LE Balance Committee - A serious suggestion for overall game quality

General
21

Sentence ends here. The rest is nonsense, and the attitude contained therein only further proves that this idea is self serving and grounded firmly in elitism and gatekeeping.

“I don’t care that my build got nerfed, I care that my build got nerfed.”

It’s as in depth as the people discussing it choose to make it.

I’m quoting this so I can reference it later, but also please yes tell us all about how you’re definitely not being elitist when you say that casual players shouldn’t get to have an opinion.

My attitude is extremely negative because it’s an offensively elitist idea.

That’s because any positive outcome to creating an in-group of self-serving players to directly advise on balance concerns is imaginary. There is absolutely no positive to alienating every other player who is not in the Cool Kids Balance Club That All Know The Game Better Than You Do, You Dirty Scrub. There is no amount of makeup you can put on that pig to make it stop being a pig.

If you want to share your views and feedback and opinions on balance, you already have the forums. The backpedaled version of this committee you (now) claim to want is no different than that unless it has an indefensible extra degree of influence on EHG’s decision-making.

You did. You literally said it. And then you said it again in the very comment I’m replying to right now. You don’t want “average joes with no experience” to have a say in balance, because they just “make random comments”.

You don’t need a special committee to express that view. Unless, of course, as you very obviously do, you want this committee - which of course you would be part of - to have influence which makes that view carry more weight than just writing it in a post would.

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22

What, don’t you all have cell phones? I think the Blizzard approach of “the developer always knows best” has been proven wrong… many, many, many times.

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I think is not a bad idea per se, after all, if I understood correctly, would be a group of passionate people that want to give curated feedback to the devs.

I understand of course the devs still have their own ideas about skills and mechanics, but would be valuable feedback.

Blizzard has people who collect feedback from the community and gives the good bits to the devs (wow). EHG may not have the resources to to that, but the community could help with that instead.

This is a game that currently gives you the opportunity to play just any skill because unlike PoE not everything is extremely tight so you have room to make less optimal decisions, and use skills that for sure will be useless on 400 corruption but good enough through the game.

But also is a game has a ladder system implemented, and there’s always the speed-runners and all the competitive stuff.

If a committee could help to avoid things like, murdering an entire archetype in a class like what happened with crit vulnerability and crit marksman, could be a good idea.

I also have worries about the organization. Is not an easy feat. It would to have separate discussions regarding specific skills, how they interact with other other skills, and then a voting system to give feedback on what the majority of the passionate players think about it.

Also worth to mention, maybe the devs don’t want every single skill to be able to be configured into main DPS skill. Skills with defensive value like Vengeance or Dancing strikes shouldn’t be top DPS skills on top of providing amazing defensive value. Also skills like Cinder Strike are great for early game, is even an option for late-game to kill trash and apply on-hit effects very fast (I actually got to lvl 100 with BM using Cinder Strike as part of the kit, so I know what I’m talking about). The thing is many trash mobs have like… 4 hp?

BTW BroncoCollider just projected his usual bad faith into you, you have not been around recently it seems, but has… “genuine” opinions in many topics.

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24

Diablo: Immortal is both popular and profitable despite the loudest gamers raging about it since it was announced, so I think I’m good with saying that Wyatt Cheng being a little socially awkward and making a PR gaffe has no reflection on the man’s ability to make game design decisions.

25

Yeah. Bad games exist, predatory games exist, bad dev studios exist. So what? Are dev studios supposed to “ask elite players for permission”?

Defenitely not. Especially not the “elite players” that serve their own agenda and maybe also are economically affected by these changes (“why is my signature build getting nerfed?”)

EHG has the community tester programm. It consisted of hand picked comunity members that got their hands on patches early.

Recently got massively expanded for multiplayer testing.

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Like the current forum/discord posts.

Sadly no, I actually am the one pulling all the strimgs and why the devs are making some bonkers design decisions. You’re welcome.

To be fair, I don’t think its unreasonable that he’s grumpy that the build became unuseable, despite the fact that it was using a very expensive skill for free every 3(?) seconds.

They get to have an opinion, it’s just not entirely unreasonable to ignore it on certain subjects (end game balance being one).

But we’ve already got one of those. And yes, ylsome of the “dirty scrubs” did get quite pissed off. Do we need more?

Games with abusive p2w mechanics are generally viewed as bad.

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I fucking knew it!

