First of all, you changed the question and then made that sound confusing, it is called CLASSIC STRAWMAN argument. They already classified what a BUG is in the 4th or 5th post, and the survey was about BUGs not about things overperforming as intended. Basically, stop your strawman.
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.
Everyone else is wrong, I know better guiz.
Thank you for being open and sharing the results for the community. The openness is appreciated.
love all the communication. thanks guys
It’s good that you learned something I hope, but the fact that the survey was very overwhelmingly obvious looks bad. The fact that it could have been taken and thought about before launch but wasn’t is concerning. Why is the “obvious choice” for something in the company the opposite of what the fans would want without gathering this information? It’s not a good feeling and makes me feel like there will be even more decisions made without asking the community’s opinion, getting implemented, and then flamed for being horrible until it’s fixed as well.
Get feedback for stuff before you implement it as early as you can so you can easily fix them as they are being built. You can be vague and use questions that will guide your choices, but don’t just assume what is desired by the fans.
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.
That’s what a bug is… “Should we make changes to things that are not working as intended” is the same exact thing as “Should we make changes to things that are bugged.”
How about underperforming skills/builds? For instance, Falcon gives Acid Flask Pools node the 6 second cooldown from the bird to the player. Fixing that would make it playable.
But the question remains why that’s where the line is drawn or why that’s the distinction being made.
Skills, items, passives, that interact in ways unforeseen by EHG and performing astronomically beyond their intended levels… This is a normal thing that gets patched/fixed/balanced regularly in most games - If it’s a tiny bit stronger than intended it gets ignored, if it’s moderately stronger than intended it may get fixed eventually, and if it’s an extreme outlier it gets fixed almost immediately. It’s abnormal to leave these things enabled in a multiplayer online games.
Bugs are bugs. If it’s a misplaced decimal or some other bug-like issue/reason … fixing it is also the norm. Please fix it. I just ask that EHG be consistent in recognizing the correct issue - The issue is “There is an extreme outlier in performance” not “Is it a bug?”.
I don’t agree on either point.
If we’re talking about the overall health of the community then they absolutely need to be in the same category because the main thing that matters is “There is an extreme outlier in performance” and that’s the thing that should be focused on and corrected, it doesn’t matter which of two irrelevant categories you can file any given example under - they both need to be dealt with for the health of the game/community, and the same policy/rules/tact/expectations should exist for all examples of “There is an extreme outlier in performance”.
This also will not necessarily get less common as time goes on - every time you patch, fix, tweak, buff, nerf, anything, you potentially open the door for more/new interactions that were unexpected. EHG will be adding new items at the very least, and I hope new skills, passives, classes, etc, over time, as well. Not to mention what we have to look forward to from a seasonal content perspective. There are going to be countless examples going forward of things that are simply not working as intended and those things will need correcting if they lead to situations where “There is an extreme outlier in performance”.
I find this to be a bit hypocritical and self-serving when people go “Oh, this is working as intended so is fine that I’m doing 100m DPS.” and then turn around and go “Oh, that guy is doing 100m DPS because of a bug, we should really nerf that.”
What is cheating, and why do people care about cheating? I think the more important part of this rhetorical question is the second part. People care about cheating, IMO, because it results in an unfair advantage.
Both situations (OP v.s. BugOP) where “There is an extreme outlier in performance” are situations where the players benefiting have an unfair advantage over the rest of the playerbase.
This is not good. It is not healthy for the game or community. People seem to care a lot about the leader boards, and also people tend to care a lot about their comparative performance. They trust that EHG will give them a relatively even playing field to compete in. Allowing these outliers of both types to exist undermines expectations of fairness, compromises the integrity of the game’s competitive and comparative aspects, and erodes trust in EHG. It also harms the community and social cohesion because now you have 3 groups of people seemingly pit against each other - (Normal builds, OP builds, and BugOP builds) - And this is decidedly not a good thing - just look at how these conversations are playing out here and in other places.
I will concede that a decent amount of what I’m saying here on this topic is also just my opinions.
Your reference to SSF is interesting, because that’s how most players are probably playing the game. I think if I’m reading between the lines the implication is that if people couldn’t participate in MG or Arena Rankings, you wouldn’t care about bugs or glitches someone is using?
I wish that were an option =P As a CoF player with zero interest in Arena besides getting good rewards/loot from it, I really wouldn’t mind if I were locked out of MG/Rankings if it meant part of my build that happened to be labeled as a bug were left alone.
I get where you’re coming from generally speaking, and I don’t entirely disagree. But I don’t think there’s really much substance to the whole “smart gigabrain player find weird interaction and now build go brrrrrr he is good smart player we should leave his build alone” v.s. “bad evil bug player abuse glitch and his build go brrrr nerf this man admin he cheating bad man bad” thing.
I think this is just a bias we naturally have where if you’re “playing by the rules” then everything you’re doing is technically fine, and if you’re winning hard by technically playing by the rules then you’re clever and should be praised. But if you “break the rules” everything you do is to be condemned, and if you’re winning hard by breaking the rules then you’re a bad person and should be punished.
But for Last Epoch specifically, with the only competitive aspects of the game being comparative performance and Arena rankings, I just don’t see this as a meaningful distinction.
The game is ultimately 99% just a solo PVE game with minor group play aspects that most players are not taking advantage of at all or with much regularity.
No one is losing anything or being hurt more or less by either OP builds or BugOP builds. If we accept that one is harmful I think we implicitly accept that both are harmful. And harm is what we need to be worrying about rather than a frankly sanctimonious distinction between “Things that are extreme outliers by abusing and exploiting mechanics that are clearly not working as designed/intended” and "Things that are extreme outliers by abusing and exploiting a bug or a glitch (which is also just a thing that is clearly not working as designed/intended) - In terms of harm they’re functionally identical. If you’re “losing something” by one or the other existing, what you lose is the same for both. If you are harmed in some way by a build existing that does 100m DPS, you are harmed identically regardless of whichever reason is responsible for the build doing 100m DPS.
And this is why EHG’s stance when dealing with both OP and BugOP needs to be identical. If there’s harm we’re trying to reduce, if we’re trying to ensure a fair balanced playing field for people to compare performance and compete for rankings etc, then we need to be looking at what harms fair and balanced play, and address all instances of extreme outliers, regardless of the reason/source. And if we’re going to leave one alone, then we should be leaving both alone.
Let’s not quibble about the first part - “That’s what a bug is” - because you’re spot on and I agree with the remaining part.
“Should we make changes to things that are not working as intended” is the same exact thing as “Should we make changes to things that are bugged.”
These are indeed the exact same thing IMO.
However it’s important to recognize that as I also stated in that post EHG is not deliberately making builds that do 100m DPS - None of the “OP” builds that are extreme outliers in performance are working as designed or as intended.
So when we say:
“Should we make changes to things that are not working as intended” is the same exact thing as “Should we make changes to things that are bugged.”
And the answer is “Yes”.
We’re also saying that EHG should be fixing/balancing the OP builds because they are not working as designed/intended. These extreme outliers were never meant to perform at these levels.
A build being strong because of synergy they didn’t foresee = Fix next cycle
A build being strong because of oops this is scaling when it says it doesn’t/uses wrong number than what it says it does = Fix now
It’s not really complicated to see what is intended at all. If they worded it as you said they would have people thinking things like the first example fit into the description, but they don’t. It’s clearer to use bug over not working as intended even if they are the same thing due to players being confused like this…
A strawman is misrepresenting your opponent’s stance or argument - making it look like, or asserting, that they said/did something other than what they actually said/did - and then attacking that fictional position.
I am not doing this. I’m putting forward that the question and focus was simply wrong in the first place, and explaining why.
I’m glad you’re enjoying your freshmen philosophy course though.
Overall this is great, but I don’t understand the decision on a partial leader board reset. Twice as many people are in favor of a partial reset than those that are against (excluding people that responded with 3 – no opinion). Moreover, having the top non-bugged build but being in 20th place behind a bunch of bugged builds with a date that is only meaningful to people familiar with the patch history is not exactly the win I would be looking for if I were competing on the leader board. I’m pretty sure the point is to be at the top of the leader board and those bugged builds at the top will be unbeatable once the bug is fixed. Anyone who finds a bug fast enough and gets far enough before the bug is fixed will seal their place at the top of the leader board for the rest of the cycle.
I’m not gonna read the whole banter y’all had to see if it’s a straw man or not but people on the internet get straw man, irony, etc misconstrued all the time.
Let’s just say two players are playing Magic the Gathering. One builds a really strong deck, goes pro tour on his LGS, and wins all the packs. The other opened up a misprinted card that says your opponent loses or something. They tried to use that card to win, but the store running the event was like “Nah that’s not what the card does that’s a misprint.”
If the card is misprinted, we fixed the problem instantly, even if the guy spent all this time building a deck around the misprint that lets him win easily. Wizards (of the Coast) finds out “hey this card we printed is really overperforming… we gotta do something about this for the health of the game.” They ban that on the next ban list.
The misprint is the bug exploit. The pro player winning with OP synergy isn’t a bug exploiter. The fact that both would easily win games because of being broken do not make them the same thing.
Suggestion regarding “Notifying the Player of changes”
Please download and take a look at Mechabellum’s starting screen UI.
They have a section for News that’s ingame. You can’t miss it. I think this should also be somewhere in Last Epoch. It would be a great addition that could inform players of changes.
Totally with you. Good talking point to bring up. I think this is a fair analogy to make. And in this analogy you’re right, simply building a really good deck wins you the game and there’s no complaints, but it’s not right and not accepted if you abused a misprint or broke some other rules to win.
With MTG I think it’s important to acknowledge that WotC has several actively utilized mechanisms in place to deal with both situations, and they do so freely and regularly:
The point I’m making is: WotC does not concern itself only with fixing “bugs” they actively balance the game across the board through a variety of means.
If we’re going to make comparisons - I think it’s relevant to point out that both D3, D4, and PoE, to the best of my knowledge, will actively adjust skills, items, talents, etc, including in the middle of a season/cycle, to shift things towards their intended level of performance and balance. They do not engage with this idea of “we’re only fixing actual bugs unless it’s the start of a new season/cycle”.
The whole point was that the idea that “OP is OP” isn’t really true. People got into the game on the principle concept that balance would happen between cycles, so they could feel like they didn’t waste a bunch of time grinding something to get it "deleted’ so soon into the cycle.
If your character is OP because of a bug and you know it’s a bug, you are saying I need to exploit this while I still can. This to me feels like people that are bad at a game using exploits to cover their bad gaming skills.
If it’s OP because you found a good synergy: congrats you won the game! That’s the whole appeal. Next cycle things will change oop now I found a different synergy that is OP. WOO I STAY WINNING.
If they change a bug mid-cycle, good. If they change it because oh that’s strong, bad.
The primary difference for me is that most people arent SSF. Most arent even ASF. Thats why the server issues were such a problem, the majority want online and likely a majority even want trade ontop of that.
So when someone makes a build that breaks the game without anything operating out of intended spec, i view that as winning. They beat the game, and their ability to farm gold and items for trade is a reward for that. Now when someone uses an easily found bug to get to the same or higher point, I just dont respect it at all.
If we could actually have them be banned from trade/online play and keep the builds to have fun in SSF I would agree thats better. However its very unrealistic on the financial side of things so i like the current solution.
Btw despite my arguments, i chose agree on nerfing major OP builds. I just understand why most didn’t. Personally i think some extreme examples should be nerfed. Especially if its simple to play or easy to make, however i also understand how bad it feels for the person who discovered it and other builds that get hit in the collateral.
There’s two things I want to address here:
It’s the same testing, theorycrafting, time and effort investment, to find strong combos and to find bugs that end up being a part of strong combos. I don’t really think most people in this space are doing these things separately. I think a lot of them stumble into bugs while testing things to find strong combos. So I feel like finding or using a bug is being mischaracterized as being somehow unskilled or deplorable when really it’s the same mindset, same people, same steps being taken as when someone finds a strong combo that ends up being OP.
This is why it doesn’t really matter what the source/reason for the hypothetical “100m DPS build” is. A very very small handful of players will be the ones who discovered something and be users of that thing. The rest are just copying others, and they just care about outcomes, the reason/source is irrelevant to them.
Most players did not start playing Last Epoch with any awareness of EHG’s stance on when/why/how they do balances/patching/nerfs.
