Item Rebalancing

cian2 said:
make higher tier items actually better than lower tier stuff and we tell you all the OP items. k, deal?
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this.

I basically gave up on reporting imbalanced items, because it feels like apart from marza/zaela there is very little attempt to communicate or understand how items are actually effecting the players/game before doing whatever_the_fuck_i_want. I see nerfs that make no sense at all. I make detailed posts with numbers asking for some explanation, and I get 0 response.
 
About the Humanoid Bane Damage Belt Issue:

I noticed this about 5 minutes after these things went Live, jizzed my pants, changed them, did it again, then decided it was far too good to be true and mentioned it to Taru. This issue is not a surprise and they are well aware of it, thinking it not really to be problematic. Unmentioned are the multitude of other types of Bane damage one can get for their belt(s), but this is only coming up as a topic due to the relative dominance of Humanoid Bane-type mobs.

Maybe we should consider the issue truly about either (1) the predominance of Humanoid Bane-type mobs in comparison to the others you can bounty aug for, or (2) the availability of Humanoid Bane-type as a choice for aug as opposed to, say, Insect-Bane. Having all that potential Insect-Bane isn't being complained about, and Bango's argument would extend to this as well. Should a zone of insects and plants become a thing with related bosses (Overgrowth?), would there be a new outcry of the same thing for this new Bane-type? Probably, and it's worth noting that now. I'd still love to get a belt with maxxed Bane damage for each Bane-type, but I also understand the potential dangers they pose.
 
Kedrin has been removed from the item March to Strife

wow i fail at life.

feel free to delete this post.
 
The problem with nerfing all of the cool effects on items is you not only create this issue where "upgrades" become looking at an item and seeing some boring 20 hp or mana upgrade and nothing else interesting but that player power really isn't scaling to meet the top end content needs where you just blow up randomly for the lower end of the hp spectrum classes, and other issues.

This was all talked about in IRC but I heard that IRC is the place to "bro out" and not talk about video game related things. I actually read this in some other place and am paraphrasing it.
 
What do we want?
Linear gear progression!
When do we want it?
At regular intervals!

Though seriously, having wildcard items that lucky/smart/good at listening people can acquire that go beyond linear progression make the game more interesting. Those items should usually have some type of drawback, like missing vital stats or negative stats or something, but having them in the game is better than not.
 
donfolstar3 said:
What do we want?
Linear gear progression!
When do we want it?
At regular intervals!

Though seriously, having wildcard items that lucky/smart/good at listening people can acquire that go beyond linear progression make the game more interesting. Those items should usually have some type of drawback, like missing vital stats or negative stats or something, but having them in the game is better than not.
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Emphasis added. These "wildcard items that go beyond linear progression" were by and large just normal statted items for the tier with a gear extraneous clicky or item effect added on above that with no concern for how that extra bonus made the power of the item quadruple. So the choice is either to nerf the extraneous effect, or to nerf the base stats of the item to the point where the power of the extraneous effect matches the lost stats given where the item would otherwise be in its tier. What some players can not get their head around, and it has been this way for the entirely of the servers life, is that huge bonus effects on items with otherwise tier-appopriate stats make the next tier of items have to compete with those bonus effects. You end up with a situation where you either 1) dev items in the next tier incorporating the previously overpowered bonus effects or 2) dev items in the next 1-3 tiers that are simply not upgrades because they do not incorporate the previous items overpowered bonus effects. With 1 you have hugely varying tier power that is unsustainable and obsolesces old content extremely fast, and with 2 you have new content that no one wants to do.

The only difference with right now is that the latest tier was item devved in a complete vacuum without any of the normal "Item Developer" oversight. This means that a ton more of these gear extraneously powerful items have gone in than ever before, and as the dev team preps to actually start adding content to flesh out these high end tiers, the items are finally being actually looked at and balanced.

