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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
pvp Game balance in reference to rating
ArchivedUser
Guest
Now this is just my opinion feel free to post and disagree. Now this post is about using leader boards properly to guage game balance.
SO lets say we have a 3v3 bracket and 80 of the top 100 (could be 200 or 300) have a bard on that team..
Well that is a clear inidcator that the bard class should be looked at to see why. Well if it is because they provide some niche ability then I would not recomend a nerf but to give other classes some unique abilities to bring to the table. But if its because set of abilities or to op then nerf.
Now if You see now no tanks in the top 100 as a matter a fact you do not see any tanks until top rated team 163(true story) It is pretty obvious they need to buffed not nerfed. If you do nerf it people are going to be wondering why?
Ideally speaking if you were able to balance the classes correctly then you would have about each class represent 1/8 of the top 100 or top 300 but not always the case.
Now there will be people saying that there class needs to be buffed. Now this is kind of a catch all but you could always say. Well so and so is a mage and he is really high rated maybe not in the top 100 or 200 but really high rated so you need to lift your game. Well that could be said about every class for the most part.
So you have one player playing one class to nearly its full potential and is very high rated so everyone needs to lift their game or one player playing a class near their full potential and they are just beating every one proves class needs to be nerfed.
Well is the entire class going to get nerfed cause one player is playing it so well he makes it look easy. You can but if you are not that player you are going to be wondering why the class is getting nerfed. Kind of like the guy that messes up the curve in reference to college grades.
I do not think that because well one bard is doing awesome but the rest of them are not doing to well that all the bards need to lift their game. Well one bard made it top hundred so rest of the bards need to lift their game.
The other side of the coin is well at low skill or low rating some class just do a lot better than others and if there are a lot of low rated people then it would seem that their class needs to be buffed or a certain class nerfed. When in reality they need to lift their game.
So at what rating should game balanced be balanced at. Well as ratings go if you were to make a graph in the form of a pyramid you would find out that it gets very very steep the higher the rating goes. So it is safe to say that people at the top are exceptional and are the exceptions and should be cut off. I dont think it would be fair to balance the game in terms of the top one hundred teams.
I think it should be the rating in which you have 1000 people at that rating and up which includes the higher rated teams.. For example at lets say at 1000 rating lets say is really easy to get so they are millions of people at that rating but lets say at 1500 little harder only 100,000 people at that rating well if you go to 2000 rating there are only 1000 people at that rating anything above that it goes into less than 100 less than 50 and less than 10. In other words you need to go down rating and include some of the people that have lowere rating than some of highest rated players. Or the top of the pyramid not just the very very top of the pyramid. I mean if you have a rating that only 1000 other people have been able to get that still means you are pretty good.
You could even go lower and say at the rating that 5000 people have and up. Or top 5000 people. But you should not be nerfing a class just because one or two players play a class very well that is punishing the entire class cause a few people have esceptional skiills.
Some would say it should it should be balanced for average rating which is were the majority of the people play but I think it should be balanced at the gameplay that is near its full potential like lets say 85 to 90% its full potentail. If you go above 90 there are so few people at that rating it would really be unfair to the rest of that class to nerf them or not buff them cause well one mage is on the one of top one hundred teams that means all other mages need to lift their game not be buffed.
SO lets say we have a 3v3 bracket and 80 of the top 100 (could be 200 or 300) have a bard on that team..
Well that is a clear inidcator that the bard class should be looked at to see why. Well if it is because they provide some niche ability then I would not recomend a nerf but to give other classes some unique abilities to bring to the table. But if its because set of abilities or to op then nerf.
Now if You see now no tanks in the top 100 as a matter a fact you do not see any tanks until top rated team 163(true story) It is pretty obvious they need to buffed not nerfed. If you do nerf it people are going to be wondering why?
Ideally speaking if you were able to balance the classes correctly then you would have about each class represent 1/8 of the top 100 or top 300 but not always the case.
Now there will be people saying that there class needs to be buffed. Now this is kind of a catch all but you could always say. Well so and so is a mage and he is really high rated maybe not in the top 100 or 200 but really high rated so you need to lift your game. Well that could be said about every class for the most part.
So you have one player playing one class to nearly its full potential and is very high rated so everyone needs to lift their game or one player playing a class near their full potential and they are just beating every one proves class needs to be nerfed.
Well is the entire class going to get nerfed cause one player is playing it so well he makes it look easy. You can but if you are not that player you are going to be wondering why the class is getting nerfed. Kind of like the guy that messes up the curve in reference to college grades.
