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Compounding effects
Tragnar
Member
This topic has been on my mind for quite awhile. We know that the goal for gear is to have 40-50% power influence over our characters. This would suggest that the power influence of other customization like skill trees (that were showed in last dev discussion afaik) and augments have the remaining percentages (that is 50-60%) - if you want to know only my conclusion and not how i got there skip to the end after the quote
CONCLUSION
What I am concerned about is that with the gigantic amount of customization and exclusive gear quality we could very well see a fully optimized character able to dish out the same numbers as a full 8man group if he has all the available augments, the top quality gear and all they have is the average dungeon drops.
Do you have any points that might expect easier balance? Personally I see only the balance being harder and harder to achieve with every customization option they have announced.
In the recent dev discussion we can see that the presented character had 134 available skill points to allocate - it is a strong possibility that it was increased so the character was "maxed out" even though in reality we could have a third of those points or more likely the same as the amount of levels. Also we know that there are going to be quite a lot of augments available - and it seems that those are going to have more impact than 1 skill point
What I am curious about is how many of those customization options are going to temper with the power level and how many are going to be pure utilities.
We could for imagination sake say that we will have only 50 skill points available - 1 skill point could in theory represent 1% dmg increase (with 0.1% difference) and it could increase linearly with the amount of skill points allocated. Also we can see that at least for now there are 9 passive/active/weapon skills. Also it is not unreasonable to say that there will be multiple compounding interactions between those. Even if in the skill tree were only 3 compounding effects (like bleeds increase the dmg of backstab by x%, backstab deals x% more dmg, backstab costs x% less resources).
So considering the above we could have sweaty theorycrafter get together all skill points allocated into those that have 1.1% power allocated evenly between the 3 compounding effects with 17 points into 2 of those and last with 16 points. This will give him three linear power increases of 18.7%, 18.7% and 17.6% which compound on each other to give total 65.69% power increase.
However if you allocate unevenly and unknowingly allocate into the average ones - not the better outliers then you could have three linear power increases of 10%, 10%, 30% for a total 57.3% power increase.
If we consider gear stat allocation to be within similar margins and roughly same difference in power between the average "good" and the best in 57.3% and 65.69% then the actual power difference of all customization with gear is between 147.43% (the average "good") and 174.53% (best).
So let's say the basic rogue-rogue class has base output of 100 then the average person is going to scale up to 247.43dps and the optimized person 274.53dps. This is of course under the assumption that both have the same amount of available customatization and the same quality gear.
This is a definition of a near-perfect balance (0.1% difference between options).
So let's say the balance misses a bit and even though the average power of skill points is still 1%, but the outliers rise are in the range of 0.3-1.7%. then by going the same route above you retain the average "good" with 57.3% power increase, but the best outlier spikes to 28.9%, 28.9% and 27.2% for the 3 compounding effects. Which is in total 111.34% power increase. Also if gear optimatization lies within the same margin you retain the average 147.43% power increase for the average "good" builds, but the best spike to 346.66%.
This would mean that while the average guy does 247.43dps the best build rises up to 446.66dps and that is considering that both have the same quality of gear and the same customization options. Also I have completely neglected the existence of augments. Which can only deepen the difference more
CONCLUSION
What I am concerned about is that with the gigantic amount of customization and exclusive gear quality we could very well see a fully optimized character able to dish out the same numbers as a full 8man group if he has all the available augments, the top quality gear and all they have is the average dungeon drops.
Do you have any points that might expect easier balance? Personally I see only the balance being harder and harder to achieve with every customization option they have announced.
“Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.”
― Plato
― Plato
2
Comments
And you did not even touch the surface of the layers of costimization!
There is racial differences,social augments, religious augments, choice of which armor tier (heavy,medium,light), weapon choices with spells, power scaling issues with levels, group dynamics and more.
The shere amount of layers is unprecedented.
Most games involving PvP and in depth PvE have like 3-4 layers whereas ashes will have around 10-12 from what i have counted.
I really like that from a theorycrafting and game depth´s perpective but i hope it won´t get out of hand in terms of balancing.
Also here comes the goal that fights should be lasting 30seconds for the majority of playerbase then by consequence with such deep customization disparity you are eventually going to get to the point of oneshots by skilled players that are going to exploit the crit-headshot aiming system. And by oneshots I don't mean League of Legends oneshots that are done under 0.1s, but oneshots that happen inside a stun window (which in MMO that is 3-6seconds usually)
― Plato
I don't really get your point here.