Does this mean there may be times we overnerf stuff? Sure. But on the aggregate a fair bit of high end shit is simply overpowered. No amount of "Us v. Staff" mentality will change that fact, or the fact that it needs to be done if we want healthy progression in the future. And I am very much going to start cutting down on people insinuating some sort of staff corruption as this rebalancing takes place. That sort of accusation needs some sort of proof to back it up, or else it really just hurts the server, and kills the morale of the people who volunteer hours and hours to make the server happen. To be honest, that really is the reason a lot of these item problems were not handled until now. The item situation got so bad, so quickly, and so many players started attacking staff for every point of HP removed, that no one wanted to touch anything. It all looked too daunting, and it was easier for developers to just fiddle in the low tiers instead of fleshing out or progressing the upper tiers. With multi-dev collaboration on the new Thaz coming out, and some new blood added to the ranks, we finally have the wherewithal to tackle the problem. And that is exactly what we are going to do - balancing items where it is needed, and adding new content to the tiers most in need.

Edit: And this is not to say that there have been overpowered items throughout the other tiers as well. Some slipped through the cracks (the proc changes not retroactively hitting some thinkmeats loot comes to mind), and those may be rebalanced. Others were mistakes of old, and have such an in game presence that it equity concerns weigh heavily against too much of a nerf. It is done on a item by item basis with more than two staff members weighing out what needs to happen.
 
Don't listen to player bitching, nerf the items that need to be nerfed. Crybabies are going to cry when they become balanced.

Also make the pet weapons that drop from animation in yclist no drop. they are absurdly overpowered for any pet class.
 
aardvark13k said:
Don't listen to player bitching, nerf the items that need to be nerfed. Crybabies are going to cry when they become balanced.

Also make the pet weapons that drop from animation in yclist no drop. they are absurdly overpowered for any pet class.
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The point of those weapons is to be absurdly good for a pet class, but really damn hard to obtain
 
Should have nerfed the weapons off animation and not the HP from pets, The pets that ware doing absurd things ware probably 9 out of 10 times equipped with these weapons and had nothing to do with the HP level they had before being given these items, Example: Mage R2 pet cannot solo BQ Elites pre pre pre HP nerf no matter how much HP they had, Give them 50%-75% Deflux procing weapons with 1k AC each, Now that pet can solo these, With or without the HP nerfs.

P.S, Sorry to you know who you are for bringing this up =( but maybe your pets HP will become useful again!
 
I rather like reliable proc rates as it makes the item more about it's special effects than just being a weapon that you swing. I think more items should be designed in that way while keeping them balanced. (Warrior COD weapon is another weapon that comes to mind, and is a powerful weapon that doesn't reduce a warrior's mitigation like a knight wearing a 2 hander)

I would like to just make a suggestion on the Lance of Vigilance. Screaming Lance seems to be a very rare drop from Mistress Saitha and is strangely dissapointing compared to LoV.
I think the effectiveness of the item and the Screaming Lance should be swapped (some aspects of them) while also balancing these items and possibly other 2 handers in the game to be more about their effects and less about their ratio.

Another idea that I'd like to throw out there unrelated to balancing of items is current knight 2 hand stances and creating or editing 2hand stances that allow more creativity in regards to knights being able to tank with 2 handers. (such as an SK stance that would increase lifetap damage while wearing a 2hander) or changing the way the current "Leech stance" works that uses up stamina at a hugely rapid rate. Paladin's could have their own ideas because I'm an SK addict.
 
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Draeos said:
Should have nerfed the weapons off animation and not the HP from pets, The pets that ware doing absurd things ware probably 9 out of 10 times equipped with these weapons and had nothing to do with the HP level they had before being given these items, Example: Mage R2 pet cannot solo BQ Elites pre pre pre HP nerf no matter how much HP they had, Give them 50%-75% Deflux procing weapons with 1k AC each, Now that pet can solo these, With or without the HP nerfs.

P.S, Sorry to you know who you are for bringing this up =( but maybe your pets HP will become useful again!
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Ain't that the truth. Runic etc pet HP was never a problem (in fact it was nice to have pets that were decent at the tier) but with animation weapons any pet would tear shit up.
 
