but this post won’t be simple either. If you wish to criticize me, then that is fine – For one, I’m not perfect, and I don’t believe I am either. However, I think it’s safe to say that Balance should be restored over to a point where all 3 classes are equal, and where level, nor varium difference would not skew the side of victory; Much rather, it should be the other way around, which is Varium and level differences NOT Skew the chances of winning. However, it is only fair to recognize the advantages and hopes of all involved parties. I’ll try my best here, but there’s no guarantee that this post will actually satisfy people. Now, in order to balance Epicduel, the following MUST happen. And it MUST happen in this order:
1. Equalize Stat Values
2. Adjust Skills to properly scale in level, and to adjust ratios with them. Simply, make all skill values equal as well.
3. Standardize Weapon Base Damages AND Stat Modifiers.
4. Stop Class-ism. Class-ism is like Racism, only you aim your hate at other classes, while trying to usurp the fragile balance by attempting to make your class better.
5. Remove Focus and Agility.
There’s a reason things must happen in THIS ORDER. If not, then nothing would happen really. I’ll explain more why in this post. And before I start, the person who really deserves the credits for this post is Xendran; I have yet to see anyone top his prowess of his ability to create Balance Solutions. So Xendran’s really the man of the hour here. Make sure to thank him; He more than deserves it, and he helped me make this post. This post will be organized according to the 5 tasks from the list above.

The Importance of Stat Equalization

Before we go into the other 4 tasks at hand, equalization of Stat Values MUST become a reality. This is to create opportunities of creativity and balance. Below is a chart of how the stats work, and how much value they offer per point invested.

<Insert Stat Values Chart here>

The results are Empirical and consistent – As you see, the stats are NOT equal in value. This creates an imbalance from the statistical viewpoint. Inevitably, even if two people have the same equipment, and the same levels, as well as the same stat modifiers and totals, they are STILL not equal. One person will be better than the other, because that person had a stat value advantage. However, if we balance the stat modifiers, then everyone would be balanced in stat totals. This would lessen the amount of balance problems because if everyone was at the same level, with the stat totals, no matter where the stats are allocated to, the only advantage would be from a strategically standpoint; IE, the victor would be the one who has the better strategy – And it would be plain ridiculous to penalize someone because they are smart. If I also remember correctly, people are angry when they lose because their opponent won through luck or because they had “better stuff”. At least when you balance the stat values, there’s more room for strategy – No longer will the victor be determined by luck or the amount of money spent, but rather by strategy and skills – The way it’s supposed to be done.

And also, because the stat values will be the same, you’ll have a good build no matter what, and you won’t be limited to a few build choices – All builds would become viable, and this allows for Maximum creativity because everything would be a viable and working build, as all builds are equal in power and potential. In this sense, this renaissance of creativity would not affect balance in the way that absurd balance updates are made to limit the effectiveness of a certain type of build; They’d all be equal to a point where restrictions aren’t needed to balance and create fairness.

To this effect, this would even make battle searches a bit more fair – This would heavily erode the level difference (to a safe level), where the lower level has a chance to win, because the stat values would be equalized, therefore, shrinking the difference of power between the two players. In conjugation with Standardization and a whole re-dunx of class skills (Which will be covered below), the level difference and balance in General would change for the real and progressive fairness of everyone.

Skill Adjustments

A Class is only as good as its stats are. At all level ranges, skills make the difference of all battles; some more than others. Some skills have proved to be extremely underwhelming, while some are just way too effective. You see, Epicduel has also had a lingering problem of this since it’s days in Alpha. The weird scaling and unstandardized ratios of skill balance inevitably make some skills better than others, and therefore makes some builds better than others, causing people to focus their anger on a SPECIFIC skill. This is not the way it needs to be done; rather, everything needs to be fixed. In order to balance Epicduel, we need to make the skills scale properly in level and adjust ratio’s with turn costs. Below is a chart made by Xendran on Skill Adjustments:

<Insert Skill Adjustments here>

You see, this way, skills would be balanced because they roughly would have the same costs, ratios, and therefore, would also be equal just like the stats are. You see, the skills made certain builds extremely powerful because the skills did not have equal ratios: Take Hybrid armor for example: At low levels, it’s equivalent to 39 Dexterity when Maxed out, with no cost, and it’s duration is un-limited. This is an example of why skills should be equal; Imbalance of ratios causes some skills to be better or worse than others, which essentially causes popularity or unpopularity of certain builds. It even a factor that causes these dubbed “Class Reigns of Terror”, where this continual cycle of one class becoming better than the other two classes. These Reigns of Terror are made from a combination of problems: In-equal Stat Values, Improper Skill Ratios, Stat Inflation, and the lack of standardization.

