Please, don't play the fun police

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1

I just saw the survey on Steam about nerfing skills/classes/items midleague. I feel like I had more to say that what the survey allowed me to. Here’s my 2 cents :

Please, don’t play the fun police.

Yes some builds are overperforming, but you know what ? It’s fine. It’s fun. This isn’t a PvP game. No one cares if some items or some things are too strong at the moment. No one is loosing anything because of overperforming builds. Of course, bugfixes are always a welcome events, but nerfs can wait for the next league.

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Only if you’re playing that build and not a non-Veil one. (or rather a Vampiric Pool one)

And to add…

The entire issue is that it’s a bug giving 10x the Ward it should.

So going by that last part, you agree that it should be fixed down to 4% instead of 40% it accidentally is now?

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go cry somewhere else metaslave. whether you like it or not this game need balance changes.

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Bugfixes are welcome? Well guess what, some of the builds are powerful because of bugs and will get nerfed if they get fixed.

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I broadly agree with the sentiment that a lot of people are getting themselves absurdly and inappropriately riled up about other people having bigger fake numbers that don’t matter than they do, claiming that they’re “compelled” to play something they actively don’t like to “keep up”, and that people with the kind of disordered and dysfunctional relationships to games it takes to have those reactions should not be catered to.

But this is also true:

They should not be afraid or hesitant to fix bugs, at any time, ever. Full stop. That is not “being the fun police”, it’s doing one of the most basic parts of the job of a programmer. It’s only “fun” because it’s extremely powerful, not because the actual gameplay of using it is fun. It should be obvious to anyone using it even by accident that it’s a bug, and if they’ve built around it or invested in it that’s their own problem.

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It might not be so obvious to new players. I remember Wolcen had the same thing with shields giving you 10 or 100 times more damage than it should. I just thought the new skill I started using was strong lol.

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Yes, I agree

It’s why I think Healing Hands should be left as is, even though Paladin build are very strong with it due to the potential Ward stacking. But that is doing exactly what it says on the can and if that is the strongest, it is an EHG design intent flaw, not a coding flaw. I would even advocate for Bone Prison to remain useful in that node, even though it is the strongest of all minions health-wise.

I wouldn’t even care about some of the old bugs where people were getting 5% more dmg instead of 3%, that wasn’t in the realm of game changers, but 10x Ward clearly does. To advocate leaving it till end of cycle negates all other Warlock builds to secondary tiers and that is just not good for build diversity, and thus player agency

@Iceberg: If only that was the worst bug in Wolcen, they probably would’ve survived. Imagine if EHG kept themselves to the original release date from Kickstarter :grimacing:

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This has nothing to do with the issue at hand. For the record, I’m not playing warlock, nor falconneer, nor runemaster. Apparently that matters to be legitimate to voice my opinion. My point is this:

  • Exploiting bugs is against the ToS of the game and can lead to punishment, like in any game
  • Bugfixes during a season is normal and should be expected.
  • Overperforming skills, items or classes that isn’t the result of a bug exploit should not be patched during a season.

Finding ways to exploit the game mechanisms (without exploiting bugs obviously) is the very essence of those types of game,s and should be rewarded. By nerfing builds mid-season, it does the exact opposite.

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Literally every overperforming build people have issues with is due to bugs. The entire reason that survey came to be is because people wanted them fixed.

They even said that it’s clear from the survey that a vast majority of players (who filled it in) want those bugs fixed during cycles, compared to less so for correctly working stuff just being designed too strong.

So if your only point was “please don’t nerf Healing Hands together with all those Ward bug abusers” then I agree. HH is working as they intended. It might still be somewhat strong, but that is a design flaw, not a bug. (See also other post)

But if you’re gonna make a thread that directly points at a survey that came to be because people are unhappy with bug exploits, and your stance is “don’t nerf me please”, don’t be mad if people assume you’re playing one of those bugged builds.
And if you were one of those players, the sentence “bugfixes are fine, nerfs aren’t” could also be read as “only fix bugs if they don’t nerf me, plz”.

PS: the term you’re looking for is “clever use of game mechanics”. Exploits have a malicious connotation attached to them.

