how do you think ashes should manage 'nerfing'

Sooo you saved up for an awesome sword or gear item, or chosen a skill because it fits your playstyle. Then they change or nerf it and it becomes useless to you and are disappointed. I hate when that happens. What should intrepid then do!?

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Varkun

There will always be skills that will over preform and let's face it players will gravitate towards and use those over preforming skills. While this will be fun for those who are of the correct class and can use the over preforming skills those on the receiving end its quite often not so much fun. Balance from my way of thinking can be somewhat of a subjective thing when you mix it in with class diversity, do you want every class to be able to do everything or do you want to maintain class diversity and uniqueness. I have lost count of the number of times I have seen people call for nurfs to skills from other classes simply because they find it hard to counter the class and its skills.

Ashes is going to operate on more of a hard counter class wise that is each class will have another class that it will find harder to fight because of its skills this hard counter can be lessened with the secondary class and its augments. We also need to remember that Ashes will not be balanced for 1v1 but for group play 8v8.

All we can do as a community is to provide constructive feedback through the test phases so that the worst of the imbalances do not occur. It is the nature of MMO's that they grow and evolve over time, skills may change for good or ill. But one thing I do not want to see is classes become so homogenised there is virtually no class identity, looking at you ESO.

Wololo

this is how balancing goes in games. you make something to strong so that its easyer to tone down after. they alrdy did this with most items like bonesmasher/spiritpierce/nightfall/darkpac. those were stupidly strong and are now in a good spot. it is also a way to introduce a skill or item to more players and see who prefers what. though i agree a nerf should never lead to something being useless with disappointment.

Morashtak

leamese wrote: »

Sooo you saved up for an awesome sword or gear item, or chosen a skill because it fits your playstyle. Then they change or nerf it and it becomes useless to you and are disappointed. I hate when that happens. What should intrepid then do!?

With proper testing this should not happen - There are too many examples of this happening in other games for IS to release anything into the game that requires it to be nerfed to uselessness. Players should be very vocal when finding an exploit and the devs should keep it in mind that clever players will look and find combinations of items and/or skills that give unintended competitive advantage.

On the other hand the devs should look back at some examples of items and classes that so under performed that only a few were used, WoW's "hybrid tax" being one - During development it was feared that the hybrid classes (Paladin, Shaman, and Druid) were overpowered so their abilities were tuned down too much at release.

Both of the extremes can be avoided with proper and extensive testing.

Damokles

I would not mind, if the nerf is reasonable.

Damokles

@Morashtak
The true problem for Paladins was, that Blizzard reworked the whole paladin gameplay right before release. There were tons of abilities that got cut for the Seal system, and the biggest reason, for why the paladin was a bad main tank in classic was, that he had no taunt. They gave tbe paladin a single target taunt in BC and he became suddnely one of the best maintanks xD

Noaani

Morashtak wrote: »

With proper testing this should not happen

But it will happen.

Even with all the testing in the world, things will never be 100%

This holds true for anything with a time crunch - which is to say literally any commercial product.

Rather than holding companies to task for there being issues in their product, we should be expecting this to be the case, but also expect these same companies to put their best effort forward in fixing those same issues.

---

If an item or ability is overpowered and in need of nerfing, I'd personally like to see developers outright saying as much at the earliest possible point in time. It doesn't necessarily need to be fixed immediately (the next patch or balance pass is fine), but the sooner it is stated as being on the cards, the fewer players have a valid reason to be upset about it when it happens. I mean, if players know an item is going to have it's usefulness adjusted downwards before they get the item, then they have no real complaints to make.

Azathoth

Cautiously and with feedback from the community?

Dygz

Probably really means that some people got the item or ability because it was OP and "useless" really just means it's no longer OP.
There should be ways to compensate for the re-balance and succeed with different abilities and/or augments, if necessary - especially with all the types of augments Ashes will have.

CrazySquiggle

My expectation for nerfs and balance fall in line with how I feel about PVP in Tera. There are 4 classes that will terrify you in PVP.

First is the Warrior, the dual-wielding iframe monster that will tear you apart if they hit you even once. You will get stun locked, then hit so many times you won't be able to count, then be dead in 1-3 seconds depending on their build.

