On Nerfing Premium Items (Full Version)

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GwenMay -> On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 2:26:54)

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.



Korriban Gaming -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 3:29:07)

I fully agree with everything that Gwen has said. Premium items needs to be balanced but they can be slightly better than your regular items without being game-breaking. The 6% from the Cutlasses is a good example of this.

With regards to the nerfs to the Arcane Cutlasses, I am going to be very honest and say that the nerf/fix (however way you like to sugarcoat it) is indeed an insignificant one. The Cutlasses still retain their identity of being the best spell-boosting weapon in the entire game for their respective element. However, what I am dissatisfied with is not the nerf, but rather, the principle behind it. I share the same thoughts as SapphireCatalyst in his reply to the nerfing of the Cutlasses and I believe Gwen, as well as some of the other major whales in AQ do as well.
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Unaware of the boost being an issue, but IMO it's late in the game to be fixing UR GGB items that multiple copies have been made to cover the elements. A reduction may not sit well, and might change UR ggb buying decisions. Any "fix" should have been made when the first ones were released. Players wanting an adjustment years later because of some mathematical error or whatever the reasoning is and implementing said adjustments IMO are far more detrimental to AQ's growth than getting it right when it's not done at the time of release.

Fun is literally being sucked out of the game for many players who use such items when that scenario plays out in my opinion.


The 6% isn't anything game-breaking. The way I see it is that they are being nerfed simply for the sake of doing so. There is no practical game-breaking issue that actually warrants it.

I'm no business major but I'll also add that releasing premium items and then nerfing it right after is literally the opposite of what you want to do if you want the item to sell. The game needs to make money to survive and we, players are more than happy to buy strong items that are actually worth our money. However, if our purchases keeps getting devalued time and again, and in this specific instance, over literally a completely insignificant reason, then players will really start to think twice about spending in the game. This might be an unpopular opinion but I feel that premium items should be dictated by your paying players as they are the item's target audience, instead they are being dictated by players who do not even own and possibly might not ever buy the said items.

What is even more irksome, at least to me, is that this supposed "fix" was brought up by someone who doesn't even own a single Cutlass. I don't understand why players must take the fun out of other player's items if they are unable/unwilling to spend on said item? I find this behavior to be extremely selfish. Are you bothered that other players have the capability to spend on the game and get more powerful items? There are plenty of stronger (and more broken) F2P items available too and to my knowledge, the biggest whales in this game really aren't that self-centered to be bothered to call for their nerfs every time the item's name is being mentioned. You can have fun with your stuff but leave ours alone.

Lastly, I can easily list off the top of my head at least 10 or more game-breaking/OP items that are in more urgent need of fixing/nerfing than the insignificant 6% from the Cutlasses. I think the staff needs to re-evaluate their priorities on what items should be touched first. Maybe you can look at these small changes after you've fixed all the more game-breaking items first. I am aware of the idea of balance, which is precisely why I'm asking for these more pressing items to be dealt with first as they have a greater impact on gameplay rather than a puny 6% from the Cutlasses.



Plushie Nugget -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 4:34:52)

Completely agree with Gwen's and Korriban's ideas, completely disagree with Broccoli's.



Branl -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 5:21:29)

I take a strong stance against the idea of segregating free and paid items when it comes to balancing decisions. The downstream effects of applying different standards to a subset of items, whether anyone wants to acknowledge it or not, absolutely has a strong impact on a wide variety of things that EVERYONE has to pay for. Boss design becomes a lot harder because now you're having to build bosses for freenium and premium players, item design becomes a lot harder as you very quickly find that it's hard to create "balanced items" of a niche that already has a deliberately unbalanced items in it. And, frankly, a lot of this game's functionality when it comes to monster design all comes down to a base level power assumption of the player. Unbalanced items makes it much harder to even have a standard to build around when crafting engaging content.

And, even dismissing all of that, blatant favoritism and selective enforcing of the game's balancing standards is not tenable for the integrity of this game. Freenium players get just as mad when things like Purple Rain and such get nerfed, I don't see how it's exactly fair to tell them on one end, "These items have to be balanced", then on another tell them items they specifically cannot get are exceptions to that rule. Regardless of what people think of what money they spent does for them in this game, a premium player's concerns are not greater than the concerns of freenium players when it comes to things that can have far reaching consequences for how the game functions.

Either go back to pre sweep AQ and don't enforce any standards on anything and give up on AQ being a "game", or enforce them equally across the board. Changes to premium items are absolutely NOT new, the Booster pets have been tuned down numerous times and they are still one of the most popular premium items to find in any given player's inventory. If post booster nerf, people are still buying items with the expectation that they can never be subject to balance concerns, I have to question at that point how much of that is AQ's fault and not the player's fault for having unsubstantiated expectations about premium items that, to date, have NEVER been corroborated by staff and have even been directly contradicted by balancing decision numerous times over the course of AQ's history.



Kaizoku -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 6:36:16)

Beautiful post from Branl. This always happens when something gets nerfed, whether it's free or paid. We'll see how it goes with Essence Orb.