Sure they do their job, but the balancing team is confronted with issues the company put on themselves.
While people surely appreciate getting features to play with, nobody is (or at least should be) asking for something absurdly complicated nobody can balance.
If people are mad about the game not being balanced they are (in most cases) rightfully so since the problems / features making balance impossible are introduced by the company itself.
I personally agree with the conclusion from your first post.
Also this is no "new" thing to happen in MMOS, look at World of Warcraft right now.
A guy named Rextroy does nothing else on his youtube channel than trying out stuff to show how broken the system in place is.
Including legit oneshots and much more.
The road that lead there was devs chasing an unreached level of individual customization to for example break up meta gaming.
Turns out it doesn't work and creates a ton of work, with next to no positive impact on meta gaming.
In fact overly complex systems will insentivies people to search for meta builds, since most people don't want to waste their free time on trying out all the possible options.
I personally think they should concentrate on some core features and drop most other stuff for release.
MMOS have the option of adding more down the line, you don't need everything fleshed out at release.
Also it is easier to get player feedback once people can actually play the game.
Why would level be a relevant contributing factor?
Everyone will reach max level eventually so it will be irrelevant for most of the playtime.
Where did I propose that level contributes 0% to player power? My entire point is that they have put on themselves a big burden with a ton of customization that is extremely tough to balance and so far there have been no system that could make balance easier - at least to my knowledge
Please quote me where did you got even the notion that I might have an opinion that they should remove customization. I literally don't understand from what you could conjure up that I might think that
― Plato
Now in terms of skill point/gear optimization. Could soft caps at all factor into these calculations? I'm not a math guy but I'm curious to see if we could use skill points to reach a certain crit cap and then stack heavy attack power gear. Making it so that the general stats won't vary that much.
We will have to see in the alpha - I personally can't wait to see those skill trees
― Plato
― Plato
Getting the game running without server crashes with the given number of players, or making sure npc's spawn, making sure quest text appears and so on are the kind of things that Alphas are for.
I am pretty sure balancing is a focus around Betas.
"BTW, Balancing in Ashes of Creation is "group focused".[266]
There will be match ups in 1v1s where one class will be superior to another; and that application should be a rock-paper-scissors dynamic. We want there to be counter-play between the different classes... Instead it's going to be a group focused balance, where as long as you have the diversity of classes present, that's going to be an equal level playing field. It's going to be very dependent on skill and strategy.[266] – Steven Sharif"
If your going in looking to see if your class feels strong or weak against a certain class, you may be disapointed if that class is a counter to your class or build. Or if you are are counter to them. Also, the intent is for you to be able to so fully alter your build as to counter your normal class hard counter.
Given all of this, I cannot see how you can expect to determine balance either quickly or project years into the future when active balancing hasn't even started.
Further info on the intended class balance. The last 2 posts at the bottom of the page are in depth on this.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/42174/you-got-questions-we-got-answers/p2
You simply just cannot balance tweak an archetype that has 6 scaling skills that compound on each other and another archetype that has only 2. In such a case you need to redesign whole kits and let me tell you - Ashes has a gigantic amount of customization to make this whole ordeal a nightmare.
Also I would be deeply disappointed if we won't see class customization in the alpha - gone are the days where alphas were only for testing if the game can run.
― Plato
I believe that all alpha/beta versions won't be enough to get even close to some balance - and that is why I want to see the customization and whole archetypes as soon as possible
― Plato
I am not sure where you came up with this in relation to ashes. All skills have 2 additional tiers and the maximum number of skills active on your action bar will be about 30.
"The number of skills on the action bar will be contained (fewer than 30).[12]"
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Skills
If you are max level with max skills available and creating a build, you start with points for less than 30 skills and spend them on either increasing the total skills available or going in depth on specific skills. It appears that at max level, all classes have the same number of possible skills and depth to skills available.
Ashes is being made from scratch. We are seeing the original Alpha. Many games that have been shown as Alphas in recent years are actually completed games that have been released in other regions and are going through a localization process that is being called an Alpha. This is not equivalent to the Alpha phase that Ashes is in.
When we take for example WoW when it released - it took them literally 5-6 years before they got around some sense of balance (after they nerfed DK into the ground).
Skill and augment systems are a giant tuning nobs that are going to modify more archetypes at once (since every archetype can take something from any other archetype). So you can get literally to a point where you tune something godlike down only to allow something else become godlike and you get into a neverending cycle, because nothing is helping you to tune better.