Waldoff said:
The only difference with right now is that the latest tier was item devved in a complete vacuum without any of the normal "Item Developer" oversight. This means that a ton more of these gear extraneously powerful items have gone in than ever before, and as the dev team preps to actually start adding content to flesh out these high end tiers, the items are finally being actually looked at and balanced.
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The really good lesson to be taken from this is: Don't just send a ton of unreviewed superpowerful shit into the wild and wait months (years? I dont even know at this point) to start cracking down.

I think that lots of the people who have resentment for the staff over this stuff feel that it was intended to be a super powerful non-linear progression based on how intentional it seemed that every Ikisith item ruled in the extreme and that fights were much harder than pre-ikisith progression. Couple that with how long it took for the staff to get around to figuring out that all of this stuff was overpowered and it seems like either the staff was asleep at the wheel totally or that they (whoever "they" is) wanted it to be that way.

To the players it is unbelievable that either the items were never looked at, and/or that nobody on staff realized that this stuff was operating the way it was.
 
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A lot of the recent nerfs were needed. What bothers me is the complete lack of communication when certain things were brought up such as the 4.3 robe's caster viability.

I'll just give some detail on the 4.3 robe situation as this is a good example.

Super rare/hard to obtain item that got a big nerf. It probably needed some nerf, but the nerf went overboard in that the item suddenly was worse than alternatives far more common 2-3 tiers below.

I made a thread suggesting changes and asking for some input. I put lots of clear information and numbers into that thread to show why the change was overboard.

After getting no response at all, I asked Marza what he knew and was told that he suggested CSI9 be added, but was told that "no new focuses can be introduced through 6 man".

So I brought this up in the thread, since it would be a pretty significant change of policy of how caster upgrades are obtained through the tiers.

At this point, what I can see of this situation, is that an item I spent hundreds of hours trying to obtain was hugely nerfed to be worse than a t9 alternative. These nerfs went against what the Dev who made the content/item intended/wanted/suggested, and finally the people who made the changes are not willing to communicate what-so-ever about why CSI9 is not viable, or why the robe should suddenly not be a caster item.

This is just one example, but it is a good representation of why Slaar/Wold get a really bad reputation among the players I know / interact with. You make big changes, but you are unwilling to talk about them or give some reasoning. Maybe you *shouldn't have to justify it*, but its not hard to see how people start to wonder about motives/reasoning when we hear nothing at all.

In contrast, when I have had items nerfed by other devs and posted or just asked them about it, they explain things. If make some point they didn't really think about, they don't act infallible, and are actually willing to change the item again.

I don't think people think staff are corrupt, the impression I usually hear is just that certain people seem to have a poor understanding of the things they are changing, and are arrogant enough that they act infallible / above criticism.

TLDR; if you want to get rid of the negative rep certain staff have, you need to be willing to have more of an open forum/discussion about things, and you need to be willing to admit it if you made a mistake on occasion.
 
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QUOTE=fuwok;278692]To the players it is unbelievable that either the items were never looked at, and/or that nobody on staff realized that this stuff was operating the way it was.[/QUOTE]

It is a volunteer run server, and we all have lives outside of the game. The one or two devs at the high end were much more focused on making kick ass content then making sure it was balanced relative to future and present interests. And I think it is fair to say their mission at making kick ass content was successful. As unbelievable as you think it is, that is pretty much what happened.

Silosobi said:
A lot of the recent nerfs were needed. What bothers me is the complete lack of communication when certain things were brought up such as the 4.3 robe's caster viability.
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Given this quote from the thread on the 4.3 robe you are using as an example:

Marza said:
How many times do I have to say this robe isn't being changed before you stop posting about it Solosolki?
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It sounds less like you are getting no staff interaction and much more like you are not getting the answer you want.

Again, we all have lives outside of the game. Time is spent partially where it is most effective, and partially where we get enjoyment out of our work. You do not have a right to, nor should you feel entitled to, an argument with staff over every change to the game. You also should not expect every item to be equally great for every class on the item, or even to be good for every class on the item.

We do our best to respond, and we are relatively approachable. If you want to just argue over our decision, that is a whole different thing. At the end of the day this is not a democracy - regardless of the fact that we try our best to keep communication open with the playerbase.
 