Korriban Gaming -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 7:24:12)

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Boss design becomes a lot harder because now you're having to build bosses for freenium and premium players, item design becomes a lot harder as you very quickly find that it's hard to create "balanced items" of a niche that already has a deliberately unbalanced items in it.

That's where the void challenges come in with their ban list. Initially when it was first released I thought they would be going the DF route of just straight up banning OP items from the challenges (V1 for example) while letting it retain its original power level for regular gameplay. Hardcore players still get their share of challenge content whereas casual players can keep the strong equipment they enjoy using. It is impossible for every item in the game to be useful and this applies to all video games, some are just going to be better than others, some are useless items that will never be used, this is a fact of game design that we should learn to accept, why is there such a strong obsession to make everything "the same"?

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And, frankly, a lot of this game's functionality when it comes to monster design all comes down to a base level power assumption of the player.

For DF, every Inn boss nowadays gets slapped with the typical Stun + Shrink resist as well as anti-double turn mechanics. The same can be said for AQ bosses with their damage caps, Freedom and Boss Boost. That alone already hinders alot of cheese strategies that are reliant on strong items. Of course, there are ways to get around this still (like how V2's Void Barrier in DF gets around alot of stuff) but often times, it is simpler to just play according to how the boss mechanics wants you to play. Devs can just build on this standard template for bosses. Players should not be punished because devs can't come up with interesting ideas for challenge content.

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Unbalanced items makes it much harder to even have a standard to build around when crafting engaging content.

I see that your character was only created in 2021 and I don't remember seeing you much around the community in past years so I'm going to assume that you're a relatively new player. AQ's idea of "engaging content" has always been centered around strong, OP and even broken items for the past 20 years. A quick search on Youtube (for videos that aren't mine) will tell you that. And so will a quick browse through the AQ subreddit to a smaller extent. Heck even looking through past conversations in Discord servers will tell you that. Players are the most excited about getting the newest OP item, not because there's a new boss or there's a new storyline. That's just how the game has shaped up to be since its creation. The game has been able to survive on that for this long, why change it now? Don't fix something that's not broken. AQ was never meant to be a Dark Souls style game. If you're looking for a super challenging game then AQ may not be the game for you.

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Freenium players get just as mad when things like Purple Rain and such get nerfed, I don't see how it's exactly fair to tell them on one end, "These items have to be balanced", then on another tell them items they specifically cannot get are exceptions to that rule. Regardless of what people think of what money they spent does for them in this game, a premium player's concerns are not greater than the concerns of freenium players when it comes to things that can have far reaching consequences for how the game functions.

Right, I agree with you on this point. But I don't think anyone is happy when items they use get nerfed, whether it's a free item or a premium item. Imagine whales who have the capability of spending 100s of dollars on the game being angry that the items they buy gets nerfed, but they can easily spend another 100 more on something else. What about these freemium players then? After doing all their research and listening to player recommendations on strong items to get pre-nerf, they finally spend that super lucky UR they got from the monthly giftbox or maybe they finally saved up enough money to get a token package, only to get the item nerfed right after they get it. I imagine it must be a 100 times worse for them since premium items in the game are so hard to come by for them. And this hammers home the point that Gwen is trying to make about special considerations for premium items. No one likes items getting nerfed because whatever they have spent on it gets devalued whether you are a freemium or P2W player.

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Either go back to pre sweep AQ and don't enforce any standards on anything and give up on AQ being a "game", or enforce them equally across the board.

Pre sweep AQ had no semblance of balance and survived for 20 years and counting. I think an overwhelming majority of the player base aren't too concerned with regards to game balance as much as you think they do. Has the game been on a decline recently to suddenly make the devs concerned about balance and how it affects the game? If so, where is the link? Was there a survey carried out anywhere that shows players aren't playing the game or spending on the game as often because it is unbalanced? Or is the truth, in fact the very opposite?

I think the main gripe here is that items are balanced YEARS after they have been released. People have already spent money on the item, The item has been recommended 100s of times over and over to new and returning players. Is it right to suddenly nerf them now? That just seems like scummy business practice to me. A quick cash grab if you will, then proceeding to screw over those who have already spent money on said item. If an item needs changing, it needs to be done ideally within a month of its release, and even then I think that's too generous of a deadline. Waiting for almost half a decade or over half a decade to change it? Might as well don't change it since players might have spent hours building around said item for free items or spent more money for builds based off said item for premium items.



LUPUL LUNATIC -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 7:27:35)

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So, staff could have altered the cutlasses to do less weapon damage but retain the same or substantially similar spell boosting


Yes, this is what i think should have happened to preserve the initial numbers on said premium items. And this is what i think choosing how to balance a normal item versus a premium item should be taken into account, especially if the item is "iconic" like Cutlasses that the main deal is their spellboosting effect.

Balance is important,and buyers being upset is a factor too especially because there is no refund/compensation on said premium items (and i exclude token package items because they are a bonus) UR/Token items. Buyers constantly feeling the "nerf" when buying items is not good when there is not any refund/compensation for it.