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28

This is exactly what I was trying to get at. It could be a semi public discussion forum where debates happen across a wide range of factors in the game, eventually towards the end of the week they could put major things towards a vote, then finally give it to the devs as a curated option.

Marksman and crit vuln (bowmage and some other archaeotypes) really did become exceptionally bad because of the crit vuln changes. I also made both a marksman and a bladedancer this patch- the marksman struggled to do monos at level 55, whereas the bladedancer went into monos at level 30 and completely destroyed it in 20 seconds.

At the end of the day, the purpose of the group would be to A) provide detailed, group based deliberated feedback on several issues/ item balance/ skill balance in the game from a result of regular discussion and the result of some kind of poll or vote, B) alert the devs to things they may have overlooked or not be aware of which need to be addressed and C) perhaps steer the focus from ‘curbing’ everything at the top and more raising skills that are at the very bottom until they can finally pose a suitable alternative to the main meta skills.

We can deal with things like imagined problems as they arise, but I don’t see how a public discussion group can become ‘self-serving’ without the discussion group, public, devs or anyone viewing and scrutinizing this behavior first.

Curated feedback is great because these will be ideas that have been thoroughly debated and had the pros and cons weighed before being delivered to the devs.

I also thing I am being misunderstood here. People are interpreteting my fustration with the current nerfs as ‘being salty that my build has been nerfed’, but I am actually fustrated that the build was no longer going to exist and be a part of the builds we have available to play. There are other, stronger builds that have appeared in the past and will continue to appear, and oftentimes these will get hit by such huge changes that the archeotype disappears immediately and we ‘lose builds’ in the name of balance. I’m not concerned that I’m going to get nerfed, I’m concerned that the community as a whole loses something to play. I’m concerned that when I go to form a group of 4 players to push monoliths together, that 3 of them are going to be glacier mages. I’m concerned that a balance approach like this will eventually have most of the playerbase playing the same builds and becoming clones.

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29

One thing is testing the game works properly, and another is to balance things out so skills don’t get out of control or buried into oblivion.

Anyways they pushed the 0.9 patch to the public without the CT testing phase (seems they had the previous internal patch quite tested) for whatever reason.

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30

That’s not true.

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There is the community tester program and I’m pretty sure they give feedback about things that are to strong in the patch cycle they test. So we already have kind of a “Player Balance Comittee”. At the end of the day it’s EHG who does the balancing and I’m happy about it because the average player likes strong and broken builds.

I’m one off the players that shok his his head about several balance desissions EHG made in the past but at this point they all work out in good way. Sure it’s always sad you got the build you play gutted and I’m sad explodo spriggan is doing thousands of poison stacks anymore on button press but it’s better that way.

All in all I think we are in a good place and the Devs are the last people that wont listen to reason if you talk to them directly.

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That’s as not true as the following.

In fact, they expanded the CT group explicitly for testing purposes. I’m curious where you got that idea from though.

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WTF, I’m not making things up, saying “is just not true” and leaving me as a liar is not a way to discuss anything. If you have concrete evidence, please, if not just both shut up.

I will not say names, but “someone” said the version that got live as 0.9 was not the exact version the CT team have tested, EHG pushed extra changes before the release and those were not under test. This is because many errors there were internally solved, emerged again. My wild guess being a programmer is they used a different/earlier branch and pushed all the new stuff there. I don’t know the details, I have no insider information. Is what I read/heard…

I can tell by my own experience on the very first 0.9 patch, a core skill like Dancing strikes, not working like at all if you leave the button pressed. That was NOT TESTED BY ANYONE. Prove me wrong on that.

So I’m quite inclined to believe what I have been told, and the version we got was not tested.

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You actually are though, probably because you arent in the CT. One of the primary functions is to find bugs, but balance is just as important.

That is what always happens. It takes a while to prep a build to test, but you’re implying that the CTs didn’t test anything. Usually the changes that go through at the last minute aren’t particularly major.

No, you don’t.

Which is your prerogative. But what you appear to be taking from it and how you are describing it is just flat out wrong. It’s entirely possible/likely it’s Chinese whispers.

I’d assume this is because not all of the pre-0.9 fixes for bugs were translated to, or were possible to be translated to the mp code base.

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The original post is the best post I have ever read. I love the idea and the concepts.

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No. I’m saying that EHG didn’t release the version previously tested by CT. If that’s commonplace, let me tell you that’s bad practice. I suppose, like everyone, that the CT team is doing their part.

