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Explanation and update on balancing efforts for R74 and Q1

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by Chris, Jan 23, 2020.

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  1. Numa

    Numa Avatar

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    I think we should leave the healers alone. How many give up dps to heal - 1 in 50, 1 in 100? If they want to go to town to (in those rare times) wipe out sone undead with banish then more power to them.

    I have yet to encounter an MMO where people say "we have more than enough healers". Let's not tempt fate and make the odds 1 in a 1,000 if a group badly needs one.
     
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  2. majoria70

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    Ok so after some thought I'm ready to comment. So I'm not against focus requirements and more reagents need to have to strategzize your power and survivability. I have always thought we, as players should need to work for our power and to survive. You know like get good at playing your character and really know your character with strengths and weaknesses and how those will keep you alive and feel more satisfied with the whole process.. Some things I have always believed in is managing your buffs, having food and potions viable and necessary to the process.

    What I don't believe in is having them rotate on your bar along with your spells. To me that is ridiculous and should be changed out immediately.

    Also to make this all more useful and fun IMO make sure creatures and the ground have our reagents to grab during our managing and make it that we have to manage that.

    I know it sounds like a pain in the butt to some but one of the biggest let-downs of this game is that we are not having some of this going on. Lots of details got left out. Also I believe we should have a chance to feel powerful if we play our character right and manage our resources and buffs.

    I agree do not take away our damage in fact bring back some of it with higher costs to use it. Ice was nerfed so badly our ice mages left or changed their specialties. Even though we have no caps and it gets said over and over we cannot change that players want to play their particular type of character such as an ice mage, fire mage, etc. Taking this aspect out of the game has been a great mistake and makes players leave to go find a place they can play their particular type of character.

    Sure some want and like to do it all, I surely like mixing and playing with different things on one character but for some it is a deal breaker and we cannot dismiss this fact.

    Also another imo we should have dungeons based on ability. We don't need one dungeon to be a catch all for everyone. Having to be in a scene appropriate to your skill and level is and should be part of the process. Having this part to the game should not mean those who follow the process should not be rewarded for doing so.

    Please reward them for it and not with junk but with usable level appropriate items, gold, buffed titles to manage and other incentives. It should all be an adventure, getting junk is not. Junk armor that can't be salvaged or junk items that cannot be salvaged is not it. As much as some like to play together guilds, groups etc we have no restrictions to adventure with. With a queing system that was mentioned we could que up for a particular scene players can band together in a group where they don't feel less than while they progress like a battle ground. Group and then go back to solo type of players especially.

    So all in all to sum this up spoken from my heart as a very long time player here. Give us back our power and make us have to manage and pay the cost for it. Give us our raid system and timed, quested battlegrounds to be able to do daily for all soloing players and group oriented. Don't dismiss the solo type of player they matter too. Tell us a story about it saving the world and provide incentives like tokens, cotos etc for doing.

    Give us cooking skills and enhancements and masterworking please, please, please once and for all.

    I have been here many years waiting for bread crumbs and changes to the lack of details in this game. I believe we have still the ability to make meaningful choices but constant distractions and lack of focus always have taken precedence over those changes. We must make the hard calls but give reasons and benefits to them in the process. I hate it but I can't support a game that refuses to do that. It makes me very sad I can tell you. I do wish the game well as always and I'm still here. @Chris
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2020
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  3. Vesper

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    Knights grace and Healing grace both remove rend.
     
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  4. addrox

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    @Atos

    Does this mean you will actually make shardfalls/other neglected pvp zones worth hunting in?
     
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  5. Barugon

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    I'm pretty sure that I heard Chris say that he's going to make it so that gaining levels in healing skills will not increase focus cost (it currently does).
     
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  6. Girlsname

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    *popcorn*

    Banish Undead will be the new flavor of the month.

    [​IMG]
     
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  7. Barugon

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    It already is. Have you not been to UT?
     
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  8. Girlsname

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    no? I’m getting 12 million+ exp/hr in Tart lmao
     
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  9. Chrystoph Reis

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    Trying ADV level cap/scaling:

    Meaning when you click that door to go in a level 1 can't be with level 100+ players. (make it within 40 or 50 ADV levels to start)

    You click on the door and if too low for the party get a message like, the "Oracle of old bars your path"

    You are too high for the normal monsters, and get a message like "The creatures in here easily slain have called for reinforecments! Beware!"

    Experiment. If it works in UT, do all the dungeons like that.
     
  10. Restless

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    I'm not sure if you were around when exp was gained at 1/2 the rate it is now, but this rate of exp gain should've never been implemented. It's part of the problem. Now with double the hourly exp gain cap and eventual removal, it's just going to get worse.

    Bandaids only work for a short period. It's time to take the bandaids off and redo all zone exp gain rates in order to remove the attenuation nobody likes. Along with removing or seriously nerfing artifact leveling.

    Instead of implementing half-measure bandaids which break pve / pvp, solutions should be implemented. Making changes like exp gain / cap increase and artifact levling for one or two lvl 140+'s to be happy is ruining sota.
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2020
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  11. Vladamir Begemot

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    And YOU get an artifact, and YOU get an artifact!

    [​IMG]
     
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  12. Turk Key

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    What is destroying the experience balance is the way group experience works. (Ducks head) Experience gained in group play should be divided up by total kill value times two divided by the group number.
     