Sapphire -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 9:28:00)

Guys. For those that seem to not understand the specifics. Premium content should be fair game for adjustment. However, putting it off is the issue. Once it's been put off for weeks, months, or years...you have an ever growing set of players who have obtained said items and therefore, you must, as a business decision more than balance decision, evaluate the pros and cons of each. Adjusting an item 2 weeks or a month later has far better consequences than 2 years later and multiple clones thereof. Considering in this specific case, we are not talking about 1 item, but several as they're clones. This magnifies the issue. You could argue either way that 6% isn't a big deal, so leave it alone or change it.

But from a 40,000 foot view, the players are the customers and when premium content weeks/months/years later get changed it's a huge slap in the face to your customers. The optics look bad. The players realize that they're not actually customers, and there is no customer service. It's like selecting an item in a store and the price on the shelf is lower than what it rings up at the register. Most businesses honor a price in the name of customer service. AQ tells it's customers sorry you can't have it for that, tough luck.

And that's the disconnect.

And this conversation isn't about the cutlasses either. It's about the potential precedent of current and future bad business decisions to alter items that are premium *months or years after their release*. Dguard was another recent change. So there is going to be a sour taste left in the mouths of a huge swath of players, and the "tough luck" outlook from the top and the potential influence of a rather small group of players doesn't look too good to be quite honest.

Just understand, a potential for a lower playerbase as a result of these decisions is on the table when this occurs. That affects us all, and is why we bring it up. We don't want this game to die off. These types of decisions are far more hurtful to the game than making sure 6% isn't there. Pros and cons. The cons outweigh the pros by a mile. Some people think perfect math is the most important thing. They're wrong. Not when it kills fun. Not when players realize they're not customers. Not when the correction to the math is years later.

I truly believe balance matters. It is balance that makes the game fun mostly. Balance ensures the game isn't too easy nor too difficult. That's when boredom sets in. However, while it helps create fun, at the same time fun > balance. That's the tightrope act at hand. You just cut the rope.


If there is an insistence on changing the item, as bad as that looks to most players (most aren't going to speak up here) then keep the intended flavor. Nobody uses cutlasses for attacking. Decrease the attack damage further to keep the 28.blahblah %.



Sir Cloud -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 12:54:37)

-1 to what Broccoli said! Especially on years after-the-fact. [:@]

btw, possible good news on the unfortunate recent nerf to all the cutlasses: http://forums2.battleon.com/f/fb.asp?m=22405441



Lorekeeper -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 13:10:05)

While integrity requires that a premium item is not in any capacity exempt from balance (This is not a personal stance, it's something I specifically cleared before making a statement), it's absolutely reasonable to expect a high priority in fixing them when an error is identified in their design.

The sweep started more than 10 years ago. The premise that balance is a new notion or the game has been coasting for on pre-sweep standards is incorrect. However, even with much smaller balance fixes than a whole sweep, it can be tricky to make time for a fix in an ongoing production schedule. Especially when other major projects are in any way disrupted and impact the workload of other releases. Out of context, this was a simple bug fix that could finally be tackled when a release created an opportunity to fix it at a time when nothing else was imposing on the ability to do so -- And it's easy to jump on those chances to cross something out of an overwhelming backlog. However, I understand the importance of the context of premium gear with a long-standing issue that isn't too complex or broken to preserve its general performance within balance.

To that end, I've relayed your feedback with the suggestion of tweaking the cutlasses. This was reviewed as soon as the team was around. As the feedback was presented overnight, I ask for your patience while this is implemented, and apologize for any inconvenience in the mean time. Hopefully this can set a friendly precedent for preserving the rough power level of a bugged premium item when it has been so long since its release and the item's bugged performance can be accommodated within power standards, and we can have a constructive discussion about items in this situation.



Branl -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 16:18:02)

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That's where the void challenges come in with their ban list. Initially when it was first released I thought they would be going the DF route of just straight up banning OP items from the challenges (V1 for example) while letting it retain its original power level for regular gameplay. Hardcore players still get their share of challenge content whereas casual players can keep the strong equipment they enjoy using. It is impossible for every item in the game to be useful and this applies to all video games, some are just going to be better than others, some are useless items that will never be used, this is a fact of game design that we should learn to accept, why is there such a strong obsession to make everything "the same"?


If the totality of your game challenges have to come from when the game is actively trying to make them as difficult as possible, that's not a very engaging game. Most of AQ is spend on normal quests. If normal quests aren't allowed to be a challenge because "we must retain the original power level of literally anything because it's been a long time and it costs money", then you may as well cut the middle man and not even bother locking items behind quests to begin with. Whether people like it or not, there's clearly a interest in making the normal gameplay loop of AQ engaging, which is where things like Freedom/Boss Boost/ and damage caps come from, and it's probably for the better. If the player can be expected to be engaged and presented with differing roadblocks based on monster, there's more reason to diversify their items.

