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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.
how do you think ashes should manage 'nerfing'
leamese
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
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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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.
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.
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
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.
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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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
A bit off topic, but food for thought.
https://deepmind.com/
Somebody has been at the wrong end of the nerf bat one time too many.
If they consider nerfing something connected to PVP they should consult with the highest perfoming PVPers. If it is PVE, they should consult with the highest performing PVErs.
The reason for this is that devs usually nerf based on popularity. For example half of the top 10 spots on the arena ladder are mages, devs might respond by nerfing mages when the problem is that mages are simply more fun or popular.