Point is, by not equalizing the Skills through ratios adjustment, properly scaling skills to maintain effectiveness, and balancing their boosts to equalize each other, you would inevitably also create balance problems because these are not equal. You need to re-adjust the skills along with stats in order to create fair, equal, and strategically battles. I cannot stress this enough when I look at the effectiveness of all skills throughout ALL levels of Epicduel. If you think singling out a single skill will fix balance – You are wrong as you can be. That will inevitably create a fundamental imbalance of a class’s potential by limiting their strength. To balance battles, you must balance all aspects of it, not just a single nitpick of what you choose. If you only nerf what you don’t like and buff what you like – You will skew the game and it’s future to a very wrong path that nobody wishes to go to.

Standardization of Weapon Base Damages AND Stat Modifiers.

We all know that quite some time ago, I created a thread that involved the problems of Stat Inflation. You can read it here:

As you see, after we equalize the Skill and Stat Values, we get to the Standardization. As you saw from that main post that I linked to, Stat Inflation leads to many disasters. Stat inflation began the process of Stat Abuse, which in turn, created these “Extreme Builds” where we all improperly focus our anger at. This is not the way it’s supposed to be – You do NOT create balance by aiming your hate at one class. You do NOT create balance without giving mathematical reasoning behind your claims. And you certainly do NOT create balance by nerfing a class. If you’re going to Balance Epicduel, you have to make it so that every battle is fair and has equal victory opportunities for both sides – This IS what Balance is after all – The Equilibrium that creates fairness and equality for all. In addition to Stat and Skill equalization, we must standardize.

The reason behind this is rather simple – First, this is needed because there’s something called tier and level differences. Epicduel has 2 tiers of power: The Non-Varium, and the Varium. Since you can’t pick and choose your enemies, you will inevitably feel these level and power tier differences. This creates the level balance problem. For example, I have seen through many battles: Much of the time, when fighting a Non Varium Player, I mostly out-value them by some 60-100 stats (depending on their builds). Even though I as a Founder (Who doesn’t have the Founder Armor like 21 others like myself) paid for my advantage (Spending some $400 to ED), I can’t help but feel that is just messed up. Varium is supposed to give an optional advantage to be more powerful – NOT something you need to buy in order to be able to win a fight; AKA, a necessity. By standardizing along with the equalization of Stats and Skills, this would erode the level differences. And now that my reason is done, I shall continue on with this reasoning.

As usual, I need to prove myself with this by using math for you un-believers. Roughly, you get 4 Base Stats from 1 Level up. However, it does not just stop there: Weapons also provide stat mods, which extend the amount of stats you end up as a total. Now, you’re gonna walk a tricky line here: How much should 1 level difference be? You’ve not only got Base Stats to consider, but also Stat mods to consider – Too much difference causes people to quit the game due to their inferiority complexions that they would develop over time. However, too little difference would only make people de-motivated to level up and get better weapons because the level power differences and tier differences would be negligible, and it would de-motivate people to buy varium and/or level up in the game. The game supposedly has a sort of clause that demands people to be more powerful if they have played more and bought more varium. Now this is even riskier when you throw in the Tier Power differences as well. To solve this, I propose the following ratios to standardize…

Varium Tiers

1 Level Difference within same tier: 8 Stat Point difference (4 Stats from Weapon, 4 stats from Character)

Power Calculations…

Primaries Stat Mods: Level/2 (Round DOWN if there are decimals)
Sidearms Stat Mods: Level/3 (Round DOWN if there are decimals)
Auxillaries Stat Mods: Level/4 (Round DOWN if there are decimals)
Armors Stat Mods: Level/4 (ROUND DOWN if there are decimals - Not going to touch Defense/Resistance Bonuses for now)

Primary Base Damage: Level (Example: Level 32 Primary would have 32 Base Damage)
Sidearm Base Damage: Equal to Primary Base
Auxillary Base Damage: Primary Base Damage +2 (To make up for the +1 Cooldown)

Varium Pricing

Weapon Credit Costs: Level*Stat Mods*10
Varium Cost: Stat Mods*30 – Yes, I know this isn’t a huge change, but understand that Titan and Nightwraith have no control over Prices; As part of their contract when part of AE, not only did they forfeit their rights to varium economics in ED, but also a percentage of their profits are collectivized to AE (Information received from a secret and anonymous insider). A small drop would be the best solution under these circumstances.

