Mid-Cycle Balance Survey Recap

Thank you for sharing the results and for communicating with the playerbase.

Ya not too happy about it but I was expecting it. Especially since it was in the same survey. Probably seemed like a good “compromise” for a lot of people. Not nerfing clearly overperforming interactions will lead to little build diversity especially in MG IMHO.

Any chance you are planning other things to make this less impactfull especially in a trade enviornment? Soft/Hardcaps on rarity/xp or any other ideas to not make it so extremly punishing to play off-meta in MG?

Maybe I am wrong but the way I see it right now is that I have to check if the handfull of OP builds for the cycle look interesting to me otherwise there isn’t much point in playing if you want to play MG.

I’m gonna be a bit pedantic here and argue I didn’t say we “need to rely on” external tools, but that it is within the realm of possibilities that the data beyond the top 50 already exists and it’s a matter of UX, not data collection. That said, the fact you weren’t surprised that site exists means you probably have ‘relied’ on it for build planners or game info at some point. This is not something new in ARPGs.

Secondly, as I mentioned elsewhere, “mild bug” is subjective and having EHG decide on rankings in a gray area is gonna lead to as much controversy. The intent in the OP seemed to be to allow players to decide for themselves what should be ‘broken’ and what not. Having the ability to filter ingame would be nice, but I can understand not wanting to hint at something and be seen as a promise, then have people complain it isn’t there due to some technical limitations.

A filter per patch would not be enough to simulate partial leaderboard resets, only full ones, so you need more data than that. Or are the Primalist rankings pre-patch suddenly no longer valid? Also, from the top of your head, can you tell me what patch 1.0.2.1 fixed and why that should be in the filter?

You’re also ignoring the possibility that a mid-cycle patch introduces new bugs, at which point you need to filter a select number of patches.

And finally, this isn’t a patch notes post, but a design philosophy one. It’s clear to me just from the OP that they want to give players the ability to distinguish pre- & post-fix rankings for themselves. Is that somehow counter to what the survey results are? Would you rather have them not post anything until all details on their Leaderboard design are ready for patch 1.3?

Scenario 1: Due to oversight, lack of testing, a “miss” during the design and vetting steps we end up with skills, items, interactions, that create the possibility for an extreme outlier that is overperforming compared to most other builds. It does 100m DPS and is “OP” by most people’s standards.

Scenario 2: Due to a mistake made from a technical perspective - bad code, a misplaced decimal, etc - A build is “bugged” and doing 100m DPS.

This is very much a “Corporate needs you to find the difference between these two pictures” situation for me.

With the exception of situations where something causes a technical issue for EHG on the backend, as was the situation with Smoke Bomb, I do not see any relevant difference between the two scenarios.

You’re right. The majority of people enjoy OP builds. So who cares if one build is OP because of a bug, and one is OP because of questionable design/testing?

In both cases things are not working as intended.

EHG is NOT intentionally creating builds/skills/items/interactions that are OP and extreme outliers. I don’t think it’s really debatable that extreme outliers are factually not working as intended.

I don’t really think it matters “why there’s two builds doing 100m DPS”. If doing 100m DPS is “OK” then it’s OK. That simple.

Consistency to me is that builds that do 100m DPS either are, or are not, OK. You either do, or don’t fix them regardless of the underlying reasons for them overperforming or being OP.

I’m conceptually fine with them taking a bug situation and going “Ok, top end builds are doing 100m DPS, this is doing 100b DPS, we’re gonna nerf it down to 100m DPS because it should actually be like 10m DPS … but we don’t wanna mess up people’s build in the middle of the cycle, so we’ll just wack it down so it’s more in line with other top end builds” - That’s OK.

But why would it need to get nerfed down to 10m DPS? Just because it’s a bug?

Like you said - People like their OP builds. And that’s fine.

I do see, and hear you, about the survey responses and people caring about the distinction. I just personally think that’s an issue with critical thinking skills from the respondent and I’m not particularly in favor of democratizing things to the point where we do things poorly just because it’s what people voted for.

The question should have been “Should we make changes to things that are not working as intended” it should have never been about if it’s a “bug” or not.

I want them to be consistent in how they rectify situations where things are not working as intended. Not drawing an arbitrary line in the sand between “well, it’s OP because we didn’t test item/skill interactions properly” and “well, it’s OP because we misplaced a decimal”. Both are “not working as intended” and they should be consistent in their stance in addressing both scenarios, meaning the same stance and tact applied to both.

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The CT program is/was open to literally anyone.
Feel free to apply to join if you believe you can contribute in a better way.

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Couldn’t agree more with your post…

Considering that there will be no mid-season nerf for wildly overperforming skills/items that aren’t technically bugs, Ladder should not be reset. All that will do is narrow the ladder and playerbase into the one or two builds that don’t get nerfed because it wasn’t technically a bug.

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Thank you for sharing the results, and really a good way to listen for the community, we are with you :muscle:

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Im struggling to see how much use distinguishing the 4 post patch rankings actually is in practice tbh

I think you made great valid points. But I don’t think there is a need to push the devs into a corner over a public exchange. Otherwise, it’s just going to make them not want to engage at all in the future?

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Thank you guys for caring about the player base. This approach is new for me, but really makes it feel like you care.

It SHOULD be considered a badge of shame… maybe a seperate badge of shame leaderboard or seperate leaderboards for each patch… I find it highly unbelievable this survey result on that 1 particular question went that way…
There is noway (unless you are 1 of the 10 or 50 or so people on the leaderboard currently), that someone would vote to keep the leaderboard as is for someone who exploited a bug to be over powered, and keep them in the top position KNOWING the bug was fixed and you will never beat them out… That one thing tells me this survey was nonsense…

Also why was there no question asking us if builds that werent over powered on other classes should be buffed to compensate the overpoweredness of a build you WONT be correcting? Too much work?

Or fix bugs as reported promptly. There is no reason bugs reported in ct or known months in advance should make it to live content.

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A pragmatic, measured approach. Couldn’t ask for anything more. Also, I’ve found it’s really difficult to get large audiences to take part in surveys – and you nailed it! At least one of those questions had 70k+ responses? That’s phenomenal. Thanks as always, for the updates and concise communication.

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Split your cycle leader boards in to 2, one leaderboard for first part of cycle and one leader board for mid cycle bug fixes. Leaving over performing builds on the leaderboards just makes the leaderboard experience obsolete as you have bugged/exploited builds sitting at the top, gg.

If the node says 4% and it gives 40%, thats a bug. Hope this helps.

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I think it has to do with “we found a perfect combination that exploits how all these skills
items, and passives function together which massibely scales damage/health/w.e.” vs “haha dev made typo”

Those two finds dont deserve to be in the same category. Especially as the former gets less and less common as time goes on. Finding a build that breaks the game is a goal, exploiting a bug is just cheating. Take it from someone who had a ball with an old glitch that made fire auras infinitely build, i never played it outside of SSF even in early acces. Its just weird to do so imo.

Don’t even know why I answered the survey. I’m not playing Cycle ever! LOL
And I don’t care for leaderboards either.

This is why even though I may not always like the direction you guys take, I always speak so highly of you. I have never seen a company that cares so deeply about their player base and will own up to their mistakes or even change their perspective/vision of their game. Thank you for your hard work and allowing us all to be a part of this amazing world you have created.

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STRONGLY AGREED with you. The developers ask the community for permission, whether it will allow them to fix broken things/too strong things in THEIR GAME. :face_with_raised_eyebrow: