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Exploding Penguin -> A Brief Expose on the many build types and creativity within ED (3/6/2013 0:59:43)
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With Omega now released and multiple balance patches also released, I can now make some inferences and decisions on build types, creativity, and the actual things that are happening in battles in Omega. Let me start by summarizing the previous phases:
Alpha: I don't really know about this phase much, other than there were some really broken skills and that a large amount of balance updates were released in short amount of time to fix multiple issues since the first release of ED
Beta: I just joined at this point and I still didn't know much, but from what I can tell ED was a much more social game where people cared less about their win rates, records, and stepped out of the comfort zone to create what most people know as "creative builds"
Gamma: This was my high point in ED. I valued "creative" builds, and I also actually started to understand how to play ED in a fashion where I can win more than I lose. There were many promos released, lots of which were the start of cores. The first one was azrael's bane (in truth, frost weapons were, but the effect wasn't really apparent unless you were killing george lowe). Lots of new features were introduced into this phase, including the dreaded enhancements. The enhancements were tolerable before they were applied to all weapons, not just armor and primaries.
Delta: This phase was something that lacked...stability. There was never a point in time where the range of OP to UP classes was at such a small rate so that class diversity was near equal. There was pretty much always an OP class at one point or another, and multiple overnerfs occurred. Also, enhancements got totally messed up, allowing for more build creativity but also allowing F2P players to be treated unfairly.
I've left out Omega because I want to explain what's really happening from my point of view now. Later, I'll summarize it up and compare it to my summaries of the previous phases. Here I'll actually start getting to the main points of this post.
Just what is creativity? Is it in play style or is it in the build? Every player has their own unique play style. Some always play it safe and waste a couple of points whenever they heal, even if it isn't necessary, and some players will go for luck-based kills using moves such as cheap shot and bunker. Even with using 2-hit KO builds like the current merc support build, each player still has their own play style in a sense that when the opponent survives the first 2 hits, the support build user must start playing in a different way than their normal battle strategy. In a sense, play styles can be shared among many players, and all have their pros and cons. Safe players who often heal just in case will realize less risks but also will lose many kill chances with high crit moves such as cheap shot and bunker, and those aggressive play styles who forge ahead without minding the cooldown of their healing (so that it can be used a second time) can often get kills and damage rush healers. Many play styles are similar (but still unique in their own way as not everyone thinks in the exactly same manner), but there are quite a few outliers who are very strong in their own original play styles. For example, my play style includes me using a calculator program which came with my OS to calculate the exact % chances of each possible luck-based event happening, and then deciding within the 15 seconds which action is the safest. My play style also includes max efficiency in my skill and stat point investment, so I will pretty much never go over level 7 reroute. However, there are also "creative builds" mentioned by many players in the community. Are these builds or are the play styles really the source of true creativity in ED?
A creative build can be defined as anything which isn't orthodox or used by the masses. At first, any build can be creative. The first merc caster build was probably considered creative, until many people started copying it (which I will get into later when I talk about build copying). Given 35 skill points, 12 skills, and 6 different classes, as well as multiple different cores AND weapons, the build possibilities are near infinite. However, how would one go about making a creative build? Here's what I do when I try to make a build, whether or not it be creative:
1. Decide my current build is boring (this happens really often, possibly 3 times in 2 hours or even more)
2. Test out possibilities given my class. I will normally test these 6 things first: High HP, Caster, Strength, Dex, Tech, and Support. If I decide that I can't make one of these 6 general guidelines, I will get more into mixed stat builds. This could include large variants off of focus builds, mixes between dex and tech (also known as tank), etc..
3. Evaluate the skill tree to see the skills which work well with the stat(s) I've chosen.
4. Choose the benefits of the skills and stats and mix them to my liking.
5. Retain, and play with energy and stats a little to make sure they work out
6. Build done!
I once made a support caster merc with max surgical strike and max artillery strike (back in delta, of course). It had enough energy to use artillery strike 2 times, surgical once, and a level 4 heal once. Let's go through the steps with this build:
1. I thought that focus merc was boring and unsuccessful (they were quite weak in delta).
2. I knew I couldn't make dex builds, and I've already done all the other stats. I then decided to do a mixed stat build, and I ended up choosing energy and support.
3. I evaluated the skill tree, and just high energy, a medium-strong aux, and a strong artillery strike weren't going to get me anywhere. I then evaluated the support stat. It reduces opponent's rage gain rate, increases crit rate, and many other things.
4. I chose surgical strike because of multiple reasons, including: 1) High base damage with low scaling for tech, meaning I don't need lots of tech to still deal good damage. 2) Reduces rage gain rate. 3) Lifesteal. After noticing these things, I decided that it created near perfect synergy with the rest of my stats and skills, as it still did a good amount of damage, reduces the opponent's already slow rage gain rate, making it near impossible for them to rage within the first 4 turns, as well as the occasional crit to increase my life returned by even more. I could then follow up with a rage artillery strike or auxiliary. The build seemed to work perfectly at this point
5. After playing around with my energy to be over 150, I finally finished the build.
6. After testing in 1v1, the build proved to work just harmoniously and brought me an 80%-90% win rate without using boosters (I disapprove of them and thus rarely use them).
Note that I actually implemented my play style into the build itself when I was creating it. By using the facts on support that I knew and created an idea within my mind, I was able to use my max efficiency strategy to use a skill like surgical strike to its max potential.
Now, after analyzing both creativity of builds and of strategy, I can make the inference: Creativity (and possibly skill) in ED comes not from the build, but from the play style. Builds can be created based off of the person's way of thinking when in a battle, and then used the way they thought of when they made it during fights to win. Thus, even if I have a very "creative" build, if it was copied by someone with a totally reversed play style to mine, they would most possibly be incapable of using it, and it would thus lose its merit as a creative build since it pretty much didn't win at all. Let's bring this situation back into Omega now:
Everyone is pretty much equal given lots of normal cores can nearly match up to previous promos(such as plasma meteor and thorns assault). Also, luck plays a larger role since there's less HP to be dealt with and overall less stat points. Since there's an increased emphasis on luck, a creative/original build or play style loses a lot of its effectiveness as it can easily be bashed through by things such as the crit core, the block core, etc... Luck factors have vastly increased because of the passive cores. I can now sum up Omega like this:
Omega: Luck factors play too big a role on the fights and thus drastically changes battles. Strong play styles compared to weak play styles now makes a minor difference, as luck with RNGs, blocks, criticals, and deflections will always prevail and help even the less skilled players beat the more skilled ones.
From this, we can see an obvious decline since Gamma, if not earlier. Omega requires too much luck and not enough skill to win with, and "creativity" from builds and play styles are neglected by this current system. Thank you all for spending your time for reading this; I hope you were enlightened on a lot of things which were not so apparent before.
Please discuss your thoughts and opinions on this!
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