$9.95 Package: 2500 Varium
$19.95 Package: 5000 Varium
$39.95 Package: 10000 Varium
$59.95 Package: 15000 Varium
Varium Hairstyles: 5 Varium Per Change, with no cost to change colors if you were already wearing the SAME style before and after the change.

Non Varium Tiers

Primaries Stat Mods: (Level/2)-2 (Round DOWN if there are decimals)
Sidearms Stat Mods: (Level/3)-2 (Round DOWN if there are decimals)
Auxillaries Stat Mods: (Level/4)-2 (Round DOWN if there are decimals)
Armors Stat Mods: (Level/4)-2 (ROUND DOWN if there are decimals - Not going to touch Defense/Resistance Bonuses for now)

Primary Base Damage: Level (Example: Level 32 Primary would have 32 Base Damage)
Sidearm Base Damage: Equal to Primary Base
Auxillary Base Damage: Primary Base Damage +2 (To make up for the +1 Cooldown)

I know you’re noticing by now that the Formulae between Free Player and Paying Player is almost nothing – This is to encourage bulk buying, which is buying and fortifying yourself with all Varium Weapons. Not only would this increase profits across the board marginally for the company, it makes the player stronger as well; A true Win-Win Situation IMO.

Stat Enhancement Standards

Although I really am opposed to Stat Modifiers (In fact, I advocate removing them altogether) as they cause differentiation and stat inflations which skew the balance, I will list some formulaes for stats.

Credit Costs: Level*Enhances*250
Varium Costs: Level*Enhances*2 (Round DOWN if there are decimals)

Base Cost and Enhancement costs would be kept separate. Stat Enhancements should only be an option to be better and therefore would be a separate cost. For example, if I buy a level 32 Varium Primary Weapon (using proposed formulae) for 8,320 credits, that’s all I would pay. If I wanted to get some enhances, I would pay a separate cost, which for example, 10 slots would cost either 80,000 Credits, or 800 Varium – Your choice.

Battle Finder Balance

Battles are selected from players from a 10 level range; From 5 levels under you to 5 levels over you. Also, stats will be indispensible part of balance. Formulae for battle finder balance would be:

Enemy Stat Mods Totals vs. Your Stat Totals – The Person with the higher Stat Mods would be chosen for the next part of balance formulae

If Person with Higher Stat Totals > Lower Stat Total*4, then the battle finder would find another person, until the calculated difference is lower than 40.

The Mindset adjustment

Hear me out. I know much of you probably have inherent feelings and superiority complexities. You know, the normal Class Favoritism or the Degrading of another class, or even looking down on those who spend less than you or are not as strategically savvy as they are and therefore are much less powerful than you are. There’s a very specific term for this – It’s called Elitism; Pure and un-deniable Elitism. Now, I don’t know about you, but I believe this causes horrendous problems within the community, both financially, and on a social level. These things are ones you probably yourself have done, or have seen happening. Keep in mind I am an equalist (Or one who believes in balance and prosperity through equality)

An example of this is the verbal abusage. The underlying problem is the impression that is given through that. For example; These elitist feelings cause people to believe in a superiority complex, and look down at people through a Dominance relationship, which the better keeps in control and authority through their display of their power. It belittles the person at the other end of this relation – Ultimately, this player is discouraged and grows tired of this Dominance relationship they’re forced to be in unless they’d afford to spend real life money (usually the easiest way to do so) to get themselves on the dominator side of the relation. Now, the easiest option here makes the players quit, which in most cases, always happens. You can either quit, buy varium, or scar your record by inflicting yourself to loss after loss. To me, none of those beneficial to the player. It’s a Lose-Lose situation.

And then there’s the problem of Classist feeling. Being Classist, or engaging in classism, is like Racism or being Racist, only here, Race is replaced with Class. This also applies to class favoritism. I for one get ticked off when a person declares 1 class better than the other, or degrades a class as a whole. This gets people stuck in that Cycle of Terror Mentality when they believe they have the RIGHT to un-balance the game. To me – this does not make sense, and it probably does not to you either. As I have constantly implied, degrading/favoring a class is like saying you wish to usurp the balance, as it purposefully creates these cycles, which one, should never happen, and 2, is a direct consequence of classism. There’s that saying of “Be careful what you wish for – You just might get it” You’re not going to balance the game by simply pointing the nerfing gun at 1 class’s skill (ED’s History proves that does nothing at all), rather, the battle elements need to be redone as a whole.