Second is the Lancer. Let me start by saying that this is my class, and yes I am a dickhead and love every single moment you scream at me and call me a cheater

The Lancer is capable of stun-locking 5 people at the same time and slowly killing them while they are unable to move.

Third would be the Mystic, yes a healer is dangerous in solo or group PVP. Not just because it is a healer, but because they can put you to sleep for 12 seconds then summon their thrall of wrath and one-shot you regardless of class

Last is the Priest . . . I love playing my priest in PVP as well because I can put you to sleep for 13 seconds and dance in front of you. The CD for the sleep is about 20 seconds when glyphed (don't remember exact number because I have not played in a while), so when you finally wake up I just dodge a few times then sleep you again. The only class that can consistently kill a priest is a warrior if they can iframe the sleep in time then instantly stun lock them down. Other than that, you are just gonna get a draw from that duel.

If you asked me if any of this needed nerfed, I would say no, because these can all be countered in group play like 3v3 and 5v5. They do seem overpowered or annoying to a certain degree, but are not the most overpowered classes. Each class has something that drags it down, whether it be a really high skill ceiling or situational advantages. That is what I am hoping for with the balance in AoC.

Nagash

just nerf ashes like any rts make something op then nerf it to the point where its useless ^^

Damokles

whitedude31 wrote: »

My expectation for nerfs and balance fall in line with how I feel about PVP in Tera. There are 4 classes that will terrify you in PVP.

First is the Warrior, the dual-wielding iframe monster that will tear you apart if they hit you even once. You will get stun locked, then hit so many times you won't be able to count, then be dead in 1-3 seconds depending on their build.

Second is the Lancer. Let me start by saying that this is my class, and yes I am a dickhead and love every single moment you scream at me and call me a cheater The Lancer is capable of stun-locking 5 people at the same time and slowly killing them while they are unable to move.

Third would be the Mystic, yes a healer is dangerous in solo or group PVP. Not just because it is a healer, but because they can put you to sleep for 12 seconds then summon their thrall of wrath and one-shot you regardless of class

Last is the Priest . . . I love playing my priest in PVP as well because I can put you to sleep for 13 seconds and dance in front of you. The CD for the sleep is about 20 seconds when glyphed (don't remember exact number because I have not played in a while), so when you finally wake up I just dodge a few times then sleep you again. The only class that can consistently kill a priest is a warrior if they can iframe the sleep in time then instantly stun lock them down. Other than that, you are just gonna get a draw from that duel.

If you asked me if any of this needed nerfed, I would say no, because these can all be countered in group play like 3v3 and 5v5. They do seem overpowered or annoying to a certain degree, but are not the most overpowered classes. Each class has something that drags it down, whether it be a really high skill ceiling or situational advantages. That is what I am hoping for with the balance in AoC.

I was a Mystik main, those were some good times xD

Ferryman

I would like to see calm and minor nerfs and in situations when those are really needed. Meaning, nerfing should aim to drop OP items and abilities for really good stage, so those will still have a good position even after the nerf. After slight nerfing it is easy to follow the effects and nerf more later if needed. Games should avoid nerfing things to the ground and total shit, it is just annoying as hell.

If I think of WoW, there the classes goes with FOTM system and I guess few of the reasons for this is to push people use alts and that way to play more, and that also makes balancing kind of easier. This works well I guess, but this kind of balancing is not thought from player pov.

Numilor

No eso balancing in ashes please.

ilisfet

Welp, the first step to solving your nerf problem is to not do what Wrobel did to ESO and instead do what any competent balancer would do, like Wheeler is trying to do in ESO or Konk was trying before Wheeler took over:

Establish a baseline of power, a "Jedi Curve."

With every ability, skill, item, and passive adhering to some formula of resources/skill in to power out with some tolerance for deviation, you can make sure stuff isn't wildly overtuned or undertuned to begin with and players will also feel adjustments are fair since they can also feel what that baseline is.

Wrobel didn't have a baseline, and Wheeler is trying to establish that, which is resulting in these massive changes in ability performance currently and why balance was so shite under Wrobel. Wrobel treated symptoms either when it impacted the bottom line or when outcry over an issue became deafening.

But, enough about ESO. In general, to avoid "being nerfed into oblivion" the balancing devs need to a) have a baseline for stuffs' power and b) be competent enough to find the root cause of balance issues and not just address symptoms.

