That is always the objective. It’s impossible though. There are millions of combinations (very very conservatively) between skills, passives and items. It’s a chaotic system. It’s impossible to completely balance. Which is why no ARPG to date has ever managed it.
Even starcraft, which has only 3 factions, didn’t get it right off the bat. It needed patches and an expansion to fix. And that is a very very very reduced system compared to an ARPG.
I’d prefer for Devs to focus on more content and fixing bugs than balancing classes. As you said, it won’t happen. And I wonder how many players really want everything balanced? I play all sorts of builds (meta & normal) and I consistently stick with normal builds longer as the challenge makes them more enjoyable. Meta builds can be really fun but not for long because it’s just too easy.
I’ve played WoW for years and it won’t ever be balanced there either. There will generally be meta classes/groups that do the highest m+ keys which only 1% of the community do. But most will say pick what you enjoy and play that, can still do high keys on any class.and get KSH. Just like in LE, heaps of builds can do 300+ corruption and kill Abby. Don’t NEED to do 1k corruption to have fun. More content will be more fun.
its also a matter of build diversity. more choices means more good.
Yep, forgot to mention that part. More important than balance imo. Some days I like to play something more OP, other days I’m up for a challenge. Important to have those options.
I don’t think anyone expects everything to be really fully balanced in the sense that everything has the exact same difficulty for any build. That is unachievable. But I think most players want all masteries to be able to do all content. As long as that happens, even if some have an easier time on some content and others on another, players are happy.
Players just don’t like when they see a class delete a boss that they can’t even try because they get deleted themselves.
But balance is what enables more builds to be viable.
As long as they can do most end game content, would you consider them viable? In the case of LE that means T4 dungeons and at least 300 corruption which is I think what the Devs intended? Don’t remember exactly what Mike said. I’m not saying balance doesn’t matter at all, but I don’t worry too much about those outliers every season that are clearly SSS tier, as long as there are still plenty of other options to choose from that are viable.
I think community perception of ‘viable’ is a bit different to what the Devs intended. Streamers think only 700+ corruption is acceptable, because of efficiency… which I have farmed at, but don’t agree that anything less is not acceptable… it just takes longer to farm favour.
Absolutely, IMO, the community, or parts of it, has a tendancy to fall into the belief/trap that only builds capable of doing the top few % of what’s possible are “viable” so anything that isn’t pushing high hundreds/low thousands of corruption isn’t viable.
IMO, in principle, the better balance is the flatter/wider the Gaussian curve is, the more builds can do above any given corruption threshold & the peak is lower (ideally) compared to the average or whatever threshold the devs want with as many builds as possible being capable of doing that. This means that the most egregious over-performers need to be brought down (nerfed) & the lowest performers need to be brought up.
Maybe devs could make a poll to ask forum dwellers what is their corr level for char to achieve to call it viable? And than tune things acordingly…
From CoF prophecies it seems that 350cc is the ceiling.
I don’t think that’s a good idea. Opinions vary wildly depending on playstyle.
People that like making multiple characters have a much lower ceiling, many times being happy when a character reaches empowered and don’t even bother pushing much corruption before they get bored and/or distracted by a new build idea.
People that tend to play only one or two characters will have a higher ceiling, since they tend to push the build to its limits.
Personally, I think they need to set their goals internally and balance builds around that. Especially because they’re the ones that are aware of the upcoming content. As an example, if they had done that in 1.0 and balanced bullds solely around 300c, then Aby would have been unachievable by most.
Which is what I believe they’ve been doing anyway. Balance isn’t easy to achieve, but 1.1 was vastly better than 1.0 in this regard. And I expect season 2 will also be an improvement. Eventually they’ll get it right enough to please most people.
PoE also struggled with balance for years until they got it kinda right, even though there are still a bunch of skills that are massively underpowered. But the overperformers are no longer so massively ahead as to discourage anyone from trying other things and most skills are viable to do all content. That’s good enough.
I believe the highest requirement is actually 320c. But with Aby that ceiling should be higher. Most builds that can do 320c will still struggle to kill Aby, although it’s a pinnacle boss, so that could be by design.
Yeah I remember on my very first character in 1.1 (shield bash FG) I did all Harbingers and thought Aby wouldn’t be too much harder. Man was I wrong… went through those 10 eyes very quick. Next character I levelled a static orb Sorc and showed him who’s boss… Haha
But yeah he’s considerably harder than anything around 300c