Also where is the balance point going to be set at? I would think around max lvl character with all/most augments unlocked right? If so then are then the archetypes going to have linear progression (which is desirable by all players, because you see steady progression forward) or a slow progression with power explosion at the end stop? Are the archetypes going to be balanced around low lvl play and thus reducing the freedom to balance at the end?
I play a lot of League of Legends and the balance in that game has more freedom that Ashes can ever hope for, just because in that game power progression through leveling matters above all else.
The big downfall of balance is that if something is to counter something else it needs to be able to have the power level in similar heights otherwise the "counter" becomes useless
― Plato
If your not following me, check the info that I linked earlier from the last 2 posts on the 2nd page:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/42174/you-got-questions-we-got-answers/p2
The question that I see is whether they can actually pull off this wide range of effective choices that allow such versatility. However, none of this will be in Alpha. Were only getting a few of the archetypes; and, if I remember correctly the relevant classes will not be available. This means that access to skills will be limited since you don't even have classes and much of the skill progression is horizontal and results from classes, religions, and other groups that I don't remember at the moment. It seems like it would be difficult to evaluate balance when you can't even access a large portion of the skills.
I don't know that it has been stated, but I hope they start balancing at max level and then work their way down as best as possible. There will always be problems with balance and if those problems start while balancing for low level then they tend to compound into much larger problems as levels increase.
I am not asking to have there for any of the 64 archetype combinations, but a few of them with the ability to customize fully at least one so we can grasp on how much power they want to put into each system.
It is completely reasonable to have this quite early. Why? because it is actually more important than resolving a movement bug or a bug that causes you to disconnect or a bug that stucks you in a place unable to move.
― Plato
All archetypes should have clear power allocations inside various systems in order to make them work and then you can number tweak.
I would hate for Ashes to launch or be delayed by broken archetype balance. That is why I want to start providing feedback about classes as soon as they let us.
And let me tell you rarely imbalances are about tweaking a few numbers
― Plato
What interests me more is group synergies/scalability. Steven has already mentioned augments synergizing with groupmates (fighter providing a fire debuff that increases the mage's damage). Since balance is based around group content, not solo, I really hope that focusing on group synergizing augments can give you a little extra edge over an equally geared/skilled group that just try to optimize their individual characters.
And I really like that they aim to have a horizontal system for the customization - however I am truly wondering what tradeoffs they are going to introduce for it to work, because the most realistic result I see is a landscape with mountains as high as everest and very deep canyons.
Also the aim to be horizontal/vertical customization doesn't truly matter for the synergy escalation, because in every vertical system you aim to have all mountains roughly the same and in every horizontal system to avoid mountains and canyons altogether.
― Plato
In SWG there were Jedi and Jedi could indeed fight a group of people. SWG also had horizontal progression but you could gain vertical power from a horizontal progression point.
You can't expect balance between 0s and 1s when it is the 1s which must be balanced against 1s and 0s to be balanced against 0s.
Therefore, with each layer balance will come, but, compounded layers should end up balanced because all the 1s should be balanced and all the 0s should be balanced.
It is difficult to assess the approach to balance at this stage. Though, I do not think we will see OP Builds like Jedi for the simple fact that you can be a Hard Counter to someone but someone else will be the Hard Counter to you. Hard Counters are unavoidable in a Hard Counter design and I would expect little balance between a Hard Counter and the Hard Countered.
You can of course counter the hard counter but you will be faced with a new hard counter to your hard counter to the original hard counter. The concept is strong for balance in the large scale, but, don't expect balance in the small scale because the game will be balanced around Groups.
Well thats not true.
The value of a heal can significantly increase when your target has higher resistance stats, due to higher level or whatever.
Thus the power growth of 2 players that are higher level than their opponents is not linear, further escalating the balancing issue.
And it´s the same case for buffs, shields , synergy augments and so on.
Ok, I have just been trying to point out that current balance will be heavily adjusted before launch. Current balance is place holder so that the game can run. Also, I think that if you want an accurate idea of how strong classes will be in relation to one another you should wait until the Betas.
Alpha is currently being limited to 10k players. Since the servers servers have only been shown running a few hundred players + 5,000 bots at once; then, it is apparent that Alpha is for IS to see what breaks at up to 10k players and fix it.
I understand that balancing requires much more than tweaking numbers. My point was simply that functioning systems are what is needed before balance can really be carried out and functioning systems is the point of Alpha in Ashes. Adjusting numbers (after balance analysis) can be done once the abilities function.
You misunderstand, I am not in the slightest talking about numerical numbers being off from one another a little bit. I am talking about the scale of power input from different systems and how IS envisions the road to take the archetypes on.
