After the last patch, balance has become not just a “living set of numbers”, but a living 30-man party wiper.
One suggestion is to start communicating every important change ahead of time. The advisability of having communicated such a completely gamechanging buff to group mob scaling should’ve gone without saying. Player trust in AGS was damaged by this.
This is such a terrible response. No one asked for more health, health scaling, heavily reduced drop rates from chests, at any point in time. There is no lag here. This is just poor decision making by AGS. I am at 720+ hours played as of yesterday. I have stuck through this shit show every single day since launch. I am not saying that I am going to quit myself, though it is a much high likelihood now than it was before the changes to elites, elite zones, elites mob health, chest drops, that I will move on. I am not a good example though, due to my 720 already sunk and strong desire to see this game succeed. You have already lost 90% of your player base. I imagine in the next 2 weeks we will see at least half or more of the remaining players quit if these changes remain.
Everything else in this patch was GLORIOUS. Best patch since release other than the changes to elite zones, chests, elite mobs, and players ability to farm their watermark to 591 so we can then run the endgame dungeons without wasting our weekly cores.
lol, no, they are not going to fix anything. They haven’t fixed the lag in wars since day 1, this won’t fix it either. And they are certainly not rolling back any of the changes to elites and elite chests. You think Amazon cares about us enough to hotfix anything? They have left the most simple stuff broken for MONTHS, lol, they would rather let hatches do 10x the damage for an entire week than actually do a hotfix.
Please can you fix the broken roll (((when the musket is equipped in hands))), it is half the normal roll distance of holstered musket or any other weapon holstered or equipped. I cannot believe it got left out in the void patch after all the musket fixes… like WTF
Been waiting for a fix for this musket BUG since release and the thread I made about it got no traction so no FIX because obviously your post needs to be on top of the forum to get noticed.
TLDR: light armour musket equipped roll is broken since release.
I agree with this and i have over 700 hours
Sadly you’ve been part of an industry that no longer is controlled by people who create games for gamers but create games for investors. You have worked in the gaming industry for 10. I have played online games for well over 30. This game is a classic example of the new mentality of developers. Release the game before it is finished, before it is polished, and use the client and their money to finish the game and appease the investors. The emotions from a finished game are strikingly different than one that isn’t. The delay of feedback, I am sorry what. You release what you call a Public Test Realm a week before a large patch. How could you possibly be accepting of feedback or analyzing the data or making changes in that time?
Your methods or implementation are flawed and need to be re-evaluated.
@NW_Mugsy
First of all, kudos for walking into the incinerator and sitting down. It’s rare and it’s helpful.
You’re right that things take time, but I’d offer you and the team the following conceptual and specific feedback.
Your quote above
What would have resolved this much faster is to simply guide expectations saying ~20% of things found on any PTR will be fixed in that release and 80% in future releases. It feels empty because you’re not setting expectations and allowing an incorrect perception that PTRs will be iterative before going live to persist. That’s the frustration.
Myrk (and the 40-man mugging march)
Similar to last, the frustration comes because I don’t think devs have stated that they don’t want a zerg-fest here. I think you don’t (I like the change in concept). But you all can be far more pro-active by stating a belief that you want to disincentivize this behavior. Hopefully that will also extend to the solo-ninja looting by hiding under platforms and over rocks. It’s so bad.
Dodge/animation cancelling
Here’s a specific collapsed quote that might help:
[Dev Blog] Combat Responsiveness.
“There are some inconsistencies that are not intended…our goal is to make sure there are consistent input windows between all weapons and abilities.”
The issue here is the wording of this entire post is general, bordering on vacuous. While I understand the team doesn’t want to get trapped, what would have been better? Taking a concrete stand on positions of (with notions of sometimes/always/never as your intentions):
The Role of RNG/Time-Gates
While at the edge of the thread’s focus, you see a lot of complaints about changes to Myrk difficulty and loot drops that come from it. Other complaints of how this ‘grandfathers’ the early power-levellers at the expense of new people. Strip away the content discussion and this is feedback/frustration around the reliance on RNG-grinds, time-gates, etc. The single best thing I could suggest to you all is a candid Dev Post about your intended reliance on RNG-grinds a year from now.
Conclusion
Again, I want to thank you for wading into the fire last night. But I also want to implore you and the team to speak more clearly about intentions. The following Dev Post is the clearest you have:
Whether or not a player agrees with it, the dev’s intent and direction are clear. This level of clarity is desperately needed elsewhere.
Thanks for reading,
I appreciate you reaching out and providing feedback to my post, as stated, I do not care for one of the balance changes. I legitimately prefer the previous patch regarding said changes. As others have mentioned, most of us, have provided great feedback during the PTR relating to balance, which none of if it was followed.
This brings up another concern, your player base will continue to provide less and less quality feedback if none of it is actually addressed. We do not want to spend the time and effort if it’s just going to be ignored.
The reality is, when these changes went live on the PTR everyone was screaming STOP, DON’T DO THIS, and nothing was considered.
So yes, my response of “Pretty much dislike every balance change possible. Yep, pretty much. Balance was certainly better last patch.” stands.
You cant jump out of ice shower? Under which stone did you life for the past 2 weeks? I can jump any time out of ICE shower, where it stated to root 1 second. lol 1 second and does nothing.
And yet the stagger from the Axe/Hammer holds you several seconds in place. Fair isnt it? Get a full party with those and you perma stunn everyone.
Please don’t use the word “We” or “Everyone”. Speak for yourself, “We” all have different opinions. I personally like most of the changes and think they were needed.
These most recent changes really hurt a large portion of the player base, your balance team completely gutted Fire Staff, Ice Gauntlet, Bow, and Life Staff. A lot of people enjoyed these specs and it added a lot of diversity to the game. PvP should be balanced around “rock, paper, scissors”, never should a PvP game try to make everything truly equal, it doesn’t work.