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For DF, every Inn boss nowadays gets slapped with the typical Stun + Shrink resist as well as anti-double turn mechanics. The same can be said for AQ bosses with their damage caps, Freedom and Boss Boost. That alone already hinders alot of cheese strategies that are reliant on strong items. Of course, there are ways to get around this still (like how V2's Void Barrier in DF gets around alot of stuff) but often times, it is simpler to just play according to how the boss mechanics wants you to play. Devs can just build on this standard template for bosses. Players should not be punished because devs can't come up with interesting ideas for challenge content.


They can't introduce a new immunity everytime a broken item is introduced, it makes it more likely something breaks when they are crafting a boss monster, and it's actually more time consuming in the longrun than simply changing the offending items.

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I see that your character was only created in 2021 and I don't remember seeing you much around the community in past years so I'm going to assume that you're a relatively new player. AQ's idea of "engaging content" has always been centered around strong, OP and even broken items for the past 20 years. A quick search on Youtube (for videos that aren't mine) will tell you that. And so will a quick browse through the AQ subreddit to a smaller extent. Heck even looking through past conversations in Discord servers will tell you that. Players are the most excited about getting the newest OP item, not because there's a new boss or there's a new storyline. That's just how the game has shaped up to be since its creation. The game has been able to survive on that for this long, why change it now? Don't fix something that's not broken. AQ was never meant to be a Dark Souls style game. If you're looking for a super challenging game then AQ may not be the game for you.


Ok, can we not do this? Whether you intended to or not, this just seems like an attempt to dismiss a player's concerns just because they are "newer".
And then based on the one linked character we're allowed? Really?

https://aq.battleon.com/game/flash/charview?temp=41657287
This is my original character, I tend to make new characters when I come back from a long break to re-experience the game through fresh eyes. Am I allowed to express my opinion now?

And you are mistaken my friend. People wants items to be fun, and being fun doesn't necessitate being broken. The ideal to strive for is items being balanced while being fun.
As an example, the Paleskull Champion Armor: Many people were falling over themselves to thank the devs for creating such a unique fun and interesting set. Funny thing is: The Paleskull set is actually slightly underpowered (The Armor's Choke skill and the shield are both missing a /0.85). Even beyond that, the totality of all the balanced items that see frequent usage should put to bed any ideas that an item has to be "overpowered" for players like them). EDIT: The Paleskull Weapon is actually overpowered. Given it was the item that received the most criticism, that's actually rather interesting.

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Right, I agree with you on this point. But I don't think anyone is happy when items they use get nerfed, whether it's a free item or a premium item. Imagine whales who have the capability of spending 100s of dollars on the game being angry that the items they buy gets nerfed, but they can easily spend another 100 more on something else. What about these freemium players then? After doing all their research and listening to player recommendations on strong items to get pre-nerf, they finally spend that super lucky UR they got from the monthly giftbox or maybe they finally saved up enough money to get a token package, only to get the item nerfed right after they get it. I imagine it must be a 100 times worse for them since premium items in the game are so hard to come by for them. And this hammers home the point that Gwen is trying to make about special considerations for premium items. No one likes items getting nerfed because whatever they have spent on it gets devalued whether you are a freemium or P2W player.


That's definitely preferable to "we have to balance purple rain because it is broken" vs "well, premium items we don't have to because it's been a very long time and players have unsubstantiated assumptions about an item's premium status protecting it from balancing, despite this already happening in the past, like with booster pets being nerfed 5 to 6 times and still being a mainstay in FO player's inventories".

Your last quote was addressed by Lorekeeper.



GwenMay -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 18:55:07)

I really appreciate that staff took the time to update the cutlasses to provide a 30% spellboost in exchange for a -15% weapon damage penalty. This change maintains balance standards while preserving the reasonable expectations of the players who bought the items over the last four years. As @Lorekeeper put it, this sets a friendly precedent for constructive discussions on balancing premium items in the future.

This is a complex and sensitive topic with a wide variety of opinions, many of which are valid takes on AQ balance. While the arcane cutlasses were the trigger for this particular post, I cannot emphasize enough that this is just one part of a larger discussion on balance and player expectations that I hope the AQ community and staff can continue to have in a respectful and productive manner. Please feel free to continue the discussion beyond the context of arcane cutlasses.



PD -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 22:16:07)

I guess since it seems that the change in question had already happens before I even had the time to look at what even happened. At least I still don't understand that actually happened in full as of this moment because it seems that it was patched within the day that it was actually implemented. Though I will say I tend not to say anything regarding item balance because I put a lot of trust those number crunchers and balance wizards to do whatever is necessary for the sake of the game's long-term health. So much so that I do not even question them and accept it all at face-value that what they say is true and correct. But I think at the same time, people ought to understand just how much said people can influence the conversation. Yes, we all get to have our say, but we should also admit some peoples' opinions do seem to matter more than others. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing (the experts should generally have the most say), but those people ought to be aware of their position in the community and what that means*.

*No, this isn't criticism of said people, just a yearning for the AQ numbers to be easier to understand and not be knowable to but a handful of people. Otherwise the rest of us can only sit here in unknowing anger or ignorance.