If characters are s**t to play and have customization that is literally impossible to get any kind of near balance then we should have gotten the archetypes earlier. I just cannot stress enough that the amount of announced customization is totally unheard of and is literally ten times harder to balance than any of the previous MMO's.
While I personally think it would be funny to see a single player clear max level dungeon faster than a full 8man group, I definitely think we should have solid foundations for the systems to be tame enough to not allow such huge outliers of power difference.
And please if you think that this scenario is impossible or highly unlikely - then I suppose I have nothing more to explain to you than to read my original post above ^^
― Plato
I have actually been trying to stop talking for the previous 2 posts. I really only had one point to make. You were talking about deep customization options and saying that you needed to wait for alpha to evaluate the customization. My point was, I think that getting a good idea of balance in the deep customization options is unlikely before beta. I think that the game and options are just not developed enough and too many of the options are simply placeholder at this point.
On the other hand, feedback throughout development is important so knock yourself out
the thing is your post makes a lot of assumptions about how stats and scaling work that are not reported by Intrepid, and even if they were, would be easily changeable. In classic wow Druid tanks get a 360% armor multiplier in bear form to make up for their leather armor having less mitigation than the plate-wearing tanks. They also have a talent option that is another armor multiplier and some extremely strong potential armor consumables. If I just gave you all of that info to theorycraft with you would tell me the game is broken because you could achieve 99% damage mitigation with all those multipliers and armor stacking, but in reality, the talent multiplier and consumables don't interact with the bear form multiplier so what you end up with is an extremely balanced tanking build. Those kind of changes of how customization options interact (everything from gear, to augments, to consumables, etc.) are really not that hard to implement. It's not just tweaking numbers, it's fundamentally changing how different skills and mechanics interact with eachother, the exact thing your saying will be such a big issue, yet games do it all the time as simple hotfixes. Your whole argument as to why we need to know this stuff is because somehow there is going to be problems with the core of the game's customization options that are so big the devs won't be able to balance them in the betas, but if you look at other games you see that those sorts of mechanics and their interactions are constantly being changed in patches and hotfixes, so the idea that Intrepid won't be able to do that during betas is ludicrous.
Tanking there is not about mitigation or survavibility, but purely dishing out the most threat per second to allow your dps warriors and rogues blow up the boss under 30seconds.
Above that mentioning tanks is pretty funny, because they have only only 2 criteria - doing enough threat to make sure the boss focuses them and having enough survivability to not get oneshot during the fight.
Not to mention that classic wow basically allows only 1 build from base skills and an illusion of choice with talents. No deep or wide customization exists in that game it is just heavily curated experience by devs to shove you into the build they made the best.
Also I am not talking above the averages, but the extremes and in classic wow the extremes are pretty nuts. Dps warriors can parse over 2500dps with most other specs and classes cannot go beyond 1300 and usually sit with 600-800dps. The only exception is fire mage, but that is due to mechanic where one mage owns a stacking debuff on the boss that does damage and all mages contribute towards that debuff.
Deep and wide customization of Ashes basically means that you have more freedom to make different skills your core rotation with a wider variety of variables. Like i said in the OP you will most likely have a skill that will create bleeding debuff that enhances your other skill backstab and this is going to be the case for everything since they want to make synergies the core focus.
tl;dr : tanking doesnt matter in here since only 1 class looks to be a viable raid main tank - that is tank-tank. Classic wow has an emberassing balance of classes and to mention it as a paragon of balance is just bad. The deep/wide skill system with augments is presenting so many possibilities that from balance experience from other games this amount of possibilities means that the power creep between builds can explode to gigantic proportions
― Plato
dude you clearly missed the entire point of my post. Please tell me where I said that classic wow is a paragon of balance. I was giving a single example of how stat scaling is far from a fixed format that you can accurately theorycraft with, wihout in-depth testing of how interactions work between customization options. You make so many assumptions in your arguments in this thread that I was trying to address such as 1.) you know how customization options will scale with eachother, 2.) these interactions will not be changeable in the betas, only numbers can be tweaked, and 3.) you having more info on customization options will let you theorycraft and find the unbalanced builds ahead of time. The example I gave had nothing to do with promoting classic wow as being a balanced game, it's not balanced, and the example could come from any game, it's just the one I chose. I was giving said example to show you why all 3 of your assumptions are wrong. I suggest you go re-read my post with that in mind and maybe you'll understand where I'm coming from a little better.