So, I feel like your community has provided sufficient feedback relating to these changes, however, the balancing team chose to ignore everything. This sort of response will only drive players away, maybe not from the game at first, but it will discourage them from feeling like their feedback matters. Which, then if more changes go live that they dislike, eventually they will leave.
Never should a weapon/class feel completely subpar in every way, and that is what your balancing team did to the above-mentioned weapons. They are so underwhelming it’s not worth bringing them to the fight anymore. Balance in the previous patch was fairly good, a few things needed a buff, ie, the musket and spear, (good changes), but to ruin other weapons in the process was a HUGE step backward.
I chose “we” correctly, because on the PTR forums there were a lot of people providing the same feedback as I, so my point stands.
Okay, I’ll see what I can do.
Im going to be writing xclusively on the Life Staff, it’s changes. PvP vs PvE balancing and what I would like to see.
Changes: The new patch reduced base heal by 20% and interfaced that with the armour one is wearing. This resulted in the following effective number(+/-1) -20% for Healer in heavy armour, -8% for medium armour, and +4% in light armour.
The problem I, personally, have with this change is, that, while I am wearing Light armour, after the Patch my survivability has dropped drastically and my healing, which supposibly increased by 4% has seen a decrease in what actually happened. I don’t have a specific precentage on the decrease, but it is there. Why that is, I’m not sure, but I would hazard the following guess: The boni from light armour to dmg/healing do not translate as intended.
Balance(PvE vs PvP):
While I wholeheartedly agree with the nerf done to the Life Staff in PvP(good job there) you’ve neglected to take into account what influence this has on PvE.
Before the patch it has been possible to clear expeditions like Dynasty without taking a healer. Even Garden of Genesis was possible, if the team was proficient in movement. Not taking a healer drastically reduces the needed time for that content, since it mean more damage.
Now, after the patch, healers in Expeditions and Elite-Runs(myrkgard, mines, pool in reekwater, etc.) are nothing but a liability. They do not add anything significant to the party.
The heal is adequate at best, but most of the time they are lying unconcsious on the ground. Taking a heavy greataxe player makes more sense, in either case!
What I would like to see is your dev-team either splitting PvE and PvP balance and revert the changes, to a degree, for PvE. How, I neither know nor care to elaborate on, since I am not a developer.
As I mentioned, for PvP your job was good, for PvE I would like to see a a different approach:
Better suviability, either by reducing the disadvantage from heavy armour, or the third dodge for light armour, that medium armour provides. Something along those lines essentially.
Light’s Embrace and/or Divine Embrace both need a slight buff as the single-target “panic”-button to save the expedition.
Also, where the heck is the void-bent armour for healers? There is not a single reason to wear anything but the heavy constitution-based armour as a healer. The light stuff doesnt provide any useful attributes.
As of now, I, a healer since day 1, will not participate in PvP or PvE as such. I am going to retire my lifestaff and replace it with a greataxe. It’s not a weapon I like, but the one which is most useful right now. Hopefully I can pick it up again, after another patch, which improves the balance(not the life staff neccesarily) of the life staff.
I hope this provides you with the necessary information and a baseline as to what to forward to your dev-team. If there is anything you need me to elaborate on I am happy to do so, please feel free to “@” me or write me a PM and I will get back to you as soon as humanly possible, for me.
Sincerely,
Zirial
Yes, those nerfs were needed. These were brought inline with the performance of other weapons.
Can’t be one sided. But I see the side you picked.
See the changes you quoted. The community asked for those. I did.
See the changes you quoted. Weapons are more equal now (but bow apparently needs a look at).
I mean just because 100 people come on the forums and complain about something, does not necessarily mean that’s the majority opinion (nor would it make it necessarily correct, even if it was the majority opinion) People don’t come to the forums to “complain” about the things they are fine with lol. I would argue that no one has thoroughly tested the balance changes still - and this includes 99% of people on the PTR. No one in this thread has given sufficient time to test these things.
We HAVE however, had plenty of testing with healing and heavy armor, and “Paladin” builds are near unkillable by a lot of other builds - and that needed to be addressed. I don’t know many healers that started out early on wearing heavy, but eventually migrated to it because other options were pointless. This is something we have thourougly tested and they have addressed it. Yalls complaints about great axe and whatnot are relatively new and I’m not 100% sure I agree yet (as I’m not personally dying to great axe …ever, and still not sure what all the fuss is about lol)
(On that note, have yall tried holding block? Seriously nobody blocks. You can’t block ranged attacks except with a shield but you can just block, yeah, even you firestaff light armor users lol)
we can also see which side you picked mrzel. Dont think Hammer/Axe group will perma stuns/stagger you?
I agree. As a healer I need to find my way with what armor to wear, but void gives me a really fun new option. And there’s differentiation in how people play pvp now.
I think the devs did a great job and explained their reasoning for the changes. PTR was a quality test after design change decisions had been made; the community team told us that. And yet all these people think “omg I gave feedback and they didn’t change the build.” That was never the purpose.
If you want my side it’s getting to a close to equal balance.
I never said there isn’t more balancing that needs to follow this patch. The community itself will indicate through feedback if certain weapons are troublesome and AGS will look into it.
Well said. Although diminishing returns for CC are needed, IMHO.
Damn crybabies are in every corner of the forum, its really sad to see how you are all crying while they are working the game nice, OK with bugs here and there, OK with things not changed RIGHT NOW RIGHT THERE, but they are working the game… Stop bullying them, let them time to work the game and polish it, if you cant stop crying for every little changes and adapt to the situation, then stop playing MMOS, EVERY MMOS have bugs and things to fix, even more at early stages.