That aside, on this topic at least: I will admit I feel a little uneasy about this topic. It's at least widely acknowledged that AE reserves the final and unlimited right to do whatever they want with their product. At the same time I think most of us also agree that if the staff cares about keeping the moneyed people around, they should at least listen to us, even if they don't have to. These two facts of life keep me of the opinion that whenever I do spend money on AQ, I only get to enjoy the fun of those items for as long as it exists and I ought to have full awareness that it can be revoked or changed at any time. I think if anything those two facts are hard to reconcile. Even I find said reconciliation to be hard at times. Yet at least (personally) I've had a lot of fun experiences over the 15 years I've played AE products and wouldn't trade them for anything. I think at the same time it's a hard ask for the rest of us to consider looking at the situation like that, so I'm only stating this as a personal outlook of how I view premiums in general. I expect nobody else to think about it this way and I will make no persuasive cases. But otherwise when it comes to Premium items, I'm left at peace when I think about it that way. At least it's how I still feel about MQ and ED. And I am more or less prepared for a certain endgame for AQ as well.

Personal feelings aside and on balance in general, it's worth noting we're still waiting for various problematic items to get fair and due adjustments (SFP, EO, Love Potion, Father Time, etc) alongside long-awaited stat changes. I think a lot of frustration is coming from the fact that the resources to do important things is so limited that the game has been in a state of flux for the last few years. At least I did an analysis quite awhile ago about how an increasing number of weekly releases for AQ are either premium releases or seasonal content. Although this year at least we're tying up a few loose storylines and many items have gotten updates, at the same time there's still that fundamental issue that there's still a mountain of work left undone that desperately needs to happen. As a result we see really frustrating situations where things are left as is for WAY longer than they should be and only amplifying whatever anger is out there. It almost seems to at times that whatever we get is whatever we get with very little to no chances at revisits unless it's THAT pressing.

The first occurrence is a symptom that AQ does not have good stable and permanent sources of income to keep the lights on and the later is just the really crazy obsession of celebrating every holiday under the sun. Both end up having real effects of putting off important work, or in this case, the inability to give items proper looks and their due diligences. And the first only amplifies the problem highlighted in this thread - that AQ is becoming ever more dependent on these kinds of premium contents to keep itself alive and that means walking the fine tightrope of keeping us happy with our monetary purchases. Which only inevitably gets us to situations like this where everything gets scrutinized under near-atomic levels of scrutiny as everything gets compared to money. I can only feel that unless something is done regarding that sort of existential crisis that seems to plague AQ, we're going to keep having this discussion more and more if we haven't already.



Lorekeeper -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 22:34:45)

There are already holidays that only get shops, and holiday quest weeks can easily be light on the reward workload. I would more readily attribute the delays to major projects to the stated reasons for those delays, namely that most of the team (Pointedly including both coders) had multiple sick weeks this year. Similarly to any overflow effect from bugs in major projects such as classes, one such week can have a domino effect on future releases Covid is unfortunately not quite eager to clean up after itself in a single week.



dizzle -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 22:50:49)

I agree whole-heartedly with this bit from Sapphire

quote:

Guys. For those that seem to not understand the specifics. Premium content should be fair game for adjustment. However, putting it off is the issue. Once it's been put off for weeks, months, or years...you have an ever growing set of players who have obtained said items and therefore, you must, as a business decision more than balance decision, evaluate the pros and cons of each. Adjusting an item 2 weeks or a month later has far better consequences than 2 years later and multiple clones thereof.


This is definitely the most irritating thing I’ve experienced with this game. These minor fixes need nipped in the bud right after the release or they will just get thrown into the backlog and forgotten about for weeks, months, or years. I understand circumstances make this a not-so-easy task but in my personal opinion this should be a top priority. If it’s not and stuff continues to get pushed back then it creates a fiasco within the community whenever one of their items they’ve been using for *literally* years gets nerfed/adjusted out of nowhere. See: above.

With all that being said, I do think some slack should be given to the staff. This year has been a long and eventful one so far, and they are obviously making an effort to get to these bugs/fixes that have gotten away from them over the years. They’re in a catch 22 right now. They’re damned if the fix the items and they’re damned if they don’t. Hopefully we can all exercise some patience and have a little faith in the devs. They’re obviously taking our opinions into consideration and taking our feedback seriously which I think should be appreciated a little bit more since they absolutely don’t have to.




Korriban Gaming -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 22:54:49)

quote:

If the totality of your game challenges have to come from when the game is actively trying to make them as difficult as possible, that's not a very engaging game.

Isn't that the point of a challenge? To be challenging? I'm of the opinion that you don't seem to find the game challenging enough because you think so many items need a nerf as they trivialize challenge content being put out. Do correct me if I'm wrong, this is my assumption.

quote:

Most of AQ is spend on normal quests.

Exactly, and while most of our time is spent frolicking with experienced players with many rare and premium items, there is also a large chunk of the player base who are new and/or inexperienced. What we don't find challenging may be the very opposite for them. I think the staff has done a good job with introducing challenge bosses in the recent story releases. I see many questions from casual players on how to beat said bosses and along with it some frustration as well. And this is where the game walks on a fine line between "challenging enough" and "not too challenging". The main focus of a story release after all, should be on the story, it is not feasible to lock story content outside of super tough challenges. Hence I am ok if story bosses can be cheesed in some way for the casual player who may not have all the right gear.

quote:

They can't introduce a new immunity everytime a broken item is introduced, it makes it more likely something breaks when they are crafting a boss monster, and it's actually more time consuming in the longrun than simply changing the offending items.

I disagree with this. Look at DF's Inn bosses when they first came out vs what we have now. New immunities are introduced more often than class nerfs. I know they are clearly different games but from what I have seen, we have gotten a lot of similar changes in DF first before it came to AQ so I do believe AQ is taking alot out of DF's book. This isn't a bad thing, both games have areas where they've done well and not so well and they can learn from each other.

quote:

Ok, can we not do this? Whether you intended to or not, this just seems like an attempt to dismiss a player's concerns just because they are "newer".
And then based on the one linked character we're allowed? Really?

https://aq.battleon.com/game/flash/charview?temp=41657287
This is my original character, I tend to make new characters when I come back from a long break to re-experience the game through fresh eyes. Am I allowed to express my opinion now?

I pointed this out because I thought you were unaware of this point
quote:

AQ's idea of "engaging content" has always been centered around strong, OP and even broken items for the past 20 years. A quick search on Youtube (for videos that aren't mine) will tell you that. And so will a quick browse through the AQ subreddit to a smaller extent. Heck even looking through past conversations in Discord servers will tell you that. Players are the most excited about getting the newest OP item, not because there's a new boss or there's a new storyline. That's just how the game has shaped up to be since its creation.

In hindsight, that was probably uncalled for and I could have worded it better.

quote:

People wants items to be fun, and being fun doesn't necessitate being broken.

I agree with this point, but how often is that actually the case? Look at the most popular and fun items being used today from all different builds. I dare say an overwhelming majority of them are unbalanced on paper and is probably slated for a nerf, but is that not a key reason of what makes it fun and why many players choose to carry these items in their active inventory?

quote:

And you are mistaken my friend. People wants items to be fun, and being fun doesn't necessitate being broken. The ideal to strive for is items being balanced while being fun.
As an example, the Paleskull Champion Armor: Many people were falling over themselves to thank the devs for creating such a unique fun and interesting set. Funny thing is: The Paleskull set is actually slightly underpowered (The Armor's Choke skill and the shield are both missing a /0.85). Even beyond that, the totality of all the balanced items that see frequent usage should put to bed any ideas that an item has to be "overpowered" for players like them). EDIT: The Paleskull Weapon is actually overpowered. Given it was the item that received the most criticism, that's actually rather interesting.

As with everything else, there are obviously exceptions and Paleskull being the most notable and recent one. But these are, more often than not, exceptions rather than the norm. There are definitely players who think the weapon is really good but there are also players who think otherwise, myself included and this is where the disconnect comes in: when "overpowered" items on paper really don't seem that good in a practical game setting. The same can be said for the opposite.

Like I mentioned in my earlier post, I think the main gripe is really the absurdly long wait time it takes to update the items. As Lorekeeper has already pointed out here as well as my conversation with him on the AEO Discord yesterday, I will not delve into it further, but hopefully they will find ways of improving this in the future to prevent such cases from being a frequent occurrence.

I also did learn from my conversation with Lorekeeper yesterday that the initial change to the Cutlass was an unintended one. It is good to see that they have worked quickly to rectify it after all the feedback. All in all, I am very happy and I believe everyone else is as well, with the newest changes, credit goes to Gwen's suggestion.

quote:

This change maintains balance standards while preserving the reasonable expectations of the players who bought the items over the last four years.

I could not have said this better. Very often, people are afraid and angry that nerfs/balance changes/fixes to items devalue them or change the item's identity completely thereby leading to buyer's remorse. I am not averse to balance changes on premium items but any changes made to them has to keep their original value and identity, if not, improve on it by taking penalties from somewhere else on the item (preferably somewhere where it doesn't matter like weapon damage for the Cutlasses in this specific example) on top of it being done in a timely fashion. I believe as long as these 2 points are kept in mind for future balances, we will not see an issue.



PD -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 23:10:25)

@LoreKeeper: I always had the impression that the biggest bottleneck was actually art and animations, although I was also aware of the illnesess to IMR/Kamui (get well soon!). Though that said, thanks for the clarification. Though it's still going to be my reserved opinion that a lot more could be done if so much time weren't spent between late October through April on seasonal content/quests.

But I do have a question for the OP and maybe the staff themselves:

quote:

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.


How pragmatic is this? Or how actionable is doing this?