For the current cycle, you are correct that some people entered into things knowing that EHG said “Balance would happen between cycles”.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with setting a new expectation though. Then people can act accordingly and they won’t be blindsided by a sudden nerf after farming and grinding for something that was clearly overperforming.
EHG communicates a new stance > New cylce happens > Someone finds something OP that’s not a bug but clearly isn’t working as intended > Player can make an informed decision to chase it anyway or avoid it knowing it will be fixed in the near future.
This is a totally fine situation.
Or alternatively we just leave all the OP builds and all the bug builds alone because for 99.99% of players they just saw “A build that does 100m DPS” and decided to try to copy it. Copying a “working as intended OP but not bugged” build that does 100m DPS is not inherently more skilled or something to be praised versus copying a “100m DPS build that is dependent on a skill/item/passive that is not working as intended due to a technical bug”. The non-bugged build isn’t necessarily harder or easier to farm items for or build. The bugged build isn’t necessarily harder or easier to farm items for or build. This is not an “expression of skill” to be using one or the other as the 99.99% of players who are simply copying what they saw someone else online doing. Typing up ego or sense of pride or accomplishment in which 100m DPS build you saw online and mimic is IMO silly.
I think a lot of my response above to KawsMeCal applies here as well.
For the extreme micro-minority that actually broke ground on something overpowered through their own testing, skill, effort, I do agree with you that to an extent the benefits they get from that are rightfully earned.
When we get into “easily found bug” we get into a really subjective space. You have to start asking questions and making comparisons like:
“What’s a comparable build/combo”
"How much effort is involved in acquiring the necessary items for the non-bugged OP builds versus the bugged OP builds?
As I said above, OP versus BugOP aren’t automatically hard or easy to farm for on either side. Do we nerf OP builds if they’re trivially easy to set up but grossly overperforming? Sure for the one guy who actually discovered it, that kinda sucks, but the overwhelming majority of people using it aren’t doing anything special, they’re just copying something they read online.
I respect your feelings on the topic (really) but I don’t think your feeling of if you respect the way other people play the game is something that should necessarily be a factor in how the game gets balanced.
Post the survey in game next time.
With over million copies sold this survey represented less than 7% of the player base. The game is averaging 100,000 unique users at any given moment which given the average hours people spend gaming means there’s likely 250-400k unique users logging in each week and therefore the survey represents at most 28% of the weekly players. It is often documented by developers that the people that are least happy with a game will spend the most time in the game’s 3rd party online forums such as reddit or steam, which is where this survey was posted. You are developers who’ve spent thousands of hours working on this game. Why change your vision based on such a small percentage of players? Posting the survey in game on the home page would increase interaction immensely.
EDIT: I just asked a group of my friends who’ve been playing the game after work each day if they saw the survey and they said they didn’t even know there was one. I can’t imagine they’re the only ones. The people watching the forums are representing the people wanting changes, not the majority that is just enjoying the game as is.
You can literally see the fact that most of the people disagree with the lazy approach that you guys plan on having.
Of course the poll results are biased, because of the fact that the players that are playing the broken builds will be voting to keep their broken builds broken.
You’ll be losing people like mysell who are tired of playing a game that’s unballanced. We don’t ask for special treatment, but for God’s sake it’s UNFAIR for a build to be farming 10x as many items in the same time period… the fact that you need to ask the community about this blows my mind… the broken builds should’ve been slightly nerfed immediately so that everybody is happy and things don’t get out of hand as they did… their builds can still be viable, nobody looses a thing and as for the leaderboards, life’s life let them have their broken build at the top, but it’s not fair for them to farm 10x as many rare items the whole cycle.
Would you like to compete in a marathon against people that are finding a bicycle after the first couple miles?.. You don’t have to cut their legs, but at least take their bike or transform it in a skateboard.
2 of my friends stopped playing after they found out that their mastery is shit compared to warlocks and falconeers, you won’t see them in the poll cause they stopped giving a shit already… D4 vibes all over again, they also planned on waiting till season 1 for changes while the playerbase was going down by the day. World of Warcraft was receiving weekly ballance changes for years and nobody complained, you were actually happy cause you knew nothing stayed broken for too long, hence you had a reason to keep pushing.
Its not that serious buddy. It’s ok to have overpowered builds in a cycle. They will be changed the next time.