  13. Cora Cuz'avich

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    I was around for that. I wouldn't mind how slow leveling was (and still is, after AL100, though obviously better than it was) if we were still getting new stuff at all levels, instead of a new scene every few months that requires a full group or AL120. The current scheme effectively gates a lot of content for a long time for casuals, and after several thousand loops each of Crag Foothills/Deep Ravenswood/Torc/UT it's just so damn boring to keep playing. (Not to mention,outside of Torc, getting pretty crap loot the whole time.)

    And while I never spent a lot of time in UT, it sounds like it (and pretty much any area with Liches) is now off the list of things I can do. If I want to get to the level where I can go back to Tartarus, K'Rul, or the tougher sections of the Rise (because before the last few rounds of nerfs, I could do those things if I played carefully) I need to do the same boring things I did for the last year, for another year. I don't want to do that. I'll come back in December-ish and see if things are any different. We'll see.
     
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  14. Arkah EMPstrike

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    This i have agreed with for a while. Im all for more dynamic and changing content.

    Im excited they are considering challenge mdoe Hardcore versions of scenes that you can actually beat (stuff doesnt respawn), if the rewards are cool. I messed with Ink, and that combined with the Event GMs in the right hands has the potential to offer folks some dynamic story related stuff with semi-unique rewards.

    The thing that I dont want to see tho is the endgame getting further from the starting point via power creep. Right now its not that bad to get to a viable level to contribute to end game stuff effectively in a group. But thats why i dont mind nerfs. But its also probably because im not a hardcore soloist.
     
  15. runicpaine

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    @Chris Will ring of fire cooldown be reduced? For dynamic decks I often just barely get my 6th glyph just before the ring disappears on subsequent casts. If cooldown isn't reduced, then there will be large gaps between when it dissipates and I can recast it. I don't mind having to recast it more often in order to keep the benefits but if Duration is reduced and Cooldown isn't reduced to match so dynamic decks can redraw and stack it, it will cause additional unintended pain points beyond what is trying to be achieved.
     
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  16. Durriken

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    So once again all need to mages . Archers dominate pvp zone and all pvp battles, no nerfs. Yet mages are dead last in pvp and get blasted for exp.... PS fix magic summons!
     
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  17. addrox

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    Here we have a golden chance for people to hold the devs feet to the fire and 98% of these posts are about banish and healers ...

    FML people get out of your tunnel vision ...

    1. Viable melees
    2. Viable tanks
    3. Balancing magic skills so its not just fire death mage combo
    4. Risk vs Reward was mentioned like 99 times by chris what does that mean? PvP? Shardfalls? Oh i dunno makes it so that 99% of the pvpers arent mages anymore?

    No wait lets focus on healing banish and **** that dont matter

    WHY do you guys care about balance if you DONT PVP AT ALL? If half of the people here spouting off about their TRAM ideas about balance would actually understand ...

    "how do you measure you skills?" or do you just ETERNALLY GRIND

    Response, "well we need balance because we dont pvp because we need balance but we will never pvp because all we want is banish and powerful healers so we can AFK in UT to level up to ... umm NOT PVP and test skills"

    **** healing ... get creative to holding the Devs feet to the fire ... LAME ass UT banish community making games lame since TRAM in UO.
     
  18. Barugon

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    This change is really welcome. If you want people to increase their use of other potions as well then you might consider increasing their duration.

    Just a suggestion.
     
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  19. runicpaine

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    Agreed, short duration buffs and potions lead to too much micro management which breaks immersion and isn't fun so people generally just won't use them except in special or rare situations and will find alternative playstyles around it instead.

    There's lot of issues with micro management in builds that need fixed. Like why do stances have durations? Does a tank suddenly forget he's a tank mid-fight and switch out of defensive stance? OF COURSE NOT. So why are stances not toggle instead of duration based? Cleansing and Soothing rain also have abysmally short durations leading to them rarely being used.

    Then there's the issue that there are only a small handful of useful combos that scale properly. That system needs a major balance pass and re-work. It's good that spell damage scales w/attunement but what about scaling with specialization and why don't secondary effects also scale? Because of this many combos are practically useless and actually weaker than just regular attacks. I know that's part of the Q1/Q2 vision but it needs to be done right and not just part-way.

    These are the main areas I'd like to see improvement during these balance passes:
    1. Combos rework/improvement plus more combos (wouldn't it be cool if a chaos mages debuffs scaled with specialization so they could actually could do more powerful debuff combos that were useful in PvE or apply their debuffs as an aoe? Or if fire/water arrow combined to make a steam blast that causes a debuff to chance to hit and a DoT? - there's so many cool possibilities)
    2. Buff duration increased for some abilities
    3. Change Stances to toggled instead of duration based (even bludgeons berserk ability should be a toggle - all of these abilities come with balancing debuffs unlike other buffs so there's no real reason they should have to be 'refreshed'. they should simply be in effect until turned off. You get both the good and the bad until you decide to change or cancel the effect)
    4. Excessive micro management needs cut down (items 2 and 3 above help drastically towards this goal)

    With all that said, I am very excited about all the changes coming and hope things like this are on the devs minds and part of their thought process.
     
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  20. Spungwa

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    This is a very narrow view of balance. balance is not JUST about PvP....

    It is also about different builds/deck having access to the same level of content. Now i'm not saying all builds/decks should be optimal for all content, that is basically impossible without making the only difference between the trees cosmetic. But all builds/decks, using the correct strategy/play style for their build, should be able to do all levels/tiers of content. Even if they do it slower because it is not the optimal way to complete that content.

    Then there should be different content at all tier levels that different builds/decks are optimal at competing, so all builds have some content they are best at defeating. Not just the current OP build is best at all content.

    That to me is balance in PvE.


    Regards
    Spung
     
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2020
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