Premium items do also tend to set new floors. And I'd say because of this new floor setting, that a lot of them also tend to age poorly. Thus the package updates that we've had this year to a lot of older packages. I can't say that basing things off past expectations is necessarily a healthy trend given that a lot of premium items are also responsible for said power creep as well. Though said items can be reined back to earth and get re-evaluated back to standards, whatever initial effect they had in the beginning is still going to influence whatever opinion/expectation people have going forward. Even if said opinions could be mis-guided. Otherwise people don't even buy them. See: the saddest package in the world Virophage

Though that said, I would agree with this statement, in broad terms. But I really have to wonder if going by expectations is the best given that power expectations are always sticky upwards and never downwards. Even sameness/stagnation can give the appearance of downwardness depending on who you ask.



Lorekeeper -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/15/2022 23:54:52)

@Korriban: As I clarified to you in that conversation, I it was the bugged state of the weapons that was unintended. I erroneously assumed that there might be more work ongoing because of the nature of said bug: Namely, that the weapons were softlocking the game, which typically happens when they point at an asset or function that hasn't been uploaded or is erroneously named. Further, as it has also been clarified with increasing frequency: We cannot set the bar for an item being good at it being broken and causing trouble. The premise fundamentally holds no ground because it doesn't even factor an item's mechanics before establishing the assumption that they have to be overpowered in order to be good or fun. Appealing to a vague notion of a point's popularity without backing said point does not provide an argument for it, it only serves to shut down other users through a notion of being outnumbered.

To explain why this prevents discussions and is incompatible with a design environment: A requirement for an item being good that explicitly doesn't factor in any mechanics whatsoever -- Build, item design, synergies, all concepts are excluded from this notion -- posits a premise in which design efforts are essentially irrelevant. All that matters is that numbers, whichever they may be and whatever purpose they may serve, are higher than the rules say they should be. With all details being irrelevant to the definition, there is no room for creative or technical design topics, and it can't be engaged with in discussion. To illustrate why this is the case, let's perform a thought experiment by entertaining the notion of using this as a general definition.



Thesis: The reason for an item being good or fun has nothing good with what specifically it does, but with it being broken in an overpowered way.

Definitions: What does being broken or overpowered mean? Conveniently, there happens to be a frequently linked thread breaking down the nature of balance, the definition of broken items, and the issues these cause.

Result: Because nobody wants to create an item that isn't good or fun, the paradigm would then be that every single item created needs to run afoul of the issues listed in this thread. Throwing out the notion of an equal value of player experiences, the integrity of our word as developers, design space for future items, and the common framework that keeps developers on the same page so that releases don't take much, much longer to create. If it doesn't go so far as causing this, items aren't good, regardless of what they specifically do.



That illustrates why this notion can't give other users something to engage with in a discussion, be worked with as a design standard, or even be used as a general definition. The notion that an item has to be overpowered to be good may be a personal preference, but to apply it as a general definition in any sense requires assumptions that cannot be made in an actual discussion. If a user sets the bar for an item being good for their purposes this high, that is a valid personal preference. One that the common power creep of a live service RPG logically pushes any optimization-oriented user who owns most top level items towards -- It's understandable that one might only want to change a top tier item for something better, if one strictly wants to see the highest numbers they can. However, this cannot logically change the bar for an item being good in and of itself in the first place.



Korriban Gaming -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/16/2022 0:35:06)

quote:

We cannot set the bar for an item being good at it being broken and causing trouble

Fair point but that is very often the case whether or not you like to admit it.

quote:

Appealing to a vague notion of a point's popularity without backing said point does not provide an argument for it, it only serves to shut down other users through a notion of being outnumbered.

Players use items because of 2 reasons, they are fun and/or strong. I don't think any player consciously makes the choice to go for items that are weak or aren't fun for them. The popularity of an item is evidence of players liking the item for 1 or both of the points I mentioned. This is a statistic based off actual item usage, not some arbitrary thing that was randomly pulled out, as such I believe it is a good point for an argument.

quote:

Because nobody wants to create an item that isn't good or fun, the paradigm would then be that every single item created needs to run afoul of the issues listed in this thread.

Not every item needs to or can hit the mark. This is normal for every game that has 1000s of items. No one is asking for every single new item to be good or fun either (though of course that would be ideal) as that is impractical. As such, we need to come to terms that some items are just not ever going to be used and that is not a big deal. However, this is different for premium items as I'm sure the intention behind making an item premium is to drive sales. Are there lackluster premium items? Yes, like some of the examples PD mentioned. Do they need to be broken or unbalanced to sell? Not necessarily. Do they need to be strong to sell? Absolutely.

quote:

If a user sets the bar for an item being good for their purposes this high, that is a valid personal preference. One that the common power creep of a live service RPG logically pushes any optimization-oriented user who owns most top level items towards -- It's understandable that one might only want to change a top tier item for something better, if one strictly wants to see the highest numbers they can. However, this cannot logically change the bar for an item being good in and of itself in the first place.

Fair point and I agree. It's really a first world personal problem as I do have most of the best items in the game hence my bar is set pretty high. That being said, as I mentioned above, not every item is going to hit the mark regardless of whether or not it's being compared to other top items and that's fine, the exception being premium items because those need to be good for them to sell. Not OP or unbalanced, but good, very good even.

