Balance in general

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Snowdog, May 3, 2021.

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  1. Snowdog

    Snowdog Avatar

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    Just as making rich people poor does not make poor people rich,
    Making powerful charters weak does not make weak charters strong.
    Tell me why I am wrong
     
  2. Violet Ronso

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    I don't think you are wrong at all.

    The reason why I feel like balance is important is not to make the weak players stronger, it is to shorten the gap between the weak and the strong, as well as help make content remain interesting. Also, when you have a few builds that reign supreme, it is hard for people to not tell themselves "Why am I wasting time with this build when I could be 5-10x stronger by using the few builds at the top" and then we have a bunch of clones everywhere with little to no diversity. Also, some content was made for groups, but players found the way to solo it, and do you know why this causes an issue? Because the devs cannot make the reward as interesting as people would want it, because if they balance loot on a boss lets say to make it rewarding for a group of 6 or so people, well the players who can solo that content become richer 6x faster, and make the price of that reward so cheap that now groups will be upset that the loot isn't worth anything.

    Balance in combat is required to provide fun and challenging gameplay, as well as to help provide an interesting reward.

    So you are not wrong, it won't make the weak players stronger, but it will make their experience much more rewarding.
     
  3. oplek

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    Balance is one thing, but too often is does sacrifice fun gameplay in general. That's because the combat power/ability is relative to the game itself, not just other players.

    If the game has 5 swords, 4 of which suck, and one is "meh"... of course everyone is going to use the "meh" one. But the dev's interpretation seems to be that the "meh" one's popularity is because its overpowered. Suddenly, we have 5 sucky swords.

    I've been standing off at a distance from the game for quite a while now. I keep glancing at the notes, hoping for something fun to come back to. There's new zones, so maybe something to explore? But they're so high level, and I just don't have the heart to spend months grinding, so that I can handle them. Instead, I find myself playing single-player(ish0 like Satisfactory, where I constantly have fun. It never feels like a grind... because it's not TRYING to slow me down, to keep me around.

    A bit of a tangent, but my point is, if the game gave me some power, so 50 levels of skill increase didn't give me 0.01% increase in damage output, I might be more inclined.
     
  4. Time Lord

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    True but I still want my $540.00 Jeff Bezos rebate check!
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  5. Violet Ronso

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    I totally agree, but I feel, looking back at scenes and thinking of how our newest player in our guild is playing the game (his twitch is Auldur, he is French, but even if you don't understand what he is saying, just watch his gameplay). He is actually adventuring and getting challenged by the simplest of skeleton, he has learned cool tactics, buy he is still taking thing slow. I feel like we gave up that sort of play in exchange for extreme power, because it was fun at the beginning but now some are losing that interest.

    I have come to compare this game to Warframe in my head, and I feel like the grind is so similar now, we enter scenes ( go on missions) to find a nice experience/hour or artifact/hour or whatever else we can, and then use that to push a bit more juice out of it. For warframe, they are grinding experience for their suits, which they "prestige" to make it a bit more powerful than the previous time, or are trying to acquire blueprints or rare drops to make new pieces of suits, like we do with artifacts. I don't think this was the plan the devs had initially, but it became it because we abused that unplanned powerspike. Had we not done that, maybe we would have a more rpg approach to the game, and less grindy.

    If these current balance changes could bring us closer to the rpg side, I think it could be pretty fun.
     
    Last edited: May 3, 2021
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  6. FBohler

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    Make players weaker so the existing content is harder and therefore more challenging or make new, fresh content that will naturally challenge players? Tough decision.
     
  7. Violet Ronso

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    It isn't, considering the quantity of scenes out there that many have never ever visited.
     
  8. Micmatty

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    This could be completely different but when I think of balance I also think of how skills at different levels and such react with creatures I don't know about anyone else and maybe people like it this way but to me it feels really bad almost like you wasted your points/time when pump 10s of millions into a tree and you are 100 (GM) in the magic you use and you are literally hitting some creatures for 0 damage it just doesn't feel right at all at least to me and my brother. So when I think of balance I think of stuff like this.

    Also for the record I have nothing against mobs having resistance but to me all skills should be able to damage a mob 100% of the time maybe not as powerful as the ones it isn't resistant to but should still hurt it.
     
  9. Lazlo

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    If the question is just what is the point of balance in general, the point is mostly to preserve options. If a small number of options available to players are much more powerful than alternatives, those alternatives won't be seen by most players as viable and won't get used much, making their existence mostly pointless and making a game much more one dimensional and boring.
     
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  10. Cordelayne

    Cordelayne Bug Hunter

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    I agree with this.

    It's also my argument for why balance in a "limitless skill system" is not only impossible, but engenders a player base where everyone is the same type of build.
     
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  11. Violet Ronso

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    Agreed. Now, I just hope they can finally make things closer, that would resolve many issues
     
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  12. FBohler

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    How can quantity of scenes be translated into quality gameplay if they all play almost the same?
     
  13. Violet Ronso

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    By simply making the older scenes more attractive, you don't need "New" content (like the panopticon, which is amazing btw), you are making that forgotten content now act as your new content.
     
  14. FBohler

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    Not quite. Defeating the same mobs in the same old scenes isn't attractive. Good loot and fast XP may make it attractive, but unfortunately that leads to more power creep and future nerfs.
    For example: you think people visit Tartarus because it's thrilling to fight three varieties of upscaled Satyrs in a dark maze, or is it because the bandit gear and high XP ore nodes?
     
  15. Violet Ronso

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    Exactly! So if you make players weaker, you can then make lower scenes more rewarding! If they could spend their time drawing new mobs instead of drawing scenes we could have more variety, but instead we want new scenes for harder content, so they have to reuse the same mobs otherwise they don't push out new scenes fast enough.

    I mean this should be pretty basic, but people want their God mode and super grind a la Warframe, that's what we get!
     
  16. FBohler

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    I don't think it works that way.

    Also, making scenes harder is way simpler than nerfing players. On the other hand, making interesting and fun gameplay is difficult and time consuming.
     
  17. Violet Ronso

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    They've been trying that, people still managed to solo lv400 mobs, what more power do they need to give mobs before it actually starts working?
     
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  18. Blake47

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    I personally plan on refining my combat deck to have more synergy instead of reinventing the wheel....Experimenting is the spice of ingenuity.....
     
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  19. FrostII

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    And because of those tiny few and the tiny few PvP'rs who whined, the rest of us have to suffer.
     
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  20. Violet Ronso

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    But you could simply go back to a lower level scene now, one adapted to your level, and still get millions of exp per hour and 10+ artifacts per hour. You don't need to try and solo Spindleskog or Panopticon or Myrkur, You will get way more by going to a T10 scene you will easily solo like The rise and get a bunch of stuff. When people say "The casuals/The lower level players are the ones who hurt the most" it's not true, they are simply trying to chew bigger than they should for absolutely no reason now. A few releases ago, I would have agreed with you, because the higher scenes were the only sources of loot and experience, but now? Almost every scene has something to offer, so lower level players should try lower level scenes and it will work out GREAT!

    But I digress, I should not be telling you how to play, I get a lot of heat for trying to help like this but people taking it the wrong way, so yeah, ignore this!
     
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