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There is a difference between overperforming and having a skill node multiplied by x amount by a bug.
Bugs should always be fixed asap, but is agree there i no need to nerf certain builds in mid season.

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I find interesting how you turn the table: you assumed something, and you were wrong. I don’t see that as a me problem. Whatever, doesn’t matter.

You said all overperforming builds rely on bug exploits, and that’s not true. If you look closely at the survey, you’ll see the writer has clearly distinguish builds overperforming because of bugs and builds simply overperforming. If every builds currently overperforming were indeed exploiting bugs, this is not how the survey would have been phrased, and I wouldn’t have created this thread.

At the time, I didn’t saw the survey thread. This thread therefore has no reason to be, it should have been a comment.

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If you’re gonna use the exact same arguments as all the other people defending the bug exploits and then not clarify where you draw the line, then yes, I assume things. You argued that broken builds are fine & fun and people playing other things shouldn’t care, so I assume that when care enough to make a post about it, you are playing a broken build.

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, … you should take your dog to the vet. Or something like that :wink:

You assume that the survey is only related to the current situation. It’s meant to review their overall stance on things, not just these specific occurrences. Right now, all vastly over performing builds require an exploit. The survey just also asks the hypothetical “but what if it wasn’t a bug?”. That hypothetical doesn’t invalidate my statement about the current situation. Again, I think HH is a bit strong, but it’s hard to see with all the Warlock/Falconer clutter on Leaderboards. For that alone, the rest needs to be fixed, so we can see who’s the actual non-bugged build that needs a nerf next cycle. Otherwise, we’re gonna be running full Sentinel Leaderboards in a few months, because they didn’t have enough data on how we interact with a build that’s only partially OP.

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i thing the bugfix is good … but i also think to make this build still good they could make it so is gives 10% ward of minion HP but its capped… 10-15k if u would generate ward over that amount u get x seconds decay delay per x ward over the cap… that would tune it down but still would make fun to play and u wouldnt feel left in the dust :smiley:

anything else is if a class is not over/underperforming dramatically then it should be kept to minor changes mid-cycle… like here and there a few numbers tweaked… since this was a bugfix i hope devs watch the performance and think about tweaks if needed not just after the cycle…

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I voted heavily in favor for mid-league changes.

Broken stuff needs fixing, no argument around that.

Slightly under-/overperforming stuff is fine.
Broken stuff needs fixing.

Simple.

I use MG, I loose stuff hence. My personal standing in the weaker since I can’t acquire the same amount of items no matter how well I set up my build. By multitudes in amount.

So yes, it affects people.

Everyone has another perspective.
Either by comparing oneself to others (which is a go-to method to see where you ‘stand’ in an ARPG for quite a few people) or actively by interfering with the existing community based systems.

We have trade, hence every person using it affects you, hence builds vastly overperforming cause you to be worse off if you use it too. CoF obviously has no issues… well… they have other issues, but not with how well other builds perform at least.

Exactly. Which vastly overperforming builds generally are, bugged.
Either that or the math behind things wasn’t thought through fully, which is more then understandable with the sheer variety of builds such a game provides.

‘Mild’ design flaws are no issue, major ones are.
It’s not ridiculous definitely, just strong, does what it says… low priority to change I would say.
If it happens? Well… no surprise, it just feels more like other builds at the same gear level would then, so no issue there either.

I try not to. That was a disaster of a game. Not only did half their tree not even work but you also got stuck, stuff bugged out, at the start you could loose your whole save by building a specific building in 100% of the cases (well tested, right?), characters vanished, characters from other people got into your account, your gear vanished.
And then they had the gal to ban people for complaining on their discord server too, only positive feedback loop chamber allowed.

They deserved to fail, had a great base-game and ruined it completely.

Never understood why. Obviously people tend to gravitate to the stronger options, anyone thinking otherwise would be fairly delusional. Doesn’t change the situation. I have to agree there wholeheartedly.

Depends, I would say if it’s a hefty mistake in some way then it’s warranted nonetheless. If not… leave it be, no issue.

Not every, but the prevalence of those is very high.
The problem is that the bugged ones overperform even far beyond those overperforming, making those doing so in an ‘acceptable way’ seem like they’re utterly normal.