Finally, there’s the mindset of greed. Simply – The Rich want more and more at the expense of the poor. If you’ve taken note, you’ll always notice that ED’s releases are appealed ONLY to the highest level people. What about the people at lower levels? Do they not exist? Do not even matter? To answer no to that question would be extremely callous of you. I’ve always read on the forums – Whether you realize it, the forums ARE the top 1% of Epicduel as the community adversely affects how epicduel is changed. Most the people on the forums demand of weapons that are more powerful than the last, whether it’s in the form of a direct request, or the revival/upgrading of old rares. I don’t remember the last time people have asked to more equipment for LOWER level folks. Probably the last time I saw anything for that was probably a good YEAR ago. Truly sad. Most of the community demands of the weapons being in the level cap, and rising the max even though a majority of the players cannot even reach such extensive achievements. IE 7 Star Rank. There were not that many 6 star players, and they raised the max because just a few people with over +20K battles in their BR’s happened to be 6 stars. Now I don’t know about you, but that takes a LONG time. Most of the updates fulfill the desires of the top 1%, while leaving out the majority. The people demand the weapons to be at the highest level with the BEST stats (Blatant Re-occuring Theme), which causes the adverse relations between the High Leveled people and the Low leveled people, which then causes the problems of level differences during battles (ANOTHER RE-OCCURING THEME!)

A Warning before proceeding…

Now, what you are about to see next – Is a grim reality. The above parts of this post are how to balance Epicduel. The sections that come below, and the parts that come next, are in contrast, but not contradicting each other. The Upper parts is the one I and many hopefullys desire of a perfect game where everything is fair – The Next is just the opposite of that. It’s the hard, cold truth.

The Ultimate and Sad Reality of Balance

A Quite some time ago, I found a very sad quote from an Investigative Journalist:

"You've got to create Problems to create profit" ~Michael C. Ruppet, Investigative Journalist

Now, you’re not thinking of how this applies to Epicduel. Let me show you a quote FROM Epicduel’s very Own Nightwraith:

“I love making games. It's fun and incredibly rewarding to see others enjoying what I create. In a perfect world, I could make games for free without charging a dime. However, the world is not perfect and game development is expensive. Server hosting, advertisements, software licenses, staff--it all adds up very quickly.” ~Nightwraith

Just like the Global Economies of today, the name of the game is profit. Now, as you may know from the stuff from above, Epicduel is FULL of problems, and with this im-balance, comes problems, and with that, comes profit. I’ll provide you a little lesson in Monetary-Capitalist Economics, which is the economic system that Epicduel, and much of the economies of the world use.

Simple Monetary-Capitalist Economy 101

Money is essentially debt in paper form. Debt is money you owe to a party or persons. Money is also labor, since people are paid in money for their services. You see, Titan and Nightwraith do something called labor as well. For their labor, they have a debt for their services. The players pay their debts by buying these weapons at a price. Sometimes these weapons are Free Weapons, which is essentially 100% Debt in a marketing term, because these items are 100% credits. Credits are sadly not official tender in any global market, which makes them useless and cannot be given a value. However, Varium weapons cost varium, which in turn, can be translated into money; You in all essentiality have a fixed sum of money for a fixed sum of varium, roughly: 50-50. No-one gets profit because one did not offer a value that was different than the other item. In turn, with this varium, you buy weapons, this in turn, is essentially trading. You trade a sum of varium, for a weapon. This weapon also represents varium, which therefore represents money. The values are still 33.3-33.3-33.3 (.1 does could be put anywhere). Everything is roughly the same value, so there is no difference. You are being given a fixed price for a fixed sum, which is the equal value that equates to 100% received, shared, and given. However, in order to create profit – You need to over-value or undervalue something. This creates a difference, or profit. The profit is essentially the difference from the trade/purchase. If there was no profit made, there would be no money to cover the debt from Servers, Advertisements (I recently saw one on a Manga Fan Site), and other things that keep Epicduel alive, simply because there is no resource to compensate for what you have used to create your product. Also, keep this in mind – Differences inherently create problems. Now that I’ve given you your Epicduel Economy 101, it is time to apply this to Epicduel.