A rough example of this is say people are dying too fast in PvP, so the devs look at this and just nerf the most used abilities, when in actuality it was the armor penetration coupled with a high crit rate and modifier that's dropping the TTD. While there's a lot of levers in this one (increase armor, increase healing, decrease damage, decrease penetration, decrease crit rate, decrease crit mod, etc.), a better dev may realise players have effectively 0 armor, so decreases penetration or replaces some armor with impenetrable damage reduction, thereby leaving mitigation and penetration in PvE the same while increasing TTD in PvP.

To answer the title more directly, I think Intrepid should establish a Jedi Curve, design everything around it, playtest (internally and with APOC) to find stuff that numerically looks inline but mechanically out, and tweak things to within the tolerable range while retaining the core identity of that item.

nefelia

Morashtak wrote: »

leamese wrote: »

Sooo you saved up for an awesome sword or gear item, or chosen a skill because it fits your playstyle. Then they change or nerf it and it becomes useless to you and are disappointed. I hate when that happens. What should intrepid then do!?

With proper testing this should not happen - There are too many examples of this happening in other games for IS to release anything into the game that requires it to be nerfed to uselessness.

I'm not sure any amount of in-house testing can properly compensate for the thousands of creative players who will explore every possible way to abuse a new ability - or simply just stumble upon an unlikely but overpowered combination. I'd definitely like to see extensive testing to minimize the frequency of over-tuned abilities, but I don't expect to ever see an end to them.

What I'm more concerned about is how IS will handle corrections once OP abilities are discovered. My recent experience - with Rift - was rather disheartening, with devs either ignoring blatantly OP abilities (when they belonged to P2W souls) or nerfing the OP ability to oblivion. Their ineptitude in regards to balance was the final nail in the coffin of Rift's PvP.

I would have much rather seen rapid but minor corrections to OP abilities, followed by an observation period and further corrections as needed. Even though that means OP abilities can continue to be an issue throughout a series of corrections and observations, at least the player base would be aware that progressive balancing is happening, and the chances of over-correction are greatly reduced.

Something else I learned from the Rift community in regards to balance: the community can not always be trusted. People will advocate for their preferred class: ignoring or justifying OP abilities that they don't want to see nerfed for selfish reasons, or making false claims against other classes' abilities in order to neuter their opponents. Rift's rogue community was especially prone to such behaviour, and even I fell into the trap of subjectivity at times.

Damokles

nefelia wrote: »

Something else I learned from the Rift community in regards to balance: the community can not always be trusted. People will advocate for their preferred class: ignoring or justifying OP abilities that they don't want to see nerfed for selfish reasons, or making false claims against other classes' abilities in order to neuter their opponents. Rift's rogue community was especially prone to such behaviour, and even I fell into the trap of subjectivity at times.

Thats just the rogue community in general though

My opinion is always, that skill rectifies opness. I played one of the weakest classes in WoW for decades in raiding (combat rogue), and was always in the top 3 (if the gear was at least on the same lvl).
I saw players with strong classes do horrible damage, just because they mindlessly followed the trends and didnt properly learn all the ins and outs of the class.

Nagash

I just hope intrepid don't do balance tests in a vacuum. The best way to balance games is to see it work in real game scenarios

xlangatangx

Deepmind would be interesting. It's already in the gaming industry. Why not test, find exploits, and balance games? There's obvious restrictions that would need to be set on Deepmind (APM, EPM, vision, etc...), but should be able to provide very useful feedback on where a healthy balance point is between classes. It is capable of running thousands of simulations against itself in a short period of time, and could use those learnings to play against actual people to check if its discoveries are fair.

A bit off topic, but food for thought.

https://deepmind.com/

Fathym

If the balancing team is nerfing things into completely useless trash, then the game has a crappy balancing team. One thing I have always mention in discussion about game design; in any game, balance teams should always be comprised of avid players. That way they always have an intimate, first hand, knowledge of what feels fun and unfun from a player perspective. Nerfing anything into the ground is always the epitome of unfun design.

Blueh

I like the sledgehammer approach just smash the op things into the ground preferably after a month so ppl have time to get them before they are nerfed into nothingness. Ahh imgine lvling a new profession or alt char and then BOOM useless, amazin~~

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