Anyways, these are the 2 main points I was trying to make, I'm not sure if you caught it.
quote:

Like I mentioned in my earlier post, I think the main gripe is really the absurdly long wait time it takes to update the items. As Lorekeeper has already pointed out here as well as my conversation with him on the AEO Discord yesterday, I will not delve into it further, but hopefully they will find ways of improving this in the future to prevent such cases from being a frequent occurrence.

You already agree with regards to the long times due to opportunity cost and gave your explanation for this point yesterday so I have nothing more to add on to it other than wait and see how similar situations will be handled in the future.

quote:

I could not have said this better. Very often, people are afraid and angry that nerfs/balance changes/fixes to items devalue them or change the item's identity completely thereby leading to buyer's remorse. I am not averse to balance changes on premium items but any changes made to them has to keep their original value and identity, if not, improve on it by taking penalties from somewhere else on the item (preferably somewhere where it doesn't matter like weapon damage for the Cutlasses in this specific example) on top of it being done in a timely fashion. I believe as long as these 2 points are kept in mind for future balances, we will not see an issue.

The change to the Cutlass was a good example. In its first iteration, the identity of it still being the strongest spell booster was retained but what was lost was the value since it got a 6% nerf. The second iteration however, fixed that issue. It still is the strongest spell booster in the game and the original value was not only not lost, but also increased. This was possible with a penalty in a place that did not matter to make the weapon balanced. I think this should be the way forward when staff looks at fixing items, premium or not and I think you will have a lot more happy players for future changes.



Lorekeeper -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/16/2022 8:42:16)

quote:

Fair point but that is very often the case whether or not you like to admit it.


This is not a matter of admission. Please refer to the entirety of the post you're quoting for the reason why it makes no logical sense to set the bar at 'broken' regardless of specific mechanics. An item can be good *and* broken, and remain good when it is fixed. Unless we commit the domino effect of fallacies outlined above. As explained in the balance thread linked in the post, which you have interacted with as well: It's always possible for a buff or nerf to go too far, and take us right back to the start. That is, of course, a problem, and never the goal. When that happens, it's just as important to fix as the original issue.

Sometimes this is a problem with the nature of the status effect called by the item, sometimes with the item itself, but it's self-evident that the objective of a fix can't be not fixing the item at all. An item is good or not because of its specific mechanics. If those mechanics wouldn't be good unless they were broken, then there is an underlying design choice issue that is fixed with a redesign.

quote:

Players use items because of 2 reasons, they are fun and/or strong. I don't think any player consciously makes the choice to go for items that are weak or aren't fun for them. The popularity of an item is evidence of players liking the item for 1 or both of the points I mentioned. This is a statistic based off actual item usage, not some arbitrary thing that was randomly pulled out, as such I believe it is a good point for an argument.


I would recommend reading the rest of my post as a reference on why making an appeal to popularity without substantiating the original point does not substitute the work of substantiating that point, as the same goes for reiterating the appeal. If used as a pathos appeal, it would work perfectly at the end of a logical point (Substantiating an argument, then making an appeal to emotion to add gravitas), but reiterating it by itself just directly ignores everything I said. Let's please talk to each other, not at each other.

quote:

In its first iteration, the identity of it still being the strongest spell booster was retained but what was lost was the value since it got a 6% nerf. The second iteration however, fixed that issue.


An item's place in power rankings is not its identity; but a consequence of said identity. The problem here was making a quick bug fix when we could have checked if the overall performance could be maintained. The penalty may seem like it doesn't matter, as many penalties can be ignored when nuking mooks, but it's relevant in longer fights such as bosses and thus still a disadvantage. Some penalties are conditional, and that's fine. It's only a problem when they could never possibly come up, add power to what they pay for, or are countered by the very thing they pay for -- We couldn't reasonably pay -BtH for autohit, after all.



Sapphire -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/16/2022 9:36:03)

Thanks to staff for circling back and making a more proper adjustment to the cutlasses. I think most are happy with this outcome.



Lorekeeper -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/16/2022 10:44:03)

Thank you for all the constructive feedback.



dr jo -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/16/2022 16:46:21)

Definitely what SapphireCatalyst2021 said :) +1 also more than happy with the new balance to the cutlasses



Heroes of the Scape -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/17/2022 15:05:10)

I'm not happy with the second change. I know how the staff doesn't cater to specific people and that's not my point.

My primary issue is with the "penalty". I understand that it is a disadvantage against bosses/challenges, but that is the only time. 99.9% of the time the reduced weapon damage makes no difference whatsoever. How does that constitute a penalty? A penalty is something that would have an effect the majority of the time. Status effects cost damage, berserk costs bth. Somehow spell boosting only costs something the almost never happens. This to me feels like pandering. Just my two cents.



Sir Cloud -> RE: On Nerfing Premium Items (9/17/2022 16:18:47)

Big thanks to Hollow + Staff for making the right decision on bringing the cutlasses back to their original flavor. Definitely happy with this outcome![:D]



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