Balance – It is the equilibrium. It is what keeps everything at the 50-50 equality values. However, there's a sad and pessimistic side to balance: To balance Epicduel perfectly is to eliminate all problems. To Eliminate all problems is to not gain profit. To not gain profit is to destroy Epicduel from the Ground up like a House Collapsing because of a Sinkhole. To remove all balance problems is to create equality and fairness. IF everything was fair; Well, nobody will be inclined to spend because it's not necessary, and therefore, is not efficient. We as humans are designed to be efficient. To spend when you don't need to is against our nature most of the time. As the above quote from Michael C. Ruppet, if you don't create problems, you won't get profit, because nobody WILL give you the money that is supposed to pay off your debt or labor cost. Here's a scenario that you might be familiar with...

You are the CEO of an Logging company. You make money by Cutting down the Rainforest, and selling wood for money - However, this damages the environment as well, so to speak. You can either admit you created that problem of environment and pay for a solution that will fix your problem, or ignore it and continue making obscene profits. For a CEO, your goal is to make profit. IF you go the honest way, you're gonna lose money as your damages are worth more than your product. However, if you ignore that problem and do nothing about it; Sure, a bunch of environmentalists and biologists will look down at you for not fixing the problem, but they are all One in a million; Not enough for you to care. To be economically efficient is to create profit.

Let me continue on to this. To be economic is to be efficient - However, to create money, you must buy the product. This creates a paradox. You are supposed to create a way to make yourself gain the most "bang for your buck", yet only by making your products bad and are outdated/broken easily, will you get more money, as humans only buy to replenish and/or replace. See that paradox yet? Have you wondered why every weapon is better than the last? That's easy - Because if they weren't then nobody would buy anything because it's not the best. Does that sound familiar to you yet? I'm sure it has.

Now, these bring me to the ultimate reality - Epicduel cannot be fair if it wishes to live on. It must create profit to live. By making Epicduel fair for all, we are to destroy epicduel from the Financial Standpoint. This is the true way to Balance Epicduel; And it is also an instruction manual on how to destroy it as well. And here is the question we must all consider: We can either make Epicduel a game of mass profit (Gained from negative differences) where it has a long life, or we can make Epicduel a game where The players, who use the product, are satisfied with it, even though that behavior is practically un-sustainable from the economic side. I know I'm sounding negative, but forgive me. Perhaps there is a middle way: A way that lets both sides be happy - But we need to find that middle way. And we must work together as unified community to achieve that middle way where both parties are satisfied. Be warned, for even perfection has its own flaws.

The Middle Way?

So what we have learned in summary is this – We can either play a game that is fair and equal for all, or a game that is stable through economics of mass profit. Think of it as the conflicts between Marxism and Capitalism. However, we don’t need to be conflicted – Rather, we should work together to create a harmonious game where both Developers and players could work together in a beneficially symbiotic relationship, like a win-win scenario. There is no other choice but to pursue a middle way. I believe I for one know the very natures of these problems, but I am not able to fix this – rather, that is supposed to be your job and responsibility as forumites. The best thing to do now, is to change your desires and expectations – lower them. If you don’t, you perhaps will keep admonishing the people below you; So unless you want to become part of the system that is a malignant tumor to Epicduel’s future (The problems above), you must seek to reform the majority, not the minority. Create a system that is fair and equal to ALL parties involved.

End Notes

For one, this was a special project of mine – Something I did not for profit or ulterior motives, but rather for the education and information for all to see and apply to themselves. I do not seek to destroy Epicduel, even though that is what this post inherently is: Indeed it is a way to destroy epicduel in the most emphatic/apathetic (Differs on person) way possible. And I neither seek to start revolutions – that is rather wasteful of resources and good thought. I like to focus a lot on unifying the community to overthrow certain problems when I see that the problem really is not the short term effects, but the LONG term effects. It will not be possible to reform with a community that cannot even agree on petty situations, nor change their thoughts to be able to support those underthem. If we can’t agree on small things like how a class should be nerfed (But as I said, not the way to fix), then what chance do we really have to change epicduel for the better? What chance will Epicduel have to survive if we cut the rest of the players off and therefore discouraging newer people from playing the game?

I urge everyone here to realize that we MUST change this game to support those under us. Now I leave with this…

“If we could cause dis-unifying and chaotic anarchy when we fight against each other, then what could we possibly accomplish if we put our differences aside and banded together?"

Notes: Yes, I know I'm missing the Stat Values and Skill Adjustments Charts. Once I get those, this post will be complete.

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You claim your first mage made all these builts thats not true. cause you wer bounty b4.

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Sup put in that work. I remember him he was a good guy. I hope ED starts making real updates.