Slaariel
*The Only Real Life Girl Dev*
I just want to explain the thought process that went into this changing of seven or eight(?) key items that happened last patch and it's not all the same thing so I will discuss them each and then do a summing up at the bottom.
- Two items had worn run speed removed from them. This is a cute idea but is not actually allowed on items just like worn enduring breath is not allowed on items (RIP Grupling Trainers). Oops I meant not allowed on non-GM items anyway.
- Healer/Caster haste capped at 50%. This is part of designing for longevity. What is the 'end' of the game now will not be the 'end' of the game in the future. If items have 100% haste now, where are we supposed to go from there in the future? Additionally. . .
- Healer weapons with massive group-heal procs were toned down. Combined with the huge healer haste from 3 items, these weapons basically redesigned three whole classes at once (with clerics being nearly unrecognizable). This is not acceptable from a design standpoint. If we want clerics to be able to heal exp groups without ever casting a group heal and just swinging a weapon, that should be a feature of the class at like level 1 on. This would not really be feasible. Clerics' entire spell sets are focused on casting spells to keep groups and raids alive and to replace that with auto-attacking? If a class needs a redesign, we can and will do it, but to redesign through itemization is ugly. Sorry this section is so long but I just want to add one more thing: when these must-have items exist, we have to look toward the future when they are eclipsed by other items. Then we have another 'Shaman Mask' situation where we now have to do something about this piece of former "endgame" gear and it just gets messy.
- Casting speed boost was removed from Xi Valla (the "4.3 robe"). This robe had, effectively, casting speed increment X. When casting speed increment 9 has not been invented yet! This is a huge jump in itemization for the entire game and to have it be on an ALL/ALL item is just so out of whack with everything else. Pre-Ikisith, CSI capped out at 7 and there was already tier 11-12 loot in game. To jump to 10 in that small window is severely skewed. Plus the robe is still a great item for some classes (I did break the illusion that I thought I was fixing that was entirely my bad).
- A Cleric DPS weapon was made to be less DPS. Again, changing a class through itemization is not really viable. We can redesign the class if we like from the ground up but to suddenly become a different thing from 1 or 2 items is not a valid route.
- Imperceptible Bonds was changed. It will probably have more HP in the future.
- Some items were fixed for instance the gloves Curator's Touch. This was not a nerf, but I'm mentioning it here since it was part of the same passel of changes.
To sum up - The things that were changed were mostly to address two separate issues: First, the ill-formed idea of redesigning a class through select itemization and Second, the huge jumps in power with no middle ground and leaving little room for itemization in the future. Some probably ask why now instead of a year ago, I can answer this.
When these items go in, SOME of them it is not apparent it will be a problem and SOME of them it is obvious there will be a problem. In NEITHER CASE are we psychic. If something appears it will be a problem, I'm always up for giving it a chance and if something does not appear to be a problem, it goes in without even that consideration. Until someone does the content and gets the loot, there is no info. When the content is done and now someone has the loot, there is STILL no info. When enough people have done the content and have the loot that we can see the true effect it has on the game, NOW we have info. NOW we can make a decision based on real-world as-the-game-is information.
Of course, this is not ideal. But we are just three people (on average) -- we have no player-based beta testing except for to put content in the game and see what happens, using what can only be called our best guess as to how the content will play out in the long run. Our guess is never 100% correct but in most cases it is either a non-issue or close enough to the mark that we can just leave it in the past and move on. In this case, as has happened in the past and will certainly happen in the future, things were way, way off-base. If I had a time machine, I would have used it to change these items at the outset but instead I am left to bite the bullet and change them knowing that it will not be well-received but also knowing that it is necessary to ensure that content can be created meaningfully in the future.
I'm not going to say what you can and can't talk about in this thread but I really want an answer for this question: In the absence of real beta-testing (which we can not have, ever, on so small a server) how would you guide development to stop this from happening in the future? I know it's awful to have a thing for a year and then have it change. If there were 100 people doing that content from the start instead of 20, this change would have happened a very very long time ago because the server would have hit critical info mass very quickly. But we did not have that.. we had one guild doing this content for a year, slowly. The info is slow to come in and we were slow to react to it.
One solution is to not care about how overpowered things are ever and an equally unpalatable solution is to dev so conservatively I could do item design with a spreadsheet and say every tier slot X gets Y more hitpoints and Z more mana, every 3 tiers focus Z goes up 1. This is an awful vision for me.. I LIKE having our devs do weird things and make strange items that are off the beaten path. But if we keep falling into a place where the weird item is both a huge jump in power and also the new normal, maybe it's not worth taking the chance knowing how slowly "real-world data" is generated and how slowly it trickles back to us and how terrible it is to change items this late in the game.
Or I could just insist that devs intentionally under-tier their loot so that most items will inevitably be buffed but that feels manipulative to me. Anyway I feel like I'm about to ramble so I'll just end by saying I knew that some of these items would probably be nerfed the second they went in but I felt the right thing to do would be to see if I was maybe wrong about that and I'm sorry the inevitable happened! It is entirely my fault, personally, that the items were released in this state and I'm sorry for any anger this mostly preventable scenario has generated.