Waldoff said:
Again, we all have lives outside of the game. Time is spent partially where it is most effective, and partially where we get enjoyment out of our work. You do not have a right to, nor should you feel entitled to, an argument with staff over every change to the game. You also should not expect every item to be equally great for every class on the item, or even to be good for every class on the item.

We do our best to respond, and we are relatively approachable. If you want to just argue over our decision, that is a whole different thing. At the end of the day this is not a democracy - regardless of the fact that we try our best to keep communication open with the playerbase.
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Woldaff, this says:

You are a peon wasting your life in our sandbox, enjoy it or else. As an intelligent fellow you can see why people spending hundreds of hours might not like that.

Whether or not you got run over by some of your unsupervised devs, who unbalanced the game (according to the nerfing), is completely, is a separate issue from the people that now are upset that their sweet powers are being taken away. I appreciate, that now, you have come back to right the wrongs, but a whole lot happened while you were the absentee landlord here.
 
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I am not denying any of that. I think you might be overstating the magnitude because you are of the tier most effected, but that is just a quibble at the margin.

No one is denying that people are going to get upset when their numbers go down. I have done nothing to stop people from expressing that anger as long as it does not go too far.
 
I love the game but I like to break your balls (even if I find this phrasing inarticulate).

I'm still angry from when Thinkmeats told me that I'm angry at the abstract concept of numbers going down even if it isn't correlated with any decrease in power. As the representative of every angry player everywhere I can tell you this is true, ok.

He also said "rabble, rabble", that fucker. Luvu tm kissyface

edit: the proc rate of the hmal lance was intentional. TM intentionally boosted it to make passive tanking in the tentacle cave more viable. Also, those hmal titans are supposed to be like the cyberdemon from doom2. I'm not sure how to shoot back!
 
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Waldoff said:
It sounds less like you are getting no staff interaction and much more like you are not getting the answer you want.
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You pulled a marza quote that just isn't really relevant to the points I bring up... I specifically stated that marza does communicate well. What is concerning, is reading that in conjunction with the other marza quotes from that thread which essentially overall say "i dont think this change makes sense, or agree with it, but my boss said so, so deal with it"

I have never thought or wanted items to be awesome for every class on them. This one particular item, though, was created with the intention of being desirable for everyone, that is a big part of what made it so rare and sought after.

IDK I hope communication improves, but my personal experience with you and Slaar is pretty bad. Any personal communications have just been ignored, whenever I have attempted to join goonsquad IRC, which is, apparently, where you guys do talk about game/item changes, I get banned by slaariel without even having said anything (and this was before I even knew him or had given him reason to dislike me)

If it was just me having this bad experience I would write it off as my loss and move on, but since this sort of thing seems to be echoed by many many players throughout numerous guilds/groups/etc, I tend to assume there is a larger problem.

With all that said, I really do like SoD, and I hope things can improve, I am really not trying to throw stones here, but rather give my honest feedback as to why the stigmas and assumptions that seem to exist in the community, continue to propagate, rather than dieing off.
 
Silosobi said:
I will continue to bring it up until it gets addressed or is irrelevant to me. The robe *should* still be best in slot for me, so until another higher tier robe drops, I'm gonna point a finger at this situation (or I just get some explination as to why its not acceptable for this to be a good caster robe)
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You use words like "intention" and phrases like "this robe *should* be the best for me." Those mean nothing except that you are trying to bring some sort of authority to your desire to have the robe changed to how you want it.

When Marza says that he has talked to the other devs and we decided not to use your suggestion, that means you did have communication with us. Unfortunately, instead of saying "well they looked at what I wanted and communicated to me their decision", you decided that this means you must go on a crusade to right the horrible robe injustice and get detailed and explicit proof of why this robe is no longer the best robe for casters. Worse yet, you keep talking about how wrong it is for all the other devs to change another's creation like there is some sort of sacred space around each devs work that even the collective of all other devs can not touch. That sort of idea is part of why we are in this mess at the high end to begin with.

So that quote is actually extremely salient. You wanted it changed, you were told no, and you decided to start complaining about communication.

You can talk about rarity all you want, but no item should be the best in a slot for every class. That is the Thaz Syndrome, and has been well shown to be horribly problematic.
 
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