Let's talk about balance

Now obviously level 25 was never intended to be a level PvP has any balance around, however I think the fact that we are going to be at this level for the next 6 months or so gives intrepid a chance to start testing some balancing with classes

There are a few things to discuss here, first we have class arch type, we have gear, we have skill trees and weapon trees, completely balancing the game would be next to impossible, but at the same time there are some blatant issues that it does not take a game Dev to figure out

Firstly we have the gear issue, enchanting level 10 gear is by far the meta right now and will be for the next few weeks at least, the issue we have is we are already back to the 2 second ttk that was removed due to the stat nerfs on gear at the end of phase 1. In a few weeks people will start crafting and enchanting level 20 legendary gear and the ttk will come down to who ever opens wins, back to a one shot meta.

I strongly disagree that the answer to this is another stat squish, for. A few reasons, firstly no one wants to put 150 hours into a game, work hard in your character just to see your dps reduced by 95%, and secondly the bigger issue with reducing stats on gear is the fact that it makes pve absolutely horrible in a game that is in its current state grind grind grind.

The other and better option is to increase characters defensive stats, health, armour rating, and design the classes abilities around being strategical, not just who can one shot harder. But this will have the opposite effect and make pve to trivial, I think one big issue is the margain of pve mobs health vs players health/damage. It makes it extremely difficult to balance when your average level 25 has 4k HP but at level 25 the pve mobs you are killing are pushing upwards of 90,000 HP

The other thing I would like to bring up is classes just being ridiculously over powered, now I have a bard and play a bard so don't get me wrong this is not a rant on them but just the truth the class is a support class and can easily one shot someone at level 25, things like this also need to be looked at, it seems like the newer the class the better they are just due to having the latest overhaul, if ttk is increased this will have a trickle on effect making bards and clerics impossible to kill, and anyone with defensives much much stronger unless every class has the same sort of tool kits

These are just some issues I have noticed, I have done around 100 hours of level 25 PvP, I have played with full legendary and I have played 3 different classes, ranger fighter and bars, I by no means have the answer to this question but I'd love to hear people's thoughts and ideas

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Wandering Mist

Question: Is it worth spending the time to balance the game in its current state, time which could be spent fixing bugs or making new content for us to test?

Taleof2Cities

Wandering Mist wrote: »

Question: Is it worth spending the time to balance the game in its current state, time which could be spent fixing bugs or making new content for us to test?

Answer: No.

If I were in the shoes of the Combat Team, I would be hyper-focused on rollout of the Rogue and the Summoner … before fine tuning class balance. Once again, the OP wants polished game systems out of sequence … before Intrepid is ready to work on them.

New content as in quests? That’s more of a Beta task and not Alpha.

The P2 roadmap has what’s in store the early part of this year before Phase III: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Alpha-2_phase-2

AirborneBerserker

First off every level is a PvP level. It's an OWPvP game.

Second OWPvP is inherently unbalanced, there is no reason to balance any classes because even if they spend 10,000 hours balancing the classes it will still result in almost all fights being unbalanced fights.

Going from 100% of fights being unbalanced to 99.99% isn't a sound investment of resources.

Third, there is no reason for them to balance the classes at level 25 because most people that PvP wont be doing it at 25 they will be doing it at 50, so it would be doubling down on the pointless use of resources.

So, no they shouldn't, what they should, and probably will do is pander, say things like "we are working on it", "It's very important to us", or "It's at the top of our list". Then put minimal effort into it to make it seem like they are working on it so as to keep up appearances. And proceed with putting time, effort, and money into things which will have an actual impact on the game.

SmileGurney

AirborneBerserker wrote: »

First off every level is a PvP level. It's an OWPvP game.

Second OWPvP is inherently unbalanced, there is no reason to balance any classes because even if they spend 10,000 hours balancing the classes it will still result in almost all fights being unbalanced fights.

Some of those balancing issues aren't down to classes, but just the gear/stat power scaling. Intrepid was right to act on power scaling from weapon rarity, but that came pretty late in P1.

The same, but quicker should be done to enchanted gear. Steven hinted in the interview with PG, balance changes to economy, artisanship skills and how they sync with the player level, so hopefully this is on their radar.

Chicago

Wandering Mist wrote: »

Question: Is it worth spending the time to balance the game in its current state, time which could be spent fixing bugs or making new content for us to test?

Honestly I think yes, there won't be any tests happening if 90% of the playerbase quit, besides it would be a good baseline for later on

Ludullu

My main response is "no, we don't need balancing in A2 P2".

But on the topic of "doing something", I think your issues can be somewhat alleviated by adding armor passives for archetypes (just like weapon ones). And to avoid rebalancing pve interactions, those passives can address purely player weapons, rather than attack types and stuff (with the pve side of this coming on later).

Those passives could address one-shots w/o making you near-invulnerable in pve.

Azherae

Ludullu wrote: »

My main response is "no, we don't need balancing in A2 P2".

But on the topic of "doing something", I think your issues can be somewhat alleviated by adding armor passives for archetypes (just like weapon ones). And to avoid rebalancing pve interactions, those passives can address purely player weapons, rather than attack types and stuff (with the pve side of this coming on later).

Those passives could address one-shots w/o making you near-invulnerable in pve.

At this point you really might as well do what BDO/WoW does, and we know Steven is somewhat against those things.

It'll just turn out like it always does, if nothing is done.

"People telling others who aren't good at PvP that they're wasting their time and are trash at the game." except that when this happens due to in game imbalances, people do quit.

Because it's one thing to shrug that off when you know you need to improve, and another to do it when it's because the devs made your class/character bad.

I'll hope it just doesn't matter, I guess.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

"People telling others who aren't good at PvP that they're wasting their time and are trash at the game." except that when this happens due to in game imbalances, people do quit.

My main point is that it's useless to expect good balancing in A2, but I do agree that one-shots are bad, so I'm ssggesting smth that would help with one-shots, at least somewhat, while not also require rebalancing of the pve side.

Azherae wrote: »

Because it's one thing to shrug that off when you know you need to improve, and another to do it when it's because the devs made your class/character bad.

I was wrong on mentioning archetypes in that comment. It should just be a universal tree, just like the weapon ones are. That way it's still a "I decided to lvl defense passives against wands, but this mage was using a book" or smth along those lines.

Azherae

Ludullu wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

"People telling others who aren't good at PvP that they're wasting their time and are trash at the game." except that when this happens due to in game imbalances, people do quit.

My main point is that it's useless to expect good balancing in A2, but I do agree that one-shots are bad, so I'm ssggesting smth that would help with one-shots, at least somewhat, while not also require rebalancing of the pve side.

Azherae wrote: »

Because it's one thing to shrug that off when you know you need to improve, and another to do it when it's because the devs made your class/character bad.

I was wrong on mentioning archetypes in that comment. It should just be a universal tree, just like the weapon ones are. That way it's still a "I decided to lvl defense passives against wands, but this mage was using a book" or smth along those lines.

Ah ok, I definitely have less of a concern about that.

In my experiences, that would make most of the difference. Sure, having a meta is still a bit of a problem but I agree that worrying about metas in testing isn't that necessary.

'Fixes' that meaningfully tie the meta to choices as rigid as Class/Archetype (even in games where these are easy to change) tend to go poorly, so I'm thankful to know you aren't really suggesting that as a 'main solution'.

Child Item