- Two items had worn run speed removed from them. This is a cute idea but is not actually allowed on items just like worn enduring breath is not allowed on items (RIP Grupling Trainers). Oops I meant not allowed on non-GM items anyway.
- Healer/Caster haste capped at 50%. This is part of designing for longevity. What is the 'end' of the game now will not be the 'end' of the game in the future. If items have 100% haste now, where are we supposed to go from there in the future? Additionally. . .
- Healer weapons with massive group-heal procs were toned down. Combined with the huge healer haste from 3 items, these weapons basically redesigned three whole classes at once (with clerics being nearly unrecognizable). This is not acceptable from a design standpoint. If we want clerics to be able to heal exp groups without ever casting a group heal and just swinging a weapon, that should be a feature of the class at like level 1 on. This would not really be feasible. Clerics' entire spell sets are focused on casting spells to keep groups and raids alive and to replace that with auto-attacking? If a class needs a redesign, we can and will do it, but to redesign through itemization is ugly. Sorry this section is so long but I just want to add one more thing: when these must-have items exist, we have to look toward the future when they are eclipsed by other items. Then we have another 'Shaman Mask' situation where we now have to do something about this piece of former "endgame" gear and it just gets messy.
- Casting speed boost was removed from Xi Valla (the "4.3 robe"). This robe had, effectively, casting speed increment X. When casting speed increment 9 has not been invented yet! This is a huge jump in itemization for the entire game and to have it be on an ALL/ALL item is just so out of whack with everything else. Pre-Ikisith, CSI capped out at 7 and there was already tier 11-12 loot in game. To jump to 10 in that small window is severely skewed. Plus the robe is still a great item for some classes (I did break the illusion that I thought I was fixing that was entirely my bad).
- A Cleric DPS weapon was made to be less DPS. Again, changing a class through itemization is not really viable. We can redesign the class if we like from the ground up but to suddenly become a different thing from 1 or 2 items is not a valid route.
- Imperceptible Bonds was changed. It will probably have more HP in the future.
- Some items were fixed for instance the gloves Curator's Touch. This was not a nerf, but I'm mentioning it here since it was part of the same passel of changes.
To sum up - The things that were changed were mostly to address two separate issues: First, the ill-formed idea of redesigning a class through select itemization and Second, the huge jumps in power with no middle ground and leaving little room for itemization in the future. Some probably ask why now instead of a year ago, I can answer this.
When these items go in, SOME of them it is not apparent it will be a problem and SOME of them it is obvious there will be a problem. In NEITHER CASE are we psychic. If something appears it will be a problem, I'm always up for giving it a chance and if something does not appear to be a problem, it goes in without even that consideration. Until someone does the content and gets the loot, there is no info. When the content is done and now someone has the loot, there is STILL no info. When enough people have done the content and have the loot that we can see the true effect it has on the game, NOW we have info. NOW we can make a decision based on real-world as-the-game-is information.
Of course, this is not ideal. But we are just three people (on average) -- we have no player-based beta testing except for to put content in the game and see what happens, using what can only be called our best guess as to how the content will play out in the long run. Our guess is never 100% correct but in most cases it is either a non-issue or close enough to the mark that we can just leave it in the past and move on. In this case, as has happened in the past and will certainly happen in the future, things were way, way off-base. If I had a time machine, I would have used it to change these items at the outset but instead I am left to bite the bullet and change them knowing that it will not be well-received but also knowing that it is necessary to ensure that content can be created meaningfully in the future.
I'm not going to say what you can and can't talk about in this thread but I really want an answer for this question: In the absence of real beta-testing (which we can not have, ever, on so small a server) how would you guide development to stop this from happening in the future? I know it's awful to have a thing for a year and then have it change. If there were 100 people doing that content from the start instead of 20, this change would have happened a very very long time ago because the server would have hit critical info mass very quickly. But we did not have that.. we had one guild doing this content for a year, slowly. The info is slow to come in and we were slow to react to it.
One solution is to not care about how overpowered things are ever and an equally unpalatable solution is to dev so conservatively I could do item design with a spreadsheet and say every tier slot X gets Y more hitpoints and Z more mana, every 3 tiers focus Z goes up 1. This is an awful vision for me.. I LIKE having our devs do weird things and make strange items that are off the beaten path. But if we keep falling into a place where the weird item is both a huge jump in power and also the new normal, maybe it's not worth taking the chance knowing how slowly "real-world data" is generated and how slowly it trickles back to us and how terrible it is to change items this late in the game.
Or I could just insist that devs intentionally under-tier their loot so that most items will inevitably be buffed but that feels manipulative to me. Anyway I feel like I'm about to ramble so I'll just end by saying I knew that some of these items would probably be nerfed the second they went in but I felt the right thing to do would be to see if I was maybe wrong about that and I'm sorry the inevitable happened! It is entirely my fault, personally, that the items were released in this state and I'm sorry for any anger this mostly preventable scenario has generated.