Neither hard-caps nor soft-caps are fine in such a situation.
If a mechanic allows you to go beyond expectations in singular areas it’s after all absolutely fine. Making those caps only limits variety.

Also it opens the prevalence for the future that all builds are balanced towards those caps in mind, making every build feel fairly similar.

That’s something which shouldn’t be allowed.
I expect EHG to do it the ‘proper’ way by providing decent balancing rather then limiting us, too many games fell because of that already, we don’t need another one following suit.

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Fixing bugs mid-cycle is fine.

Nerfing non-bugs mid-cycle does hit many as anti-fun despite addressing things like leaderboard unfairness. However, mid-cycle nerfs also introduce an unfair aspect because they punish slower-paced players, while speed demons have likely already moved on from whatever character used the overpowered mechanic and just laugh at the nerf in their rearview mirror.

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Yeah, I agree, I can’t see the bug that HH is using to generate ward. As far as I’m aware it’s the final paragraph on the node that gives ward whereby the healing (which is affected by healing effectiveness is converted to ward if the target is using any effects that give ward per sec per missing hp).

No, they require a bug, as you said earlier, exploit has a malicious conotation to it.

But who is the arbiter of what is broken?

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Depending on how we take mikes word on this, this might be a bug.

He said its not intended. (His direct quote is when asked in discord “is it intended for healing effect to scale HH ward?” his response was “No, that was a mistake”) is this a design mistake or a programming mistake? either way he does say its not intended which imo puts it on the table of being fixed.

I think the way I read it, is the initial heal is turned into ward. When something turns into something else ala conversion, it does not gain the properties of the old. When your bleed turns to poison, bleed duration does not come with it unless explicitly stated.

So the way it should work is initial healing → ward → Healing effect?(Not applicable, ward is not healing!)

Whats happening instead is Healing → healing effect → ward

the rive/HH ward builds are good, but they use the node which causes your healing hands to have 65% less initial healing.

Currently the node behind the problem node is bugged. it gives 3 ward per 10 healing effect when maxed. That is not initial healing, its just its own instance of ward. So when those two bugs get fixed, rive healing hands will be much weaker, but still very strong all things considered. with 1k~ healing effect which is reasonable to get, you obtain 300 ward per hit. this is still a respectable amount of ward on hit instead of a broken amount.

All this was a bit of a ramble, but if you play channeling healing hands, its not “slightly over performing” I am able to roll over my ward like warlocks. I dont think any build ever should hit integer limit. That is a huge unpolished issue. I am able to get 80-100k ward.

This is because I dont eat 65% less healing, and spend the 4 points on initial healing, the 4 points on the tree in initial healing also scale with healing effect. So you go from 100 base to 240 base. Which then becomes 2400 with healing effect, which is then turned into ward. Which I cast 4x per second for a staggering nearly 10k ward a second. I literally stand in reign of dragons at 400c and tank every bomb and breath. 400c isnt that high, but its probably high enough where I should be atleast trying to move.

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Everyone got to vote. Apparently OP builds that exist only because of bugs are something the community want squashed ASAP. Something I agree with.

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Builds that are significantly more powerful than others can get further in corrutpion and that means they get more gold, more T7 drops and more LP3+ Uniques dropping. I would’nt be surprised if a Warlock who can push 1k+ Corruption has a higher drop rate under MG than a 300-400 Corruption CoF player, on top of this they would earn more gold.

If this was to continue for long term then every player would need to make a warlock to be able to compete with the prices on the market for items due to the significant amount of gold/drops that would be brought in.

There is a big difference between being “Top Tier” and “Overpowered”

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Well, that depends in what context you wanna use that word.

Bugs, exploits, non-functioning mechanics are one part of that. The obvious broken stuff.

And the second is ‘broken balance’. This has to do with build performance simply. If a build has 50%… or 100% more damage then other builds in the same line of progression it’s usually fine, ARPGs of the variety which LE is have a lot of leeway with that.
But clear disparities of 1000+% for example are simply not acceptable, and that’s what we’re dealing with.
But here the arbiter is EHG, they need to have a clear cut-off to say ‘this is too much’ from their side.
The community then will call them out if they make it too frigid (bad) or too lax (also bad).