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Afaik EHG changed everything they promised to change according to CT’s feedback and they also work on stuff they promised to work on. So far, as unbelivable as it is, you can take the devs of this game by their word.

After the backlash that the CT programm faced in the beginning I’m pretty sure further testing will be even more exclusiv and you don’t hear anything about it. I’m positive certain uniques and buildes have been deemed to strong and have been chaged before the patches hit the server.

Sure the whol thing could be cut short by a CT breaking NDA but I think this will not happen but experience and stuff Mike said in the friday streams make me belive everything is better then it is pictured here by some and I’m not a beliver and I’m one of the first persons to riot in here if something seems fishy.
Balancing was never that bad even when it left me speechless sometimes.

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38

You are indeed making things up.

Why are you talking about it then? No Details? No insider information? You’re making things up because of rumours you heard.

No. You have to present proof for your statement first. Thats how it works.

Just the fact that you experience bugs in the 0.9 doesn’t meant the version wasn’t tested. Just imagine that EHG didn’t want to miss their deadline for 0.9 again.

Can you imagine how many bugs might be in the game if the MP patch was not tested by thousands of CTs?

Dancing Strikes being still bugged might be caused by several reasons:

  1. The patch wasn’t tested (what you said and what I told you isn’t true. Because it was tested.)
  2. Nobody tested the skill in the testing phase, so nobody knew it was bugged
  3. People tested it, but didn’t write a bug report, so devs wouldn’t know
  4. People tested it, wrote bug reports, but EHG didn’t read all of them so devs wouldn’t know
  5. Devs read the bugreports but didn’t find the root of the issue, yet.
  6. Devs read the bug reports, didn’t prioritize the issue and delayed working on it
  7. Devs already implemented what they thought was the solution, but something went wrong

Of course, since you are an experienced programmer you can easily say that it just could be 1. Right?

And just a sidenote in addition: The CT is not a QA programm dedicated to primarily find bugs. It’s mainly about feedback regarding gameplay and balance and stuff like that. And just to be clear: The fact that there’s talk about balance doesn’t mean that EHG is instantly tweaking every number when an issue arises. I say that just in case you want to present balance issues as a fact that 0.9 wasn’t tested.

Maybe you should talk to your “someone” and try to iterate on these points. Or you can just apply for the CT programm yourself and find out.

It’s better to not go out in the wild and spread things based on rumours you’ve heard. And then tell people to proof you wrong or shut up. That makes you look like a fool.

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That wasn’t what came across from what you said. Given it takes some time to prep a patch for the CTs and for us to test it, what would you have the devs do while this is happening? Down tools and take a week or so off?

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Firstly I gotta agree I’m definitely with you on this point. Hate it when playstyles are straight up deleted from the game. I had tried Lightning and Ignite Earthquake (shaman and beastmaster) and these were failures even before the whole cooldown nerfs…

Buuut a group of player balance committee brings with it a whole host of problems as already mentioned here. So many ways, it could go wrong.

What happens if committee becomes redundant
What happens if committee becomes the only way to give feedback(or this becomes the perception of community)
Who moderates conflicts between committee and community or within committee members(could just be individuals disagreeing or escalate to groups like a streamer and his community or even just the general player assumption)
Who selects the committee (can easily get preferential)
What if committee ideas clash with the community’s or the community starts blaming committee for nerfs (highly possible if its all public)

Maybe not the best example, but there is a group of russian players in Grim dawn with an active discord and who like to do a lot of theorycrafting and build testing, Could consider them as an example case of the balance committe as they tested a lot of builds and provided plenty of feedback. I remember seeing quite a bit of forum drama between this group, other players and even the devs. The group did a bunch of testing and put up a list of the best builds in Grim Dawn and as expected this had generated a ton of debate. To kinda summarize they used certain metrics as a benchmark (like lets say in LE terms T4 Julra kill speed and 300+ corruption clear speed) but others argued it can’t be considered better than builds which can manage 1000 corruption lets say. Was a lot of heated debate and even some bans if I remember correctly.

Its kinda awkward to explain but I think a set committee is not really a great idea as it can have so many issues of its own.

I do however think its a good idea for some sort of community feedback to the devs so that entire playstyles don’t get deleted or annoying changes get overlooked for long. Maybe some kind of pinned monthly ideas/feedback post which Devs review the top ideas and where players can post and others can vote on it and provide additional comments. Major flaw with this idea is of course it becoming redundant.

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