I do not think that because well one bard is doing awesome but the rest of them are not doing to well that all the bards need to lift their game. Well one bard made it top hundred so rest of the bards need to lift their game.
The other side of the coin is well at low skill or low rating some class just do a lot better than others and if there are a lot of low rated people then it would seem that their class needs to be buffed or a certain class nerfed. When in reality they need to lift their game.
So at what rating should game balanced be balanced at. Well as ratings go if you were to make a graph in the form of a pyramid you would find out that it gets very very steep the higher the rating goes. So it is safe to say that people at the top are exceptional and are the exceptions and should be cut off. I dont think it would be fair to balance the game in terms of the top one hundred teams.
I think it should be the rating in which you have 1000 people at that rating and up which includes the higher rated teams.. For example at lets say at 1000 rating lets say is really easy to get so they are millions of people at that rating but lets say at 1500 little harder only 100,000 people at that rating well if you go to 2000 rating there are only 1000 people at that rating anything above that it goes into less than 100 less than 50 and less than 10. In other words you need to go down rating and include some of the people that have lowere rating than some of highest rated players. Or the top of the pyramid not just the very very top of the pyramid. I mean if you have a rating that only 1000 other people have been able to get that still means you are pretty good.
You could even go lower and say at the rating that 5000 people have and up. Or top 5000 people. But you should not be nerfing a class just because one or two players play a class very well that is punishing the entire class cause a few people have esceptional skiills.
Some would say it should it should be balanced for average rating which is were the majority of the people play but I think it should be balanced at the gameplay that is near its full potential like lets say 85 to 90% its full potentail. If you go above 90 there are so few people at that rating it would really be unfair to the rest of that class to nerf them or not buff them cause well one mage is on the one of top one hundred teams that means all other mages need to lift their game not be buffed.
0
Comments
- I think these concerns will be resolved in Alpha 1, Alpha 2 and Betas
- These ratings are considered by how many wins the team has, right ? Because there is a thing called " Wintrading " ... in some MMOs. I personally don't like the idea of " ratings " - in need of another type of System. ( tbh i don't really care for Arena/ BattleGround PvP, but might as well ask )
How do you feel about not having " Meta " ? Because that's how i feel the" Rock-Paper-Scissors-Column-Style " Combat for Ashes of Creation - i think its this approach that* will prevent the term " Meta " from existing. From what i can tell ... I think this approach of Combat will give some " lee-way " for the " Anti-match-ups " ... as opposed to ... " laughable-stomp " .
Ratings are essentially a table of micro-data.
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Examine all PvP fights.
Discard those without a clear winner.
For each class, examine how many times their side won vs how many times their side lost.
Any class that produces a result of 40 - 60% can be considered generally balanced.
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The problem with ratings is that most PvP players just follow. Someone will use a group setup on Twitch or something, and then everyone will use that because it means they don't need to think.
Most MMO builds or setups that players have considered OP simply because everyone uses them can be traced back to one person that posted about it on the forums, put up a video about it on YouTube or streamed it on Twitch.
Most of these players are either too lazy or too dumb to look at the game themselves and come up with their own builds. They look at something that someone had some success with and simply copy it.
While it absolutely is true that some games have balance issues, it is far more common for player populations to be the issue - but we all just blame the game anyway.
i.e. Skill does 50% less dmg in pvp than it would do in pve.
As far as rating and balance are concerned, I don't really like the idea of having a rating or a leader board. Maybe its nostalgia, but I like the good old days when people would be known for how good they were via word of mouth. Some people would go as far as to hide their builds and not tell anyone, giving them an edge. These kinds of things build community, and you can become infamous through this kind of system.
These modern arena pvp games, all you ever see is a name on a leaderboard. You never face the player or get to learn from what they do. People can get suck in lower ratings without ever learning, cause the only people they go up against are in the same skill bracket.
Maybe these builds in the top 10% arent actually the best build, but they are just played by superior players.
I may be wrong but it is an interesting thought and / or idea.
They are also approaching class balance with a rock/paper/scissors mindset so even if something is strong and becomes meta, the player base can start building to counter it.
What it is, though, is lazy, poorly managed game development. Any game that does this is going to have massive issues in relation to PvP combat and balance.
A game that simply looks at combat a a single, that then balances encounters and players around the same philosophy, is going to have an easier time maintaining something resembling balance.